8.3.2001
Ananda Daydream

Something... has gone terribly wrong. I don't know if it's just in rock music, in music, or if its spread elsewhere too, but...
Just caught Iggy Pop on the David Letterman show. ..Iggy Pop on Letterman.... *that's* weird enough in itself, I mean, you've got a rock provocateur extraordinare, one of the originators of glam and shock rock, on a show my grandparents watch! And just watching it... here you've got, on this somewhat-political but totally acceptable tame show, a scrawny guy, long hair, dressed in nothing but high shoes, tight belled jeans, shiny aluminum-esque gold elbow-gloves (a la Alice Cooper's on "Luney Tune/Elected!" single), and a bunch of broccoli hanging from a wide green ribbon around his neck. (I have no idea on the broccoli...) And he's screaming something about "you're wearing a mask", jumping around onstage like he's epileptic, or getting electric shock therapy, sudden sharp movements, throwing himself across the stage.. going down by the audience, getting right in their round, dumbly smiling faces. A middle-aged, well-dressed neatly-pressed audience who just sit and smile, enjoying the show, smiling at the singer before them like they would an epileptic monkey in a zoo.
It seemed so wrong to me.
I mean, okay, there were some people further back with their arms in the air, and maybe they were all told to stay sitting or something, but c'mon! It's the same thing as it was at what was it, the Grammy's, I think, where U2 performed, putting on an awesome show, as always, Bono and the rest throwing heart and soul into the song and everything.. and no-one stood up or anything. You've got the first mess of rows full of aging men in suits, sitting there placidly, probably smiling at "the naive young man" who's laying his soul bare before them, trying to wake the world out of its complacency with a song..
And it's wrong.
What's happened to rock, what happened to the rebellion and the carelessness effortless freedom of loosing yourself in the music, letting your soul fly unfettered in the atmosphere created by the melodies? I mean, c'mon, what kind of rebel-rock do we have now? What, we've got Eminem. And I think that's only seen as rebellious 'cos of the hype that's come up around it.. I can't say too much, having never really listened to anything of his, apart from hearing "Stan" once or twice, but.. it's not rock, anyway. It's like Larry Mullen (the drummer from U2) said, sometime last year: "There doesn't seem to be a lot of rock music right now. What would you call Korn and Limp Bizkit? What is that? I appreciate some of it, but I don't know what it is. It's not rock 'n' roll." So much of what's out there's been so pumped-up, puffed-up, by technology.. even U2. Heard a song on the radio the other day, not sure who it's by, but the hook was "rockin' the suburbs", and I caught a line or two, something to the effect of being just like some older band, only they were talented, now they can just let the computer touch it up. And it's true. Read in the tv guide the other day, someone wrote in to ask if Jennifer Lopez really sang the lead on one of her songs. She did, though rumours had spread that one of her back-up singers, who has a stronger voice, did. But the point is.. someone had to ask. If you're in a band, yeah, you can trade of vocals, fine, but when you're a solo artist like that.. I'm sorry, you've got to be doing all your own stuff. And if your voice isn't strong enough that you can't sing without back-up, or without computer touch-up (I'm not just talking about Jennifer Lopez now), then, I'm sorry, but you've got no right to be out making that much money. Not when there's undoubtedly thousands of other great singers, some with record deals, some not even that lucky, who are just waiting to give their all to be in your shoes for even five minutes. And some are probably much much better..
You know how many great and wonderful bands I've listened to that no-one's ever heard of? Cactus World News, for one. They were an Irish band (I don't think they're still around, though I'm not sure), got a leg up on U2's record label back in the mid-'80s. They played Self-Aid, the benefit concert in Ireland back in '85, '86.. released a few singles, an album, maybe two.. and disappeared. I only know about them 'cos my mom had bought a single, album, and shirt. I listened to them.. and they're awesome. A fair bit in common with U2, but still with their own definitive sound. Some truly great songs, introspective thought-wrenching songs.. and no-one's ever heard of them. Yet everyone knows who Brittney Spears is, who J Lo is, who the Backstreet Boys are, who Aaron Carter is, who all these pop kings and queens are.. and have they ever even written a song? All it takes is a pretty face and a good dance routine now, decent techno back-beat, and you're in. Doesn't even require that you have that much, if you know the right people.. Meanwhile, you've got so many languishing in the underground, praying for a record deal, haunting the college airwaves, sending mp3s across the now-scattered wires, hoping someone will hear them, will catch their message to the world... While the gods and goddesses of pop, the false prophets of music, preach to six-year olds that sex is good, the opposite gender are toys, you are the only thing of importance to yourself.. and then you get Eminem and the rest, I'm not just pointing the finger at him (I just don't know the names of the others, just heard the songs).. there was a pop/dance track a few months ago, in some South American country , I think, somewhere south of here, anyway, and the song was about a guy slappin' his girlfriend or something, beating her, and there was an accompanying dance, involving a re-enactment of the song... and it was banned from being played at a city festival. While some will scream censorship, I'll scream "sanity!". Trust me, I'm all for freedom of expression, but, come on, common sense here! You don't come up with a bouncy little tune about someone being beaten! Tell me I have no sense of humour, I'll tell you that you've no sense of conscience.
