This column was written for the print edition of the Georgetown Voice. It can be found on the Voice’s website here.
Every Friday night, my Village B apartment begins to shake around 9:30 p.m., and it continues to pulsate deep into the night, usually quitting around three or so in the morning as I’m hopping into bed after some reading or writing for this esteemed paper. I have come to understand that this is a normal part of college life because most students just cannot seem to survive without pumping dub step or hip hop while they force the stresses of the previous week away. Footsteps pounding up the steps with random screams of incoherent chatter overlay the pumping of what they would probably call music that penetrates the thin walls around me.
The next morning I may make a brave walk to a nearby coffee shop to start Saturday morning off slowly. Too many times I am flooded with frustration as I hear some pompous kid in a beanie and non-prescription glasses start expounding on exquisite acoustic guitar sounds and softly sweet vocals that ease over the low bumbling of the drum beat on this new indie album he found. I usually have to quicken my pace, take deep breaths, and try to push away his claims that this revolution in indie rock will change how you feel about life. Oh, and also how you feel about your inner self too, bro.
Don’t even dare say that today’s experimental indie recording artists are low quality and unimaginative, because if you do, then you obviously are not intellectual enough to comprehend the avant-garde magnificence of these lyrical trailblazers. Is there anyone else who wonders what in the world a person would do at one of their concerts? Drink warm milk and discuss serif fonts, possibly.
The world wasn’t like this before. There was once a time when guys with feathered hair flowing past their shoulders in ripped jeans and leather vests would jump up on a stage and rip on a guitar while pushing their vocal chords to their absolute limits for the sake of turning an audience into a rock n’ roll-induced riot. Day by day we move farther and farther away from the age of hard rock and hair metal.
When I look through my parents’ old pictures of the rebellious life of the 1980’s I have no choice but to laugh. It’s an immediate reaction when I see the poofy hair and flamboyantly fluorescent-colored shorts that dominated the era, but there is still a part of me that pangs with the feeling of opportunities never received. It has occurred to me that the days of true musical entertainment has surely passed us by.
I have very little hope in any kind of musical revolution that will turn the current course of modern music around and away from the heavily synthetic and digitally-altered sound that is utterly inescapable no matter where you run off to. The hard rock and hair metal bands of the eighties endure a mountain of flak for their objectification of women and profuse abuse of narcotics but what is so misunderstood is that they provided the most purely entertaining musical scene the music world has experienced.
It is especially clear that the climax of musical entertainment is behind us whenever we are reminded of just how old these once-mighty rock stars are. Earlier this week, the eighties heavy metal legends Mötley Crüe announced that they will be making one more run at a global tour before calling it quits after over thirty years of screaming guitar solos, black leather, and infamous flow. Vince Neil’s soaring high notes and Mick Mars’ heavy licks defined a generation of rebelling against the institutional man that can only be passed on through tales of concerts from back in the day.
All we have to show for rebellious expression today in the musical arts are a bunch of bands who think that rebellion means the obscurely warped guitar sets and squeaky vocals of Vampire Weekend or Kanye West “rapping” about his sexual escapades. Mötley Crüe brought an angst to the music scene that, at this point, I can only wish had continued just a little bit longer so that I may have had a chance to experience it.
The passing of this titan makes the days I can only picture in my imagination drift even farther into the abyss of musical history. There’s only so much that a pair of good headphones and maxed out volume can recreate. Maybe one of these days, my apartment will start shaking at 9:30 p.m. with the hammering of an electric guitar solo. Maybe one of these days, music will take one last shot at returning to its former greatness. Maybe I should keep growing my hair out just in case these hopes turn to reality—but really, who am I kidding.
Photo: Leila Lebreton / Georgetown Voice
