I’ve been feeling some pressure.
“Not enough writing.”
“Not enough cutting edge journalism.”
“Not enough of your keen and razor-sharp wit these days, old man.”
No one has actually said these things to my face, but I can feel them circulating the universe. Plus: I keep getting bloody noses, so that means someone is definitely putting these thoughts up in the air, causing them to land in my subconscious like grenades of scorn.
Well, I have something to say about that: There ain’t enough worth writing about.
So there.
Seriously. Too much fashion, not enough Rock n’ Roll - and lets be honest: no one wants me writing about fashion.
Besides… it’s too easy.
Panic! It's the fashion.
So let’s ask the hard question: “Where’d the Rock go?”
Right now there isn’t much to speak of. Somehow we went from trying to create new genres and new styles to… just playing the same crap over and over in order to focus more on actually paying attention to clothing trends. Style. Fashion. I’ve heard dudes in bands talking hair and makeup tips. I wish I were exaggerating. It’s the music scene without music - so just… a scene?
It’s not even that I care about fashion or who is dating whom. One way or another - everybody has their own thing, and I could care less. I just want to hear good music - the rest is secondary. But when more passion seems to be poured out on whether or not your belt will fit your skinny jeans or how to properly explain to your stylist that you want your bangs a certain way than whether or not your new album is any good… we got problems.
Now the music fans - those who have no business trying on girl’s jeans or wearing eyeliner to school - are left to ask the question they’ve always asked:
What about us?
Every generation of outsiders gets stuck with the same question: What’s next for us? When is the next moment for us mortals? What is the next wave, the next sound, the next style - and who will be the next pioneers to lead us on… and give us something new to call our own? When - or if - this New Sound emerges, will you have to be beautiful to pull it off?
Take courage, Awkward Rock Fan, I’m ancient. I actually remember the last time this happened and it worked out pretty well.
*time warp sound*
Ah, the late 80’s. What kid in High School could really expect to pull this off:
One day, there will be a show full of chicks not yet born trying to hook up with me. Seriously.
Back in the 80’s & very early 90’s, these bands were everywhere. You couldn’t escape them - MTV, the radio anywhere, every single magazine. They were inescapable… and if you wanted to watch MTV or read a magazine about music, you were forced to see bands like this constantly. What people forget is that these bands were just the logical conclusion to an over-marketed, totally exploited Rock Music scene. Corporate rock made copies of copies starting with Led Zepplin and this was what they ended up with:
Fortunately during the 80’s, Punk Rock - the kind that didn’t involve shooting heroin into your eyeball - also became huge and provided a major outlet for those of us who had no interest in hearing songs about hot chicks sung by dudes who looked like hot chicks. There was a loose identity to Punk Rock that any goofy, awkward kid could actually feel a part of - because it was created by goofy, awkward kids. More importantly, this sincere group of music fans had a place that was their own and that, at least for the most part, was all about the music first.
Watching Punk grow and swell and carve its own place into American culture, it seemed that the common man - Awkward Rock Fan - had something good going. Something his own. It wasn’t a reinterpretation of something done before - this wasn’t a new anything, it was its own thing.
Then… the milk went bad.
For five minutes things were looking up. Then The Man came along and… roont the whole game.
You want to ask, “Where’d the Rock go?”
I’ll tell you where it went: It was eaten. By them.
Them: The Beautiful People. The Haves. The 1%.
Somehow, they won.
People were asking the same questions then as they are now:
“Who’s gonna be our Led Zeppelin? Who will be the next Jimi Hendrix? The Beatles? Who will define our era?”
The last time people tried to sincerely answer those questions, the Labels swept in with bags of money so they could control the conversation. In doing so, they skipped over the real answers and gladly provided us with their own. IMHO, Alternative Rock as we know it was started in 1986 with Bad Brains’, i against i. We were on the right track! It had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with taking to the music to its natural next phase. What happened after is where things went all batty and we ended up with Punk dolls and Trump Cuts.
Bad Brains started it, then inspired all new waves of bands with Punk roots that were looking to take over the mainstream. The first band to really take that concept to the next level was Jane’s Addiction.
