I wish to expand on my last blog.
I think some people may have gotten the wrong message.
My main point was that this generation has lacked a transcendent act or single musical movement which has been willing to protest and sing out against the problems of the decade. Politics wise was my main gist, which I didn't make clear enough, sorry!
However, in no contradiction to my previous statements, music this decade has been a mind blowingly, eye burstingly, eargasmingly diverse sprawling wonderland of sounds, ideas, directions, colours, textures, instrumentation, arrangements and genres. There have been more sub genres and genre splicing musicians than anyone would previously have thought possible. Brilliant pop classics, dubstep has reared its peculiar head in a wonderfully majestic manner, indie has dominated the decade spawning more sub-genres than you could care to shake a stick at- nu-rave, nu-folk, electroclash, garage rock revival, post punk revival. All of that down to The Strokes, the near undoubted godfather's of indie music this decade. Althought the decade has generally been a disappointment hip-hop wise (and it could scarcely be anything less after the 90s), us here in the British Isles got grime. Love it or loathe it, emo and scene rose and fell (thankfully), the internet redefined music and destroyed the physical single.
Whilst this decade has lost the uniting movements and artists of previous ones, it has also managed to lose the musical cliques and divides of other generations. Somehow, in some strange should-be-but-isn't-contradiction. My itunes collection is insanely diverse, I scarcely know a single person who listens solely to one type of music. Obvious and audacious genre splicing is a norm nowadays, and isn't such a gimmick or a shock as it was.
The messages of previous decades may be absent, but music in itself has been awesome. Which perhaps is a necessary step. Music has been celebrating itself this decade, going to incredible new places, busting down sonic barriers and taste barriers and making a euphoric noise. Maybe this decade's been all about having fun and just enjoying music for itself. Which is a wonderfully valid thing to strive for, and the extent to which it's been acheived in the past ten years does actually make the gaping loss of poltical protest seem less appalling now that I think about it.
This decade, musically, was definitely necessary. Music has leapt to new places, partied, celebrated, gloried in itself. And maybe now it's claimed and discovered new sounds, it will use those wonderful gifts to sing about and play about the state in which the rest of the world is heading into the next decade.
Here's to Klaxons/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Dizzee Rascal/Radiohead/Beck/LCD Soundsystem/Battles/Porcupine Tree/MGMT/Gorillaz penning a massive anthem that defines the next decade!
Sunday 22 November 2009
Friday 13 November 2009
The Noughties Have Come To Nought
It's suddenly dawned on me in the traditionally premature run up to Christmas and New Year that this decade is nearly over! It's insane! Slightly terrifying! I will have a defined decade of my life, an era of history I have lived through. To quote Velma Dinkley: "Jinkies!"
Now, I am in love with music. Music is an essential part of being human. If you don't enjoy music then, in all seriousness, with no degree of sarcasm and irony, there is something mentally, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually wrong with you. But, as I review the fact that I have defined memories of an entire fixed decade, the noughties, I turn to thinking about the music of this decade and, in turn, the music of other decades.
For the greater part of the last hundred years, every decade has had a type of music that represents the youth, the culture, the wants, the issues, the politics, the social system and many other things of the present generation. Nearly every single decade has had a definitive tattoo of music branded across it. A type of music that cries out the message of that decade's generation of youths, music that SAYS something about the time that it's coming form. Music that all of the teenagers and young adults can unite together and sing, belting out a victorious, relevant chorus that's the essence of who they are as a group. They're united around it. Someone could start playing one of their songs and together, they would all join in, united, whatever their differences, by the message in their music.
The 1920s and 30s were dominated by jazz- the music of the youth, it was young, rebellious and, whilst far from being the most lyrically focussed genre of music, it was carrying a huge message that united young people.
The 1940s were overshadowed by the war. We lost a generation and there's not a particularly definitive musical genre, but there are obviously the war greats like Vera Lynn.
The 1950s obviously birthed rock n' roll in all its glorious poularity, and again we have music for the youth that's fresh, sexy, vibrant and focussing the minds and energies of a generation who want to escape from the shadow of WW2.
The 1960s, undoubtedly the era in which politics most influenced music. The great protest folk singers, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, many more. Hendrix became the precursor for any degree of heavy rock in the near future and Beatlemania obviously engulfed the globe, but they're not entirely relevant to the point I want to make.
