Saturday, January 21, 2006
At the ripe young age of 25 I’m sitting behind this computer screen contemplating the make ups of a cultural icon. Reading that first sentence alone sounds really grandiose even for the standard of my pretentious blogging ways. So yes, being a product of the 80’s I grew up in the grunge era. The days where every rock type music with distorted guitars were lumped into the genre of “Alternative.” This also highlights the first demise of a fad when the Alternative grunge hero the charismatic musical icon Kurt Cobain perished. He was questionably destined to be the most influential icon and could have championed cultural revolutions the likes that had only been done before by The Beatles. His suicide took away that chance. Marked by my past insights read since Cobain’s entrance to the grave still resonates like the anthems he wrote to build my generation of music.
The current generation of music is insipid. It’s filled predominately with talented musicians that use adhoc techniques to singe their musical influences in a garbage can of Pro-Tools and spit out the sound for a marketing success in mass consumption. It’s like that movie The Island where people are isolated to living in this underground incubator. The biggest hope in their life is to win the lottery and be picked to go above ground to The Island, which is this unseen paradise, portrayed to be this divine existence. An underling theme of the movie, one which permeates in the current music industry, is that there is an unlimited amount of human flesh and blood (bands) with only a very small finite amount of people destined for paradise and as all these people try to push their lives toward this dream they rarely question, Who’s the man behind the curtain?
Cobain's words taken from a Guitar One interview highlight his dissatisfaction with the music scene at the time:
“Every band since the mid- ‘80s has surfaced in a revival act. It’s a sure sign that rock is slowly dying. There’s nothing like wallowing in the past when everything in the future looks bleak. It happens in every art form. When they’re afraid of what’s in front of them, they always look back. They’ll reach a plateau, and they’ll think everything’s been done, but in reality, they’re just not thinking hard enough. They’re just stalled. If everybody gives up, though, that’s when things start to die.”
I guess that sums it up most clearly. Tonight just shoved those words right up my ass as I spent my time relishing in the sonic palettes of the current mainstream music. The bands
Weather and We Are Scientists offered up the regurgitated formula detailed herein. Weather’s singer Sean Campbell borrows archetypical vocal forms from Dave Matthew’s Band for the opening track All This Time released on their album Calling Up My Bad Side. Then Campbell feels like a change of approach so what strategy is implemented? Skip to track 9 Short & Sweet and Campbell does a little singer witch craft trick by calling the force of Sting into his vocal chords creating a song that sounds like an original tune where Sting came into the studio for a guest appearance as lead singer. W.A.S.’s songs sound like the accumulation of every new wave guitar hero that came before them infused with punk tempos and emo lines that’s I don’t even care to get more specific than that…because that’s what IT is, General. They are engaged in a revival act designed to aid in the demise of original music. They are bands that are talented but complacent rendering a sound too much like the musicians they wish to emulate. Listening to the mainstream today is akin to what it must have felt like listening to the mainstream of the 80s. I can’t imagine being 25-years-old when hair metal ruled the world and the content of the music was superceded by the showman ship of the band’s musical wanking ability.
So what’s an icon? In a world of John Lennon fans it’s someone with something to say. In a world Cobain fans it’s someone with something to say. They could take the simplest of lines and make them powerful and pop at the same time. I disagree with Cobain in the fact that people aren’t thinking hard enough. I don’t know about you but I think it would take a lot of concentration to sound like DMB for one song and then switch it up to Sting for the next. I agree with Cobain in the fact that people aren’t thinking hard enough because people aren’t questioning their sources. The stall of the 80s and in this generation is one in the same; it’s based on fruitless recycling. An artist should never stall on the epitaph of their predecessors rather they should implore their soul and reflect this world through the medium of their work. There is a man behind the curtain and an icon paints a vivid picture of him for the world to see.
The current generation of music is insipid. It’s filled predominately with talented musicians that use adhoc techniques to singe their musical influences in a garbage can of Pro-Tools and spit out the sound for a marketing success in mass consumption. It’s like that movie The Island where people are isolated to living in this underground incubator. The biggest hope in their life is to win the lottery and be picked to go above ground to The Island, which is this unseen paradise, portrayed to be this divine existence. An underling theme of the movie, one which permeates in the current music industry, is that there is an unlimited amount of human flesh and blood (bands) with only a very small finite amount of people destined for paradise and as all these people try to push their lives toward this dream they rarely question, Who’s the man behind the curtain?
