Hey you kids, get off my lawn!!!
A segment about how life is going by and we're not cool anymore.
So every day I listen to this radio station while I work called "Radio K"; it's the college station over at the U of M and has three signals, two FM and one AM, and if I drive in my car and cross highway 62 or 169, I lose the FM signals, no joke; actually, one of the FM signals stops broadcasting when the sun goes down due to some obscure FCC regulation, again, no joke.
It is actually a great station because they play a lot of music that the 'kids' are listening to; for the most part the DJ's are like Jack Black in "High Fidelity" - but I like that kind of snobbery at 35. I highly recommend streaming it online; your usual list of today's best angst and artistry with bonus points for degrees of how obscure and/or retro a tune is (found this song today and love it.) However this morning was Themed-Thursday and it had something to do with "90's Irony" - they were playing tounge-and-cheek about how bands in the '90's were "mean and angry" - they introduced Cherub Rock as one of the Smashing Pumpkins "angrier songs from the early '90's." They finished with Urge Overkill doing their cover of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon." The former song released - 1993; the latter became popular with Pulp Fiction in, wait for it, 1994.
We're old and apparently the songs of our youth were angry.
5 Comments:
I pulled tubes with Urge Overkill.
Tell me this isn't getting old, I listen mostly to books on tape. However, I specifically tune into Georgia State's radio station Friday from 4-6 to a radio show called I Don't Care which primarily plays hardcore and punk form the late 70s early 80s. The two hours is filled with Minor Threat, Husker Du, Circle Jerks, Angry Samoans, Black Flag, The Stooges... I love it.
Kids these days have it so easy, they hear one song they like and can go buy the single for 99 cents from their own home. They can search the web and find out who and what the band is all about and what other bands are like them. In our day, it was hard to find the bands in the first place. Second to get that one song you had to buy a whole album for about $10. If you were lucky you got something incredible that turned you on. If you were unlucky you found a group that had one good song and an album of crap.
February 26, 2010 at 8:53 AM
Great thread, dudes. I think we need a separate blog, fromprincetothejayhawks@blogspot.com to document our music discussions.
I think what we listened to in the early to mid '90s WAS angry, and extremely angsty, and full of ambivalence about fully engaging in a world dominated by our parents' generation. I mean, c'mon, look at who was leading the way: Nirvana, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, Dino Jr., Soundgarden. That stuff defines our late teens through mid 20's. Hell, even Counting Crows was pretty depressing and extremely cynical.
Compare that stuff to what preceded it and what's followed it. Had Dave Pirner come around just ten years earlier than he did, he'd have been leading a faux-rock glitz band like Poison. Had he come around 10 years later, he'd be Kid Rock. Instead, he was scuzzy and grungy and pissy about the shitty world we inherited.
The Millenials can't relate to that depression of being the first generation in American history to come out of college with no jobs (they're getting a bit of a taste of that now, of course), to have an adult lifetime of lowered standard of living and listening to the Boomers prattle on about how great they are in front of them. We're cynical, they're idealistic; we're ironic, they're earnest. So they mock. But pretty gently, in the grand scheme of things. Cycle of generations, c'est la vie, as far as I'm concerned.
rts, totally agree it's easier these days, what with iTunes and youtube and people listing what they're listening to on Facebook. On the other hand, I still tend to favor albums as the better art form, and feel badly for the youngins that by and large they don't get that experience of popping in a new CD and listening to it for an hour a day for a week. You're right about wasting 11.99 on a stinker with one good song, though. That zucked.
The other downside for the kids these days is the fragmentation. Is the media landscape even capable of launching something like Thriller or Nevermind anymore? Those shared experiences of our youth when literally EVERYONE was listening to the same thing - kids these days don't have that. They have a weekly rotating singles list and the occasional Lady Gaga emergence from an otherwise totally broken industry. I love the choices today, and I love that it's allowed the indie explosion of the last 7 or 8 years, but it has a downside, too.
Anyway, I try to keep up through podcasts (All Songs Considered, indiefeed), and when I'm at the office late I always listen to The Current online. Jan, I assume that's what you listen to on the other side of 169? I find it harder and harder, though, with kids and work and everything else. I'm definitely a couple steps behind the truly hip these days.
What other new stuff are y'all listening to lately, anyway? I just picked up (10 months later) Neko Case's latest. Great stuff. I'm still engrossed by Grizzly Bear's Vekatimest, even though it came out last summer. Easily the best album of '09, as far as I'm concerned. Lately I've been listening to a bit of Afropop and similar, too - Amadou & Mariam, Ali Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate.
Also, great tune I heard the other night in the car on, you know it, college radio: Dave Ramsey, If You Won't Try. Some dude from Cleveland I'd never heard of. Can't find a clip, though, sorry. Sounds like The Shins meets Gauck.
February 26, 2010 at 11:04 AM
MCA, I will have to check some of that stuff out. I don't have the slightest clue who you are talking about.
I am so far removed from what is going on that I have nothing to add music wise. I will say that for the Iowa Wrestling fan, A Season on the Mat is a good listen. I am now going to go cry because of my patheticness.
February 26, 2010 at 11:51 AM
I'm with you RTS- I had not heard of any of those groups.. I'm really indie-music challenged these days, though I must admit I wouldn't mind hearing some of that Dave Ramsey fellow you mentioned MCA, Shins + Gauck, what's not to like?
February 26, 2010 at 12:47 PM
LH and rts, you need to check out NPR's All Songs Considered and subscribe to their podcast. Keeps you up to date without being too out there (it is NPR, after all). Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney guitarist, is a regular contributor. If you don't have time to listen every week, they do occasional "best of" shows and stuff, too.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=37
I swear to god it's totally coincidence that this week's show, which I haven't listened to, focuses on Fela Kute and some of the African musicians I mentioned above. Funny enough, the second story on the website right now is a link to The Current, which I also mentioned above, to a live performance given there by...Prince, who I casually mentioned in a fake new blog name above. Bizarro. There's also a link at the bottom of the page to a show from a couple weeks ago featuring a cover of a Pink Floyd song. So they're on our wavelength.
Also, check out Paste magazine - it's like a music, movies, entertainment magazine for people with IQs above 75. http://www.pastemagazine.com/
Some of these artists aren't that obscure, as I'm sure jan can verify: Neko Case and Grizzly Bear in particular are all over the place these days. http://www.avclub.com/articles/neko-case-middle-cyclone,24463/
http://www.avclub.com/articles/grizzly-bear-veckatimest,28377/
February 26, 2010 at 3:12 PM
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