We baby boomers have lost too many cultural icons. Don’t take away Woodstock.

Some nut shot John Lennon. Good journalism — or was it reality? — took away our faith in institutions. We’ve pretty much lost Ford, Chevrolet, General Motors, Wall Street, faith in television news, trust in doctors, air, water … hell, they even took away Christopher Columbus, who went from great explorer to racist exploiter, all in one generation. And now there are people who say the 1969 moon walk was faked. But Woodstock too? What’s left?

I turned 21 in 1969. I was a West coast kid, nowhere near Woodstock, working a summer job between years at college. But, despite the technicality of geography, I was there in spirit just like the rest of that half of my generation that had woken up to new values, wanted to change the world, believed in a new kind of freedom, opposed the Vietnam war, and drank the cool-aid. With whatever symbolism we could find, usually nothing more than long hair and bell-bottom pants, we paraded our loyalty to what we thought was going to be a once-in-history sweeping change in humanity.

The Woodstock media sensation was cultural affirmation.  It was just about a year after the 1968 student uprisings world wide — riots, broken windows, overturned cars, breaking out simultaneously in places as far apart as Tokyo, Mexico City, Paris, Berlin, and cities across the United States. Unlike the year before, though, it was a new kind of uprising, a peaceful uprising. It was validation. Half a million people gathered for three days in a muddy field with no money, no violence, no hierarchy, no police, no authorities, and no problems. And it proved what we’d been saying to ourselves, to our parents, to our teachers, bosses, and anybody else who objected.

It felt like a turning point. After Woodstock, “Hippy” was no longer a bad thing to be.

All of which brings me to this disturbing segment of a fascinating Wall Street Journal video (below) on how Woodstock changed music. Oh the loss, oh the disillusion! Is nothing sacred?

Disillusion number one: marketing? The narration says “the Woodstock nation was born, ushering in a whole new area of marketing. True, I’m all grown up now, I get marketing, my company depends on it like the rest of small business, but jeez, marketing at Woodstock? That’s Woodstock’s legacy?

No, I hope not; but then John Scher, CEO of Metropolitan Talent, explains:

“You had a new brand. It was called Woodstock. And you had music that was associated with a mass movement: A social, cultural, and political movement. Music could be marketed, differently, than it was before. And then you had people who had no soul, just trying to sell product, trying to figure out how they could latch on.”

(If you can’t see the video, click here to go to the source at wsj.com)

But wait: it gets worse. The narrator implies that the legacy was more the movie than the event, and in the movie …

“Not all the performers fared so well.  The order of performers was changed, some were left out, in some cases songs performed elsewhere replaced songs performed at the event.  It all helped to create a memory that wasn’t necessarily true to life.”

And still worse. The five-minute piece finishes with WSJ Music Critic Jim Fusilli:

“There’s a lot of really terrific performances that received no exposure. For the past 39 years, they’ve gotten very little bounce. A lot of Columbia artists didn’t get into the film. A lot of Capitol artists didn’t get into the film, or onto the album. You had a giant label in Warner Brothers, who had possession of the music at Woodstock.

“I don’t remember what actually happened anymore either. I’ve been struggling against the myth of Woodstock. I’ve probably read 10 books, I’ve listened to (I bet your) two thirds of the music that was at Woodstock. I’ve talked to probably 20 people who were at Woodstock or involved in Woodstock. And I don’t really know what happened anymore. The only thing I have that I can trust is the music.

“This is a debate that I have with myself all the time, as to whether things like Woodstock, and the Beatles, and the Stones, will continue into the future. Whether people will have the same affection for them once the social context has changed. And I think it’s hard to say. The truth is that as long as a single hippy remains alive, the myth of Woodstock will be perpetuated.”

Screw historical accuracy. Power to the people. Leave Woodstock alone.

On the other hand, sacred? Who are we kidding? So, in the immortal words of the late great Gilda Radner (another baby boomer, by the way), never mind.

I’m not buying all the generalizations about generation Y, also called millennials, echo boomers, and the trophy generation. They’re getting through college and into the work force. I’ve seen the book The Dumbest Generation. I’ve seen the ads for special corporate trainings on how to deal with them. And I don’t like it.

Generation generalizations can be amusing. It’s a good parlor game. But does anybody seriously believe that there’s really a generation that is over-entitled, over-coddled, lazy, demanding, and so forth?

I don’t.

And why does it always seem like it’s gen-X that’s doing most of the complaining about gen-Y?

Could it be as simple as the fact that the people just out of college and into the workforce are using previously nonexistent technology to voice the same kind of sentiments that 20-somethings have had forever? So we have phenomena like the 10 best gen-Y blogs, and a Wikipedia entry, and all of that?

Isn’t everybody impatient and demanding when they’re 20-some years old? I was. I just didn’t have anywhere to say so. Remember the 1960s? What, we weren’t demanding? I certainly hope we were. And you 30-somethings and 40-somethings, you don’t remember what you said about your first job?

Generation Y is supposedly more entrepreneurial. Is that a function of the people, the age group, or the changing world we live in?

I like Brian Moran, who’s a real expert in small business, but earlier this week I caught his post Fixing Generation Y-ner. Brian jumps onto the bandwagon started at NBC, pasting a stupid law suit onto an entire generation. One recent college grad sues the school because she doesn’t have a job. Do we really think that’s a symbol of a generation? I don’t. And he jumps on the trophy story, which has the whole generation suffering from too many trophies for all, without distinction between winning and losing. I was there for some of that. I coached soccer for kids in that generation. They know the difference. The trophies fooled nobody.

I taught my start-your-business class this again year, as I have for many years, and watched how hard a bunch of graduating seniors worked to get employed in this worst-of-all-years employment situation. They didn’t look entitled to me. And I watched my own two millennial daughters get into the job world, and neither one of them seemed all that demanding or all that entitled. True, that’s not much data, but still, not very much of this gen-Y stuff is based on data.

I say give them a job, give them a break, and so what if they want meaningful work. I did too. And so did you.

1. The early hires have huge impact.

Just do the math. Think about how much more a single person affects company culture in a company of one, two, three, or four people, compared to a company of several hundred.

2. Building by shedding jobs

We’ve used the shedding jobs strategy as we built from a one-person-do-everything business to a software company with 45 employees. The first job I shed and our first hire was sales, because that’s not my favorite thing, but I was doing it. Next I shed the tech support job and hired someone to do that for us, for the same reason. Then bookkeeping. Followed by programming, and then marketing. What I was getting, most of the time, was my own time back.

3. Create your own workplace environment.

As the company grew, I wanted a workplace atmosphere that felt good to me when I would arrive in the office in the morning. Happy people, sharing the vision, working together.

4. Occasionally you fit the job to the person, instead of vice-versa.

Sometimes you run into somebody who you want involved in the company, and you adjust the job description. For example, one person was hired to do tech support, but ended up as documentation manager.

5. Projects make great introductions.

Sometimes jobs can begin with consulting contracts for specific projects that you need done. That makes a comfortable introduction. Like having a cup of coffee together before you decide to take a weekend trip.