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"I think the age of bands is over."
A dire statement, but not one to be overly concerned about -- unless it comes from the mouth of an owner of a venue that hires many regional acts.
I did hear this sentence, or one very much like it -- from the mouth of an owner of a venue that has hired many regional acts.
Including us.
In fact, as I write this, I will be playing at that venue in two nights, as one-half of the acoustic group Keg Salad.
We will be one of those things whose age is over. A band. |
Even though I and others have been to many shows where the turnout is nil or low, and even though I have been in bands that sometimes attract only the devoted few, I cannot quite sit still, thinking about this statement.
It does not sit quite right.
Partly this is because I know how good the band experience is, from both sides of the lights.
Partly, too, this is because the notion of the band is old, in our society. It is much older than the notion of this peculiarly postmodern thing, the rock-and-roll band. It is simply one of the structures around which and upon which we build our society.
The band of musicians:
A social building-stone.
One of many such building-stones.
On the other hand, something about this notion that the age of bands is over does sit right with me.
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I would sit calmly on my porch, twiddling my thumbs, if the Age of the Youth Band were to tremble and collapse in a moment of timely calamity, for instance.
The boy bands, the girl bands: few have been built upon firm musical foundations, in the first place.
I would not be utterly devoid of feeling, of course, if this twittering edifice were to totter and fall.
Rest in peace, you peachfuzz dearhearts.
I would say that, out loud, while holding revels within my heart of hearts.
A few months ago I greeted the news that the music industry -- a phrase that should probably employ a few quotation marks, as in "the 'music' industry," or else rephrased as "the so-called music industry" -- would not be embracing the boy-band notion any longer, or at least not with the same affection as before.
I did not take this news as the harbinger of the appearance of musical sensibility in a sector of manufacturing better known for its bandwagon sensibility.
I took it the way I take the sounds sometimes emanating from the dog-pen at the next-door house. The sound I hear is the sound of plastic scraping over cement.
The dog has become preoccupied with its empty food dish, and is shoving it into another corner of its pen to see if there it will be magically refilled.
The music industry -- that poor thing -- is hungry.
If you do not care for the hungry-dog comparison, then take the following understanding of the situation, to see if you can swallow it more easily:
The boy-band notion, formerly a sweet one to the industry, has become not so sweet. Or perhaps it is that the boy-bands, or even the boys within the boy-bands themselves, are no longer so sweet. In any case, the industry has gathered up its publicists to announce a change of heart to the world. The industry has experienced a deep-seated musical awakening, and now realizes that not all music is subservient to hormones.
Yes, indeed.
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Personally, I have nothing at all against mawkish, sometimes simpering, often saccharine music, any more than I do against the mind-defying, pounding idiocy of sterile and heartless techno-rave ho-hum. After all, these sorts of music serve the social function of hypnotizing the susceptible and turning them into useful drones of that pliable sort always being sought out by credit-card companies and C.E.O.s. Where would we be without them?
The problem indicated by the statement, "I think the age of the band is over," is that we are sitting about halfway through the Postmodern Century. As a population, we have been subject to postmodern influences nearly all of our lives.
What this means is this:
We have grown up to become adults in a society in which the influence of corporations is equal to or greater than the influences of family and community.
If you have a question about the idea of the Postmodern Century, by the way, please accept the term in its easiest sense: it is the century after the Modern Century, which spanned roughly from 1850 to 1950. Whatever name cultural historians finally give the Postmodern Century, they will probably say it started around 1950.
"Postmodern," in other words, simply means "after modern."
In other words, in saying the age of bands is over, the man was making an observation that might be taken this way:
People have lost some of their individuality. They have ceased pursuing experiences that would help them become individual, and help them maintain their individuality. They have become used to machine product, exemplified by the mechanical rave, and to the corporate name-brand product, exemplified by studio-sweetened belly-button pop. These people, or perhaps I should say these so-called people, will turn out in droves for aural-cilia-flattening evenings of amplified digital product. They will pay money for this. Or they will turn out in droves for sweetly harmonized utterances born of heartaches at the prepubescent level of emotional complexity. They will pay money not only for this but also for associational licensed products.
Given the option between paying money to be spoon-fed or to have the opportunity to feed themselves, they think the choice is obvious.
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In talking about how people have come to think things are only real, or only important, if seen on TV, heard on radio, or made into a movie, I would be saying nothing new. You have heard it. I have heard it. This is our century. This is our life. We can do nothing about it.
And I can do nothing about the fact that two nights from now, while we are playing our original, not-corporate-sponsored music, people will be drinking locally-brewed beer out of glasses advertising corporate giants Miller and Budweiser.
Nothing, that is, except to note it.
And to note that unlike the complex commercial messages being delivered by most entertainment systems operating in our society, the messages being delivered by good, live bands are complex only musically and emotionally, and occasionally intellectually.
In fact, I could boil a live performance's primary non-musical message down to these two sentences:
"Hey, folks, we're having a good time up here."
And, "Hope you are, too."
If people are not coming out to hear live acts, maybe this is a message they do not care to hear.
The best things in life are not sponsored, are not on TV, are not on radio, and are not in movies.
When you look at your own life, you should be able to hear these words, or read them, and agree with me.
If you cannot agree, then may I suggest that it is not your life that you are looking at.
It must be someone else's.
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Cheers,
Mark Rich
7 October '02
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You may still read the May essay here, and the July essay here.
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