We Don't Care Anymore?
So I'm sitting here, feeling fairly decent after a Sunday off from work, having witnessed my beloved Bears win their seventh-straight game (that sounds so sweet!), and after a few drinks, and I can't fucking think of anything to write about. I could bitch about my problems but honestly, they're my own fault for making a stupid decision a while back in my life and I know that, so what's the point? There is no point. So I wandered onto amazon.com and found what I was going to write about.
Kids these days and their fucking idiocy in regards to music. In short, what the FUCK?!
Before I really hit the proverbial "ON" switch, however, for purely editorial reasons here I'll narrow down the focus of my example to just bands that have come along post-2000. The '90s rock scene got a lot of shit because neither Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, or Elvis released a new studio album, but that's a poor reason to ignore great commercially-successful albums like 'In Utero', 'Ten', and 'Dirt'. By the time the post-grunge alternative acts started hitting the scene in the late to mid-'90s, the horridly inflexible music critics of the world were just barely starting to accept this whole "grunge thing" to the fold as just plain Good Rock. Which then, of course, conveniently gave them lisence to pan the likes of Live, Bush, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, and even my silverchair for the sheer audacity of NOT being Nirvana or Pearl Jam (or actually, in all mentioned examples, also being simultaneously guilty of ripping OFF Nirvana or Pearl Jam... it was a confusing time to be a Rolling Stone reader, to say the least), despite the fact that from '94 to '98 was one of the best five-year stretches for rock and roll since the late '60s (laugh if you may, but you're just dating yourself if you do, baby-boomer), if not THE best.
Go ahead, think about it. Give me five years that beat that period since '66-'70. I'm waiting.
Then there was nu-metal, and a lot of it was good. Most of it sucked ass, though, so we don't really need to delve into that one. It happened, it was good and horrible at the same time, and we've been laughing at Mushroomhead ever since.
So now, post-2000, we really don't have many, if ANY, great rock albums. Finch's "What It Is To Burn" was a very good album, but classic? No. The Used's 'Maybe Memories' was a good album, but fell apart from random bouts of song-writing weakness. Taking Back Sunday have been weak from the beginning, and just sucked in a lot of the power-pop/emo/screamo crowd hungry for something else to listen to. Frankly, their popularity baffles me. Thrice released two indie albums of massive underground following before 2003's 'The Artist In the Amublance', which is arguably their best album, but again... can we put it in a bin with 'Appetite For Destruction', 'The Joshua Tree', and 'OK Computer' under pretenses of "not being able to compare apples and oranges... they're all classic because they're just so great without trying to be?" No, no we can't. I am, personally, a fan of Story of The Year's 'Page Avenue', but I fully-well understand that the ONLY reason why they were signed is because of the close proximity they shared with other popular screamo bands of the time. They had a good sound and they fit in, so they could tour with whomever they wanted, just as long as it was within those two dozen or so bands that they were genre-cousins with.
Now we're seeing a lot of the second and third (and fourth and fifth) albums from these and other similar artists, and the reactions are both predictable and staggeringly insulting. Thrice's 'Vheissu' is an outstanding example of an intelligent band consciously trying to develop and mature. It's a very good album, but the jump from their attempts at appeasing their older fans with their older sound to the newer, quieter, artsier affair is a hard one to make, and very, VERY forced. Good album, but impossible to compare to anything they've released in the past. For those silverchair fans that I know are reading this right now (you know who you are), this is the jump from 'Neon Ballroom' to 'Diorama' that was almost impossible to follow unless you liked more music than Nirvana and Korn. So why are their fans on websites across the net preaching about how they're "die hard Thrice fans that love this album more than the others combined?" Being a Thrice fan has no relevance to liking 'Vheissu', just as being a silverchair fan has no relevance to liking 'Diorama'. You do or you don't. You're not showing your loyalty to one of your favorite bands, you're showing your abundant ignorance in not knowing what it means to like the new album. In other words, you like the album, the end. Forcing yourself to like it because it's Thrice/silverchair/Radiohead (another band that has changed completely between albums, AFTER having established a die hard fanbase) is a waste of your time, attention, and energy. Just go out and listen to something that's pretty close to what you already like, it's why record labels sign 743 bands that sound alike at the first hint of a new commercially-viable sub-genre like nu-metal or screamo.
