X marks the spot: The forgotten generation remembers

Remember the Simple Minds song, 'Don't You (Forget About Me)'? The 1985 new wave anthem, used to great effect in The Breakfast Club, is now surprisingly apt. It turns out that Generation X, the cohort sandwiched between Boomers and Millennials, have been pretty much forgotten.

Here, four RNZ writers look back at how things have changed since the 'olden days' of the 1980s and 90s.

Phone home

In the early 1980s phones weren't mobile, in fact they were decidedly static, says Graham Smith.

The phone - clunky, mechanical, plastic, and often a curious shade of avocado green - lived in the hallway. It had its own throne, a kind of low, seat-table hybrid on which sat the address book, pens, and a stack of telephone directories and Yellow Pages.

In our house answering the phone fell largely to Mum: "Hello, Ruislip 32980." To this day I have no idea why this bit of pre-war telephone answering protocol lingered on in our 1980s household. Inevitably the call was for me or my sister; "Graham! Phone!" she would bellow up the stairs, the receiver left lying on its side on the table-seat throne.

If Dad was in the house, phone time was more highly policed. Calls out were monitored with hawk-like diligence. Even calls in, which cost Dad nothing, "Are you going to be on that thing all day?" Aimlessly chatting on the phone was seen as a faintly sinful pastime.

Early, awkward conversations with girlfriends were interrupted by Dad stalking out of the living room and tapping his watch. Later at university, I had plenty of privacy to talk on the phone but couldn't possibly afford one. Telephone connections were hugely expensive and there was a waiting list anyway. So, it was phone boxes, reversing the charges if calling home.

None of my mates had phones in their decrepit student hovels, so how we all stayed in touch, or arranged anything at all, seems slightly miraculous by today's hyper-connected standards.

If a bunch of us arranged to meet at the Free Trade or The Strawberry or The Egypt Cottage at a certain time, we turned up. If someone was running late, a call to the pub from a phone box might be necessary. "Is there a Graham or Reds in the pub?" "Yep!" "Sputnik's five minutes away."

The idea that 30 years later we would not only be carrying around phones in our pocket, but that they would also be powerful mini-computers connected to every corner of the planet would have blown our minds. Even Sputnik's, which was, to be fair, quite blown by that stage already.

The slow-burn of 1980s retail therapy

Shopping - especially for exotic goods not sporting 'Made in New Zealand' tags - wasn't for the impatient, remembers Liisa McMillan.

In the mid '80s, many things were not available in New Zealand. Shopping choices were limited, but you knew cool things existed from magazines, newspapers and TV. Air freight was incredibly expensive, so most items arrived in here by ship, three months minimum from the other side of the world.

When I desperately needed a pair of Dr Marten's boots, required post-punk/alternative/goth/skinhead/psychobilly wear at the time, I cut an order form out of the classified ads in the back of a 3+ month-old copy of the New Musical Express, and filled it in by hand, guessing a shoe size.

Visiting the post office, which was open between 9am-4pm Monday to Friday (if you didn't have enough cash for the weekend, tough luck! There was no Eftpos), I bought a money order (like a one-off cheque in the currency you needed. A cheque is the paper equivalent of a single debit card transaction, with worse fees), a 'surface-mail' envelope and stamp, and sent them all off to Shelly's Shoes in London.

And then I waited. And waited. No internet, no tracked delivery, no emails from the vendor, just waiting, hopefully, for months.

Eventually - usually - a box would arrive and there would be shoes inside! With luck, you still liked them, and they fitted you.

Some months later a small, angry skinhead offered to cut the laces and steal them off my feet in the women's toilets at a pub gig. I politely declined.

Selling out? Yes, please

Gen X used to worry a lot about selling out, so it's no wonder we struggle with how the influencer generation sees it as a life goal, says Nik Dirga.

When was the last time you heard someone called a sellout? For Generation X, through much of the 1990s, it was the worst possible insult you could imagine.

Nirvana's Kurt Cobain was the patron saint of indie credibility, not bowing to "the man" and wearing T-shirts bashing corporate culture. It's hard to remember now, but when the Beatles' 'Revolution' was used to sell Nike shoes in 1987, people kind of lost their minds. These days, selling out is no longer seen as a moral collapse in a world full of side hustles, social influencers and TikTokers all grinding away to break through into viral stardom.

What changed? The internet kicked down the doors so anyone with a phone could share their hot takes with the world instantly. There were fewer cultural corporate gatekeepers of the ilk that pissed off Kurt Cobain so much 30 years ago. Anyone can sell themselves out any time they choose and chase after those sweet, sweet endorsement deals and merch sales for their YouTube channel.

That's both good and bad, if you ask one of us graying old Gen Xers. We've got the control, but there sure seems to be a lot less ethical Gen X-style navel-gazing over what selling ourselves 24-7 really means. Once upon a time, being called a "sellout" felt like fighting words. These days, it kind of feels like a life goal.

From the cassette to the MP3: how the internet changed everything

Tony Stamp was a slave to his Walkman until the internet came along and changed everything.

As someone who scraped into Gen X by a scant few years, the 1990s still loom large in my memory, and worldview. We were slackers: in fact they made a movie about us called Slacker. The bands we liked? They were slackers too!

When I was a teenager, a vague sort of nihilism drifted through the air. I listened to Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Pearl Jam, and they all seemed mad about something, but I was never sure what. Regardless, their white male rage spoke to me on a deep level, chiming with whatever I was angry about at that time (my parents, probably).

At Papatoetoe High School I clutched my Walkman closely, listening over and over to cassettes I'd purchased (or, more accurately, my parents had purchased). Around age 14 I felt my appetite for music, triggered by these bands I thought were cool, start to become more adventurous.

Ten years or so later, everything changed. The internet was well-established, as were mp3s. But when my flatmate brought home a hard drive full of them (he worked in computer tech), my household, full of musically hungry 20-somethings, found ourselves immersed in hours and hours of fresh tunes.

We knew it wasn't strictly legal. But it was so easy. Countless albums we'd heard of, but had never been able to afford, all at once. We spent months lost in them, adding undiscovered acts and genres to our mental Rolodex. Things were never the same.

[https://citygallery.org.nz/exhibitions/generation-x-50-artworks-from-the-chartwell-collection/ Generation X: 50 Artworks from the Chartwell Collection], opens at Te Papa on Saturday 27 July and runs until 20 October.]

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