Have you ever headed straight somewhere and ended up making lots of stops first? That’s what last post was like. It reminded me of a girlfriend I had once who wanted to go clothes shopping for me, but first she wanted in to stop at this dress shop then that shoe store and then another women’s clothes shop then another until I said “I need to get out of this mall” and on the way out she tried to get me into another dress store.
I’d give you our dialog in departing — but it would just be another detour.
In an attempt to get back on point about good, vital rock, and listless rock (an oxymoron, really) and the cult of newness:
As the first bands of the New Wave beached themselves in the early to mid Reaganista 1980s, I’d joined the workaday world with a full-time job and changing priorities. Sometime after Romeo Void my brain lost its velcro for song and band names. It was no longer so easy to keep track, even when I liked the music. In the early 90s I made a concerted effort to listen to what was new. I even strove to get some banter going with friends, the way we used to, and traded tapes with them of some of the new things coming out: Crash-Test Dummies, etc., trying to find stuff we liked.
But it was forced. For one thing, so much of the music seemed so bleak. As far as emotional tone, rather than any kind of happiness or joy, so many of the bands affected a world-weary, jaded attitude. Kids in their twenties feigning the seen-it-all cynicism of sixty-year-olds. Music to commit suicide by. Still, I listened to the local SF rock stations and we talked about any promising trends (I loathed grunge), hoping for another good burst of creativity. And there were some decent songs. But it seemed nothing like earlier creative bursts in the genre.
In the mid 90s I had a stressful editorial job, detail-oriented and compulsive. One of the few pluses was that the bosses let us listen to music on their headphones. I didn’t take advantage of it much, but an associate publisher lent me a Cream CD one day when I was reasonably caught up and just tidying some schedules, so I popped it into the PC and put on the headphones.
As the first chords of White Room reverbrated around my skull, it shocked me back a few decades to a carefree time where anything went (almost). It was like matter meeting anti-matter in my head. Electro-shock musical therapy — and I couldn’t handle it. To be in that compulsive, uptight environment where small miscues could throw books off schedule and screw everything up was not conducive to listening to Clapton, Baker and Bruce doing psychedelic wild abandonment.
I had to pull the CD out. Physicists may want to conduct tests smashing matter into anti-matter, but I wasn’t ready to conduct any such tests inside my cranium. I’ve endured a lot for art. All 17 minutes of Ina Gadda Davida without psychedelic anesthesia. The Bob Dylan movie Renaldo and Clara. A wretched Clash concert where half the sound system failed and Strummer spat at us (literally and figuratively) “Don’t just stand there, yell fuck off you fucking Limeys!” A bizarre hard rock festival in Finland where the hosts kept asking me what I thought of Finnish rock’n'roll, and finishing was all I hoped they’d do.
But I could not listen to Cream singing I Feel Free at that job and in that cubicle.
I went home and played the CD after work and loved it! I was free! The music was great, and it got me thinking.
What compelled me to put so much energy into trying to find the newest good music? Where does this come from, this desire to discover good art on the cutting edge?
To the point where admitting you like older music somehow makes you unfashionable or even a bit laughable, as if you had old high-water pants on and faded shirts with too-wide lapels? To the point of enduring joyless, mediocre music rather than listening to what I knew was good, was true to the genre?
Screw it. The best rock music came from that golden age, say 1964 to ‘73. I think the next really vital era for the music was roughly ‘77 to ‘83. Why settle for less?
A few months ago I posted on Stanley Karnow’s book Paris in the Fifties. He has a chapter on the fashion industry. Toward the end someone speculates on what keeps fashion going — why do people keep paying so much money to wear something different? A fashion leader answers that so long as women don’t go into stores and ask, “could I get another dress just like this one I’m wearing?” there will always be a need for fashion designers.
I suppose it’s something like that that keeps us looking for the latest novel sounds in music.
Yet it seems to me that sometimes the drive to listen to tunes whose only redeeming quality is their newness robs us of the gorgeous harmonies, rhythms, and melodies of the past. I mean, in the 60s they had glorious heart-broken songs that made you feel great about life: Stop! In the Name of Love; Where Did Our Love Go?; Help!
Sing it: “Help me if you can I’m feeling down,
and I do appreciate you’re being round,
help me get my feet back on the ground,
won’t you please, please help me?”
and see if it doesn’t infectiously leave you smiling. How did they do that and why have they quit?
“Stop! in the name of love! Before you break my heart. Think it over.”
