What’s the message I’m conveyin’?
Can you tell me what I’m sayin’?
So have you got some idea?
Didn’t think so, well, I’ll see ya!

Vox Day posts Khyron’s Generation X Aptitude Test –

1. Do you want to change the world?

A. Yes, and I’m proud to say we did it, man. We changed the world. Just look around you!

B. Yes, absolutely, and I promise I will get back to doing that just as soon as interest rates return to where they’re supposed to be.

C. Omigod, omigod, changing the world and helping people is, like, totally important to me! I worked in a soup kitchen once and it was so sad but the poor people there had so much dignity!

D. That question is so stupid and absurd that there is obviously no reason to continue this pointless exercise.

If you answered D, you are Generation X.   Thus endeth the GXAT.

Following this, a rather, uh, spirited discussion broke out over what should be GenX’s anthem. For most people, it will be Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” although one commenter did aptly suggest “Rape Me.”

Not everyone was 20-something long-haired disaffected white kid with divorced parents and a stack of Melvins and REM records, though. Generation X was probably the most fragmented generation up til that point, requiring multiple anthems.

A significant number of Xers came of age in the late 80s and early 90s – the last real GenXer year in music was ’94 or ’95 – so this focuses primarily on that age bracket. The following is a list of which band is most suited to you based solely on ridiculously arbitrary stereotypes with no guarantee of actual accuracy.

If you…

Were a confused kid starting to figure things out but couldn’t quite hack it and blew your brains out* – Nirvana

…and I swear that I don’t have a gun…

Could rock out at first until becoming boring PC, follow-the-script left-wingers – Pearl Jam

After Pearl Jam boycotted Ticketmaster, fans had to deal with the unintended consequence of out-of-town scalpers

Same as above, but even whinier and without the politics so much – Smashing Pumpkins.

Were in college getting good grades or just sorta hanging out – Toad The Wet Sprocket

A hardcore leftist idiot who really could rock out – Rage Against The Machine

A black-wearing clubgoer – Depeche Mode

A bitch – L7

A lesbian with a pickup truck – k.d. Lang

A deluded suburban white kid – Vanilla Ice

Style like a chemical spill, indeed

Passed out under the dance cage with naked girs next to you  at a club at 3 AM – Lords Of Acid

An educated white kid posuer trying to look nihilistic who later got pissed off for real – Nine Inch Nails

A scrawny four-eyed nerd who managed to avoid beatdowns by being funny – “Weird Al” Yankovic

A gangsta – NWA

The original cop-killin’ gangsta – Ice-T

A rapper with a positive attitude and a thing for horseshoes – Arrested Development

Thought you were cool like that – Digable Planets

A nympho – Liz Phair

But not at the same time

Disliked all the other slackers in school – Harry Connick Jr.

Centered virtually your entire life around drugs and despair – Alice In Chains

What’s my drug of choice?
Well, what have you got?

The Devil’s spawn – Michael Bolton

What, you expected something happy in a post about Xer music?

____________________________

*Or were so messed up you married a woman who arranged for your death and made it look like a suicide. Opinions are divided on that one, but either way it’s a bad day.