The 1970s saw music become a lot funner, largely to escape from the seriousness of the 60s. Pop music as we know it now really began to take over, but it was, once more, fresh and youthful and a UNITING FORCE. The 70s was also the ear of a disco, a genre which has more to it than meets the eye. Whilst, like jazz, it wasn't partiuclarly political or revolutionary lyrically, disco saw black people reclaim the music industry after the glory for rock n' roll had been stolen by the white man.
The end of the 70s birthed punk rock, which carried on into and through the 1980s. Reggae also became hugely popular and these two genres united the youth of the day massively, in a desire to fight against the remains of disgusting racist National Front, in the thick of Thatcher's Britain and the revitalised Cold War (thanks to Reagan). The youth were definitely united and focussed thanks to punk and reggae.
The 1990s saw the rise of alternative rock. Nirvana, almost undoubtedly the single most important music act in the past 20 years, gave a new voice to rebellion and the upsets of youth and their breakthrough led the way for movements like Britpop. Britpop swerved from being intensely political to a way to escape politics, but it united the British youth with some incredible songs that they could all chant along to, take up arms with. It even united people in a good rivalry: Blur vs Oasis.
And so what of the noughties?
Bugger all.
Bugger.
All.
Now I am a massive fan of new music in this decade, I'm keeping up to date constantly. But this decade, the decade in which I have really grown up and lived the greater part of my teenage years, has had NOTHING, barely a VESTIGE of any kind of unifying music. No band who have reached the calibre of the class transcending, boundary trashing groups of eras gone past. The closest we've had has been Green Day with the release of American Idiot, but other factors and over commercialisation hampered them massively.
Why? Why has the generation of this decade not sung out?! It's shameful! It's not as if we don't have anything to sing about and protest against!
A corrupt, unwinnable, American led war being fought in the east, wasting hundreds of American and British lives and thousands of natives. It spawned unmeasurable amounts of protest music when it was happening in Vietnam in the 60s! Oh yes, there are protest songs in existence about the Bush administration etc, check out Bright Eyes' "When the President talks to God". But there's nothing transcendent! Nothing that can unite everyone.
We have the BNP getting more and more influential in Britain all the time. It's essentially the child of the National Front, and resistance against them in the 70s and 80s spawned incredibly unifying music. Who do we get? Jon McClure from Reverand and the Makers. Good intentions don't stop him being a tit and failing to attempt to appel to anyone other than a niche of NME readers
We're in the grip of recession, and I can't even THINK of bands who have really said anything about that!
And there's so much more. The general disintegration of Britian's moral fabric, the advent of political insanity/correctness, the impotence of New Labour and so many more things.
The 21st century has been dogged by leaders who have been unable to stand up effectively to the challenges the world faces. And it's been equally full of musicians quick to criticise them and to point out all of the problems in society. However, clearly those musicians can't measure up because they certainly haven't acheived any kind of unification for my generation. No anthems. No relevant anthems.
We've had our musical breakthroughs.
The Strokes, spawned noughties indie and garage rock revival but are a band who I don't think have ever lyrically said anything and are actually quite unkown to a lot of people.
Anddd... oh. That's it. Really.
I'm devastated that, in years to come, I won't be able to sit around with people my age and recall a song from this decade that united us all, that had a message, that said something about our world and our country and our lives and our problems.
Really, it saddens my soul.
We'll look back and see a void of meaning
A long row of empty coffins, haunted by the ghosts of anthems never written.
An unmarked grave where the truly important music of this decade should have been.
Now, I am in love with music. Music is an essential part of being human. If you don't enjoy music then, in all seriousness, with no degree of sarcasm and irony, there is something mentally, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually wrong with you. But, as I review the fact that I have defined memories of an entire fixed decade, the noughties, I turn to thinking about the music of this decade and, in turn, the music of other decades.
For the greater part of the last hundred years, every decade has had a type of music that represents the youth, the culture, the wants, the issues, the politics, the social system and many other things of the present generation. Nearly every single decade has had a definitive tattoo of music branded across it. A type of music that cries out the message of that decade's generation of youths, music that SAYS something about the time that it's coming form. Music that all of the teenagers and young adults can unite together and sing, belting out a victorious, relevant chorus that's the essence of who they are as a group. They're united around it. Someone could start playing one of their songs and together, they would all join in, united, whatever their differences, by the message in their music.
The 1920s and 30s were dominated by jazz- the music of the youth, it was young, rebellious and, whilst far from being the most lyrically focussed genre of music, it was carrying a huge message that united young people.
The 1940s were overshadowed by the war. We lost a generation and there's not a particularly definitive musical genre, but there are obviously the war greats like Vera Lynn.