Before Grunge and before any white dudes you knew had dreadlocks, there was Jane’s. Perry Farrell, all septum & nipple piercings, horizontal-striped knee-high leggings and jitter bug stage movements dropped the comment, “(I would describe us as) a cross between Duke Ellington and the Bad Brains” in the band’s video, Soul Kiss. While there was a fashion element to what they were doing, it was clearly secondary to the music. They were terrifying and new and dangerous and utterly unmarketable by the standards of their time. Perry would never fit the mold of the macho David Lee Roths or pretty Bret Michaels’, he was the first real bridge between the Punk scene and the mainstream - and he did it making great, original music.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m well aware that Jane’s eventually got huge, which led to Lollapalooza and the introduction of Alternative culture to the mainstream, but that isn’t the point. The point is that the music eventually got swallowed by waves of insincere, mass-marketing fashion-based poo.
During those couple years, Nirvana and “Grunge” erupted, partially due to the success of Jane’s Addiction. The labels had a new horse they could ride into the ground - the new path that Bad Brains had begun and Jane’s had opened wide was paved over with flannel t-shirts, pre-fabricated “Grunge Fashion” and all sorts of devilry. (No offense intended to Nirvana or those who followed but, y’all should’ve at least sent a card.) Bands like Jane’s kind of took the back seat and before you know it just faded out into tour promoting and dating super models.
At that point what remained of the Alternative Rock and Punk scenes went underground - and Grunge took what had been called “Alternative” and made it mainstream. Grunge went from being new and interesting to gross and pre-fabricated fashion. Of course… the labels were loving it. They jammed every young stud they could into a flannel shirt and Doc Martens, and it was over. Set formulas in place, they went on cruise control for a decade. Cue: The rest of the 90’s. To death.
Meanwhile… all kinds of good shit got lost.
For example:
Or…
Punk grew into something entirely more sophisticated - not that mainstream music would ever know it.
The last Golden Age of the Record Label spent massive amounts of money assuring that you heard exactly what they wanted you to hear. A new form of payola was introduced - corporate sponsorship - and the labels had the market dominated. You could pick up a so-called “Rock Magazine” from those days but you would find nothing about what was going on outside of what was on the radio. There were bands that produced entire careers of innovative and surprising music - completely overlooked by the labels, print media, radio, MTV and the general mainstream music world. Add to the mix the debacle that is American Idol and here we are.
Fast forward to today and I’d say we’re primed for a new… something.
Do we really want to see what comes next on our current course?
From the (in)famous KROQ:
“We are in the business of selling advertising, not breaking bands.” The art of making something great took a back seat to the business of music fashion and culture - anything marketable - and we spent a decade listening to music that made us hate music.
NEW YORK (AP) — Never mind the auction block — here’s the Sex Pistols.
Memorabilia from some of punk rock’s biggest acts and seminal moments — including a scrawled flier for one of the Clash’s first shows and publicity photos signed by the Sex Pistols — is headed for a Nov. 24 Christie’s auction.
The event, announced Tuesday, includes more than 120 records, photos and promotional pieces for such punk, garage rock and new wave legends as the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, the Ramones, David Bowie, Blondie, the Cure and the Smiths.
The auction is Christie’s first to focus on punk mementos, signaling the collectible status of a brash, anti-authoritarian rock movement that largely thumbed its nose at posterity.
“We understand that tastes change, tastes mature,” said Christie’s pop-culture chief Simeon Lipman. “Ten years ago, punk memorabilia probably wouldn’t be something we’d be auctioning here. But now, people of a certain age have a certain ability to splurge on this material.”
Should they care to, highlights include a rare poster for a 1976 Ramones concert in London widely credited with helping inspire such British punk titans as the Clash and the Sex Pistols and a flier for a show later that year featuring the latter two bands and the Buzzcocks.
Other prime finds: a copy of the Sex Pistols’ first press release and a 1966 promotional packet in which an up-and-comer called David Jones promulgated his new last name: Bowie.
The various punk items are expected to fetch between $300 and $6,000 apiece.
