Don't Read If You Like Rock

While I was waiting for my bus the other day (that damn 39!), I decided to kill some time by checking out some mags in a nearby off-license.

So I started flipping through one of those rock mags. One of those rock mags where the cover shows a band of five kids all trying to look as drugged up, yet as good-looking as possible – all hair, skinny jeans, big eyes and casual indifference. One of those mags where the cover encases 200-odd pictures of bands that look exactly like the band on the cover (in this case, you can judge a book by its cover).

So I start thinking that even though they all look like drugged-out-of-their-skulls, self obsessed, superficial winos, surely they, as popular artists have something to say of the eternal existential human condition. As the last bastion of dionysian beings who prowl the London underground, the darkened halls of hedonism, surely they have cottoned onto something bigger, more meaningful than the average Joe Blogg Nine to Fiver.

But then I chance upon these kids’ lyrics which are sporadically dished throughout each article. These 'words of beauty' range from such significant events like texts failing to reach their destination because of bad reception, to a fat geaser lookin at his bird wrongly at the local pub.

Then I happen upon a picture which finally makes my point clear – well, to me at least anyway. It’s a picture of another drugged up yet, how-does-he-look-so-good-looking-because-he-is-so-drugged-up pic of a band member imitating the famous image of Jim Morrison, arms spanning out, Jesus-style.

That’s when I realized, modern rock is clutching at a memory of something that was great, which is now a residue, dregs of a great wine– except not nearly as intoxicating.

In the sixties, rock not only represented, but created and delivered a new and invigorating freedom in every important category of our existence – social, political, sexual, artistic and spiritual. Now it’s about bad mobile reception.

I could quite possibly look past this if a significant amount of these bands were at least interesting - musically that is. Sadly, however, much like the way in which all the bands look alike in their pictures, they also sound the same. At the risk of sounding old and out of it, I’d say that it’s a blur of noise; an aisle of silver toasters that buzz really loudly; a robot mannequin engineered by fascist aliens trying to predict what’s cool (because the only albums they got their hands on were of the Smiths, Sex Pistols and the Cure); pristine puke from a great party the night before; a great fuck-up.

Has no-one got the memo yet that the foo fighters-esque distorted guitar-sound has not only been done to death, but was fucking boring from the start?

But that’s another story for another time. My bus has finally arrived.

Edward Miller

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Posted by Hannah, on 27-10-2008 21:00,

Hear hear! My sentiments exactly, it was only the other day that I was listening to a guitar solo on, I believe, a Pigeon Detectives song (by accident!) that merely descended the scale, crochet by crochet. I waited for the clever key change, but was instead smacked in the face by the root note. I would have laughed if I wasn't crying...

 

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