The 1950s obviously birthed rock n' roll in all its glorious poularity, and again we have music for the youth that's fresh, sexy, vibrant and focussing the minds and energies of a generation who want to escape from the shadow of WW2.
The 1960s, undoubtedly the era in which politics most influenced music. The great protest folk singers, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, many more. Hendrix became the precursor for any degree of heavy rock in the near future and Beatlemania obviously engulfed the globe, but they're not entirely relevant to the point I want to make.
The 1970s saw music become a lot funner, largely to escape from the seriousness of the 60s. Pop music as we know it now really began to take over, but it was, once more, fresh and youthful and a UNITING FORCE. The 70s was also the ear of a disco, a genre which has more to it than meets the eye. Whilst, like jazz, it wasn't partiuclarly political or revolutionary lyrically, disco saw black people reclaim the music industry after the glory for rock n' roll had been stolen by the white man.
The end of the 70s birthed punk rock, which carried on into and through the 1980s. Reggae also became hugely popular and these two genres united the youth of the day massively, in a desire to fight against the remains of disgusting racist National Front, in the thick of Thatcher's Britain and the revitalised Cold War (thanks to Reagan). The youth were definitely united and focussed thanks to punk and reggae.
The 1990s saw the rise of alternative rock. Nirvana, almost undoubtedly the single most important music act in the past 20 years, gave a new voice to rebellion and the upsets of youth and their breakthrough led the way for movements like Britpop. Britpop swerved from being intensely political to a way to escape politics, but it united the British youth with some incredible songs that they could all chant along to, take up arms with. It even united people in a good rivalry: Blur vs Oasis.
And so what of the noughties?
Bugger all.
Bugger.
All.
Now I am a massive fan of new music in this decade, I'm keeping up to date constantly. But this decade, the decade in which I have really grown up and lived the greater part of my teenage years, has had NOTHING, barely a VESTIGE of any kind of unifying music. No band who have reached the calibre of the class transcending, boundary trashing groups of eras gone past. The closest we've had has been Green Day with the release of American Idiot, but other factors and over commercialisation hampered them massively.
Why? Why has the generation of this decade not sung out?! It's shameful! It's not as if we don't have anything to sing about and protest against!
A corrupt, unwinnable, American led war being fought in the east, wasting hundreds of American and British lives and thousands of natives. It spawned unmeasurable amounts of protest music when it was happening in Vietnam in the 60s! Oh yes, there are protest songs in existence about the Bush administration etc, check out Bright Eyes' "When the President talks to God". But there's nothing transcendent! Nothing that can unite everyone.
We have the BNP getting more and more influential in Britain all the time. It's essentially the child of the National Front, and resistance against them in the 70s and 80s spawned incredibly unifying music. Who do we get? Jon McClure from Reverand and the Makers. Good intentions don't stop him being a tit and failing to attempt to appel to anyone other than a niche of NME readers
We're in the grip of recession, and I can't even THINK of bands who have really said anything about that!
And there's so much more. The general disintegration of Britian's moral fabric, the advent of political insanity/correctness, the impotence of New Labour and so many more things.
The 21st century has been dogged by leaders who have been unable to stand up effectively to the challenges the world faces. And it's been equally full of musicians quick to criticise them and to point out all of the problems in society. However, clearly those musicians can't measure up because they certainly haven't acheived any kind of unification for my generation. No anthems. No relevant anthems.
We've had our musical breakthroughs.
The Strokes, spawned noughties indie and garage rock revival but are a band who I don't think have ever lyrically said anything and are actually quite unkown to a lot of people.
Anddd... oh. That's it. Really.
I'm devastated that, in years to come, I won't be able to sit around with people my age and recall a song from this decade that united us all, that had a message, that said something about our world and our country and our lives and our problems.
Really, it saddens my soul.
We'll look back and see a void of meaning
A long row of empty coffins, haunted by the ghosts of anthems never written.
An unmarked grave where the truly important music of this decade should have been.
Sunday 8 November 2009
Communication Minimisation
I'm too young to really remember much of the 90s, and what I can remember isn't particularly related to pop culture, but I'm informed enough about the changes between the last decade and this one to have noticed something.
Since the start of the 21st century, the ways in which we communicate have become increasingly abbreviated. Just think about it.
Text messaging. I'd wager that at the turn of the century, the ratio of people who had mobiles to those who didn't in the UK was probably about 50-50, possibly even higher in favour of not having one. But now, a mobile phone is an essential, the replacement for the Swiss Army knife. And the primary use of mobile phones now is text messaging. Text messaging has had its advent this decade. Short, succinct messages relayed almost instantly. And they've even spawned their own minimalsic language of few vowels and many abbreviations.
