8.15.2007

Demographic Shifts

I was tempted to set this up as "Battle of the Shitty Bands," but there's something going on here. Like the rest of Gen X (Thanks Coupland, you dick), I'm getting old. So guess what? I'm not the target audience for this music.

Some music is meant to annoy. As a diehard Devo fan, I appreciate that.

But I don't think that's what's going here. I saw this first band at Warped, where the kids went nuts for them. They are truly metal-by-numbers, with some Tiger Beat sprinkled on top. That was the case for about half the bands at Warped, actually. The other half were punk-pop (I was there for Tiger Army and Bad Religion, if you must know).

My good friend Alexis said that the second band was her definition of Hell, yet the audience of NYU kids were dancing their asses off to it all.

The point is that while these bands may have their tongues in their cheeks (or someone else's), they are actually into the music. Good for them.

Still, IMO, bad for us.

Or, as Matt Groening put it 25 years ago,

Q: Is today's music as lame as it sounds?

A: Yes.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

(Take 2)

I know that there is a long tradition that defies this... but I still live under the illusion that if you're going to shred a guitar and scream at me, you at least need have a chance at beating me up in the alley behind the club.

The Tiger Beat Metalheads are lacking that core, defining notion... whining aggressively is not the same thing as screaming in rage.

The Kaiser said...

I'm with Matt Groening on this one. It spans musical genres as well. Aside from "The Old School Lunch Hour" I can't really stand to listen to the hip-hop station here anymore as approximately 80% of the songs are pretty much just some guy or guys repeating one phrase over and over again (c.f. "Ay baybay", "Lean Wid It, Rock Wid It", etc).

Hex said...

Despite Bad Religion and Tiger Army -- it's the pervasiveness of these kinds of bands that's kept me away from Warped in recent years. I love energy in music -- but I want it to at least feel authentic, and so much of this seems lacking in that department.

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