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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Don't worry, rock
I've been thinking hard for a long time of the idea expressed in this recent (and very good) Fluxblog post. For the past few years, pretty much since I moved to SF in 2005, I've been trying to conquer my various anxieties and neuroses. At the same time so much of American cultural has gotten more neurotic and anxious. I see it all the time. I see it when I read New York magazine's article on the "Age of Insolence" brought on by Gawker and the popularity of using the Internet to spread gossip. I see it when I read Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article from last year about 9/11 conspiracy believers when he ends by saying "It may be that America has become too big and complicated for most people to deal with being part of. People are longing for a smaller, stupider reality." Matthew Perpetua of Fluxblog is seeing it when he sees that "at the root level, indie/alternative/college rock/blog rock/whatever you want to call it is poisoned by the vanity of its audience." When it comes to taste in music, as well as many areas of life but we'll just stick with rock 'n' roll for this post, so many people are fine being fickle and disapproving. I assure you I don't want to get near politics but it feels with the United States becoming a faded empire the upper-middle class's frustrations with culture has become as glaring as the guys to go before us, Great Britain. It used to be that no one could touch the British music press when it came to cattiness and the good ol' practice of build-'em-up-and-tear-'em-down but now there seems to be plenty in this country who can do just a good a job.
When I moved to SF I was finishing college so I barley played guitar and did not keep up with music intensely as I used to. I went to exactly one rock 'n' roll concert, The Electric Six at The Independent. It was a ton of fun but I was too busy to spend much time with pop culture. Any free time I had went to comics and old movies. I come out of university an adult, both personally and professionally, ready to jump back into the world of rock 'n' roll and I see behavior that reminds me of my high school days (and I despised it then, too). I'm about to put myself out there as an artist and this new harsh audience has been cultivated. Not a harsh audience the way you would classify the aggressive crowd at a concert in Boston or Philadelphia. That actually be a great learning experience as Philly raised stand-up comic Paul F. Tompkins says. In that case you're dealing with something tough but also something honest. With the sniping done on-line and in person, for the record I've seen this type of attitude from about half of the rock 'n' roll fans I interact with, there's this cruelty you're getting from someone who is not entirely honest with themselves. For them it's more fun to dump on groups than to praise them. You can all join in the fun of sneering at someone. Displaying genuine enthusiasm for an artist makes one a little bit more of an individual and who wants that?
I suppose I'm being a bit neurotic myself when I tell you here I am already worried about this before I've recorded any music or played any shows. But for me it's another reason to find a center of my own. It's why I hold on to the music I love and remain inspired by certain bands no matter what is going on in the current world of pop. That's why I have Creedance posted above. John Fogerty and his band still amaze me. It's not just becuase they were producing so much great music in such a short amount of time, although that certainly does blow me away. It's becuase these guys came up in the Bay Area where in that place and that time, as well as all over the world, there so many far-reaching and grand ideologies being thrown around about music and the world at large. People depended on rock 'n' roll to change the world (seriously, Timothy Leary said that The Beatles were the next step in evolution). CCR was able to transcend all that bullshit and simply churn out one great song after another. They were too in love with the integral elements of rock 'n' roll to bother with anything else. They couldn't be cool or fashionable. The people who care about that stuff don't really love the music. But for those of us who just love the music there's nothing better than just turning up Chronicle, Vol. 1 and letting that sound seep into your brain.
I love how Steve Hyden picked "Ramble Tamble" as "the most rockin' song of all time" in his post of The Onion's AV Club. In that post he writes "rockin' requires an utter lack of self-consciousness, and attempts at rockin' in the past 25-plus years are inherently self-conscious and old fashioned." It's that lack of pretension I'm trying to develop in my own songwriting. I do work hard to make my songs as good as they can be. I just don't want to start worrying about if I'm sounding too "retro" or if I'm going to reinvent the wheel or not. There's no way I can make myself happy going down that path becuase there is no end to the ways I can make myself worry. Worrying doesn't lead to rockin'.
Permanent Link: 9:15 PM |
1 comments
Comments:
Pretension and self-awareness is the reason I can't get behind so many bands praised in these latter days, from the White Stripes on down. They're essentially doing very literate pastiche, and there's nothing particularly honest about that to me. I've often felt we're in a poor state if the best our artists can do is elaborate commentaries on someone else's original work.
I know you're worried. I did some time on the emo scene (as a boyfriend of a fan, not one myself) before it asploded all over the place, and got a taste for the cattiness, bitchiness, and "scene"iness of it all. I'm not singling emo out in particular, because I figure every music scene is basically a bunch of people who took all their social cues from high school (and movies about high school)...
I'm not sure if it's much help to say this, but you really just need to avoid the bitchiness if at all possible. I know it's not entirely possible, but... if you trust in the honesty of what you're doing, that really does make you untouchable in a way.
I wouldn't mind hearing something you've done, if there's anything around.
# posted by Ken Lowery : 10:19 AM
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