Who are these young whippersnappers? Do you know the difference between your Coldplays, Snow Patrols, and Pigeon Detectives? The picture above is Snow Patrol. It doesn't matter, really. They are the outcome of a faceless and utterly apolitical cultural production process. It is truly amazing that today's indie rock sounds in no way different to their predecessors. In fact, it's worse: They sound like a bad cover version of XTC or the Inspiral Carpets, diluted with no message. Many of these 'indie rock' bands are simply music light, diet music, stripped down to the bones, with nothing interesting to say and nothing interesting to play.
I have (re)developed a habit of watching Newsnight Review followed by Jools Holland's self-celebratory music bash on a Friday night (that's if I'm not in the pub). By the time Jools' annoying programme is on, I'm usually half-cut. Still, I listen to both new and old bands, and yes, the pattern is always the same: The Brit School styled bands have really nothing to say. Nought......
....and yet young people have every right to be pissed off. They have been born into the credit lie and will be burdened with incredible levels of debt. Many of them face being inextricably tied to meaningless office jobs, having all their space for thinking, reading, and learning completely constricted by the burden of unbelievable debt. Be pissed off.
Young people born after 1989 have been born into a seemingly post-ideological world. Nothing, so they have been told, is political. It's all dispassionate, post-ideological, objective. Yet all they've been faced with is meaningless consumerist junk. And if the credit crisis lives up to its (much needed) expectations, all their 'values' (i.e. stuff) will disappear into nothingness.
They have been lied to. Our world is no less (perhaps even more) ideological than pre-1989. Third way thinking and consumerism has sucked dry anything of value and meaning. Everything young people have been taught is compromise (don't question/challenge) and 'stuff' (stuff makes happy and is a sign of 'free' choice). This has been the world's worst enemy. It has eroded any sense of questioning in a two-pronged attack. And now - with the financial crisis - we have been granted a brief glimpse into the emptiness, the vacuousness of this lie. Let's hope it's exposed entirely. Be very pissed off.
And that's of course before we mention the 'big issues' like illegal wars, problems of exploitation, globalisation and the erosion of identity.
The 'indie rock' music of the last decade has been part of the problem. It has put a lid on rebellion and questioning. It has lulled an entire generation into worrying about handbags and bad hairdos. And yet there is so much more to talk about. The current indie rock music industry needs to disappear and destroyed. 50 years of rock has probably just about exhausted a movement and is as far as it can go. It's been a decent innings, but in the end it began to rot from the inside thanks to Coldplay, Travis, Snow Patrol et al. Rock is dead, and not a moment too soon.
7 comments:
Right on.
Any band that spends more time on their stupid swoopy hair than they do writing their songs is bound to produce a meaningless bag of toss. Mind you, properly marketed, they still manage to shift units to an undiscerning audience.
I might place the start of the rot slightly earlier than you did. Another factor is at play here, in addition to the soulless consumerism you mentioned: a great many people who were at school after Herr Thatchler got her claws into the curriculum can neither read, write nor speak. Systematically deprived, as they have been, of the basic tools of linguistic communication, can it be any surprise that they have, apparently, nothing to say?
The rot probably started earlier, you are right; but I also think there's a sudden break in the late-1990s after which there simply were no interesting, angry, or otherwise remarkable bands.
In the late-1980s through to the early/mid-1990s there were still some angry or musically interesting bands (in-between the emerging Brit School junk).
I liked your point about an "undiscerning audience"; it's poignant and sad at the same time.
And yes, the curriculum has certainly played its part in 'dumbing down' a whole generation and really levelling out all differences, tensions, questioning. Educated enough to work for business, but not enough to articulate anything of note.
Yes, I suppose there will always be one or two acts in any given period that stand out from the rest.
It's possibly significant that the only ones I can think of that even approach listenability in our current epoch are veterans of bygone days.
This is true. There is nothing of note, which is produced by new rock et al musicians and acts.
Just to be a little superficial: The 'worst' acts are the post-punk ironic ones; the ones who know how to imitate the style and dress with designer gear, and yet have nothing of interest to say or anything to add to music. Although, I can see that in one sense that is following in John Lydon's footsteps...
Brilliant post, olching. I couldn't agree more.
What was never truly alive can't die. If the cradle of rock was the '60s, we were all rocking a very sick baby indeed, and it never grew into anything. Maybe we thought - briefly - that rock would change the world for the better, but it couldn't and didn't. It takes action, not music to do that, and everyone merely sat back and listened to the music, hoping they wouldn't have to do anything more. They - we - were wrong. Sorry about that guys, but you'll have to do more than worry about music. Over to you.
Nick, of course Rock has never done anything as such (apart from the militant side of rock and the anarcho-punk stuff). But music - as literature or art - is popular culture that reflects dissent and rebellion. It isn't resistance, rebellion, dissent per se, but it can engender a culture of dissent. This is where I think we have moved into quite a novel era in which popular rock music does not present that potential at all. It is now almost wholly part of the process of engendering meaningless mass culture. This, I think, is indeed quite novel.
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