Stealing titles is so much easier than inventing them!
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What I know:
I brought a bitter, windy cold with me to Grantham, Pennsylvania. As Ben, my friend of fifteen years, and I sat huddled on freezing metal chairs outside the Messiah College Student Union, I was reminded of Lewis Black’s rant about how much he hates the cold. You can’t even hold a thought in your head, he says (or shouts, really). Of course, the reminiscence, true to Black’s word, didn’t stick around for long.
Eventually, the powers that be opened the Union doors at about a quarter after seven. The six hundred of us who waited in line were ushered into the warmth, where we were handed rubber bracelets and directed towards the open area in front of a small stage, packed to its edges with guitars, horns, keyboards, and a drum kit. Ben and I planted ourselves in a space just a few feet from the stage’s right side (much, I’m sure, to the chagrin of anyone on that side of the room under six feet tall). Arms folded, backs straight, toes still numb, we endured an underwhelming opener (sample lyrics: Her name is Kendall/She’s an ordinary girl) as enterprising - and mostly female - college students jockeyed for position nearer the front. Then again, I’m not six-four and 230 pounds for nothing. We weathered the siege, the openers left the stage, and the massive clock hanging on a wall left of the stage ticked on. Its second hand may as well have been a barometer, spinning like Clark Griswold’s electric meter on Christmas Eve. With each one of its short jumps, the room grew warmer, nervier, more volatile.
The lights dimmed. Eyes turned to the closed off balcony behind us where four men and a red-headed whisper walked in a single file, all smiling as they took a staircase down to ground level, behind a lengthy divider, and strolled onstage.
Over tinkling piano, Fun.’s (for legal reasons, always spelled with that period at the end) lead singer, Nate Ruess, sang to the hushed throng: “Some nights, I hold to every note I ever wrote/Some nights, I say, ‘fuck it all,’ stare at the calendar/Waiting for catastrophes, imagining they’d scare me into changing whatever it is I’m changing into.” He raised his eyes then and almost hissed, “You have every right to be scared.”
And just like that, Nate Ruess held six hundred people in his sweating palm. About an hour later, he had every voice singing with his the chorus to Fun.’s wildly popular (top of both Amazon’s and iTunes’ mp3 downloads) song, “We Are Young.” From what I could tell, nearly everyone in the room knew every word. The album had been out for four days.
At some point near the show’s end, Nate thanked the crowd. It was the first show of the tour, he told us, and “...this is just-” but he didn’t seem able to find the words.
What I think:
I think that in less than twelve months time, Fun. will have played Saturday Night Live.
I think that “We are Young” will win the award for best song at next year’s Grammys.
I think that the work that Fun. is doing (and that Ruess’ old band, The Format, did before them) is as good as any music I’ve heard in the last decade.
I think that I saw a band on the brink of stardom.
I think that when Nate Ruess stopped short as he addressed the crowd at Messiah College, it was because in that moment, but not before, he thought all of this too.
The new record, Some Nights, is largely a record about duality. Its opening lines (the same which opened the show) hint at as much. Some nights we want to be held, some nights we can imagine only being alone. Some nights every choice works out, some nights we can make only mistakes. Some nights we know what we’re doing, some nights we haven’t a clue.
None of this is groundbreaking territory, as far as rock musicians go. But the duality which Fun. examines most closely is a rarer bird. Go back and look at those opening lyrics. Some nights I believe in my vocation, my art, and essentially myself, some nights I look for any excuse I can find to rid myself of the burden that being an artist has put on me. How much longer, he asks, can I reasonably do this before I hang it up? Will there come a time when six hundred people in a college Student Union will mean defeat rather than success. Has that time already come?
The songs on Some Nights ask these questions again and again. Ruess sounds, for all the world, like a man giving professional musicianship one last run, to see if it’ll finally stick.
I think that he got his answer last Saturday night.
What I Believe:
I believe I’ve got some talent as a writer. I also believe that talent is only a small part of success in any given field (just think about how often we see it easily squandered). After Ben and I left the show, I wondered about those very same dualities Ruess wrestles with in his lyrics. Any writer will tell you that on some days when you stop working you feel so good about what you’ve created that you’d challenge Hemingway to a duel, fifteen paces at dawn. Other days, you feel like you’re a shame to Stephanie Meyer’s profession (cheap shot, I know, but I’m working out some demons here). It’s just the nature of the artistic beast.
I read somewhere the other day that writing is awful, but having written is wonderful. That is perfectly true. For about five days. Then the dreaded "other side" of a writer’s life rears its head. Query letters, rejections, agents (or worse, the lack thereof), publishers (see last parenthetical), and the prospect of each day waking up to write words that no audience might ever read are so much more daunting than deciding whether or not the third paragraph on page thirty-eight really needs that last sentence.