Okay, so perhaps I’m a dinosaur, or at least an archaeologist. I’m probably becoming like the big band aficionados who decried early rock and roll. Or the jazz fans who sneered at big band music. Or those born in the 19th century, listening to symphonies, and opera and enjoying marching bands on the Fourth of July who knew, just knew, that Dixieland jazz was the devil’s music.
It’s a time-worn tradition, casting a jaundiced eye on the new. Just don’t ask me to listen to another spoon-fed world-weary 20 year old whining about his or her suburban pseudo-blues.
I foolishly listened to a top 40 station in my youth and heard the same 60’s songs played so many times that I now often wince to hear them.
I would agree that older music is, “where it’s at.” Sam Cooke, James Brown, Genesis (with Peter Gabriel), etc. That said, 1994 and the alternative music explosion stands out in my mind. So many good songs/bands emerged in a short space of time. Many are still my among my favorites.
I too have tried to find “new” music, with limited success. Some newer bands have a sound reminiscence of Johnny Rotten’s nihilism, but you have to wade through miles of crap to find them. I stay with what I know.
Paul, isn’t that a long time to bear a grudge? I mean, the radio station overplayed it’s hand, not the musicians, yeah?
Stevo, to your mind who are the primary bands of the ‘94 alternative music explosion? And the best/most typical songs?
I will preface this by saying that I think 1994 was a great year for music. Some may believe that “alternative” music went mainstream with the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991. Nirvana may have opened the door in ‘91, and by 1994 performers were stepping through it. Perhaps I overstepped when I labeled ’94 as the alternative music explosion.
I was fortunate in 1994 to have my first real decent paying job, and luxury of listening to a Detroit alternative station each day at the office. I had enough disposable income to purchase tapes (yes, tapes, I had no CD player.) This was before MP3 and downloading. The web had yet to go mainstream.
I was sitting at my desk well after midnight in the spring of ’94 and heard a strange, vitriolic song. Alanis Morrisette sang, You Oughta Know. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After listening to her album I decided most of it was crap, but that song…
Other bands and albums of 1994, Hole released Live Through This (that despite the controversy of Cobain’s involvement in the project remains a great CD); Weezer, their self-titled Blue Album; NIN, The Downward Spiral (Pretty Hate Machine was much better IMO); Liz Phair, Whip-Smart; Portishead, Dummy; Green Day, Dookie (over produced, could have been much better); Veruca Salt, American Thighs, Garbage, self-titled, P.J. Harvey’s first mainstream single Down by the River from the great To Bring You My Love CD (the title track is the best on the disc). Canadian bands I Mother Earth and Our Lady Peace also made their presence known.
Before 1994 I didn’t listen to the radio much. I was ‘out of touch’ with music. That year brought me back to the present. There was so much to listen to. I had worn out my Smiths, Sex Pistols, The Cure, and Floyd CDs because of the pap produced by the music industry. I was interested again.
Perhaps I am biased given that I had funds to purchase and listen to music. I still listen to the CDs released that year and count many among my favorites. There are a few new bands that interest me, including My Chemical Romance, and Cursive. I am now, again, out of touch for the most part.
Ah, I think you’re too hard on modern music.
It’s true, too true that so much of what’s played on the radio is unbearable. You have to dig around, but I think there’s more available now than ever before, and it isn’t just the one in ten million who makes it that’s available anymore.
The information age has made little bands, local music widely accessible on the world wide web. If you don’t find something euphoric, or uplifting, or deeply talented it’s because you aren’t looking, not because it isn’t out there.
Stevo, that is a wonderfully thorough answer. I’m totally impressed. Some of it is slightly familiar to me, most not, we’ll see how much I recognize in the first few chords — I think your last paragraph nails it.
Music sometimes catches us at the right time. That’s what was happening in the mid 60s to early 70s, a lot of us found that music was a glorious score to our lives.
Carrot blister! (Root veggie wound bubble?)
Yeah, you’re right.
You and Stevo both touch on it. A lot of the answer might be that I caught all of that great music as a kid at an upbeat time when I could buy the albums.
(Cuz as a teen, Mom and Dad got room and board.)
And we made fun of the really bad pop music then, too.
Still, back then we could separate the bubble gum from the nutritious. For the past two decades it all seems to be trying so hard to be heavy, I’m trying to find anything with a little joy and bounce.
Maybe in 1970 it had too much bounce. Now it feels like they’ve let most of the air out of the tires.
[...] wrote a fantastic post about music called ‘Cult of the New’ (part [...]