Another example? Sure. Finch's 'Say Hello to Sunshine' is very progressive in melodic development and song structure. They are NOT your typical dozen or so offerings of verse-chorus-verse. Some hardly even repeat, which is *GASP* daring for a major label act to attempt. Even more so for a Drive-Thru Records signee. The album tries to be weird, even resorting to rip off the king of progressive weirdness, the legendary Mike Patton (frontman Nate Barclow even sports a Fantomas tattoo he got whilst touring for their preceeding debut album). The album tries to be softer. The album tries to be completely different from its predessor by even going so far as to completely do away with their chronically-overplaying and yet virtuosic drummer, Alex Pappas, who was famed in the younger musicians crowd for his prowess on the double bass pedal, and replace him with the STRICTLY single bass pedal playing of... whoever the new guy is. All in all, however, this album is different enough to attract a completely different crowd. So why are the same fans coming back with the same old loyalty? The change is night and day. Admit the fact that you like the album, but they are NOT the same band you fell in love with on the first album, and let's move on. Don't tell me how much this sounds like The Used. Don't FUCKING tell me how much it sounds like Fall Out Boy (a third generation pop-punk band? When will the genre DIE?!). And don't even fucking DARE to goddamned tell me how much it sounds like Slipknot.
At the very root of this whole barrage of SFIs (stupid fucking idiots) is the fact that music for the masses has never been about how good it is, and has always been about the image you wish to project to the world. I'm guilty of it, you're guilty of it, we're all guilty of it, let's accept that and move on. You remember the very first album you ever owned. Tell me what it is in reply to this (mine was actually three: TLC's 'Crazysexycool', Green Day's 'Dookie', and silverchair's 'frogstomp'. One of those three is, sadly, no longer in my collection. You get no points and no respect for guessing which one), and I'll give you a good time. And then after that, you got the point and narrowed it down to what you thought was "cool", and went from there. I lost the bad apple in those three and moved onto the likes of Oasis, Beck, and Bush. You did the same, reader, regardless of whether or not you admit it. This is exactly what kids these days are doing, themselves. But in the absence of the classic albums, they're instead forced to stick with the genres instead of various aspects of the modern music scene. In short, genres have replaced albums, and artists have replaced songs. Careers last less than three and a half minutes, and can be purchased on iTunes for 99 cents. Buy now while supplies last.
How fucking ephemeral are our attention spans going to get before even iPod is obsolete?
-Owen
Kids these days and their fucking idiocy in regards to music. In short, what the FUCK?!
Before I really hit the proverbial "ON" switch, however, for purely editorial reasons here I'll narrow down the focus of my example to just bands that have come along post-2000. The '90s rock scene got a lot of shit because neither Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, or Elvis released a new studio album, but that's a poor reason to ignore great commercially-successful albums like 'In Utero', 'Ten', and 'Dirt'. By the time the post-grunge alternative acts started hitting the scene in the late to mid-'90s, the horridly inflexible music critics of the world were just barely starting to accept this whole "grunge thing" to the fold as just plain Good Rock. Which then, of course, conveniently gave them lisence to pan the likes of Live, Bush, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, and even my silverchair for the sheer audacity of NOT being Nirvana or Pearl Jam (or actually, in all mentioned examples, also being simultaneously guilty of ripping OFF Nirvana or Pearl Jam... it was a confusing time to be a Rolling Stone reader, to say the least), despite the fact that from '94 to '98 was one of the best five-year stretches for rock and roll since the late '60s (laugh if you may, but you're just dating yourself if you do, baby-boomer), if not THE best.
Go ahead, think about it. Give me five years that beat that period since '66-'70. I'm waiting.
Then there was nu-metal, and a lot of it was good. Most of it sucked ass, though, so we don't really need to delve into that one. It happened, it was good and horrible at the same time, and we've been laughing at Mushroomhead ever since.
So now, post-2000, we really don't have many, if ANY, great rock albums. Finch's "What It Is To Burn" was a very good album, but classic? No. The Used's 'Maybe Memories' was a good album, but fell apart from random bouts of song-writing weakness. Taking Back Sunday have been weak from the beginning, and just sucked in a lot of the power-pop/emo/screamo crowd hungry for something else to listen to. Frankly, their popularity baffles me. Thrice released two indie albums of massive underground following before 2003's 'The Artist In the Amublance', which is arguably their best album, but again... can we put it in a bin with 'Appetite For Destruction', 'The Joshua Tree', and 'OK Computer' under pretenses of "not being able to compare apples and oranges... they're all classic because they're just so great without trying to be?" No, no we can't. I am, personally, a fan of Story of The Year's 'Page Avenue', but I fully-well understand that the ONLY reason why they were signed is because of the close proximity they shared with other popular screamo bands of the time. They had a good sound and they fit in, so they could tour with whomever they wanted, just as long as it was within those two dozen or so bands that they were genre-cousins with.