There’s a great line in High Fidelity where Rob (John Cusack’s character) says in voiceover, “Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of twenty-six. We were of that disposition.” I feel like, if modified slightly, those lines would describe me only too well. Only writers of a certain disposition are frightened of remaining unnoticed for the rest of their lives at the age of twenty-six. I am of that disposition.
This is, admittedly, not a good sign. Tons of great writers don’t have any notable publishing success until they’re in their forties. Twelve houses passed on Harry Potter. A half-dozen record labels passed on The Beatles. So what happens when (the word “if” would be absurdly naive) months or perhaps years have passed and I’m essentially right where I am now. Am I prepared to stay committed? To trust that as long as I put in the work on my end that some form of validation will arrive? Will I have the guts to keep pushing myself like Nate Ruess has done?
Some nights I believe I can do it, but some nights I just don’t know.
By Josh Corman
Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman
P.S. - Do yourself a favor and give Fun. a listen here.
A good marriage is like a fine wine: It smells of rot and is inherently alcoholic. After more than thirty months of marriage and twice as many boxes of cabernet, I should know. Many said that I was too "emotionally stunted" or "unstable" or "I beg of you, please put down the dagger" for marriage, but Jonny took a chance on me, and I, in turn, took a chance on 1.3 European cut carats. I truly believe we were made for each other.
And we'll be together forever.
And so, in my beneficence, I offer these principles for a healthy marriage. May they guide you toward the wedded euphoria in which we bask and toward which you may vainly strive.
Principle #1. Communication: Poison in the Marriage Well
"We need to talk."
Right behind "How about sex tonight?" those are the scariest four words your spouse can utter. An unexpressed thought is a dollar in the mind bank. You wouldn't give away all (or any) of your real dollars, would you? So why would you give away your mind money? Your spouse is already a drain on so many areas of your life; let your thoughts be yours alone. You can save your spouse and yourself a lifetime of awkward conversation and imprecise analysis with a lifelong dip in the golden pool of silence. I can't tell you how many times Jonny has come to me and said, "Emily, it hurts me when you call me ______" or "I could use a hug" or "I may have just killed a prostitute," and for both our sakes, I have had to stop him from continuing. Not only does conversation ruin the feng shui of the marriage relationship, but also it limits the imagination. It's so much more interesting and exciting to guess what the other is thinking. And guesswork and imagination are the bedrocks of...
Principle #2. Sweatpants: The Lingerie of the Enlightened
When I get home from work, it takes me maybe thirty seconds to change into my boudoir attire: fifteen-year-old, ripped, flannel, size XL men's pajama pants. For his part, Jonny doesn't leave the house in anything but sweatpants, if he bothers to put on pants at all. We have discovered the passion and desire that baggy jersey knits can incite. Because this is a family site—and by that I mean our immediate family members are our only readers—I will not go into further detail about our raging libidos. Let's just say that the other day I saw Jonny in gray terrycloth bottoms, and for one crazy moment, I considered giving him a closed-mouth kiss. It was wild! Strictly adhering to Principle #1, I, of course, did not express the thought to Jonny. Nevertheless, I fully embrace the titillating merits of sweatpants, and I pity those who are stuck in prisons of lace and satin. Naturally, I also pity those who don't yet know...
Principle #3. Grooming, like Sex, Is Optional
Back in elementary school, my parents told me to brush and floss my teeth, but you know what, Mom and Dad? Those teeth fell out. Luckily, new teeth grew in to replace their fallen comrades, but I'll never again be duped into spending five more minutes of my day on hygiene. I have enough trouble squeezing back-to-back marathons of Pawn Stars and Storage Wars into my precious eight hours of awake time. When Jonny turns to me at night and gives me an air five from his twin bed across the room, I know he's really saying, "May I braid your leg hair sometime?" That's a special bond between a husband and wife. Regular grooming will only sterilize your relationship, and while reproductive sterility might be a good option for you (it was for us!), metaphorical sterility will bleach your relationship of its vibrance.
Principle #4. Sharing: The Great Divider
Before you and your spouse go merging your books and movies and ideals into a giant marriage liabilibrary, consider for a moment the unsung virtues of selfishness and violent individualism. Sure, you could let him read your Bible when he leaves his in the other room, but wouldn't that just go against the Teaching a man to fish, Place for everything and everything in its place, When life gives you lemons make lemonade stuff that Jesus preached about (Jude 5:8-23)? When you share with your spouse, you are enabling his laziness. Let him bring his own TV, his own couch, his own meals, his own bed (and if not, floor), his own ovaries into the relationship. You'll see a drastic improvement in self-morale when your things are your things alone. I will caution, too, that chores should never be shared. You must not take from your spouse the joy of cleaning.