I understand songs of anger, songs of hurt, songs of love, songs of sex, but.. don't sell it to little kids. Did eight-year-olds buy Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie and Iggy Pop records? Of course not. So how is it that now the "prime market" (treating people as economics, of course) for Brittney Spears is pre-teen? Pre-teen! Was over at a friend's house one day, his little cousin, maybe like, 6, 7? Under 10, anyway. She had one of those "hit clip" things that'll play a pop song for you. I don't remember if it was Brittany Spears or Christina Aguilara, but it was one of the two, and I remember watching her slinking around, thrusting like she must've seen them do. And this is coming from a little girl! Heck, she's probably just barely learned where babies come from, she can't understand what she's doing.. so she's not in the wrong, she doesn't know what it is, it's just a cool tune. I'm sure I was the same, only with New Kids on the Block and Sinead O'Connor (yeah, I know, weird, but that's what I picked up on when I was little). But New Kids at least tried to keep a clean image (though it was proven otherwise in after-years, I think) for their young fans.. I know they had older fans, too, but I think they managed to keep it pretty clean for the kids. Which was good. While granted, that was a good ten years ago, a decade(!), and "things change".. morals don't change. What kids grow up with, they accept, be it violence from a wrestling show or loose sex from television, or talking about God from their parents. I've even seen differences between my sister and myself, and we're only six years apart. I was homeschooled for most of third grade, and all of fourth and fifth. I came back in sixth grade, not knowing what out-of-school suspension was, what a lesbian was, what a whore was (documented evidence of that in my diary), seventh grade had to have the significance of "69" explained to me..and then the significance of that explanation explaned. But then, with my sister.. I've been on some of the same websites she has, they're a little iffy... she's catching jokes that I'm only now understanding. She's obsessed with cute guys (though, granted, they're largely anime characters), more than I've ever been, I think. She's sworn, been through the whole teenage-angst thing.. and I've barely arrived there (may never really hit it). I think a lot of the difference is that I was homeschooled, she wasn't. I've undoubtedly had a rather sheltered life (though I know some who've had it to a greater extent), and I'm not complaining about it, I'm glad. Because I didn't learn a lot of these things until I could understand them. Until I was old enough to understand them. It's strange, we've come in such a circle, I think... centuries ago, children were betrothed at birth, married as young teenagers. You had child-emperors, child marriages... then gradually, over time, we grew up, I think.. no-one got married before 20, sex so rarely came before marriage.. But now, heck, today I stumbled across some 14 year-old girl's online journal, she was so relieved to have found out she wasn't pregnant.. what is this?! I don't know if it's all just gotten so blatent, with no-one hiding anything anymore, or if there's just so much *more* of it all. In health class last year, we were doing the drug unit (when are we not?), and kids in my class had seen kids in the junior high, 7th graders, selling ecstasy tablets in the hall outside the cafeteria. And this is in a nice, well-reputed suburban school. And then there are condoms being given out with suckers at a pop concert with O-Town (a boy band, a kiddie-draw).
But getting back to the music... maybe it is just a reflection of our culture. I suppose it is. Listening to the radio yesterday, a professed "alternative music" station, claiming to be "on the cutting edge" of "today's new music".. it was all so toned-down. Even the sad songs, so smoothed over with overdubs and computer-generated string loops, that they loose their power. The so-called "punk", sure, they're immature and crude, but it's been so commercialized, and it's always the same thing. It's all become so laid-back.. once again, even U2, their latest album. Some of it, yeah, is still great, "Elevation" is a rock song, musically, "Peace on Earth" is a tragedy (not as in bad musically, not at all, but it depicts a tragedy unapologetically), the message of "Beautiful Day", that you can loose everything but still be happy, and "touch me, take me to that other place, teach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case". That's all great. But then you've got like, "Wild Honey", and it's just like, no. And the album has been decribed as a more stripped-down sound, and it is in a way, sounding smooth and clear, like a breath of fresh air.. which is good, don't get me wrong, but after awhile, you start to wonder if that air's been sterilized and cleaned by machines. There are some great things in it, but the technology has been utilized, and obviously so. Technology is a good thing, but you can't forget how to play... with U2, it's permissable, because they've proven they can play (and live it all changes too), there's no studio musicians in there, they still put soul into it.. but.. only so much soul will come out of a computer. Computers cannot make rock music. No matter what buttons you push, you're still only pushing buttons, you have to have something real in there somewhere, you can't pull emotion from a mouse click like you can from a guitar string, can't click like you can kick a bass drum..
