catachresis
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Sep 23, 2004
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Another current thread has got people lamenting how all the great 'alternative' music movements eventually got reduced to style, appropriated to the great yearning commercial mainstream, and commodified. It got me thinking about when I first started understanding the whole "alternative" meme in the mid-80s, and how even as I was starting to see how cool the alt scene was, I was also discovering a parallel movement by "the pretenders to Alt" -- the "college rock" bands.
Sure, the alternative bands were championed by college radio. But there was another crew that essentially created themselves for the benefit of the college radio audience. They *sounded* kinda new and edgy, but really only enough so that the frat boys could play it at their parties without dealing with music that sounded just 'wierd' or that had offensive references to homosexuality, racism, class-warfare, the military-industrial complex, or synthesizers--anything, in other words, that might put your date or your frat brothers off drinking, dancing, smoking 'doobies', and making out later.
There was always magical liminal moment when things that had been alternative suddenly stopped and became mainstream. Bob Marley and the Wailers were pretty outre until suddenly they weren't, and every every idiot who drove his daddy's old Merc was totally into reggae, especially if it was authentic like Clapton doing "I Shot the Sheriff," and it was the annual Bacardi Mixer at the frat. David Bowie's Scary Monsters was initially unsettling and strange, and kinda wasn't surprising coming from that guy who did all the make-up and jump-suits in the early-70s, but Let's Dance was totally cool and a great excuse to go buy some leather pants. Murmur was like, Who the hell is that creepy little Michael Stipe? while Automatic for the People was profoundly profound because you could dance to it, and they were like friends of The B-52s, who did "Rock Lobster," which was the only song you'd ever heard of them doing until you heard Cosmic Thing, and then you knew "Rock Lobster," all the songs on Cosmic Thing, and how cool REM was. Tracy Chapman was a little offensive, a little marginal, until they started playing her every day on the radio, and then all the girls in the sorority suddenly realized that she wasn't Black--she was a folk singer.
Anyhow, that was the crazy mixed-up world of 80s alternative and its more photogenic but dim preppy sister, college rock. What I want to know are what are the totally worn-out affectations that are supposed to signal "alternative" to mainstream people in a way that will be make people in shopping malls feel aesthetically edgy but not in a way that will put them off buying the mp3s?
Examples.
--Hippie-funk. A magical thing that combined the Greatful Dead's poppy-boogie-shuffle with some bass-licks off a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Should be blamed on The Spin Doctors. It's a genre that still refuses to die. I can't think of any of the current perpetrators by name, but I've heard them, especially in German car commercials. They seem to have mutated into something that adds touches of white hip-hop and emasculated Ragga.
--Swooning, sensitive College Pop. Clean-cut, preppy, and only slightly androgynous college boys (ergo, not Take That or New Kids on the Block) who sing melodic but predictable and mostly forgettable college radio rock-pop that's authentic because it gets played on college radio but not in a way that offends your girlfriend, who thinks that they're sensitive, and that suggests that you're sensitive too. I remember Ocean Color Scene--they might have started this sub-genre. I can't remember a thing they ever played. Their banner has been picked up by the epically anodyne Coldplay. I can think of some of the things they play and wish that I couldn't.
--Edgy Post-feminist Hippie-folk. A thing that may have been cultivated in the darkest bowels of places like Swarthmore and Smith, like poisonous mushrooms that are black with neon-pink spots and smell like patchouli mixed with Calvin Klein's Eternity. Often heard in cultured bistros that sell vegetarian burritos that include shredded carrots and/or bean sprouts. Plays well with Hippie-funk. Should, perhaps, be blamed on Ani DiFranco. Should be blamed even more on Alanis Morrisette, who perfected it. Sounds like what happens when a young womyn from a nice, respectable bourgeois household starts out playing Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind," graduates to Joan Armatrading and Nina Simone, and then does postgraduate folk-work by getting slipped a Rohyphie by a handsome frat-boy who listens to Hippie-funk. Anxiety, ambivalence, and too much adderall become a potent cocktail of syncopated acoustic guitar riffs and lyrical grievances against systemic misogyny played by people who eventually win Grammies. Listened to by people who end-up wearing big shoulder-pads, grousing about impossibility of "having-it-all" when you've reached the point of "having-most-of-it," and firing every subordinate within a thirty-foot radius.
Shouting Frat-boys. Not really speed-metal, though they went to the same prep school together. Not really hard-core, though they get their Beemers detailed at the same place. Not punk at all, although it shares the same equanimical relationship that Elvis cultivated with more original Black rhythm-and-blues musicians who preceded him. The genre is distinguished by the sound of young White guys yelling--not screaming, mind you--to the accompaniment of roaring guitar chords. Doesn't force fans to shake their heads at speeds that might threaten to strip the threads and throw their heads on the frat house floor. In "In Bloom," Kurt Cobain sang about the fact that these guys used to beat the crap out of him in high school, and now they treat him like a saint because he's angry at them, and plays guitar, and yells about it, and they don't listen to his lyrics, but, rather, they just bang their heads in unison, and this implicitly offends his sensibilities because it creates so much ambivalence. God hearkened to the cries of Kurt Cobain by creating Nickelback and selling Kurt a shotgun, thus putting an end to the ambivalence that the universe abhors. Shouts a lot and sounds really angry, but the lyrics are about the kinds of things that make you so angry that they make you want to affirm your common masculine bond with your frat brothers, shake your heads in unison, and have another Heineken. It's really just reggae--if reggae had been invented by angry white guys in college who liked guitar-rock.