Principle #5. "Dear," "Baby," and "Love": Four-Letter Words That Will Ruin Your Tolerate-Life
Far too often, I hear young couples using so-called "pet names" with each other, and I have to shake my head in grief. First, they are addressing each other, which directly violates Principle #1. Second, if they insist on disregarding my sound advice, they can at least inject a bit of individuality into their rhetoric. Consider the following pet names that Jonny has given me in the last week. Although I cannot yet convince him to embrace Principle #1, I have to applaud his eloquence. He has called me:
my precious little fruit cup
my half-eaten McGriddle
my tin of parrot food
my sweet little card catalog entry
my wire-mesh soup strainer
my favorite ball of yarn
Any woman would melt at such tender expressions, which proves that I am not just any woman (or a woman at all, for that matter).
If my hairline has taught me anything (and I think it has), it's that a lot can change in ten years. But there are certain things that are currently true about this world that would have shocked me to have known when I was in high school. Be assured, I don't consider these the five MOST shocking things that have come to be true in the world since I was in high school (in some cases, they are far from it), they are just some shocking things that have come to be true.
5.The Death of Steve Irwin
One may be tempted to call Steve's heartbreaking demise less than shocking, as the man mixed it up with gnarled crocodiles and tangoed with venomous snakes for a living. But the blindness of human perception, at least for me, created a falsely secure view of Steve, not unlike something out of Hollywood. Watching Steve was like watching Indiana Jones: we allowed ourselves to be caught up in the danger of it all, but we never believed anything could really hurt him. When it happened, it rode on a sobering wave of reality that never quite seemed true.
4. The Cell Phone > Flip Phone > Razr > Blackberry > iPhone "Evolution" (Read: Takeover of Society)
When I graduated from high school, I had one close friend who owned a cell phone. One. And he didn't bring it to school or carry it around with him. It hardly ever left his vehicle, actually. I knew a few parents who had had one for a few years, and I had a few other acquaintances with cell phones, but my existence was, for all intents and purposes, a cell phone-less existence. Five years later, more or less everyone I knew owned a cell phone. Now, just over ten years later, its market saturation is complete. I suppose if I had really sat down and thought about it, I would have seen this coming. The evolution of technology is inevitable and the cell phone revolution was poised for dominance at the turn of the century, but in my world, phone communication had always been locked within the parameters of our homes. Voice messages waited patiently at home for me to come receive them. The notion of being always available, not to mention the subsequent and immediate frustration that now sets in when someone is unavailable, would have shocked me.
3. Internet on the Go
This is in a similar vein to the last one, but it is distinctive enough for its own slot. Remember, technologically behind the times as I may have been, I was a "normal" breed of behind the times, the last 33% of society to the party, not an anomaly. The internet was still a rather gimmicky thing when I was in high school. My personal experience had been confined to AOL email, instant messaging, and chat rooms until my junior year, when I first learned how to use a search engine. That notion would have seemed laughable to juniors five years ago, let alone today. The idea of having the internet—this strange, unidentifiable being that came in through the phone wires—in the palm of my hand wherever I went would have downright staggered me. The change has been gradual (although less so than past technological changes), and so the dramatic shift
in the way society behaves has crept up somewhat unnoticed. If I had
jumped straight from my last...er..."class" senior year to today, and
gone to a typical party or social gathering where the majority of eyes were locked in the down position, toward the little glowing screens in front of them, and seen
the way we instinctively, even desperately depend on the constant flow
of information that they provide, I would have been shocked. The
spaceship scenes from Wall-E don't seem so far fetched all of a sudden.
2. The Death of Saddam Hussein
Again, maybe this seems like something that was bound to happen and therefore unworthy of the "shocking" moniker, but once again the phenomenon of human perception disagrees.Saddam Hussein's name became vilified to the point of legend early in my elementary school days, with the result that I never thought of him as an actual human. He was a myth, a cloud of evil that would always be around. When he became a flat out wanted man, it was always assumed that the chase for him would continue, that he would always be The United States' Shredder: even a trash compactor couldn't kill him. But, like the death of Steve Irwin, although in starkly different circumstances and summoning starkly different emotions, a sobering wave of reality accompanied Saddam's death and reminded us that we're all human, we're all vulnerable. A world without Saddam Hussein was hard to wrap one's mind around, and then just like that, he was gone.
1. The Loss of Pluto
Look, if there is one thing every third grader from the last 300-odd years has known beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's that our Solar System has nineplanets. It is one of the elementary mind's great axioms:
2 + 2= 4
E=MC2
George Washington was the first president of the USA.
The Solar System has NINE freaking planets!
And then science, that unfeeling, analytical monster whose very heart is as cold and unyielding as the icy block of a former planet which it so callously demoted, took it away. Kids, don't believe everything your teachers tell you. It's only a matter of time until it's proven wrong.
