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The following took a really long time to write, and Managing-Editor-Jay might hate me (a little bit) for that…but really, I have a good excuse:
My goal was to sum up this very moment in Rock Music, create a brilliant narrative that would totally nail the zeitgeist, and further validate my ambition as a social critic. I even thought I’d coin a great catchphrase for this era, like what “Grunge” was for that greasy haired period of the 90’s. With all my extensive notes and research, (namely, scrolling through peoples’ iPods and reading Pitchfork), I had a belief I could sift through all the distantly related Pete Dohertys, Chemical Romances, Killers, Braveries, all the Shouting Out Loud, Clapping Hands, and Sayings Yeah that occurred at various Bloc Parties. With everything considered, more time on my hands than I’d like to admit, and a very patient editor, I still had nothing to say. Popular bands still seemed as scattered as my own broken social scene and my original lofty goal was whimpering in the corner after this bitchslap of a realization.
I was disenchanted with Right-Now, because if it’s too difficult to describe everything that’s going on, it probably means nothing is going on. To make sense of it, I went back in “history” and wrote about how if it weren’t for September 11th, Andrew W.K. and The Darkness would never have enjoyed their brief success. This wins for Worst Paragraph Buried in My Hard Drive.
I dropped my idea all together, and went about my usual business, as I evaded Jay’s e-mails with responses like, “Yeah, I’m still working on it…It’s AWESOME, though I promise.”
I desperately Googled, flipped channels, and browsed magazines for something singularly interesting and Now to ramble about. Perhaps discussing all the “indie-rock beef” that went down this summer, or the latest news of The Killers and Fall-Out Boy going on radio shows and dissing on each other’s make-up. That could be funny!
It wasn’t. I don’t care about what the Killers do, and I don’t know anyone who does. I barely know who Fall Out Boy are. I’m not interested in why the guy from Bloc Party called the guy from Art Brut fat, and got punched in the face for it at some venue in London, a venue which, I have no desire to visit. All I care about is how pretty “This Modern Love” sounds on the sick soundsystem they have at NikeTown while I shop for my next pair of cross trainers.
But my own ambivalence was alarming. Surely, there must be something out there that’s totally blowing someone away! I must have missed something in a seemingly lackluster, scene-less musical doldrums. Naturally, I turned to my friends to see what’s good. I paid attention to which shows they were attending, and what they had to say about it afterward. I tried to keep an open mind and not think, “Talking Heads Rip Off” when I heard about Clap Your Hands at South Street Seaport. I didn’t silently scoff at reports of M.I.A. being “amazing” in Central Park, and decide that in three years, we will care as much about her as we do Neneh Cherry now.
According to my very scientific sample population of friends and acquaintances, any band equipped with an amplifier and a time slot at any venue had the potential to be AMAZING, or AWESOME. If one band rocked particularly hard, they’d make you “shit your pants.” It wasn’t just the euphemism that nauseated me, but all the hyperbole. There is just no way all these bands could be holy-shit-amazingly-awesomical!
I knew it couldn’t be just me, being bitter and jaded and older. I’ve felt like this many times before, and sure enough, someone like The Yeah Yeah Yeahs will come along, and I find my once-detached-self suddenly smushed against a stage, getting sprayed in the face with Karen O’s beer, and loving it.
And that is what junkies refer to as a moment of clarity. It’s like the first 5 minutes of Sex and the City, where the narrator, Carrie, asks herself an important question that sets the theme for the rest of the episode. (Yes, I watch that shit on DVD. Sometimes on Friday nights, shut up.) The voice in my head sounded like this: Is everyone just calling everything awesome because there’s nothing else to say? Why is it so hard to describe everything if there is no cool scene to attach it? Is nothing new and truly great anymore?
(Okay, it sounds like an angsty Carrie who worries more about art more than like, relationships and shoes and stuff).