Twitter. 2009 has really been Twitter's year. Again, we have precise, 140-character-limited bytes of information being tweeted onto the internet, providing glimpses of snapshots of peoples' lives. The same goes for most social networking sites in certain degrees.
It's also reflected in the music industry now. The 21st century has seen the birth of the mp3's popularity, and many would say that now we have the ability to instantly download individual tracks, the album is a dead medium, a relic of the past to be onsigned to the history books. A massive percentage of online mp3 purchases are for single tracks, rarely are whole albums downloaded online. We now have brevity in the form of music we download! We pick and choose track for track, which is even more minimal than going out and buying a single, which has been made even more obsolete than albums! (I don't think albums are obsolete, far from it. But, sadly, singles largely are) Even when we do download whole albums from the internet, it is a much more minimal activity than going to the record store, buying a physical copy of the album, savouring the case, the cover notes, the reality of possessing something physical of music. And the advent on single mp3 downloading is making local record shops and communication with the people who work therein, who know their stuff about music and, when you bother to talk to them, usually but you on to new, exciting bands similar to what you can in looking for in the first place. But now, even that is being eradicated with things such as "similar artists" features on Spotify.
The minimisation of communication is an interesting feature of the century we have yet to travel 10% into. I'm not saying it's bad necessarily. I love the brevity of tweets on Twitter, the convenience of text messaging, the opportunities new bands gain by putting new tracks up on the internet. But it has obvious downsides I'm sure you're intelligent enough to work out without me listing them. It's gonna be fascinating watching how communication develops throughout the rest of the 21st century.
Since the start of the 21st century, the ways in which we communicate have become increasingly abbreviated. Just think about it.
Text messaging. I'd wager that at the turn of the century, the ratio of people who had mobiles to those who didn't in the UK was probably about 50-50, possibly even higher in favour of not having one. But now, a mobile phone is an essential, the replacement for the Swiss Army knife. And the primary use of mobile phones now is text messaging. Text messaging has had its advent this decade. Short, succinct messages relayed almost instantly. And they've even spawned their own minimalsic language of few vowels and many abbreviations.
Twitter. 2009 has really been Twitter's year. Again, we have precise, 140-character-limited bytes of information being tweeted onto the internet, providing glimpses of snapshots of peoples' lives. The same goes for most social networking sites in certain degrees.
It's also reflected in the music industry now. The 21st century has seen the birth of the mp3's popularity, and many would say that now we have the ability to instantly download individual tracks, the album is a dead medium, a relic of the past to be onsigned to the history books. A massive percentage of online mp3 purchases are for single tracks, rarely are whole albums downloaded online. We now have brevity in the form of music we download! We pick and choose track for track, which is even more minimal than going out and buying a single, which has been made even more obsolete than albums! (I don't think albums are obsolete, far from it. But, sadly, singles largely are) Even when we do download whole albums from the internet, it is a much more minimal activity than going to the record store, buying a physical copy of the album, savouring the case, the cover notes, the reality of possessing something physical of music. And the advent on single mp3 downloading is making local record shops and communication with the people who work therein, who know their stuff about music and, when you bother to talk to them, usually but you on to new, exciting bands similar to what you can in looking for in the first place. But now, even that is being eradicated with things such as "similar artists" features on Spotify.
The minimisation of communication is an interesting feature of the century we have yet to travel 10% into. I'm not saying it's bad necessarily. I love the brevity of tweets on Twitter, the convenience of text messaging, the opportunities new bands gain by putting new tracks up on the internet. But it has obvious downsides I'm sure you're intelligent enough to work out without me listing them. It's gonna be fascinating watching how communication develops throughout the rest of the 21st century.
Saturday 7 November 2009
Knights in Shining Spandex
Woven throughout the immeasurabley vast and beautifully vibrant canvas of humanity's fiction, myths and legends is an undeniable obsession with heroes. Achilles to Atticus Finch, Hercules to Harry Potter, we love heroes. And within our obsession with heroes is our DESIRE for heroes.