Then again, maybe I'm overreacting. Without science, we wouldn't have knowledge of such simultaneously enchanting and educating phenomena as Alchemy, Craniology, and of course, everyone's favorite monsters of yesteryear, the dinosaurs. Yep, I'll always have my dinosaurs, and my beloved personal favorite, the Triceratops...
Your books have made me seriously reconsider what I know and think about the world around me, and, frankly, I feel violated. Have you any idea just how long I strolled about my day to day life, absolutely self-assured and totally confident that I knew everything worth knowing? A long damn time, sir.
I knew how to fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket, how to parent, and how to bluster knowingly in the directions of intensely bored friends about crime, education, business, and politics. But that’s all crumbled now, thanks to you. Now I bluster about the things you think.
If you suspect that I am somewhat to blame for the sad state I find myself in, that I simply could at any time stop reading your books and your New Yorker articles and the interviews you do and thus spare myself the indignity of being shown up as someone who understands very little (but proclaims to know quite a lot) about the world around me, then I take offense at that typically arrogant insinuation. How can I stop? You see, only by continually investigating your “well-researched” and “insightful” works will I ever find the critical mistake, the half-baked error that will invalidate all of your “wise” and “transformative” and “mind-bendingly revealing” drivel. Yes, I must soldier on.
Or so my thinking went.
One day last week, I pulled up a video of a speech you had given at a TED conference in 2004. I was searching for a short but rhetorically effective display of deductive reasoning to show my AP Language and Composition classes, and, in my poor judgment, I played your “Spaghetti Sauce” speech for my unsuspecting students. While they were largely unaffected (the coming generation has thankfully been immunized against exercising their capacity for abstract thought in all but the direst circumstances), I was once again traumatized and affronted.
In that speech, when you summarize the work of Howard Moskowitz , you extol the virtues of “horizontal segmentation,” wherein the largest possible number of people have the greatest chance at happiness when they abandon the Platonic ideal of one perfect choice. Instead, you suggest that they embrace the idea that no spaghetti sauce or mustard or olive oil is intrinsically better than any other, only that there are sauces and mustards and olive oils better suited to their individual tastes. I then (as I assume was your nefarious goal all along) applied this logic to my own choices.
Traumatized and affronted, sir. Traumatized and affronted.
Of all the other deeply held convictions you have made me question, none has horrified me so completely as this. I have impeccable taste. That taste is rooted in years of placing every conceivable song, film, book, album, score, and short story into a painfully crafted hierarchy of perfection. And from the top of that hierarchy I looked down at Stephanie Meyer and Nickelback and Drew Barrymore and I laughed, sir. Sometimes in pity, sometimes in rage, but always from the safety of my ivory tower.
Your implied suggestion that, in fact, relentlessly mocking Twilight and Two and a Half Men and Michael Bay’s films is not a beneficial and worthy use of my time, and that I should instead simply recognize that the people who enjoy things that I dislike are not actually brainless slugs whose very existence signals the apocalypse’s imminence appalls me. What else am I supposed to do with my time?
I have spent hundreds of fruitless hours in circular debates in which nothing is concluded but the friendships of those involved. If you claim that these have been a waste, you call into question my intellect, my behavior, perhaps even my sanity.
I’ve spent much of my life making sure that I am right, but now, all of a sudden, I wonder whether or not I actually am. Or if it's even possible to be "right" when it comes to matters of taste.
How dare you.
By Josh Corman
Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman
P.S. - To better prepare your defenses against Malcolm Gladwell's devilish schemes, watch his "Spaghetti Sauce" speech.
The American and the girl with him sat at a pub table in the corner, inside the house.
"Will you have an Ale8?" the man said, shoving his school books beneath the bench.
"Yes please."
He walked to the kitchen and returned with two chilled bottles. He put them on the table and pushed one in front of the girl. The girl was looking at a clock. It had a gray face and a black minute hand.
"It looks like Eeyore's tail," she said.
"I don't see it."
"You wouldn't."
The man drank his soda. "Can we go over these questions please? I have class in thirty minutes."
"You have class in thirty minutes."
"Would you cut it out?"
"I did cut it out. I just can't cut the—"
"—Let's just eat our soup and cornbread. Then you'll go to work and I'll go to class."
The girl took a bite of her soup and raised her eyes to his. "It's delicious. Did you hear that the gas station has a new owner now?"
"Pie, I think it's the right move for us."
The girl blew into her soup.
"We've been together for over a year now and I've been very patient so far, very understanding," he said.
The girl did not reply. She took another bite and opened one of the textbooks.
"Everything will be fine. You'll see."
"You don't know that," she said.
"You're not the first person I've dated," he said. They sat in silence, watching the minute hand move another tick around the clock face. "All of our friends have done it and they're fine."
