TheLastManInAmerica

Hey, you

Is there something worth aspiring to?

And can it be found in a record store?

Well, it’s not there anymore

      “You Don’t Belong”- Bad Religion (2002) 

                “Rock is dead”. This saying has been regurgitated and debated for some time now. It seems to me that it is not so much a question of whether it is dead or not, but when and how it died and if it can be resurrected.

            Some people believe that rock met its maker at the end of the sixties; others say it died with Lennon. I don’t believe this. Indeed, the face of rock n’ roll was changed after these events but its lifeblood, artistic integrity, had not yet been lost. The deathblow came in the nineties, with the rise of
Seattle as the music capital of the world. The early years of this decade saw the last real world-wide music phenomenon with the overnight ascension of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam to stardom virtually unmatched since the Beatles. But things had definitely changed in these thirty years. Even though there were numerous leeches around, who capitalized on the staggering success of the Beatles, the early nineties was an orgy, with executives and bands screwing and sucking for every drop they could manage to get out of this new movement. I don’t believe there was a “sound” that came out of
Seattle (you can’t say Nirvana and
Alice in Chains or Soundgarden and Mudhoney sounded the same) but for some reason, throngs were able to attach themselves, like barnacles, to the idea that there was. It became such a tangled heap of bodies and limbs, all reaching for the same thing that it became nearly impossible to discern the artists from the imposters, which is what happens now.

            I find it very appropriate that Kurt Cobain’s publishing was called “The End of Music” because when the wave he was part of crested and receded into the ocean, we were left with the destruction that occurred when it came ashore. Marketing executives had succeeded in taking away the honesty and humility that was the real catalyst of the “Seattle Scene” (hell, they managed to sell flannel shirts for eighty bucks a pop because they were associated with the music), and ever since then, whenever something “new” finds its way to the masses, it is followed by a rush of clones, engineered by disembodied voices in conference rooms and their henchmen working as producers in the studios, who had to go to college to understand what music sounds like. It’s now more about the next “new look” as opposed to the next “new sound” (after all, the latter can be taken care of in post-production).

            This exists in every genre of music. At the end of the nineties, the onslaught of boy bands and teeny-bopper starlets were fine examples of this, if these acts can indeed be considered music. The emergence of Southern Rap saw countless acts follow the “Crunk” fashion; the same is true of “Emo” and “Indie” bands that gave rise to an entire army of pale, skinny kids who finally realized that there are others out there as sad and as lame as them. Some last longer than others but eventually the fickle masses grow tired of the novelty and the fat cats have to round up the ext generation of guitar swinging pretentious hacks. Music today exists to sells clothes, plain and simple. I don’t condone it, but if you happen to catch the seventeen minutes during the day when MTV shows music videos, you’ll understand what I mean.

            The only hope for getting back to honest music lies in cutting out the middle man. Luckily, this can be accomplished and for a while now, musicians have been shouldering this burden. With the ability to record, mix and edit your material in the home and file sharing to spread it around, we’re getting closer to doing away with corporate meddling in this art form. Unfortunately, this self-sufficient way of creating music is still in the larval stage but if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that music is trendy and soon we’ll see scores following suit and doing making the music they want to make. Sure it will still be trendy, but at least it will be honest.                

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