This July, I watched rock ’n’ roll take one of its last labored breaths. We were at Dante’s in Portland, OR, watching Mudhoney wheeze through a Saturday night set. The crowd’s age spread evenly to my left and right, leaving me, at 34, in the middle of the bell curve. They seemed no less intelligent than any other group of 24- to 44-year-olds who’d buck up to see a once-respected band anywhere else in the country.
Two weeks ago, Irving Plaza, same scene, another gasp and sputter. Onstage it’s Guided by Voices. Granted, lead singer Bob Pollard has long been too old to be playing in a rock ’n’ roll band; he’d admit it himself. At this show, on this night, he was embarrassingly dated and not just a little bitter (again, hardly no results for "bitter, ‘Bob Pollard’"). He was in rare form, bitching and moaning about the success of Alien Ant Farm and rambling on about Matador Records’ Chris Lombardi. Not since the good ole days of slurry sets in the lesser Philadelphia clubs have I seen him so sloppy and annoying.
I can’t decide if someone dropped the H-bomb or released toxins in the subway or if the hole in the ozone layer finally proved to be too much or if nanotechnology has run amok, but rock ’n’ roll has finally been wiped off the face of the Earth, leaving only lame and invalid nostalgists behind. Very few in the capacity crowd understood that they were standing in cultural rubble. Ghosts, all: in the crowd, on the platform, aping a time once greater.
Thank God, I thought. We can finally stop pretending.
Or perhaps it’s me, grown old and dissatisfied and idle. Unlike so many other bored post-punks my age, I haven’t begun to fetishize my nostalgia, nor have I turned to the deeper past. I’m not retreating into jazz, and my blues collection hasn’t expanded significantly.
From whence this loathing?
Two years ago, I watched from afar as an entire cadre of music writers and editors sucked the dick of rock revival, and it turned my stomach. I take no issue with the existence of these bands–they’re nothing new–but I’ve always relied on the market to deal with them. By confining the same-old punk rock bands to the same-old clubs, for example, or airing them on the same-old college radio stations.
To see these writers–some of whom I once admired–cling so desperately to a puddle-deep fad broke my heart. Singing the praises of rip-off rock bands was the last opportunity for aging critics to feel important, to imagine that they’re gatekeepers of culture. It was the last time your average 40-year-old music critic would ever understand anything about new music. Every one of them who drank at this well proved himself to be as impotent creatively as he is physically. Unable to perform, unable to sire, unable to contribute.
But back to Mudhoney and those who were wasting their time and money. I left Dante’s before Mark Arm could expire onstage, not wanting the cops to require a statement from me, not ever wanting to find myself at a polygraph test: "Have you ever wished Mark Arm dead?" My bowels were also a bit uncertain from the spicy food we’d enjoyed before the show, so I found myself choosing between a wan rendering of "Touch Me I’m Sick" and a productive 20 minutes in my friend’s bathroom.
Half an hour later, I was reading a copy of the Portland Mercury on a pull-out bed, business completed, stomach settled. My host’s computer was shuffling through the "D" folder of mp3s, flirting through Dag Nasty and Dinosaur Jr. and David Bowie. The Dag Nasty, I hadn’t heard for years–an old pal, back in my ears. The Dinosaur Jr., dependable memories. Bowie’s Aladdin Sane was refreshing. I couldn’t pretend that my musical choices were anything but entertainment, and it occurred to me that I’d been quick to judge Mudhoney and their aging fan base. What’s wrong with a little–
No, no, no. No. That grasping band, those grasping fans–they made me sick. They were worse than revivalists; they were nostalgists, and I’ll grant no leniency. Modern culture is feeding upon itself, eating its own flesh, eating its own children–I’ll offer no quarter for cultural cannibals. Unimaginative homage is a much worse sin than original failure, and as a famous man once said, I’d rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.
Revivalists, nostalgists, homagists–they’re not even serving up top; they’re doing time in purgatory, losing points daily, steadily on the way to being trodden underfoot down below, where those who tried and failed are beheld as heroes. Experimentalists rule the slush pile, ignored by the unimaginative but noted by those who matter.
There’s a gallery on Prince St. in Soho that’s featuring rock photography. As my friend noted as we walked past the window containing prints of Jim Morrison and Paul McCartney and Neil Young: "If it wasn’t a famous person, nobody would care about these photos. They suck." He was absolutely right (except for the Morrison Hotel cover shot, we agreed; that’s a good picture). Not that I demand social importance in my art, but who cares about these old fucks? Oh, right, these photographers are selling for thousands in a Soho gallery.
I thought of a roommate who only hung posters of dead people. She had all the usuals up there–Janis, Jimi, James–and I swear that when Stevie Ray Vaughan died (we lived together summer, 1990), she had his poster up within days. And she suddenly knew the words to "Look at Little Sister."
When I look around at any given show at any given club, when I listen to the supposed counterculture types talk shop and spew the merits of corpses, when I walk this city, I feel like one of the adults in Childhood’s End, condemned to live out the last days of mankind knowing that others have been chosen to survive. As always, horrible as it sounds, the future belongs to the young, and they’d be smart to learn nothing from their forebears. Those of us caught in the middle best wise up and pick a side.