Now we're seeing a lot of the second and third (and fourth and fifth) albums from these and other similar artists, and the reactions are both predictable and staggeringly insulting. Thrice's 'Vheissu' is an outstanding example of an intelligent band consciously trying to develop and mature. It's a very good album, but the jump from their attempts at appeasing their older fans with their older sound to the newer, quieter, artsier affair is a hard one to make, and very, VERY forced. Good album, but impossible to compare to anything they've released in the past. For those silverchair fans that I know are reading this right now (you know who you are), this is the jump from 'Neon Ballroom' to 'Diorama' that was almost impossible to follow unless you liked more music than Nirvana and Korn. So why are their fans on websites across the net preaching about how they're "die hard Thrice fans that love this album more than the others combined?" Being a Thrice fan has no relevance to liking 'Vheissu', just as being a silverchair fan has no relevance to liking 'Diorama'. You do or you don't. You're not showing your loyalty to one of your favorite bands, you're showing your abundant ignorance in not knowing what it means to like the new album. In other words, you like the album, the end. Forcing yourself to like it because it's Thrice/silverchair/Radiohead (another band that has changed completely between albums, AFTER having established a die hard fanbase) is a waste of your time, attention, and energy. Just go out and listen to something that's pretty close to what you already like, it's why record labels sign 743 bands that sound alike at the first hint of a new commercially-viable sub-genre like nu-metal or screamo.
Another example? Sure. Finch's 'Say Hello to Sunshine' is very progressive in melodic development and song structure. They are NOT your typical dozen or so offerings of verse-chorus-verse. Some hardly even repeat, which is *GASP* daring for a major label act to attempt. Even more so for a Drive-Thru Records signee. The album tries to be weird, even resorting to rip off the king of progressive weirdness, the legendary Mike Patton (frontman Nate Barclow even sports a Fantomas tattoo he got whilst touring for their preceeding debut album). The album tries to be softer. The album tries to be completely different from its predessor by even going so far as to completely do away with their chronically-overplaying and yet virtuosic drummer, Alex Pappas, who was famed in the younger musicians crowd for his prowess on the double bass pedal, and replace him with the STRICTLY single bass pedal playing of... whoever the new guy is. All in all, however, this album is different enough to attract a completely different crowd. So why are the same fans coming back with the same old loyalty? The change is night and day. Admit the fact that you like the album, but they are NOT the same band you fell in love with on the first album, and let's move on. Don't tell me how much this sounds like The Used. Don't FUCKING tell me how much it sounds like Fall Out Boy (a third generation pop-punk band? When will the genre DIE?!). And don't even fucking DARE to goddamned tell me how much it sounds like Slipknot.
At the very root of this whole barrage of SFIs (stupid fucking idiots) is the fact that music for the masses has never been about how good it is, and has always been about the image you wish to project to the world. I'm guilty of it, you're guilty of it, we're all guilty of it, let's accept that and move on. You remember the very first album you ever owned. Tell me what it is in reply to this (mine was actually three: TLC's 'Crazysexycool', Green Day's 'Dookie', and silverchair's 'frogstomp'. One of those three is, sadly, no longer in my collection. You get no points and no respect for guessing which one), and I'll give you a good time. And then after that, you got the point and narrowed it down to what you thought was "cool", and went from there. I lost the bad apple in those three and moved onto the likes of Oasis, Beck, and Bush. You did the same, reader, regardless of whether or not you admit it. This is exactly what kids these days are doing, themselves. But in the absence of the classic albums, they're instead forced to stick with the genres instead of various aspects of the modern music scene. In short, genres have replaced albums, and artists have replaced songs. Careers last less than three and a half minutes, and can be purchased on iTunes for 99 cents. Buy now while supplies last.
How fucking ephemeral are our attention spans going to get before even iPod is obsolete?
-Owen