The end of the Cold War marked the end of ideology, and therefor of innovation as we know it. With America, and the world, at a place in history with no real "enemy," we have let ourselves become fat, soft and quiet. There is nothing new. The 21st century will forever be remembered as the backward century. For all the problems and complications that the 20th century brought us, we have grown content to exploit the last 100 years for whatever they're worth. Rock music hasn't done anything new since Nirvana - a decade and a half ago - and even Kurt Cobain himself said he was ripping off the likes of the Pixies and the Sex Pistols. But is there really anything else to do? Can we really be to blame for this utter lack of innovation? We've gone from acoustic to electric, and from electric to electronic - and now where to after this? We've become a generation of head-scratching kids. The only options we've left ourselves are to ape everything our predecessors have done better before us. Punk - the penultimate form of "against-ness" has now become a sound rather than an ethos. Everything that the Sex Pistols sang about - The Berlin Wall, abortions, the corrupt and crumbling British Empire, have all fallen by the wayside and been replaced with moaning about how your girlfriend has broken up with you. The sound has replaced the feeling. Sounding punk, basically using distortion and not knowing how to sing, is not the same as being punk. There simply is no piss and vinegar left in our collective American blood.
But let's face it - what is there left to bitch about? The United States - and by the transitive property: the world - won the War. We're on top. And after nearly two-and-a-half-centuries since our Revolution, we have nothing left to talk about. They say that the journey is always better than the destination, and now that we've arrived at the "promised land" (and what a sad thought that is - that this is our zenith) we don't know what to do with ourselves. We haven't had a major conflict since the Reagan years - a time period that still leaves the two only parties with a fight at the nomination looking backward. Bush's War on Terrorism is really pathetic when you look at it. In the words of Walter from the Big Lebowski "what we have here? A bunch of fig-eaters wearing towels on their heads, trying to find reverse in a Soviet tank. This is not a worthy adversary." Bush makes it seem like we are in the throes of a fight that will define the next 1000 years. Islamic fundamentalism is nothing like communism - much more isolated, and not with the backing of major superpowers. Without a major conflict no great artistry can arise. Would "Guernica" have been created without the Spanish Civil War? Or would "The Times They Are A-Changin'" have been written without the backdrop of the Vietnam War? I think not, and as long as we are content to sit atop the peaceful plateau of isolation, we will never revisit the glory days of artistic output.
The internet is also partly to blame. Now that we have all this information at our fingertips, revisionism is so easy. The death of the local scene can be attributed to the instant gratificaiton of the internet. Why create a local artist's community when you can chat online with an artist from Tokyo, or have a Facebook group with other Krautrock fans. The local scenes which bred the indie scenes of the 80s have disintegrated to a large part. Now only surviving through communes such as the Orange Twin commune in Athens Georgia, or The Smell in Los Angeles. Places like Andy Warhol's Factory and the ever immortalized/idolized the Haight-Ashbury have ceased to exist for a large part. Looking backward has become easier than looking forward in the internet age. Want to learn as much about Afrobeat? It's just a few clicks away. We weren't born this backwards. We can change.
But what is there a change to? When Alternative music became mainstream (how's that for an oxymoron?) we were left wondering - "an alternative to what?" Indie-ism is now so concentrated on what is isn't - abstract conceptions such as "marketable" "mainstream" "popular" (since when was that a bad thing?) and "conventional" have become phobias of most indie scenesters. Everything seems to be anti anti anti. Why not stand up for who you are, rather than who you aren't? I am not a lot of things, and it's easier to not do something, rather than do something. Rock used to be about not trusting anyone over 30. Now it has a Hall of Fame that's more like a wax museum. Even the new Students for a Democratic Society is run by people who were around in the 60s. That means they're in their 60s. We can't revolutionize things if we're recycling the revolutionaries. I can't wait until the last of the Baby-Boomers die, it's the only thing I can look forward to if I don't decide to off myself when I'm 27 (what a novel concept.)
Magazines like Rolling Stone and its across the pond carbon copy the NME are so quick to hype anything that even remotely breaks the mould. Remember the Arctic Monkeys? Yeah, me neither, because even though they were called the best British band since the Beatles, and their debut was named the fifth best British album of all time, their follow up was largely ignored because everyone else on that god forsaken island was probably busy drooling over Pete Doherty's latest "zany antics." By the way, lets look at the rest of that top 10 list. The Stone Roses debut was there, Oasis' debut was there, the Sex Pistols only album was there, and the Arctic Monkeys. And that's just the top 5, the rest of the list includes The Libertines debut Up The Bracket. What do these albums all have in common? They're debuts! Britain is so ready to jump the gun and declare every new band the best thing since blow jobs that 5 of the top 10 British records were not only recorded during the last quarter century, but they're all debuts as well. What ever happened to those top 5 bands? The Stone Roses recorded one more album 6 years later than broke up. The Arctic Monkeys have been ignored by Pete Doherty's (lead singer of the Libertines) crack-fueled relationship with Kate Moss, and Oasis blew up a few years later, but not after ruining pop music with that whole "Britpop" revival bullshit.
I hate revivals. There was the Garage Rock Revival, the Post-Punk revival, Nu-Rave and all the horrible hype-trappings that each scene brought itself.
These are not excuses, or answers for that matter. we cannot act as if all these actions and consequences are crutches that can be leaned upon when we look at ourselves in the mirror and realize how far we've fallen. There is great art out there - the majority of the public simply would rather turn to MTV or Top 40 radio, than seek out a local zine, or visit Stylusmagazine.com or Pitchforkmedia.com. But we have grown tired and apathetic. I don't have a solution. Is resistance futile?
