What the hell happened?
I try to make a little blog about everyday bullshit in January and here it is, August. I think it was John Lennon that said "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." But fuck that hippie. Any one that goes from her:
to this:
on purpose is out of his god damned mind. I don't care how many hits he wrote.
There were a lot of things I could have written about over the past few months. Trayvon Martin, Obamacare, piles of poop on the decks of the Carnival Triumph and the new prince of Wales/Sheffield/Suffolk/England all seemed to beg for attention. But Jesus, haven't we all heard enough. Plus, I didn't want my first real post to be all that inflammatory. I'll save that for post number two.
I was buzzing around Youtube at work listening to music the other day and I came across this little gem.
I'll say it. I like Limp Bizkit. I'm pretty sure it's uncool to admit that. But I know I'm not the only one that's plunked down hard earned (and not so hard earned) cash for one or more of their cd's. You don't sell 40,000,000 albums all over the world without being a little good at what you do. Now I know what you're going to say. "Jesus Sean, miss 1998 much?" "These guys have always sucked." "Misogynist bastards!" and so on. Guess what, it's really not that bad. It's pretty fucking good actually. It also has what's been missing from music for the past three or four years. Anger.
Rewind to the late 1970's and early 1980's. The punk revolution was in full swing due to the disco era and every time you changed the radio station, the friggin' Bee Gees were on. Some of those shitty garage bands broke into the mainstream. The reason, anger. I'm not talking 1960's sitting in the mud, smoking a bong, staring at a lava lamp, trying to interpret Bob Dylan's incoherent mumbling, peace and love anger. I'm talking power chord driven, bar room brawl, slam dancing, heavy distortion, smash you in the face with my Fender Precision bass guitar anger.
This then led to the Golden Age of heavy metal. Bruce Dickinson screaming his face off, lead guitarists on Gibson Flying V's in leather pants and elaborate stage shows that used to cost you $20.00 plus the Ticket Master service charge to head down to the old Cap Center's Liberty Bell parking lot. Such good music. Songs that told a story. Kind of like the ballads of the early to mid 70's, but with balls. Album artwork with pictures of zombies, war machines, demonic overtones and over the top sexual imagery. Remember this stuff?
And to show I'm being fair, this is for the women in the audience.
Keep it together ladies...
But like a package of Oreos, all good things must come to an end. Bands like Poison, Cinderella and Warrant dilute the metal gene pool. All five pairs of Def Leppard's testicles are ripped off in Rick Allen's car wreck along with his arm and we get Hysteria. The power chord is replaced by the power ballad on every single friggin' album and we all knew that the end was near. There was no anger, no rage. There was a lot of lipstick and spandex, but what gave rock and metal its edge was gone. It was as sharp as a bag of wet hair.
But out of the ashes of mascara bottles and microphone stand bandanas, a bunch of asshole kids form the Pacific northwest got out of their garages and started playing in coffee houses and dive bars around town. They were raised on good old fashioned rock and roll and they saw what had become of it. And they were pissed. Bands like Tool, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were now leading a new rock revolution and I was all in. (I was going to put Nirvana, but I was never a fan and the only good thing to come out of that band fronts a much better band in the Foo Fighters) Grinding guitar riffs, bombastic vocals, something to say besides where the party is spoke to a whole generation. My generation. It was the decade of festival concerts and flannel shirts. Spending all day at a venue getting dirty and sunburned while listening to bands that looked like us. They were our age. They weren't exceptionally pretty or polished. Exept for maybe Nicole Fiorentino from Veruca Salt.
Very pretty, very polished.
Then, one of the darkest times of rock started to evolve. The Grateful Dead resurgence. Let me preface this paragraph by saying I hate the Grateful Dead. I hate the sound, the fans, the lyrics, the fans, the look, the fans, the frisbees, and the fans. I'm only slightly happier that Hitler and Bin Laden are dead than Garcia is. But like a dirty, smelly dreadlocked phoenix, rose the Deadhead sound-a-likes. Bands like the The Spin Doctors, Phish, Blind Melon and Dave Matthews came along in their giant microbus of soft pleasant sounds and neutered rock. The only thing they were angry at was anyone harshing their mellow. Pussies.
Now, I've left rap out of most of this missive because it truly is its own genre. But like rock has its roots in the blues of the black musicians of the American south, rap has a lot of its roots in the hard rock and metal of the 80's. Run DMC brought rap into the mainstream on Walk this Way with Aerosmith. The Beastie Boys were a hardcore punk band before tapping into the New York rap scene and expanding their sound. And my favorite collaboration of all was when Public Enemy paired up with Anthrax for this.
Anyone who can picture Dave Matthews doing this has a better imagination than Tolkien.
Unreal. Now the same kids that grew up listening to these groups started to play music together. The birth of a new sound was here. Rap metal or nu metal gave us bands like Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit. But most importantly their sound was angry. It gave their music some heart, some passion. And say what you will, Limp Bizkit was very good at this. Fred Durst, whether you think he's an asshole or not, was and still is a great front man. Personally I think Wes Borland is the metaphorical straw that stirs the Limp Bizkit drink, but that's just me. There was a bit of a backlash against bands like this in the early 2000's. I know Durst took some flack for performing with Christina Aguilera at an awards show.
I have no idea why he would have done that.
Maybe because they were deemed to have "sold out". I'm not sure, but I think Tool said it best:
Not to be sung in church.
Now the biggest thing in rock music seems to be Mumford and Sons, Of Monsters and Men and The Lumineers. What. The. Shit? Hearing these bands played on 98 rock and DC 101 breaks my metal bone and all of our souls die a little inside with each mandolin strum. Don't get me wrong, I like Mumford and Sons. Little Lion Man is fantastic song. But on a rock station? No way, no how. Maybe this new song from Limp Bizkit is a chink in the armor of the most recent barrage of soft, easy listening pseudo-rock. I hope so, anger sounds better on guitar.
On a somewhat related side note, yes I know there were women in the video used exclusively as eye candy. I also get that I have a daughter and how can I look at those women
being degraded by those jerks. Here's the deal, these women have the
ability to say no to the video makers and the band. No one forced them to show off their near flawless bodies for money or fame. You can't have it both ways. Either women are strong enough and smart enough to make their own decisions and live with the consequences or they are weak willed and need the NOW protecting them at every turn. Sometimes I think I have a higher opinion of women than feminists do.
This is what a feminist looks like.