I too listen to early Beatles a lot. And I will never cease admiring The Who, The Stones, The Doors, The Band and many more from that time despite the overplay in many venues. But my god how much great stuff has come up since, and not all of it depressing. For bands that have not done away with melody, we have The Pixies, Wilco, Radiohead, The Eels or even the Killers. And we have people like Bjork, Tom Waits, Buddy Guy doing his best work in years….its a smorgasborg at the best place in town.
I’ll admit the stuff on the radio is much worse than it used to be. Though there always was some separation between am/fm or hits and albums, its never been quite as bad as now, and never has popular music been quite as monolithic. But off the main road, it just keeps getting better. Every month I seem to run across another new amazing talent.
And I will cede that it was a Golden Age but less because they were so much better but because 1. they were first and 2. there was less crap to wade through.
Think of it: no American Idol, no Beyonce or boy groups (they did have men groups like the Drifters but c’mon, they were good). You see, I have mixed emotions about this time…great music like there ever was and more crap than we’ve ever had to deal with before.
ps. just check out the music I’ve found.
Doesn’t it all seem much more fractured now than it used to be?
We made fun of “Top 40″ music in the 1970s as an industry gimmick, knowing that greedy moguls (easily made fun of, pictured as balding paunchy guys in big offices with picture windows) those avaricious moguls controlled who got air play.
Yet in the 60s if a kid from Cleveland met a kid from San Diego or Omaha or Tampa or Boston or Portland, he could mention the Drifters or Blues Magoos or The Strawberry Alarm Clock (let alone the Stones or Doors, etc.) and chances are everyone knew who he meant.
So in reaction to Top 40 there was an effort to get out and discover different talent. Not mainstream, not “pop.”
But doesn’t it seem to have swung so far in the other direction that now everything is very diffuse? I get the sense that kids all over the country know their local garage bands and what’s playing in their area, but there isn’t the common musical vocabulary or “matrix” of recognizable bands and songs.
But what do I know? I’m getting to be one of those old guys, now. (I want the big office with the picture windows, dangit.)
Absolutely agree re the fractionalization. I have a friend who shares essentially my tastes and when we get together and talk music he’ll list off about 5 bands of which I know 4 and vice versa. And we are in the same location as well. Its frustrating in that its good to have music in common but does indicate the wealth of music out there.
Yes it seems more fractured. I think that is because it is more fractured but I don’t have solid evidence either.
I think one of the reasons old music seems better than new music is a selection effect. The old stuff that is still available tends to be the best of the old stuff. I think there was a fair bit of crap in olden times but it hasn’t survived. So, the old days always appear to be a golden age.
Aos, one of the interesting things about this dynamic is that we now have more and arguably better formats for connecting and sharing music, via the internet.
Yet the technology that enables so many to share the music they make also drives the diffusion that makes it difficult for really talented individuals to rise above and become known nationally or internationally.
Bongo mirror: good point, re the bad old stuff.
I think this is generally true across all media. I mean, there doubtless have been lots of fairly bad art openings, and that old art is now moldering away in basements or attics or buried in dumps.
Same thing with old movies — I’m sure there’s lots of lousy old celluloid that no longer sees the light of a movie projector to bore or annoy people. So yeah, about the bad old bubble gum and other forgotten music.
On the other hand, we have a local radio station here, KFOG, that plays Ten at 10, (http://www.kfog.com/shows/10at10/default.asp)
where songs, ads, news, and audio clips are played from one year as if we could go back in time.
Given a good year, I love a third of it and enjoy much of the rest. On Saturdays, they re-play all five from that week. (To get an idea of it check out the songlists for all 5 in a given week.) I turn it on as I do stuff around the house. Just listened to 1971, including a funny clip from an old Mary Tyler Moore program. (A strike has Lou Grant doing the news, first time sober (terrible) then drunk (much better).)
We just heard 1976, including Starbuck’s “Moonlight Feels Right.” Once, it’s enough to make you smile as you wince or shake your head. Twice, I’d have to change the station.
Plus, the DJ who does it, Dave Morey, has an absolute fixation for certain songs that I can’t abide. Such as Kool & The Gang’s “Jungle Boogie.” I’ve even called in and talked to him about it. Afterward, on air he mentioned my call and how he would play it until its detractors got how good it is. *wince.* In my case, it ain’t gonna happen.
Anyway — yeah, normally, natural selection weeds out lots of dross. And, but for nostalgia programs, much of the idiosyncratic stuff is forgotten.
Postscript: I’m listening to 10@10′s take on 1987 as I type. Ted Koppel is interviewing Jim and Tammy Faye Baker about their finances. Tammy is bubbling along about her love of shopping — 20 years later, the inteview is kinda surreal.