That gave me another new idea. I would write “Death to AWESOME,” a lengthy treatise on how our generation is so desperate to find excitement and attachment to something that we will deem any live music experience as fantastic by default. This essay would of course be VERY bitter and jaded, and I would write it from my high horse. This is the same high horse I sat on while watching Sex and the City DVDs, when my friends were at shows that I opted out of, because I already decided they were boring.
While toiling away on that “piece,” I got a call from my friend Katie, who said she had an extra ticket to go see Metric that night at Bowery Ballroom. I love Metric. They’re not my favorite of all time, but Old World Underground is really great to sing along to when you’re driving or doing dishes. I’ve also seen them live before and they were pretty good. That said, I wasn’t too enthused for the show. I didn’t want to spend the money on a ticket and beer, I didn’t want to stand around and watch a lame opener, and I definitely didn’t want to run into anyone that I know, because being bitter doesn’t make for great small talk. But whatever, I hadn’t hung out with Katie in forever, and Bowery Ballroom is really right down the street from my place, so why not.
I’m not gonna lie and say the magic happened as soon as I walked through the door. There was a really shitty Death Cab For Cutie rip-off playing, and the band members were so sincerely flailing about on stage, that it looked ironic, which it clearly wasn’t, so it just looked awkward. Katie and I decided that the male lead singer was “such a fucking woman,” and the only good part of the band was the female guitarist, just because her physical restraint, in comparison to the others, made her look “cool.”
Before Metric came on, Katie and I tried to guess what songs they would play first. They opened with a new song I hadn’t heard yet, which normally disappoints me, but since they played so well, it only made me want to hear MORE new songs. Crazy, huh?
I would give you every detail of how they played each of our favorite songs from their last album and Katie and I started jumping up and down. Then how amazing the rest of their set was, complete with a brief Pink Floyd cover, whom I hate, but still thought it was excellent. And how, before they came out for the encore, Katie and I (and a bunch of people around us) were like, “Dead Disco! Dead Disco!” and sure enough, they STARTED TO PLAY DEATH DISCO AND WE GRASPED EACH OTHER’S ARMS AND SHRIEKED IN GLEE! I was having so much fun, that I threatened the guy next to me, who was just standing there and text messaging, and told him I would toss his Blackberry across the room if he didn’t stop.
I would tell you all about this, but it might sound lame. What if you don’t know anything about Metric and could care less? What if you hate them and think I’m retarded for loving their show so hard? What if you don’t get them because there is no discernable scene from which they were spawned? Yes, I’m holding back in talking about this show, because I know it sounds like an exaggeration when I say my heart was going to jump up my throat and I was going to barf it all over the hardwood floor when they played “Calculation Theme,” the prettiest-sad-love-song ever. Even if I swear that’s what I felt like. No hyperbole.
Live music is a personal experience, based on personal taste, and even if you’re an articulate person (which I should clarify, that sample group of friends I covertly surveyed are actually eloquent peeps), it’s difficult to properly relate it to anyone without using otherwise empty phrases. Kind of like trying to articulate an orgasm, if I can make the cheap analogy. The unique thing about this type of personal experience, the live show, is that you also share it in a dark room with anywhere from 2 to 20,000 other people. And then you feel a need to share it with people who weren’t there at all, who can easily muster some cynical remark, like this:
Guy Who Went To the Show: “Oh my god. Arcade Fire at Central Park was so FUCKING RAD, and then FUCKING DAVID BOWIE came out on stage and did a song with them!!!”
Guy Who Wasn’t There: “Why do people get so surprised when that happens? David Bowie performed with them like, three times already.”
Ouch!
My big lesson-learned through this short bout with angsty pop culture existentialism, (and this now, is supposed to sound like the last 30 seconds of a Sex and the City episode, where Carrie’s voice over cleverly sums everything up, as she runs down the street in the rain or something):
“Sometimes you shouldn’t be able to sum up everything with a clever catchphrase, or label a particular block of time as the such-and-such era. If you stop and look around for strings to tie everything together, you won’t enjoy the mess of variety. And just like anything in life, you can only be sure you won’t enjoy it if you don’t go and see it for yourself.”
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