"Oh yes, they're fine."
"Well, I won't make you do it," he said. "I wouldn't want you to if you were absolutely sure you didn't want to, but I know we'd be happier."
"I'm happy now."
"No you're not."
"I think the new owners are going to change the name again," she said.
"It would be a step forward for us. It's such a simple thing really. Society says it's a big deal but I know it isn't."
The girl opened his notebook. "What does 'la mochila' mean?" she said.
"I don't want to go over the questions anymore."
"Translate into English 'el pedo.'"
"You won't even consider it?"
She closed the notebook. "Maybe I will. But you'll look at me differently, I know you will."
"I won't. You don't need to be scared."
"How do you know it's the right time?"
"You've been eating beans and cornbread. You're tense. It's the right time," he said. "It's perfectly natural, Pie. You just let the air out and then it'll all be ok."
She looked again at the clock and smiled. "It doesn't look much like Eeyore's tail really. Eeyore's tail has a pink bow at the end."
"Would you like another drink?"
"Yes."
He stood and turned to go to the kitchen, but before he reached the doorway, an unmistakeable noise arrested his step. He looked at her and smiled. "You won't regret it," he said.
They say fashion is cyclical, but I think that descriptor should be applied to pop culture in general. As I've waited patiently for pantaloons to make a comeback, I've discovered that we can learn a lot about ourselves by examining some of the cultural cycles in our more immediate vicinity.
A few weeks ago, in the throes of a late-night nostalgia kick (one of my favorite pastimes), I pulled up Fuel's Sunburn on Youtube. As I sat on my computer that evening, listening to Brett Scallions scream about letting the sun fall over him, something shocking occurred to me.
This would never fly in today's musical climate.
Don't get me wrong. I like Fuel. I don't love them, because they're not a great band. But I like them, because they're a good band. Like, love, or hate them, however, one thing is unarguably true: They are quintessential nineties rock.
Nineties rock has a sound. I didn't realize it during the nineties, but now I can see it so clearly. It's like the difference between swimming in a lake and flying above it in an airplane. In the former situation, you feel that lake it in your very bones; you're one with it. It's your whole world. In the second, you sort of forget what it was like to be in the lake, but you can actually see what it looks like. You can see what shape it takes.
The Axis of Acceptance
Here is an axiom upon which the rest of this essay is built: All people reach a moment in their lives when they decide for themselves what kind of music they like. They accept a certain style of music as their own. This age is usually right around middle school, coming into full bloom in high school, although of course this can vary from one person to another. It's no longer what their parents or anyone else made them listen to; it's their own music, based on their own decisions. This point henceforth will be called The Axis of Acceptance. The Axis is not fluid. For each person it is one era of music, and that era it remains for the rest of his life.
Here is how The Axis of Acceptance works:
1. It's based loosely on decades, and it clings to whatever the current style is when The Axis is reached.
2. That style becomes the basis for all good. Your Axis' influence over you is akin to how you view your parent of the opposite gender when searching for a mate. Realize it or not, The Axis is what you will compare all future music to, no matter what. You may go in the complete opposite direction in the end, but it's still what you will hold up as the standard. It may not even end up being your favorite style, but it's the basis for working out what is good.
3. Anything from two eras ago or more is fair game. For some people, the vintage stuff may even be superior. We find variance here, as some may say, "Well, The Beatles are the greatest band of all time, and I love the New Pornographers, Death Cab for Cutie, and Sufjan Stevens as well, who are all, obviously, totally influenced by The Beatles' music." The Beatles' lingering prevalence in today's music provides the backdrop against which their brilliance can be appreciated. Others may flip this point of view and say, "My favorite band is The White Stripes and I also love Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and a lot of sixties/seventies music."
4. Last—and most importantly for our purposes—according to The Axis, the musical era prior to that of your Axis is OFF LIMITS. Sure, a few GREAT bands may have risen to the surface that are either tolerable or even enjoyable, but the overall vibe of the last decade is SO LAME.
Think of the generation designations
themselves. There are exceptions and anomalies, but there is a lot of truth in what they say. I think The Axis is the same when
it's all taken as a large picture. Step back a few feet, forget about
all that fell in the cracks, and look at the finished painting. The
greater image rises to the surface, and all the brush strokes fade away.
Discovery Through Experience
I have a friend who is four years my junior. He is, by all accounts, including my own, an intelligent, thoughtful appreciator and creator of good art. He likes good films, good literature, and good music. But he doesn't like Nirvana, who is my favorite band, and largely considered one of the most important bands of all time. And it's not an, "I appreciate Nirvana, but it's not my favorite kind of music," thing; it's simple indifference. He claims not to like Kurt Cobain's voice, doesn't like the style, basically doesn't see what the big deal is.