The items generally weren’t designed to last for decades, making the few that have survived all the more tantalizing, Lipman said.
Even when the global financial meltdown is sapping a once-raging art market, “with pop-culture items, there’s sort of a nostalgia that drives it. It’s not necessarily a need to invest — it’s ‘that’s cool,’” he said.
The auction also features artist-designed toys and several big-ticket classic-rock collectibles, such as the portable organ John Lennon played in the Beatles’ indelible 1965 appearance at Shea Stadium. Drawing a then startling 55,000 fans, it ushered in the era of stadium-size rock concerts.
The instrument was broken during the show and quickly traded in at an Atlanta music shop, where the owner realized its significance and held onto it, Lipman said. The now-functioning organ is expected to fetch $150,000 to $200,000.
One would think that a forum with Ian MacKaye two weeks before the most consequential presidential election in recent history might yield some pretty charged questions about current events. MacKaye is one of the founding figures of hardcore and post-punk through his work with Minor Threat, Fugazi and Dischord Records, and his almost 30-year career in music has been a real-time example of how to make records, a business and a family life off the grid of corporate influence.
Now that MacKaye is three dates into his seven-city Q&A speaking tour of Southern California, what’s the one topic that someone, without fail, always brings up?
“There’s always someone who asks a Straight Edge question,” MacKaye said, referencing the Minor Threat song that sparked a lifestyle movement aggressively committed to sobriety that MacKaye has since distanced himself from.
“Many of the people coming out are interested in historical punk stuff or a particular Minor Threat song. It’s challenging because I want to be fresh in my answers. The people asking these things are 18 now and wrestling with these ideas in their own lives. I remember going to see Abbie Hoffman speak 20 years ago, and he was pretty cynical and dismissive towards young activists. Running the label, the music is all still current to me.”
MacKaye’s done similar “group interview” tours before, but this one (which stops Sunday at Hollywood High) comes at a particularly apt juncture for the Los Angeles counter-culture and punk communities. The self-identification of young, arty rock bands with DIY culture and its “Our Band Could Be Your Life”-era ethos seems ever more visible in L.A. But for local bands operating so close to the vortex of the entertainment business and its increasingly myriad opportunities (or, some might say, necessities) to make money through licensing, MacKaye still sticks to his guns on ethical advice in an era of increasingly sophisticated means of using music to move product.
“Many years ago, Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag said he’d rather have a day job so he could be free with his music,” MacKaye said. “I work! I run a label. I book bands. I’m on the phone with you. I work so I don’t need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you’re not beholden to anyone. I grew up in D.C., where the town’s business was government, and in L.A., the entertainment industry is government. To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale. People who do [licensing] aren’t necessarily wrong for it, but it’s like paying your rent with prostitution. We should be asking why that economic system is in place at all. It’s snake oil.”
Those coming to his Q&A sessions should expect a pretty loose town-hall format: MacKaye isn’t preparing notes, and no question, from the most obscure punk arcana to volatile political issues, is off the table. In a time when few new artists seem willing or able to artfully talk about social issues in their music, MacKaye’s has stayed vital with three generations of young fans partly because he kept the politics personal. He makes a point that, unlike many punk bands of the ’80s, he never addressed Reagan or his policies by name, and while a Fugazi song about missile defense systems would probably have been fantastic, the continued attraction of young fans to his Dischord catalog suggests that he may have made a prudent decision back then.
The one political topic he does seem to encounter every night of this speaking tour is the question of who he’ll vote for on Nov. 4. His answer, he says, is the same it’s always been.
“At every election, my vote goes to the candidate less likely to declare war,” MacKaye said. “You’re dropping hugely expensive pieces of exploding metal on a population. America deserves the president it gets, whether the country votes for them or allows their vote to be stolen, and the least we can do is to elect someone who won’t do that to other people. It’s like if you have a friend who you know is always going to get in a fight, you don’t ask him to come with you to a restaurant because you know he’s going to punch the waiter.”
– August Brown
Ian MacKaye speaks at 7 p.m. Sunday in Hollywood High’s main auditorium, 1521 N. Highland Ave.; tickets $5, or free to Hollywood High students.