Cobain's words taken from a Guitar One interview highlight his dissatisfaction with the music scene at the time:
“Every band since the mid- ‘80s has surfaced in a revival act. It’s a sure sign that rock is slowly dying. There’s nothing like wallowing in the past when everything in the future looks bleak. It happens in every art form. When they’re afraid of what’s in front of them, they always look back. They’ll reach a plateau, and they’ll think everything’s been done, but in reality, they’re just not thinking hard enough. They’re just stalled. If everybody gives up, though, that’s when things start to die.”
I guess that sums it up most clearly. Tonight just shoved those words right up my ass as I spent my time relishing in the sonic palettes of the current mainstream music. The bands
Weather and We Are Scientists offered up the regurgitated formula detailed herein. Weather’s singer Sean Campbell borrows archetypical vocal forms from Dave Matthew’s Band for the opening track All This Time released on their album Calling Up My Bad Side. Then Campbell feels like a change of approach so what strategy is implemented? Skip to track 9 Short & Sweet and Campbell does a little singer witch craft trick by calling the force of Sting into his vocal chords creating a song that sounds like an original tune where Sting came into the studio for a guest appearance as lead singer. W.A.S.’s songs sound like the accumulation of every new wave guitar hero that came before them infused with punk tempos and emo lines that’s I don’t even care to get more specific than that…because that’s what IT is, General. They are engaged in a revival act designed to aid in the demise of original music. They are bands that are talented but complacent rendering a sound too much like the musicians they wish to emulate. Listening to the mainstream today is akin to what it must have felt like listening to the mainstream of the 80s. I can’t imagine being 25-years-old when hair metal ruled the world and the content of the music was superceded by the showman ship of the band’s musical wanking ability.
So what’s an icon? In a world of John Lennon fans it’s someone with something to say. In a world Cobain fans it’s someone with something to say. They could take the simplest of lines and make them powerful and pop at the same time. I disagree with Cobain in the fact that people aren’t thinking hard enough. I don’t know about you but I think it would take a lot of concentration to sound like DMB for one song and then switch it up to Sting for the next. I agree with Cobain in the fact that people aren’t thinking hard enough because people aren’t questioning their sources. The stall of the 80s and in this generation is one in the same; it’s based on fruitless recycling. An artist should never stall on the epitaph of their predecessors rather they should implore their soul and reflect this world through the medium of their work. There is a man behind the curtain and an icon paints a vivid picture of him for the world to see.
# posted by Nick D @ 1:56 AM 
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Great post. There has truly been a void in the music scene for many years. I am so sick of hearing the whiny, poppy, basic crud. With the exception of Green Day, I thought rock was dead. When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs found their way into my life, I listened to them for almost two years. Exclusively. I was so starved for something raucous and untamed that also had a good pulse on the culture and a sense of humor. When I finally saw Y3 in concert, I got all teary-eyed when Karen O came on stage.
Many of my friends have turned to different genres (e.g. underground metal bands) or old stuff (e.g. Cheap Trick, The Beatles, Genesis) to sate their hunger for something new while the landscape is so barren.
I still find myself listening to stuff I dug in high school and college years.
That said, I still had a fargin' blast at Lip Gloss with Peter Hook as the DJ. They played lots of old stuff I hadn't heard in ages (much less boogied down to). Tones on Tail was a nice surprise. Of course, there was lots of Joy Division and New Order tunes, some of them were remixes I hadn't heard before.
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Many of my friends have turned to different genres (e.g. underground metal bands) or old stuff (e.g. Cheap Trick, The Beatles, Genesis) to sate their hunger for something new while the landscape is so barren.
I still find myself listening to stuff I dug in high school and college years.
That said, I still had a fargin' blast at Lip Gloss with Peter Hook as the DJ. They played lots of old stuff I hadn't heard in ages (much less boogied down to). Tones on Tail was a nice surprise. Of course, there was lots of Joy Division and New Order tunes, some of them were remixes I hadn't heard before.
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