He has since gone on the record claiming that he doesn't like nineties music, period. Remember that nineties sound I mentioned? He hears it too. And he does not like it.
This dichotomy of good taste and bad vibes toward such a critically and historically loved band, besides vexing me endlessly, got me thinking.
In my desperate search for answers, I came upon a sobering realization: I have said these exact same words. But for me, it was the eighties. The glitz, glam, electronic, candy coated, fake, plastic feel of the whole decade made me sick. "Give me something real," I said. "Give me something raw."
With this epiphany under my belt, I came to an important conclusion (and I hope when I say this my friend will remember the glowing build-up I gave him only moments ago): He simply doesn't get Nirvana.
It's not his fault. He never swam in the Lake of Nineties Music. He's only ever seen it from afar. He has simply fallen prey to The Axis' awesome power, just like I did before him.
The Painting: A Brief Summary of Recent Music Through My Own Eyes
When I reached my Axis of Acceptance, I was in seventh grade. It was 1996. I had been raised on oldies and Christian music, and then I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit"for the first time, and everything changed. I was a few years late to the grunge party, yes, but I was still in the midst (though in the final third) of the resultant era. The glam and glitz of the eighties had been replaced with a straightforward, raw, emotive, stripped down rock sound on the heels of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, and the rest. So that became my Axis.
The movement held strong and morphed slightly through the nineties, and as bands like Silverchair, Live, Bush, and Fuel (to name a very few) formed or rose to prominence, I was all aboard. They all had unique sounds, but they also fell under the same general banner of sound: straightforward, guitar-based rock; emotive, honest vocals; and unapologetic lyrics. That is, they sang passionately (which can mean a host of things, such as angrily, or hopefully, or pleadingly), and they did it honestly. No winking to the camera. No half joking front. They sang about what the song was about. That doesn't mean that lyrically they weren't abstract or poetic, but it means that the songs were about something honest, and by God, they meant them.
This was comfortable for me.
And Then...
I still remember the first time I heard The White Stripes. I was fresh out of high school, and my friend, mentioned earlier, was just entering. I saw this music video:
On one hand, this was the most raw, stripped down music since the Pixies, even more so than Nirvana. But what I interpreted was a wholly foreign aesthetic. Do you hear the way Jack garbles the lyrics in the musical breaks? Do you hear the whole so-simple-it-sounds-like-we're-not-actually-trying thing? I thought to myself, "This is a joke. This guy's just screwing around." They were too aloof even to condescend to such a standard form of rock as including a freaking bassist in the band. It came off as campy, cutesy, un-serious, give-me-attention-for-being-weird music.
I wrote them off. It was the eighties all over again.
But in the coming years, the transition continued, and more bands dripping in tongue-in-cheek vibes started pouring out of the record labels, like The Strokes, The Hives, The Vines, and, a little later, The Killers. (Notice too the "The" band names, a subtle statement of a return to sixties form and a rebellion against the moodier names of the nineties like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam.)
I hated all of it for a while. I couldn't take any of it seriously. But eventually, without even realizing it, I came around and softened to the whole style. I even came to love some of it. I suddenly realized that it had its own unique, but no less worthy, musical gifts to offer. The transition was so smooth, and so subtle, that I didn't even notice it when it happened. It wasn't until I considered my friend and his similar plight with nineties music that I really considered how it had gone down.
When we moved out of the self-serious bands of the nineties and into the tongue-in-cheekiness of The White Stripes and The Killers and co., in some ways, popular music was hearkening back to the eighties. The eighties—whether it was Aha!, Boy George, or the Hair Bands—was shrouded in a candy coating of wink-wink, nudge-nudge quirky-ness. Beneath a lot of those ridiculous synthesizers and ludicrously over mixed drums was heartfelt, soulful, genuine artistry.
A representative sample: The Killers, some twenty years down the road, began picking up the old eighties mantle again, sticking campy, bright, ludicrously peppy synth punctuations over their furious guitar tones. It's ironic in the sense that this peppy synth fluff is not what one expects to hear alongside lyrics like, "Heaven aint' close in a place like this," but when you got used to it, the dichotomy kind of worked.
Also, even through the White Stripes' stripped down sound, it wears a heavy coating of irony. It's a, "Let's make this sound kind of crappy in hopes that it will actually sound awesome," attitude (which it turns out, worked).
To be clear, I'm not saying the White Stripes sound eighties. I'm not saying eighties music itself is making a comeback or that today's popular music is ripping off eighties music. But what I am saying is that many of the overarching sensibilities that defined the eighties and made them stand out from the nineties have helped guide the new era back away from the starkly contrasted nineties.