Rock can't be dead, rebellion can't end, the establishment can't win, we can't just become mindlessly contented in our own little sheltered worlds, watching the news where there's a two-second sound clip of a flood in India that's killed millions, and then a half-hour special on someone in a nearby town complaining about the smell from a nearbly farm. (Don't move in near a frickin' farm then, if you don't like the smell!!!) We've got to have something to keep us from falling asleep, and rock music has always served that purpose... but where is it now? It's still there, I think, but it's being buried under the avalanche of pretty-faced pop, hey look we set up a showing of city kids' artwork, great but what about the kids dying of hunger the kids dying of war bullets the kids we've forgotten about pushed aside 'cos they upset us?! You with your big-screen telly, what about the child whose family has never even seen a television, but they'd love a loaf of bread or, dream of dreams, a cow, that they could have milk, and maybe further down the road, meat, or a calf to sell, maybe the child could someday have shoes or learn to read... they're such stereotyped images, the picture of the third-world child in their "primitive" world, but it's so detatched from the world we live in, our "education" so important, having a "successful career" in some meaningless occupation, keeping up with co-workers' lives, buying your kids those $100 shoes and the latest PlayStation games... athletes getting paid millions of dollars each year, living in the lap of luxury, for playing games... executives getting paid probably even billions for sitting on their arses telling people what to do, what stocks to buy, who to fire, while producing big-screen televisions for us to waste our time and money with. While in reality, children are dying of hunger.
Live-Aid woke up the world, at least temporarily, back in, what, '86? Yet when Net-Aid tried to do something, just a few years ago... I didn't even know it was a real thing, the only place I'd seen it mentioned was in the 'Doonesbury' comic, I thought they were just mocking something out, I had no idea it was a real thing! And it got nowhere. All the technology available to us now, with Live Aid they couldn't even get a real-time satellite broadcast half-way across the world. And now we can get a real-time image on everyone's television screen, on everyone's computer screen, all you need do is get a few people to talk about it, a spot on MTV, maybe a catchy tune, and you'd have the world ready to help. But does anyone do it? No. You've got your songs of puppy love, of lust, of anger, of fun, even of hatred... but you've got nothing in the mainstream that even tries to help.
You can get a band called Incubus (Hell-demon? something along those lines) on the radio no problem, there's never even a question about the name.. yet there's so very little Christian music on the main airwaves. All the talk about sex and getting drunk and mean jokes.. but never about God, you mention God, you get slammed for pushing your religion, offending those who don't believe in Him. I'm still amazed that Jars of Clay's "Flood" made it so big, that Creed hit it off so well.. but Creed is loud enough, grungy enough, that it's easy enough to ignore the words. And I don't know, personally, I don't think the music lives up to the lyrics, but it's not like many out there will notice, it sounds no different than anything else out there.. thus probably the reason they were so easily accepted, 'cos they sound the same, no-one notices that they're Christian. And granted, a lot of the "Christian" music out there is insipid.. at least, what you usually hear on Christian stations is. ('Course, so's a good deal of what's on the pop stations..) But there's a good bit of it that does have soul... U2 is a Christian band, but they're not catagorized as one (for whatever reason, and that's what saved them from being buried underground, I think). Newsboys have some great stuff, but you'll never hear them on a pop station. DC Talk's no different from a lot of the other bands out there, but they're "Christian", you can't play that on a mainstream station, you might offend somebody. ..Yet they never seem to fear offending anyone with language or sexual references or violent references.. they yell 'Freedom of speech!' and stand firm, resolute in their belief in artistic expression. They can take a stand for sex and drugs and violence now, but not for religion... (I want to start up my own radio station now. *g*)
What rock music is left, is faced with one of the toughest battles to win: apathy. People will get so into soap-operas on television, "reality" shows, but won't face anything in their own lives. They'll be patient with the problems of people on tv, but not want to hear the problems of their friends. They'll hear a tune, but not the words.. or they'll hear the words, but not listen to them, the ears working but the brain not. There's plenty of others working to help those who need it, we pay our taxes, our government officials were elected to take care of these things for us..
"Shock-rock" has become a cliche, the only thing left that will shock is Maralyn Manson and Eminem, and even then, it's through their ability (whether real or just preceived) to hurt. Which, yeah, if you can't break through any other way, you've got to slap someone in the face once in awhile, but.. you don't need to scar them in the process, you'll risk just loosing them to fear and darkness, instead of waking them to the light of day.
Iggy Pop is still using the same tactics he used back in the '70s to shake people up, but it doesn't work anymore. Things like that will no longer touch us, we're locked up in a glass world of complacency, a 'do-not-disturb' sign dangling from the cold doorknob. Someone screaming at the front door, screaming in pain, or pleading with all their soul, or baring their heart before us.. doesn't affect us. It's all just some tv show, some image, they don't really feel like that, people are all such actors nowadays, don't you agree? ("It's no secret that a liar won't believe anyone else" ~U2's 'The Fly')
We hold emotions so close, just going to work each day to pay the credit card bills for the clothes and the tv and the stereo and the suv.. and we like our pop music cheery.

 

 

After-note: Wow... you *know* I'm in a rough mood when I start raggin' on my own fav band..!