"complicit in manufacturing the sentiment"

I'm not really a Jane's Addiction fan, but Jessica Hopper wrote some killer lines in the Chicago Reader this week reviewing their new box set, and I felt the need to share my faves here:

To believe that Jane’s Addiction headlining Lollapalooza again is somehow historic, to be psyched about this recurrence, is like masturbating to the memory of losing your virginity. Sure, it was meaningful when it happened, but 20 years down the line, it’s a pity if this is what’s getting you off. If what was our pinnacle then is still our pinnacle now, it reflects pretty poorly on how we’ve been spending our time.

Why this campaign for our sclerotic hearts and minds? Perhaps it’s because we’re the last generation to come up thinking of music as something we’re supposed to pay money for, and they figure they’d better milk us till we can give no more.

But we’re not exactly the passive victims of this scam. To believe, to attend, to spend is to be complicit in manufacturing the sentiment that reunions like this depend on. To be nostalgic for a time is to assert that it’s worth remembering—that our generation mattered. And we’re happy to allow our sense of our own importance to be used against us as a marketing tool.