Now What?

 
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.

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:

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.

Now what?