New Music Sucks. I have proof.

There was a point in time where I lived at shows.  Back in the mid nineties, I went to at least one and sometimes as many as four shows a week.  When I think about the bands I saw back then, I feel blessed.  One show had 88 Fingers Louie, Ignite, and Good Riddance on one bill.  (This was the infamous “If Good Riddance doesn’t want to give my daughter a t-shirt” show–ask me about it one day)  I got to see the short lived Texas is the Reason.  I knew New Found Glory sucked long before the rest of the nation.

I went to a show this past weekend and there was no spark.

At first, I thought I had finally, after almost twenty years of punk rock, grown up and out of the scene.  It bugged me.  I hated the people who just used punk rock as a stepping stone.  The people who were at every show one year, never to return when they discovered college parties, raves, or weed.  Then, over the last few days, I thought about it a lot.  Usually, music was in the background.  And when music is in the background, I tend to drift back.  I drift back to a number of times and places.  Times when all we had was each other.  Places where we had to make do with little.  I guess it’s the crusty old punk in me–and I can imagine the older ones have even more to sigh about–that can bitch about how much better the music was, how harder we had it, whatever.  And to a certain degree, it’s true.

Looking at Spin‘s top albums of the last three years, you see a lot of TV on the Radio, some Lil’ Wayne, Against Me!, and the Arctic Monkeys.  Compare that to the top albums of the years leading up to my high school graduation (1991-3) and you see albums like Nirvana’s Nevermind, Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life of…, Dre’s The Chronic, Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville.  Take (in order) the most influential (I say influential, not neccessarily the best) rock album from the last 30 years, one of the most brilliantly original hip-hop albums of all time, arguably the most important hip-hop album of all time, and arguably the most emotionally raw and unabashedly sexual albums out there.  In 2008, the best hip-hop can provide is… Lil’ Wayne?  Really?  Whaaat?  Yay-yuh!  Oh-KAY!

So, Sunday, when I was at a show for the first time in over a year, I found myself bored.  There was no energy.  Yeah, kids were dancing and rocking out, but there wasn’t that sense of urgency.  When Lollapalooza hit in 1991, there was the first opportunity for a bunch of us misfits to gather in large groups and see the length and breadth of what we all listened to.  While there might have been a dozen of us at school, here we were surrounded by thousands.  It was awesome.  I remember going to shows to see bands I had only seen as patches on jackets, rocking out, and falling in love with one of the bands that opened for them.  Most of the kids today just show up for the bands they want to see and leave.  There was also a sense of history.  On Sunday, when Bayside ended their show with a cover of NOFX’s classic “Liza and Louise,” I felt like I was the only one singing along.  Maybe it was just our scene, but when the bands at Spanky’s used to cover songs from before our time, be it the Misfits, Murphy’s Law, whoever, we knew the words.  We knew the bands that made the bands we listened to.  What kids today know the Replacements, let alone Television?

I don’t have the exposure to the new stuff like I used to have, that’s for sure.  I still stay current, though.  Man Man?  Fucking brilliant.  (Okay, even if I hadn’t known the drummer since he was like 12, I’d still dig them)  Vampire Weekend?  Awesome.  Gnarls Barkley?  Probably the most talented outfit of the decade.  I don’t pay that much attention to the new stuff, though.  The rapid turnover in the music industry these days, where one-album wonders are the norm in the search for The Next Big Thing, means that we have a lot more in the way of Branded acts, as opposed to the steady growth of bands.  R.E.M. didn’t become superstars until their fifth album, ditto for U2.  Both bands are still putting out albums.  How many bands that are out today do you think will have thirty year longevity?  Green Day seems to be about it.  It’s hard to get interested when all of the music today is shake and bake.  And it’s hard to enjoy the show when everyone there has bought into it.

Advertisement

~ by poolboydeluxe on March 26, 2009.