Somewhere around 2005, I realized that I was enjoying eighties music when it came on the radio. I would turn Bon Jovi up rather than turn it off. It was ok, now, to like Boy George. When did that happen? In the nineties, if you popped on some Culture Club at a party, people wouldn't smile knowingly and say, "Oh, this guy and his culture club!" They would say, "This shit sucks. Turn it off." Once again, the change happened so subtly I didn't even notice.
As popular music, in many ways, began to hearken back to the sensibilities of the 80s, I found that what I thought I had been so sure of about "good" and "lame" in my youth was slowly falling away.
The Crux: Candy Canes on a Coffin
I had come full circle when I finally acknowledged that I enjoy Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan, in many ways, is the polar opposite of Kurt Cobain and represents neatly the difference between my friend's Axis and my own.
Sufjan's music is shrouded in irony. Bright, peppy horns and funk-tastic keyboards lift his music to a sort of sweet, bubbly, playful aesthetic that never takes itself too seriously. Meanwhile, Nirvana's music is immediately arresting. They're not messing around one whit when they thrash out the opening chords of Teen Spirit, and when the somber, dry, acoustic tones of "Something in the Way" fade out at the end of the album, there's no question that we've been on an exploration of pain and sadness.
But look a little deeper at Sufjan. Sufjan's music is like candy canes hanging on a coffin. If we look past the brightly colored, sweet treats on the outside, we find a deadly serious artist searching the universe for answers about life, death, right, wrong, pain, and joy.Lyrics about the invention of Cream of Wheat come minutes before a chilling recounting of the mass murders committed by John Wayne Gacy Jr.
Now look a little deeper at Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Behind their wall of aggression and anger, artfully ironic themes make us realize that all of the black clad, depressed generation X-ers claiming Kurt to be their spokesperson were on the butt end of a great joke. ("Teenage angst has paid off well; now I'm bored and old.") Through deadly serious expression and searching through misery and hopelessness, Kurt still found a way to wink-wink nudge-nudge those who weren't too wrapped up in the seriousness of it all. A closer inspection finds wonderfully abstract, satirical themes usually sung in sugary sweet melodies that wouldn't be out of place on a Beatles record, if housed in different sonic tones. It's the difference between those who run home crying, offended by "Rape Me," and those who know that the real target of the scathing song are the bullies in this life who take advantage of those weaker than themselves. With Nirvana, that candy is on the inside of the dark coffin.
What a Difference Four Years Make
It's amazed me what a difference four years can make in a group of people. At least part of it, I'm sure, is that I found my Axis at the final third of my era. Four years later, my friend made the discovery at the beginning of his. We were right on the line, on opposite sides.
It was hard for people of the grunge generation to accept the glitz and sparkle of the eighties and, in turn, the ironic, tongue-in-cheek throwback of what The White Stripes and Sufjan Stevens started. While Sufjan kids may look at a picture of an eighties wedding complete with the bride's frizzed out hair and the groom's robust mustache, they laugh and call it "epic." Nirvana kids would have just called it "stupid." The Sufjan kids get so deep in ironically praising Chuck Norris that they almost forget that he is actually a bad actor. The Nirvana kids would just roll their eyes in disgust, say he sucks, and change the channel.
My point is, we just think differently.
What Does it all Mean
Writing off an entire decade is foolish, as I learned. With the GREAT ones who rise to the surface of the lake, like Sufjan and Nirvana, you will find underneath the earmarks of their eras timeless, artistic, and dynamic music. But even beyond the great ones, down in The Lake, in the average, solid, earnest music of an era, you will find that maybe it's not so bad once you accept an era for what it is. I would hate for anyone to miss out on any of it because The Axis has them convinced that the days of "good music" are either behind or only just returned.
In 2001, I was fresh out of high school, and I would soon be hearing The White Stripes for the first time. I didn't know it at the time, but one era was slowly melting into another, as the eighties and nineties had done before.
That was ten years ago.
My friend admitted to me recently that, despite his disdain for nineties music, he actually "kind of likes Fuel." He's also been asking me for a mix of Nirvana: the best of the best, something to try on with new ears that just may reveal to him what he's been missing. I'm hopeful that he'll find, just as I did half a decade ago, that if you get out of the plane and dip your toe in the lake, you may find that you want to take a swim. It's not all that bad.
Every time I looked at this poster in 1999, I got cold chills.
One May afternoon when I was in the eighth grade, my mom surprised me with news that later that evening (on a school night, no less) we would be attending a midnight screening of Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace. This news nearly incited joy-induced heart palpitations. I had never been to a midnight screening, for one, so this all felt very exotic. Plus, I (like every other Star Wars nerd in Christendom) had been feverishly awaiting George Lucas' return to a galaxy far, far away. In many ways, the opening of The Phantom Menace was the first truly meaningful cultural experience of my life.
