CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

ARCHIVES!
The Conflict of "Alternative Music"

Friday, June 24, 2005

this entry brought to you by foo fighters, "baker street"


I was having a discussion with a girl eight years my junior about music. She'd said she likes "all kinds of music", which, as I've said before, is a bad sign to me, because while I, in fact, listen to all sorts of music and have CDs and MP3s for just about every major genre of music, I still pick one when someone asks me what I like. Because to me "all kinds" means "I don't listen to any music with any seriousness," so it's a red flag.

And then the word "alternative" came up."

Here's the problem with the word "alternative" and I. I like the word "alternative". I like what it means. Music that cannot be classified in other categories. Different. Something else. It fit my music tastes. It's how you could find a connection between such disparate sounds as Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and Bjork. "Don't try to classify everything" my snobby art friends would say. But that's the whole point to "alternative". It's a way of classifying music without classifying it at all. How anti-system is that? It's anti-everything. It's anti-anti-conformity. The definition of the post-ironic 90's.

And then, not-so-ironically, the word "alternative" came to be used for such made-for-radio sludge as matchbox20, Candlebox, Seven Mary Three, and a slew of shit that destroyed radio, which later turned into bands like Puddle of Mudd, Three Doors Down, and Nickelback. What's so alternative about that? And now, an entire generation of kids has grown up with the totally wrong idea of what alternative music is.

My friends all hate the word "alternative music" because it was ruined for them. Which frustrates me, because without that word, I have no idea how to describe my tastes in music. Indie rock? My favorite band of all time also happens to be everyone my age's favorite band-- Nirvana. What's so indie about one of the highest selling, most important bands of the 1990's? Or The Strokes, which never even had an indie album? Or Postal Service, a band that is the most sugary-sweety pop music ever, and has been name dropped constantly on The OC, of all places? Well, they have indie attitude, I guess, but my musical tastes don't do the term "indie rock" justice. I've never heard a Pavement record. Never heard Tortoise. The first Modest Mouse record in the house was Good News, their second major label record.

So why can't I have my word back? Why can't I just beat it into all the kids that listen to radio rock to stop using the word "alternative"? Punk rockers do it with their term. "The Hives are great, but they're not punk," they say. Metal heads do it too. "Yeah, Tool's great and all, but it's not really metal." I could do that. "Sure, The Killers are fun, but they're not alternative."

Problem is other alt aging hipsters need to understand the sanctity of our once-beloved term to get behind me and teach the kids a lesson. But they kind of just roll their eyes and shrug and ask me why I have to label everything. God, people like me are assholes.
-----



with love from CRS @ 5:18 PM 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment