Beginning To See The Light (in Re: Ellen Willis)
...And so I had simply stopped listening. I told myself that the trouble was I was tired of old music, and there was no new music that excited me. I wondered if I were coming to the end of an era—was rock and roll no longer going to be important in my life? Then I gave up trying to censor my thoughts. Immediately there were plenty of records I needed to hear: Blood on the Tracks; Loaded; Heat Treatment and Howlin’ Wind; Astral Weeks; Exile on Main St.; The Bessie Smith Story, Volume 4 ... (Ellen Willis, Village Voice, 1977)
I became a passionate rock and roll fan in my late teens. With rock books and rock writers such as Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau et al leading the way, I became obsessed especially with the British Invasion and the proto-punk sounds of Detroit, New York, and London. I became fiercely devoted to the early Rolling Stones, Who, Yardbirds, Patti Smith, The Stooges, Velvets, The Clash and Bruce Springsteen (who wasn't a punk or even anything like them, but who struck the same kind of chord, even in his blaring and overproduced mid 80's stuff). And I yearned for a rock scene of my own.
And, amazingly enough, I got one, as bands began to pour out of the South and Midwest - young bands, the same generation as me, influenced by the same aforementioned that I loved. The early REM, The Replacements, X, The Gun Club, Husker Du, The Lyres, Jason and the Scorchers, Opal, The Pontiac Brothers, Sonic Youth. And dozens more. If I was an apostate of their influences, I was a true fanatic for these. This, after all, was mine. This wasn't history. These artists weren't legends (yet). This was happening now.
And then, one day. It ended. The bands splintered (mostly) or lost me (REM). I went down to the sacred store, but the man said the music didn't play anymore.
But I was still here. Barely into my mid-20's, and the carnival had left town. What would I do now?
For a brief moment I thought the second act was coming, when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" actually became a top-tenner. I knew about Nirvana already of course. They'd been playing them on the local (and great) college station (KFJC) for awhile now. And I'd liked the songs I'd heard well enough. And I liked "Teen Spirit" well enough.
But suddenly they were everywhere. And every fucking college kid was walking around in ancient, baggy jeans and doc martens, with a flannel shirt over a dirty tee and a backwards baseball cap on his head. And Nirvana was all over the place - and the more I heard the more I found myself disappointed. Yeah, they were okay. But aside from a handful of songs, I didn't find them great and I definitely found them inferior to the bands that paved their way.
And what followed ... Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots? Spare me. The pile of crap hair metal that had dominated rock radio was now replaced with a pile of crap art-metal that pretended to have some association with punk, but owed way more to bad 70s hard rock than anything out of CBGBs or London `77.
As I watched the horde of kids mourning Cobain, I felt very much like Pete Townshend, glaring out at a crowd of neo-mods c. 1979 and declaring "we don't have much in common with you lot." Cobain was their hero. What a damn shame they'd never known about D. Boon, John Doe and Exene, Paul Westerberg, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Bob Mould...
And at the same time I knew the truth. That, like it or not, Cobain was their first fuck. And he would always be their first fuck. Nothing could change that and it was unfair of me to resent them for not being as cool as I wanted to think I was.
I also knew the second truth, that the first one pointed to. It didn't matter worth a damn how I felt about it.
So I retreated into a world of rockabilly, country, blues and jazz. There was, after all, an immense body of music to explore there. Who needed today's rock and pop when I had Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, Howlin' Wolf, and Charles Mingus?
Oh there were a few bright spots. Wayne Kramer's solo albums. Alejandro Escovedo, Southern Culture on the Skids. The Muffs. The Detroit Cobras (sigh). Paul Westerberg's all-too-occasional releases. Bob Dylan and Patti Smith made comebacks. But for me, it still felt like the party was over. I saw fewer and fewer shows and bought fewer and fewer albums over the next many ears. I turned into a grognard. Next thing I heard guitar sales were down dramatically worldwide. The chairs are on the table baby. Out the door.
And so it went.
For nearly 27 years.
Fuck I can't believe I actually wrote that. But it's true. From around `93 till c. 2019 I paid very little attention to what was happening in music. Other than picking up new albums by old faves on the rare occasions they put them out. I got heavily into downloading and building my own "best-ofs" of those artists with lots of good tracks but few killer albums. But next to nothing new caught my ears. I even tried a few times, spinning the critics faves from their yearly Top Ten lists, checking out the hottest bands from SXSW. A few things were okay. Most left me cold.
But the Spring never came, nor the Summer ... So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees.*
And so it goes and so it went. And I settled down into comfortable middle age.
And then...
One morning the Giant was lying awake in bed when he heard some lovely music. It sounded so sweet to his ears that he thought it must be the King’s musicians passing by.**
I'm not sure what kicked it off exactly, but I know it was YouTube and it might have been a video of The Regrettes covering The Sweet's "Fox On the Run", or The Linda Lindas, or Yee Loi, or all of the above. But suddenly my Spotify lists were swelling with new music, or new to me at least (some of it goes back as far as 10 years, though much does not). Suddenly there were dozens of bands and artists I was excited about. People I'd like to see perform. People whose albums I wanted to hear. People I wanted to know about. With songs that reached out and grabbed me by the throat the same way so many other loved ones had. It still stood. My life has been saved by rock and roll, once again. And I am 17 again, in spirit if not in body. With new and exciting music in the air.
The interesting thing too, I found, is that most of these artists - real rock and roll artists, I might add, are being all but ignored by the rock crit world, such as it is today. The very same writers who guided me through the musical wilderness in my teens have little or nothing to say about almost any of the most interesting music I'm hearing today. They'd rather talk about Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. Rock and roll no longer seems to catch their attention.
As for the younger music writers ... few have anything to say that interests me, or even an interesting way of saying it. And they're not writing, or caring, about rock and roll either.
I've been thinking a lot recently. About all this exciting new music. About how I want to talk about it and share it. With friends. With people I don't know. I actually toyed with the idea of a zine for a while. But that just didn't seem to move me. Plus it seemed like too much work. Which left blogging. Which isn't quite as much work.
And thus, this, for now. A little place for me to vent, rant, ponder or verbally jerk off about mostly some new(er) music I think deserves attention. And the occasional old friend as well. And perhaps some fellow seeker will wander in and through it, find something they're looking for. And/or be entertained by my musings. Or amused at least. Because there are things happening in music again. Because there are things worth ranting, pondering, or jerking off about. And why? Because finally I'm excited about new music again. Because finally I have something to talk about besides how much better the old days were. Because finally I'm beginning to see the light.
Blogging is tricky and keeping one going regularly is trickier. But we'll see.
Until then...
* Oscar Wilde, "The Selfish Giant"
** ibid
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