I thought about writing a review of TPM for you, done from the perspective of my thirteen year-old self, but a) It would be in all caps and b) I think there's a statute concerning the number of times the words "awesome" and "lightsaber" can legally appear in one paragraph, and thirteen-year-old me would violate it severely. Instead, I'll offer only reminiscence.
When we left the theater, my mom was understandably exhausted, but that didn't stop me from sapping what little will to live she still possessed by recounting all of TPM's most exhilarating scenes, frame by frame. I was blindly, wildly elated. Jake Lloyd's suspect delivery of some suspect dialogue didn't phase me. The out-of-left-field "the force is the result of something called a midi-chlorian count" element didn't phase me. Jar-Jar Binks? Didn't phase me. Not even a little.
But such is the luxury of being thirteen. I wasn't worried about little things like acting, writing, direction, and specious plotting. My concerns had more to do with lightsabers and the myriad ways in which the Jedi use them to dispatch legions of Trade Federation droids. When I got to school the next day, I touted the film's merits and gloated incessantly about seeing it before any of my friends. I had them salivating by day's end. And the next day, after they'd all gone out and seen it for themselves, we became a little chorus of awe-struck adolescents, rehashing each of the film's most pivotal moments and prognosticating on how all of these loose threads would tie together when the gap between Episodes I and IV was bridged.
Since none of my friends were film critics or thirty-seven–year–old men who'd imbued the original trilogy with way too much personal and emotional significance, it took a long time for me to temper my consideration of TPM. Ahh, the wonders of teenage solipsism.
Eventually, though, the points I heard people make about Jake Lloyd's acting and the hokey dialogue and Jar-Jar's distracting goofiness level started to make a lot of sense. As the years rolled by and Attack of the Clones approached, I was convinced that TPM had been an aberration, that the closer we got to Anakin's turn to the dark side and the destruction of the Jedi, the films would recapture some of the dark edge that made The Empire Strikes Back my favorite movie of all time. I turned out to be very, very wrong, but even after the warnings of TPM, I didn't realize it right away.
For probably a month after I first saw AotC (remember that I'm sixteen at that point), I defended it ferociously. I played down the overly saccharine love scenes—complete with botched CGI—and extolled the darkening story arc, the emergence of Christopher Lee's Count Dooku, learning the origins of Boba Fett, and finally getting to see Yoda wield a lightsaber. Even those elements soon lost their luster, and I gave up trying to defend George Lucas, instead slipping into the easy cynicism of a jaded nerd.
I won't pretend that I didn't still get excited for Revenge of the Sith three years later. No matter what happened, I was going to get some plot resolution that I'd been waiting more than six years for, and I hoped beyond hope that Lucas could work his magic one more time and save this wreck from capsizing completely.
There's a lot to be said for RotS, but the roots of that cynicism I had adopted grew deep. I began to poke holes much more quickly, and though I still think it's the best of the prequel trilogy, my estimation of it is not notably greater than the other two.
The great lesson in this little bit of personal history is not, despite what a great many Star Wars fans have written and said, that George Lucas botched one of the greatest cinematic opportunities of his, or anybody else's, lifetime. The lesson, for me at least, is that the Star Wars prequel trilogy represents a kind of descent for me, a descent into something more hard-hearted and less accepting, more bitter and less freely adventurous. In those three year gaps between movies, I went from being a middle-schooler to a high-schooler to a college student. My intellectual maturity and many of my critical faculties sprouted during that time, and what came with that was a sharper ability to appreciate and analyze art. The upside of this is obvious, but there's a downside, too.
The downside is that I end up feeling very much like Susan in The Chronicles of Narnia. I might look back on that midnight screening of The Phantom Menace and know, intellectually, that I was incredibly excited to see that film, but I can't really connect to those feelings in any meaningful way. I've left that version of myself behind, and while there are a fair few reasons to be thankful for that, there are a least a few reasons to mourn the loss. I've long since lost the capacity to approach films with that same barely suppressible exuberance, and that's a real shame.
Now, when I see commercials for the 3-D re-release of TPM, I simply scoff at Lucas' brazen and unnecessary ploy to suck more money from the pockets of the people who have spent a lifetime fueling his outsized hubris by watching his films.
And then I feel ridiculous, like an old man shouting at kids to get off his lawn. Am I so bitter about one filmmaker's mishandling of a beloved story that I can't even imagine a reality in which he just wants some thirteen-year-old—some kid who wasn't even born while I was wide-eyed and gaping as twenty-foot-tall images of the noble guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy flashed before me—to have a chance at experiencing a story that has been such a wonderful part of so many people's lives?
Lord, I hope not. I hope, in fact, that I can summon the urge to go back and watch TPM again, maybe even in theaters, just to feel that rush as Obi-Wan Kenobi flies at Darth Maul, lightsaber raised, delirium in his eyes.
Actually, I'm getting kind of excited just thinking about it.