I notice this obsession with heroes primarily because of the amount of comics I read. "Heroes" often, for many, at least for the younger generation, leads to ideas of "superheroes" or similar figures. Superheroes- people with powers or abilities or qualities beyond our own, which allow them to conquer foes and acheive feats (physical and moral) which we ourselves could not. Superman has his unmatched strength, power of flight and seemingly immovable moral stance. Batman has harnessed his personal tragedy and allowed it to drive him into one of a handful of men taking an active, physical stand against the tide of evil in Gotham City. Iron Man who has utilised his incredible wealth and intelligence into technology he uses almost relentlessly for the good of man kind. The X-Men who, despite the abuse and racism hruled at them by their society, scarcely waver in defending the very people who despise and reject them.
Right there, really, is what we want in heroes. Figures who do what we can't. Figures who embody the heights of action and morality we so often wish we could reach ourselves. Those who can defeat super villains, villains who are inconceivably stronger and eviler than any other foe we could come across. Figures who deal out blind justice.
Now, morality in the realm of comic books has become increasingly complex throughout the years, and that's a whole different blog/book altogether, but those premises I began with remain there.
Humans want heroes. People who can overcome the villains, evils and threats facing the world that we cannot. Even people who are endlessly skeptical can only say that they don't think such heroes exist on earth, they cannot say that they do not want one.
And this desire for heroes shows, indisputably, the desire inherent in every human heart in history: the desire for God.
Whether you believe it or not, you want God. You are seeking the things which you can only get in an eternally satisfying way from God- love, acceptance, relationship, justice, worth, purpose, direction, creativity, moral standards and, in this specific instance, a hero.
Someone to overcome that which you cannot.
And that thing is the evil in the world.
The human race can swipe at what we perceive to be evil for millenia. We can defeat Hitler, Saddam, the next evil dictator. We can attempt to reduce knife crime. But those are only symptoms of the sin and darkness that lives in the heart of every human. They are not the thing itself. Thining you can iron the evil out of the world by targetting things such as those is like trying to blow out a gas fire. Even attempting to target their causes will never stop the selfish desires that we are all subject to, no matter what.
Through Jesus Christ, the enemies we cannot possibly hope to defeat on our own are flattened and decimated once and for all, for eternity. Sin and death. He can do what we can't. He can once and for all deliver justice to evil. He can once and for all dish out the punishment evil deserves. And He can once and for all free us from the oppression of that enemy.
I notice this obsession with heroes primarily because of the amount of comics I read. "Heroes" often, for many, at least for the younger generation, leads to ideas of "superheroes" or similar figures. Superheroes- people with powers or abilities or qualities beyond our own, which allow them to conquer foes and acheive feats (physical and moral) which we ourselves could not. Superman has his unmatched strength, power of flight and seemingly immovable moral stance. Batman has harnessed his personal tragedy and allowed it to drive him into one of a handful of men taking an active, physical stand against the tide of evil in Gotham City. Iron Man who has utilised his incredible wealth and intelligence into technology he uses almost relentlessly for the good of man kind. The X-Men who, despite the abuse and racism hruled at them by their society, scarcely waver in defending the very people who despise and reject them.
Right there, really, is what we want in heroes. Figures who do what we can't. Figures who embody the heights of action and morality we so often wish we could reach ourselves. Those who can defeat super villains, villains who are inconceivably stronger and eviler than any other foe we could come across. Figures who deal out blind justice.
Now, morality in the realm of comic books has become increasingly complex throughout the years, and that's a whole different blog/book altogether, but those premises I began with remain there.
Humans want heroes. People who can overcome the villains, evils and threats facing the world that we cannot. Even people who are endlessly skeptical can only say that they don't think such heroes exist on earth, they cannot say that they do not want one.
And this desire for heroes shows, indisputably, the desire inherent in every human heart in history: the desire for God.
Whether you believe it or not, you want God. You are seeking the things which you can only get in an eternally satisfying way from God- love, acceptance, relationship, justice, worth, purpose, direction, creativity, moral standards and, in this specific instance, a hero.
Someone to overcome that which you cannot.
And that thing is the evil in the world.
The human race can swipe at what we perceive to be evil for millenia. We can defeat Hitler, Saddam, the next evil dictator. We can attempt to reduce knife crime. But those are only symptoms of the sin and darkness that lives in the heart of every human. They are not the thing itself. Thining you can iron the evil out of the world by targetting things such as those is like trying to blow out a gas fire. Even attempting to target their causes will never stop the selfish desires that we are all subject to, no matter what.
Through Jesus Christ, the enemies we cannot possibly hope to defeat on our own are flattened and decimated once and for all, for eternity. Sin and death. He can do what we can't. He can once and for all deliver justice to evil. He can once and for all dish out the punishment evil deserves. And He can once and for all free us from the oppression of that enemy.
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