Boy, was I wearing my vage extra sloppy yesterday. As a few know and have mocked me thoroughly and justly for, there is a small yet noticable segment of my music collection playing the part of the sore thumb. It's almost . . . well, it's almost too embarassing to admit in print. On the Internet. Where it shall forever be attached to my good name. Then again, my good name also broke my eyeball open one not-so-foggy Super Bowl Eve (Santa came to say, ho ho ho) because it had a few-too-many (and the person attached to that good name had quite a bit more too-many), so this couldn't be all that bad.
Now, this isn't to intuit that I took a particular enjoyment in ALL or even MANY of the artists participating in the Lilith Fair concerts. Truth be told, I don't know if I could name very many. I only know the vain. And, of all the many artists in the Lilith Fair vain, I only partake in a very small percentage. Let's not name any names here, let's just go into the one's I certainly DO NOT like. Sarah McLachlan is out. Indigo Girls, no way. I'm not big on Sinead O'Connor, I absolutely despise Shawn Colvin, I could really take or leave Lisa Loeb, Natalie Merchant is terrible, and I could really see Paula Cole dropped on her head from a ten-story window and not lose sleep.
Now, what's the point of all this? It's almost 2005. Midway point in the decade. And I'm here to inform you of a theory I've got going.
Approximately ten years ago from this point, music started getting TERRIBLE. That whole Seattle grunge thing was ending in a bloated mass of over-commercialization: Soundgarden was on the verge of breaking up, Pearl Jam's fight against Ticketmaster and MTV forced them into near-obscurity, Alice In Chains was disolving faster than the heroin in Layne Stayley's veins, and Kurt Cobain, the most reluctant figurehead of the "new" rock revolution was dead and pretty much forgotten in favor of a watered-down slop I like to call "Everclear and The Offspring." Overindulgence killed what we had in the first five years of the decade. Smashing Pumpkins taking advantage with a double album, Jane's Addiction breaks up, Nine Inch Nails goes into hiding for about five years, the Chili Peppers decide to suck ass for five years, and all those great Indie bands I'm just now discovering (like Pavement, the Pixies, Jesus and Mary Chain) decide to pack it in and call it a day because they know they'll never make it on the radio and they can't get over the fact, so they decide to take it out on each other in the form of band-bickering.
And where does that leave us? Well, that leaves ME looking to the past. In those last five years of the 90's, I packed my collection so full of classic rock it would make your head spin. And here's where my theory comes in. Starting with the 1960s through to today. OK, now, the first half of the 1960s just sucked major balls. You've got the Beatles, but that's their pop period. That's "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "Help" flooding the airwaves. The public was just crying for ANYTHING. However, starting with 1965 or so, with Bob Dylan going electric on the world, the second half of the decade was totally far out, man. You've got the Beatles now experimenting, you've got the Beach Boys taking music to a whole nother level on an album. You've got the introduction of Jimi Hendrix to the world; the Doors; Eric Clapton's supergroup Cream; Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane from the Bay Area; Frank Zappa turning heads along with the Velvet Underground in New York; along comes Creedence, Neil Young (sometimes with Crosby, Stills and Nash), Santana. A lot of really fucking great music came out of that half decade and it happened to spill over into the first half of the 1970s. That's practically a ten-year span before, as it did in the mid-90s, everything became too bloated and all the great music imploded on itself. That's where bands like Grand Funk Railroad, Boston, America come in. Maybe they have a good song here and there, but it's all watered down from the brilliance of the late 60s and it's all tailored towards the pop music sentiment of what's quality.
And then, in 1975, you get Disco, and everything just stops. Now, you can't deny the fact that Pink Floyd started getting big around this time, but there's anomalies in every theory. Disco sucks the life out of everything and, for a few harmless years, everyone forgets what's good and dances. Dances. I'd like to believe it was all the Coke making them forget that Disco sucks, but for some reason I don't think that's the case.
Music sucked well into the 80s. Let's not delude ourselves. Van Halen may have come out in this period, and U2 started making noise, but facts are facts. You look at any "Best of the 80s" set of music (I know we've all perused the commercials/infomercials a time or two), and you're gonna see a whole lotta Toto, Dio, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, The The, and Devo (and those are just the T's and D's). It's difficult to pinpoint where the 80s started getting good again, what with all the shitty metal happening throughout, but I'd have to say it started somewhere around the time Metallica was still an up and coming band, Guns N' Roses was hitting the mainstream, and the Seattle Underground consisted of the Melvins and Green River. As the 80s came to a close, you've got a lot of great new California bands honing their chops: Primus, Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More; and the world is poised for truly outstanding music once again. And it really only took a ten-year hiatus, more or less. Mid 70s to the Mid 80s.
And, from those Mid 80s, all the way through the Mid 90s, life was good. My cd collection increased infinity percent in that period; I personally witnessed the rise to unmatched glory and popularity of MTV and its crushing fall once Woodstock '94 ended and they never again returned to viewing music "videos."
But, it wasn't really as prominent as the 70s. There wasn't really a Disco of the 90s, except for that whole "Disco Revival" thing they had for a while. After all the cool music faded out, they tried everything. It started with everyone trying to push techno down our throats. They said it'd be the "Next Grunge." The End even had time devoted to the new, flourishing genre. That lasted about as long as Fatboy Slim's videos with Spike Jonze were aired on MTV. Then, Limp Bizkit reinforced the underground influence of Korn who came before them. They both rode a nice wave to the new millenium. And, you could say the upsurge of folksy women singers, of the Lilith Fair ilk, was a disco-esque diversion. They've got the similarities. All those baby-boomers who look back on their platform shoes and bellbottoms saying to themselves, "What was I thinking?" are just like all the lesbians and pseudo-lesbians who didn't shave their armpits, wore flannel with the sleeves cut off, carried around an acoustic guitar even though there will never be a female guitar virtuoso in the mainstream EVER, who are now executives or financial planners, saying to themselves, "What was I thinking?"
And, you've got people like me, who have that blemish on their cd collections. Who have been known on occasion to turn the lights down low, settle in with a warm cup of cocoa with the tiny marshmellows and a fuzzy blanket wrapped around their bodies, and a Jewel / Fiona Apple / Tori Amos / Ani Difranco cd in their stereos. YEAH, SO WHAT! I admit it! In 1998, that was all I had! It was either that, or fucking Limp Bizkit or the fucking Backstreet Boys. I didn't even have Beavis and Butthead to tell me what was cool anymore because fucking MTV had to fucking let the show go in favor of more bullshit Real World seasons! I was a lost 17 year old youth. We all make mistakes when we're young! I guess no amount of tens of thousands of cool songs can overshadow the likes of a few dozen.
Anyway, so like I was getting to. Music was just God-awful the last five years of the 90s and at LEAST the first two of the 00s. We've started to get out of the funk. Bands like The Strokes, White Stripes, Interpol, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket, Franz Ferdinand have done their part. But, it's not that huge explosion yet. There's still too much Jessica Simpson, Hillary Duff, Yellowcard, Sum 41, and Nickleback for comfort. We need to purge ourselves from these abominations (it's truly comforting to note how long it took me to compile that list of five shitty artists in the previous sentence; goes to show how little of mainstream America I actually relate to) completely before my dream can be actualized.
So, count on a continuing of the purge through the next year. But, don't count on ANYTHING until we see one of these kickass bands I mentioned above at or near the top of the Top 40.
Then again, I really haven't put that much thought into this theory. Just wait until I come back with some "research" and revisions are made.