Saturday, August 30, 2014

rock, pop, and the mid-decade (written early 2010)

Since the 1960s, the U.S./U.K rock and pop musical "middle eight" of a decade has been a fascinating period of transition. The mid-1980s experienced the doldrums of big business extinguishing the spark of post-punk experimentation; as a result, weak links like "Shattered Dreams" by Johnny Hates Jazz and "Lady in Red" by Chris de Burgh had their 15 minutes of fame before 1987's The Joshua Tree by U2 gave us a reason to believe once again. This period also birthed hair metal, where good times bested good rock. In contrast, the mid-1970s, while littering the airwaves with cheesy AOR hits like never before, saw the explosion of the DIY movement, each experiment with wresting rock from its now-turgid major labels more delicious than the next. It also reflected, and helped to inculcate, a broadening of gender definition: men not only dressed in drag on stage, but the reigning teen sweetheart was Kristi MacNichol, a tomboy almost indistinguishable from Scott Baio. Although the early 1980s trumpeted the transcendence of style over substance, the freedom flaunted in acts like the revamped Human League and Scritti Politti could not have occurred without the previous battles for greater plurality in sound and vision: it made us believe we could imagine anything into reality. By the mid-1990s, neo-liberalism arising from a disturbingly facile U.S. Democratic acquiesence in the face of Republi-con intransigence could be heard in the waning of early 1990s inclusivity, forewarned by the suicide of Kurt Cobain. Tori Amos gave way to Sheryl Crow, and the Happy Mondays gave way to Oasis, as the ennui of twiddling one's thumbs flooded the airwaves. The age of broadcasting mega-conglomerates began, in fact, in 1996, transforming said airwaves into a wasteland of vacuous repetition. By the late 1990s, however, the driving pulse and blissed-out entrancement of underground dance culture had finally infiltrated the mass media, as a mind-boggling array of EDM subgenres asserted their collective force: drum n' bass, hip house, tech-step, downtempo. Beats, samples, and achingly "beyond" synth work provided a way to ride and ride out Y2K anxieties, until the trauma of 9/11 proved insurmountable. Two shining moments of heart and soul pierced the mid-2K fog: "We Belong Together" by Mariah Carey and "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley. However, we ultimately have Lady Gaga to thank for jumpstarting a sense of daring at the close of our last decade. Stay tuned (or wired) for the 2010s...

The start of something on August 30, 2014...

When making a killing is killing you,
and the sun doesn't shine like you want it to.
Colors so vivid, so everything's gray.
The worst thing to do is a brand new day.

When death's an obsession, and caring's a waste,
the time is nigh to refocus your fate
in service to Others with no hope for return.
Only then can you actually learn.

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