I killed an hour in the Pop/Rock section at Borders earlier this week, looking to buy some new rock music.
No such luck.
I saw ridiculous amounts of space devoted to bands with names that made me grind my teeth: Plain White T’s, Panic At The Disco, Death Cab For Cutie, Cute Is What We Aim For...Plain White Cutie?
I saw that Hold Steady have a new album: Stay Positive. OK, guys. Which is it?
(The Marquis told me that one of the top kid’s music singles this year was something titled “I’m Awesome!”)
I saw some new heavy metal -– now packaged with handy consumer-guide stickers: “FOR FANS OF” this list of eight other metal bands whose music invariably only has loud guitar in common, and one of whom is always Metallica.
I saw copious amounts of space surrendered to warhorse cash cows like Zeppelin.
What I didn’t see was any new rock music.
Your basic rock music. Blues-based. Built around guitar riff.
Beery. Horny. A little pissed-off, but generally good-humored.
Not Norwegian death metal, not too-clever-by-half pop.
Raised on Fun House, not The Joshua Tree.
And…it’s gone, in the very real sense that you can’t walk to the shelf in a music store and put your hand to it.
Old news, I realize.
Spend any time drilling down the “Also Purchased” feature on Amazon and you might think it’s the next golden age for the garage band, but hit the bricks and the illusion crumbles anew.
It got me thinking about the early nineties, the end of the rock era, and what an embarrassment of riches the grunge scene truly was. (Deciding what not to buy was the difficult part of a trip to the music store.)
Your mileage may vary. I think Nirvana sounds dated, I’d still rather hit myself in the face than listen to Pearl Jam, and I’m still not sure what Stone Temple Pilots sound like (although I do remember that they were elegant bachelors.) I never listen to Sonic Youth or Pavement or Afghan Whigs, my favorites at the time. But I’ve spent the last day or so listening to some of the also-rans –- Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr, Melvins, Meat Puppets –- and the stuff sounds timeless.
Anybody got a copy of Tad’s 8-Way Santa?
I suppose...if you really dig Palin White Cuties, this might be your golden age, but something’s missing.
Come on, youngsters!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
1) Pearl Jam's "Ten" is a great album
2) "Palin" White Cuties? Intentional?
3) All signs seem to indicate: We gotta get the band back together!
I think rock music, as we know it, is dead. The popular bands now, the ones that get rave reviews on Pitchfork, sound like what you would expect from kids who grew up with Nintendo, lots of electronic sounds with dispassionate singing. One recent album that’s in the rock tradition is the Raconteur’s Consolers of the Lonely. It’s one of my favorites of 2008, which has been a terrible year for new music. Most recent rock albums just sound tired and cliché-ridden. (Disclaimer: I like the new Coldplay album.)
Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of soul music from 1970-75, like Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, Gladys Knight, The O’Jays, Gwen McCrae, etc. It was another period when rock music was moribund, but it was a fertile period for soul music, which went mostly ignored by suburban white kids. Listening to all this soul music has led to weird dreams, such as the one in which Ted Danson is having an interracial affair with a feisty black lady. It was actually a pretty funny dream.
Stoner, did you end up buying anything?
rocky, do you know how I know you're gay?
Reference to the 40-Year-Old Virgin (the movie, not rocky) behind us, I'm not really sure what "rock" music is. Stoner suggested it is blues-based, guitar-oriented, and beer-inspired. Fair enough - for our generation. I would argue that the heart of rock is a rebellion by white, adolescent culture against its forebears, and, thus, its manifestation is a moving target. I think it's important, for this argument, to distinguish btwn "good-time" music (ie, pop variants) and "rebellious" music (ie, rock).
In the late fifties, white kids adopted sexual "good-time" black music and created rockabilly to shock their elders. Morrison upped the ante by singing about fucking his mother. Iggy wanted to be someone's dog. Bowie couldn't make his music more shocking, so he played bi-sexual for impact. He also did his share of stealing black "good-time" music (the soul that rocky mentioned). The Ramones sang about sniffing glue and other street-life vices. The Sex Pistols rebelled against the whole fucking system of their parents' creation. Other punk bands that followed didn't necessarily take on status-quo politics, but certainly adopted many of the incidental, yet highly offensive (to the older generation), stylings of the Brit punks. Rap music began as "good-time" black street music but was adopted by white youth as a means to twist their parents' panties. Metal wasn't strictly offensive in and of itself, but the bacchanalistic lifestyle of its popular practitioners certainly is, and I think that facet of the genre is more important to its aficionados than the music's modes and time signatures. Of course, there was Black Sabbath and its Satanist ravings (which actually go back to the Stones and earlier). Electronic music generally wasn't offensive and was more of a "good-time" music (as was disco, R&B, etc) and doesn't really fit into the "rock" category.
So where is the rock of today? Today's white youth will rebel against what exactly? Their parents snorted cocaine in discotheques, smoked pot in hot tubs while engaging in three-way (or more) unprotected sex. Inter-racial relationships are the norm, and gay, bi-, trans-sexual orientations are generally accepted. We (soon) have our first black president, and racism is extinct in mainstream culture. How do adolescents up the ante, how do they let their elders know that they won't take their shit anymore, that they are the new wave?
I don't know, but I think they must be doing it somehow. Most of the music that I hear kids listening to is "good-time" music. If a new, young band is playing something that sounds like the rock music of our generation then of course it will sound cliched - they would be mimics of another age, not speaking from their time, their unique culture.
Well, I muddied up the water pretty good, but I was really trying to say: I miss the mainstream presence of a certain baseline musical vocabulary that I associate with rock – removed from matters of style and rebellion, however germane they also are.
I should have put horny ahead of beery, and there's the rub: None of the popular bands today sound the least bit horny…but they must be, right? Boys must still pick up guitars, in part, to get some girls, but girls today (see Twilight) prefer cute guys with no balls…
…So the bands all skip over "You Really Got Me" and go right to "Waterloo Sunset" (or whichever pretty and eccentric latter-day Kinks tune you care to name); whereas the Kinks first cranked out dozens of songs that
1) sounded not unlike “You Really Got Me”, and
2) sounded berserk, because that was their raison d’etre.
Have youth outgrown berserk?
FB -- You say Ten is a great album, I believe it. I'd still rather punch myself in the face than listen to Pearl Jam.
I will say, though: They do rock.
Palin White Cuties is a typo I decided to let stand.
I assumed it was a malapropism.
Anyway, if you want "horny", you have to go to the hip-hop bin. The 12 to 14-year old kids on my bus seem to only listen to, and appreciate, hip-hop. The songs are all about the rhythm, and feature explicit or suggestive lyrics. "Good-time" music, for that generation, but I find it awful, mostly.
I've tried to introduce them to the Deep Blues ("Turn off that hillbilly music"), Dylan ("This is awful"), Joanna Newsom ("She sings like a retarded goat"), etc. The closest I've come to acceptance is Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin.
You mentioned grunge earlier. I just watched "The Gits", a documentary about that Seattle band. So-so film, but it served as an intro to their music (pretty good) and the great voice of their singer, Mia Zapata, who was murdered just as the band was approaching mainstream success. It made me want to check out their discology.
FB, you know how I know I'm gay. My record collection includes the complete works of Belle and Sebastian, quite a few Dusty Springfield records and even a Dolly Parton record.
Your view of rock music is a lot more expansive than mine. If I can't hear the influence of Little Richard, Chuck Berry or Jerry Lee Lewis, I don't consider it rock.
I am still laughing at ("She sings like a retarded goat")
Post a Comment