Sure, the alternative bands were championed by college radio. But there was another crew that essentially created themselves for the benefit of the college radio audience. They *sounded* kinda new and edgy, but really only enough so that the frat boys could play it at their parties without dealing with music that sounded just 'wierd' or that had offensive references to homosexuality, racism, class-warfare, the military-industrial complex, or synthesizers--anything, in other words, that might put your date or your frat brothers off drinking, dancing, smoking 'doobies', and making out later.
There was always magical liminal moment when things that had been alternative suddenly stopped and became mainstream. Bob Marley and the Wailers were pretty outre until suddenly they weren't, and every every idiot who drove his daddy's old Merc was totally into reggae, especially if it was authentic like Clapton doing "I Shot the Sheriff," and it was the annual Bacardi Mixer at the frat. David Bowie's Scary Monsters was initially unsettling and strange, and kinda wasn't surprising coming from that guy who did all the make-up and jump-suits in the early-70s, but Let's Dance was totally cool and a great excuse to go buy some leather pants. Murmur was like, Who the hell is that creepy little Michael Stipe? while Automatic for the People was profoundly profound because you could dance to it, and they were like friends of The B-52s, who did "Rock Lobster," which was the only song you'd ever heard of them doing until you heard Cosmic Thing, and then you knew "Rock Lobster," all the songs on Cosmic Thing, and how cool REM was. Tracy Chapman was a little offensive, a little marginal, until they started playing her every day on the radio, and then all the girls in the sorority suddenly realized that she wasn't Black--she was a folk singer.
Anyhow, that was the crazy mixed-up world of 80s alternative and its more photogenic but dim preppy sister, college rock. What I want to know are what are the totally worn-out affectations that are supposed to signal "alternative" to mainstream people in a way that will be make people in shopping malls feel aesthetically edgy but not in a way that will put them off buying the mp3s?
Examples.
--Hippie-funk. A magical thing that combined the Greatful Dead's poppy-boogie-shuffle with some bass-licks off a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Should be blamed on The Spin Doctors. It's a genre that still refuses to die. I can't think of any of the current perpetrators by name, but I've heard them, especially in German car commercials. They seem to have mutated into something that adds touches of white hip-hop and emasculated Ragga.
--Swooning, sensitive College Pop. Clean-cut, preppy, and only slightly androgynous college boys (ergo, not Take That or New Kids on the Block) who sing melodic but predictable and mostly forgettable college radio rock-pop that's authentic because it gets played on college radio but not in a way that offends your girlfriend, who thinks that they're sensitive, and that suggests that you're sensitive too. I remember Ocean Color Scene--they might have started this sub-genre. I can't remember a thing they ever played. Their banner has been picked up by the epically anodyne Coldplay. I can think of some of the things they play and wish that I couldn't.
--Edgy Post-feminist Hippie-folk. A thing that may have been cultivated in the darkest bowels of places like Swarthmore and Smith, like poisonous mushrooms that are black with neon-pink spots and smell like patchouli mixed with Calvin Klein's Eternity. Often heard in cultured bistros that sell vegetarian burritos that include shredded carrots and/or bean sprouts. Plays well with Hippie-funk. Should, perhaps, be blamed on Ani DiFranco. Should be blamed even more on Alanis Morrisette, who perfected it. Sounds like what happens when a young womyn from a nice, respectable bourgeois household starts out playing Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind," graduates to Joan Armatrading and Nina Simone, and then does postgraduate folk-work by getting slipped a Rohyphie by a handsome frat-boy who listens to Hippie-funk. Anxiety, ambivalence, and too much adderall become a potent cocktail of syncopated acoustic guitar riffs and lyrical grievances against systemic misogyny played by people who eventually win Grammies. Listened to by people who end-up wearing big shoulder-pads, grousing about impossibility of "having-it-all" when you've reached the point of "having-most-of-it," and firing every subordinate within a thirty-foot radius.
Shouting Frat-boys. Not really speed-metal, though they went to the same prep school together. Not really hard-core, though they get their Beemers detailed at the same place. Not punk at all, although it shares the same equanimical relationship that Elvis cultivated with more original Black rhythm-and-blues musicians who preceded him. The genre is distinguished by the sound of young White guys yelling--not screaming, mind you--to the accompaniment of roaring guitar chords. Doesn't force fans to shake their heads at speeds that might threaten to strip the threads and throw their heads on the frat house floor. In "In Bloom," Kurt Cobain sang about the fact that these guys used to beat the crap out of him in high school, and now they treat him like a saint because he's angry at them, and plays guitar, and yells about it, and they don't listen to his lyrics, but, rather, they just bang their heads in unison, and this implicitly offends his sensibilities because it creates so much ambivalence. God hearkened to the cries of Kurt Cobain by creating Nickelback and selling Kurt a shotgun, thus putting an end to the ambivalence that the universe abhors. Shouts a lot and sounds really angry, but the lyrics are about the kinds of things that make you so angry that they make you want to affirm your common masculine bond with your frat brothers, shake your heads in unison, and have another Heineken. It's really just reggae--if reggae had been invented by angry white guys in college who liked guitar-rock.
