We’re too old.

That’s what Herbie Hancock said at Quincy Jones’ Music Consortium.

He told a story.  Of being in Japan and getting one of the original PlayStations.

Now Herbie considers himself to be technologically adept.  When he got back to the States, he hooked the PlayStation up, even though the instructions were in Japanese.  But he couldn’t get past the first level of the one and only included video game, involving samurai warriors.  After three or four hours, he gave up.

But a few weeks later, his buddy came over with his nine year old son, Ryan.  When Herbie told Ryan he had a PlayStation, the kid started bouncing off the walls, he was doing cartwheels.  Herbie led him to the living room, told him he’d had trouble figuring it out and to give it a go.

Half an hour later, after catching up with his bud, Herbie returned to the living room to find Ryan on level four of the samurai game.  Ryan started explaining what was going on.  This warrior was a force for good, this one a force for bad, this one could be both, depending on how you played.

Point being kids today are born into technology, they’ve got a natural facility.  We oldsters, as adept as we may become, will always be a step behind.  With children it’s instinct.  The children are literally the future.

Oh, don’t blast me for using the cliche.  Too many people use children as an excuse for their lame behavior today.  My point, Herbie’s point, is that the kids will have the solutions.  We can start the ball moving on music education, but the kids own the court.

Kind of like Shelly Berg, who runs the music education department at the University of Miami.  He’s now using YouTube for instruction, having students play along with some of the greats.  You don’t deny technology, you embrace it!

Great wisdom for the baby boomers now controlling media.

But more important is to note that solutions will come from this younger generation. Whilst oldsters go to lunch, play golf at the club, kids are coming up with solutions. Oldsters want a band that will be ubiquitous, that will rain down coin.  It’s necessary to support the purveyors’ lifestyles.  But kids are excited about music and the process first.  The end result comes second.  Or the end result doesn’t have to be today, it can be tomorrow, or the day after that.  Kids are still dreamers, they haven’t had the optimism beaten out of them.

Today’s kids are the anti-baby boomers.  Rather than striving for individual achievement, what’s most important is cohesion, being a member of the group.  And it’s groups that will birth the future.  You can’t have a successful act without an audience.  And kids know how to grow said audience, and aren’t worried if at first it’s just thousands, and not millions.  And kids today know how to use the new technology, how to stimulate and stay connected with these groups, that’s the social networking revolution.  Instead of putting up barriers, preventing the free flow of both information and copyrighted material, they see easy conduits.  They don’t believe information must be free, but they do believe everybody must have access to it.

So new methods of payment must be constructed.  And the oldsters are penalized by their thinking, that starts with too many zeros.  Kids today are interested in traction.  And will jump to where the traction is on a whim, instantly, if their friends are there, if it’s appealing.

In other words, it’s about the audience, not marketing.  Once a kid feels he’s being sold to…  You’d better have an incredible product, like an iPhone.  Otherwise, not only are they skeptical, they bad mouth you.

So, when you construct an album of tunes written by old hacks, putting a pretty face atop it all, like a cherry, kids may consume the one hit track, but don’t believe in the act and don’t want any more.  They’re on to our game.  The key is to find something they believe in, and will continue to believe in.

There are so many tools.  And so many being invented every day.  Usually, by these kids who learned how to code in school, or by themselves at home, out of pure desire.  You might say the younger generation is too self-focused, too myopic, but I think you’re missing the point.  They’ve got incredible dedication to what they believe in.  They don’t have short attention spans, just an unusual ability to graze and pull out exactly what they’re looking for.  They’ll spend hours, days with what truly interests them.  Just watch kids playing Halo and tell me they’ve got short attention spans.

They get all this, we oldsters do not.  Our role is not to put up barriers, but to enable kids.  Give them tools, support and money so they can grow the future.  Which is coming upon us ever faster.  More rewarding for the individual as we go.

Just think about it.  We used to hunt rare record shops for discontinued product. Kids today have the history of recorded music at their fingertips.  Should they pay for it?  Absolutely!  But not at CD prices.  And I dare you to say this is bad.  To be able to tell someone about Frank Zappa’s "Absolutely Free" and let them hear it, miles away, oceans away, in short order.  I hunted for years for "Lump Gravy".  Now everybody can have "Lumpy Gravy".  You can say I wasted years, but times change, and we need to change with them.

Great acts will be born.  They’ll generate a ton of revenue.  And they’ll be a lot better, with greater longevity than the crap foisted upon the public in the MTV era.  We sold lowest common denominator.  Kids are interested in crap with train-wreck value, but they’re dedicated to that with substance.

There’s a generation gap miles deep.  You might think your kid is your best friend, that you’re aware of everything he does, what he’s thinking, but you’re clueless. Even if you steal his phone, check his texts and IM’s, you don’t know what’s going on in his mind, the way he processes information, the opportunities he sees.

What’s the cliche?  Lead or get out of the way?

Make no mistake, the kids are the leaders.  Either help them, or step aside.