I was busy figuring out the area of office, lobby, and hallway space for Fuller's Office of Development and Alumni/ae and Church Relations this morning based on 1/96 scale plans (1 inch = 8 ft) for the purpose of estimating the expense of carpet replacement - which, incidentally, made me feel bad for all the horrible things I used to say about high school geometry, but that's something for another post - when I started thinking about Nine Inch Nails.
"Odd," one might think, and one would not be far from the truth. At any given moment in my mind multiple thoughts are engaged in an all-out, free-for-all, no-holds-barred struggle, battling and wrestling for the dominance necessary to earn the right to rise to the top and gain admittance into the realm of my consciousness. So anyway, I was thinking about NIN which just released an album on the new Radiohead model: independent from any label, internet exclusive, and free. And that got me thinking about heavier music and I realized it kind of sucks now.
When I was in high school and one wanted to rebel against authority of various kinds there was a whole slew of musical options: Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Pantera, The Deftones, even Metallica was coming out with new stuff, and that's not even counting all the imitators out there (I'm looking at you, Nickelback). Now those bands are broken up, on hiatus, or repackaging stale retreads of their once revolutionary sound to cash in one last time before obscurity descends and envelops them in a dark suffocating blanket of mediocrity. Even the once unassailable punk band has been co-opted by the man and transformed into some faux pop-punk crap.
What do the kids do these days when they need some good old fashioned angry music? I suppose they could turn to rap to piss of the parents, but even that genre has been tired and predictable for the better part of a decade. If anyone out there has a finger on the pulse of America's youth please clue me in so I don't feel quite so old and out of touch. Thanks a bunch.
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2 comments:
I haven't listened to the radio in ages so I have no idea but I don't think it's "cool" to be angry these days. A band like Boysetsfire comes out with an incredible album brimming with rage over the things going on in our country today and probably nobody has heard of it. And now they've broken up. So I don't know. I think rock is dead for the most part, unfortunately. But check out The Misery Index from Boysetsfire for your anger fix. Also I recently discovered Chevelle who is pretty good. I'm a little behind on that one. Like I said, I don't listen to the radio.
Yeah - I've caught a few tracks from Anti-Flag: Pittsburgh-based politically charged punk with a healthy dose of anger. I can get behind that.
I'm a lot less angsty than I used to be, though. I was more just curious about what the young folk were doing to get their anger fix these days. That being said, thanks for the tip, David. I'll check those boys who set fires out.
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