Read Uncut and learn there’s more to new music than temporary gratification…Yes yes, this is another one of my narcissistic articles on the crippling state of our beloved music scene. A self-righteous collection of immaterial words, intended to both boost my dismal ego and hopefully shed some light on the monotonous and uninspiring problems that we come face to face with on a near-second basis while trying to make some sense of our deluded art form.
I’m probably becoming a bit repetitive with this shit. Every week I start writing some ‘think piece’ on the nostalgic romanticism of music blah blah and it usually ends without ending. I get bored of what I’m writing and in all honesty it often transcends into a half-finished analysis of my own misleading analogies, plagued by a sense of disjointed and futile remarks that actually shed light on the ignorance and closed mindedness of this writers warped sense of what is significant. But it’s all a journey. I want to find out why, I want to discover where we’re going wrong and why we’ve formed this confrontational stance towards music and the scene’s we inhabit with it’s competitive fashionista’s and ill-mannered scensters. It’s meant to be about community, right? Well that’s what I thought…
While at work this week, myself and an employee were taking about the capricious scenes we now can’t escape and she told me that she thought no prolific music had been created since the nineties, and I agree with her to some extent. Almost everything created now, in our art form, reflects our instant gratification society in the way that it provides relief for a snap-shot period of time. It’s a short term solution to distract us from the fact that music is now created as a form of temporary fulfilment, and you know what, I think that some take satisfaction from this because we’ve got fucking lazy.
There are now more bands and generic labels in the world than there have ever been, and it’s not that we’re being over-indulged, no no, over integument would mean that we’re feasting on these entities like buttered up crumpets, it’s more to do with the fact that there are too many bands and we don’t know where to turn. Every other week some superfluous band will be praised or hailed as something revolutionary, when, if we’re honest to ourselves and everyone around us, this just isn’t the case.
I don’t hate new music, far from it. I believe the likes of Alberta Cross, Animal Collective and The Feliece Brothers, for example, are producing some brilliant records that will stand the test of time, but not as legendary pioneers at the helm of ground-breaking virtuosity, and that’s fine. The thing that gets me is the prior praise. The XX for example. I don’t agree, to the extent of the critics, that this album is as ground-breaking as they say, and its shelf life reflects that of a carton of milk, and believe me, it’ll fucking stink in a few months time. Temporary gratification! It’s a stepping stone over the abyss of boredom and we want to believe that something can come and blow us away so we can often mistake minimal innovation for prime time development.
Perhaps this is the way things are these days. This aint no Laurel Canyon bohemian dream of marijuana smoke and lustful rock ‘n’ roll relationships, so maybe I’m the one who’s out of touch.
But, before I get myself in even more trouble, I want to note the fact that I do still get excited about new music. There are some talented little people out there and it’s these people who make it worth it. Because, if I’m honest with myself, a piece of music that excites me, despite being able to stand the test of time or not, is doing exactly what it’s been created to do: enter our hearts and our minds to swell some form of emotion, be that happiness, excitement, fear or sadness, it’s all the same when we deconstruct its emotive content and purpose.
My sudden interest in these time-testing records might just come from recently becoming infatuated with IPC’s wonderful music publication, Uncut. The stories that grace the pages of this magazine are riddled with idealism and ramshackle tales of the genius of rock and roll, groupies, class A narcotics and all. Allan Jones and co. are at the forefront optimism, with experienced writers who stray from bogus claims of heroic new-comers and short-lived declarations of scene-obsessed fickle musos.
Uncut’s beauty partly comes from the way they can make a story involving Gram Pasron’s endless drug binges seem so relevant and recent. They take these individuals who have left their mark, and while they paint images of utter musical brilliance that seem more like film scripts and guitar-infected dreams, they also open our eyes to our dwindling and diminishing ideologies, clearly demonstrating in a pretentious-absent manor that there’s a fuck load more out there than we thought and we all have very little idea of what we’re talking about: But you can’t know everything, can you? And it’s not like these intrinsic critics are trying to one up us, they’re simply attempting to educate while notifying that awareness is just as important as acceptance and a willing to explore the past as well as believe in the present.
As I was writing this I came across a new blog on NME.com by one of my favourite writers, Luke Lewis. Luke’s article concerned itself with the availability and readiness of today’s society and how this has ultimately transcended to the music industry and the struggling band who has near-endless publication methods at their fingertips. Things have changed, right? Well that’s what Luke thinks, to a certain extent, and I think he’s spot on.
We are now in a position where we know what has to be done in order to get air play, for example, and people have become more aware of how to utilise these limbs that reach into the industry we adore and ache to belong to.
So while this article has little direction I think it relates to what I stated above regarding awareness. I’ve become a lot more aware that not only is there a lot of new music, good and bad, there are glimmers of hope. I’ve become aware the naivety I previously embodied is just part of this critics learning curve, and that’s a curve that is currently ever developing. I’ve become aware that the past is a treasure filled cave of heroes and villains, many of whom I’m yet to meet but will hopefully greet on my long journey to the middle of discovery of meaning and happiness, of feeling elated and fearful, it’s all one big learning curve.
So while I leave you with little to ponder oither than my own sense of self-gratification, I hope I leave you with an open mind to the future and the past. I also hope, however, that I leave you in a position in which you will deliberate your own knowledge and what you think you know about this illicit love affair with a pressed 60s L.P or a sale rail bargain CD.
Read Uncut, it’ll broaden your horizons, install more faith within your heart and hopefully turn you onto something life changing. And best of all, there’s no dub-step in sight, this is rock ‘n’ roll after all.
