Okay, when did rock and roll become about whining about stupid stuff? Am I just getting old, or are record execs in league with the pharamceutical companies to produce a generation of depressed children?
I talked with a rather mopey looking kid this afternoon who noticed I was playing the Descendents'
Cool To Be You (2004 Fat Wreck Records) as I pulled into the gas station. Moptop, jet-black hair. The look of having not seen the sun much this summer. Designer "vintage" tees, Ray-Bans designed to look like drug store grandma sunglasses.
Yup. An emo kid. Right down to the Puma hooded sweatshirt (it was 92 degrees this afternoon in Oxford.)
"Hey, who are you listening to?" Emo Boy asked when I got started pumping my gas. "It sounds like the Jimmy Eat World."
I cringed.
No, I explained, its an old-school SoCal punk band. The kid went back to pumping gas into his SUV.
I won't go on a rant about this current cannon-fodder marketing blitz currently called "Emo." The whole phenomena of this so-called culture bugs the living shit out of me. Emo, the music and clothing marketing trend, supposedly has roots in the DC Hardcore scene of the 1980s, with punk bands like Fugazi, Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Minor Threat cranking out emotionally charged tunes.
Sure, there are a lot of emo kids who dress the part nowadays, but its clear that the touchy-feeliness of growing up suburban in a Post-Columbine, post-911 world has turned a generation of kids into, well, wimps.
Gone are the days when music was about music. Music as a form of energetic relief has given way to crying over lost loves and shallow misery into a microphone - and its all being bought and sold by the masses raised to be self-absorbed and self-important.
Sure, I like sad, slow melancholy music. I even like some artists often labeled as Emo (though Weezer predates the whole current trend, as does Modest Mouse). But I also appreciate the value of pumping my fist in the air to a song with a righteous "Hell Yeah!" And I love the painful grind of early grunge, circa 1994.
When I want to get over the blues, Ithrow on some Hank Williams or Lightning Hopkins, maybe some Miles Davis. When I feeling politically charged, I throw on Public Enemy's
Fear of a Black Planet. As this Emo kid drove off in the big hunking SUV, I saw that he had tucked his mopish hair up under a trucker cap - clearly one of those bought from a mall, not from a truck stop. I wondered how many Prozac, Zanex, and other anti-depressants he was on. He had that "Love Life through Overmedication" look to him.
Maybe he'll go home a search for some Descendents to download. Or google "So-Cal Punk" and find a plethera of other good music.
JWJ
