[403] Corner of Scene and Done

I think I'm constantly yearning for something that feels “authentic.”

There's this terrible sort of missing out but at the same time excited feeling I get when I watch documentaries by and about bands. The most famous names today either were influenced by or apart of the literal foundation of all music. The worlds they grew up in I envy, for all the technology and “options” of today.

If you were a punk back in the day, it was you and 30 people you saw all the time. You didn't know about scenes in other places. Your struggle was real, your cause was local. If you were in a band, you might have been in 1 of 15 who started on their own label before there were labels. You got all of your friends together and cut and folded the album holders. You defined looks, language, and dug from the depths of your outcast soul an identity that would grow to be inseparable from the story of humanity and its musical evolution.

Go even farther back and think of the blues or jazz. You rallied around a style for identity. You got so damn good that you couldn't be denied in a climate when everything was trying to fight you. You could be the first, the best, or rely on your signature style or look.

And it feels like right around the time I was born we were already well past the point of no return. We didn't need to go outside because the new and fancy internet was here. What music did me and my friends rally around? Smash Mouth. Let's all get together and form a ska band and rage to Smash Mouth covers!...No thank you.

I think I just want that simplicity of motivation. I want more restrictions. I don't need to hear every rock and punk song. I don't want to print my own fliers from a "music" template. I don't want some guy a Youtube giving me the tools to mimic exactly how Eddie Van Halen laments that he played Eruption. I just need to see a show that blows my mind, get a shitty guitar, and hang out with my friends until we discover how to suck a little less each day. It speaks to my revulsion towards “indi” in general. Indi to me means you got confident in your boredom and ability to play with Protools.

Where does my generation get to be authentic? Where do we get to carve out our identities? The music back then was a rally, not arbitrary “protest song.” I can feel the passion they had just in their descriptions. I can't even remember the last time I met someone with a fire in their belly about anything that mattered. I know 2 people who are crazy enough about their music or journalism. I know a few who are basically satisfied their job lined up with what they studied in college. The vast majority is people getting by with some thing or another that pays the bills.

We're the ones not starting families until late. We're the one who can't afford anything. We're the ones who've had so much information pumped into our heads that it feels like this impersonal mass that has to be summarily dealt with more than understood. Do you think the electronic music scene feels as “authentic” as the grassroots of previous eras? Or is it closer to having a mascot of an E-ridden sorostitute with “PLUR” tattooed to her ass? And can't it be argued half of that scene is just skimming off the hippies?

We're the “techies.” Woo hoo. Bound by our mutual ability to laugh at old people who don't realize we shouldn't be getting paid for “maintaining their company's online presence.” We're the failed Occupy movement. We're the “too unappreciative of what we have to vote” crowd. It's almost cooler for us to have never heard of our parent's music or movies than it is to appreciate why so much of what we have today sucks so much dick. That may be the people a few years younger than me as I feel I have more in common with older generations than I've ever had with people even a few years younger.

We're stuck in cultivating online personalities, not digging in and fighting for who we are or what we like. We're like old rich white people, taking up a craft or a hobby and smiling too big and clinging glasses for all we've accomplished this week by finally uploading all our pictures to Instagram AND facebook. Even found the time to download our Shazam queue!

You don't get to be a guitar legend, an iconic comedian, or groundbreaking anything it feels like. When you flirt with those lines, your entire history can be used against you and the standard for proof will shift under your feet. Louie C.K. is big right? Why? Certainly he's hilarious, certainly his style is what we all do; dryly lament our circumstances while we beat the word “awkward” to death. Who's the best singer in the world? Stupid question right, because Beiber is the biggest brand, Gaga is underrated, and The XX speaks volumes to your utterly stoned mind. Don't you love how their name isn't a name! It's commodities and gossip.

It's why things feel so fetishized. You're independent breakout company who seeks positive values from it's members as it breaks down barriers and hopes to peel back the layers of corruption and waste is actually you paying too much for T-shirts and unnecessarily registering for an LLC after getting a little too much money for Christmas. Your fancy future sounding job title used to just be called “shit kicking secretary” or “runner” if not “boy.” But you have to be working on something right? You have to be achieving, contributing, and growing. If not, how are you going to make other people envy your updates? How else can you feel a marginal amount of pride in anything you've done?

This is why I want to disappear and wander. I think I hack away more and more of my identity or potential usefulness or “purpose” by disappearing behind blogs, books, and arguments I'll never get to have. I think it increasingly soul crushing that when I'm in a mood to be personable and talkative, someone would legitimately call me out as being on coke before they could believe that I might just engage with a crowd in a positive way from a positive mood. That girl really let me down the other night...

Or maybe I just picked such a lofty and complicated goal that I feel adrift. I envy the idea of simplicity, not the missing out on a chance to get spit on by Henry Rollins. Well, that could still happen, but probably won't be with him in a dress in a grimy D.C. basement. Still, I sense a kind of purity about the pre-digital era, and not in some overly romantic sense that's ignorant of the history that happened around burgeoning scenes. I imagine being genuinely afraid of being drafted would put a damper on a Beatles concert, for example. And who the hell could we produce that comes up with such great names!? They're the beat! It's right there in the name! Or The Rolling Stones. Literally, calling themselves rock and roll. Who wouldn't want to kick DJ Numark in the balls this instant?