BOC/OFF: Repercussion of a bad musical trip

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On lör 20 mar 1999 10.54 -0500 "Stephen Swann" <swann at PLUTONIA.COM> wrote:
> As Andy Gilham and I have hashed out a thousand times, w.r.t.
> _Live Chronicles_ for instance.  ;-)

     I avoid discussing LC with Andy :) and stick to serious
musical statements like "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" ...

>> I was discussing
>> something like this with a German friend the other day--we
>> both like _Steeleye Span_ f'r Chrissakes, which is instant
>> street cred death in Britain.  But for us there was never
>> an association with twee 70s folkies, it was just some
>> music.
>
> For me, this would be Jethro Tull.

     Ah, and I am a major Tull freak :)

     Actually, it has been my perception that liking Hawkwind
gains street cred in the US (since there, when people have
actually heard of them, they are perceived of as a hip, UK
underground thing, bonus points for weird SF), while they
lose street cred in the UK (being perceived of as old drug-adled
nutters who play one chord songs for half-an-hour at a go to
untrendy bikers).  Or such is the vibe I get.

> So, there I was at the turn of the decade in that absolute wasteland
> of crappy pop-rock and LA-style big hair metal that totally dominated
> "rock" radio.  Musically speaking, I had hated all of the mid and late
> 80s.  Aside from a couple of albums (Imaginos being an obvious
> example, but that was 2 years previous, and we'd found out since then
> that there wasn't going to be a reunion or followup) the whole music
> scene was just a waste of time to me.  I was actually starting to lose
> my interest in new music, because it had been so long since I'd heard
> anything that really shook me.

     Yeah, my sister was really into the 80s hair-bands then :)
I had only gotten into "late-20th-century rock/pop music" ;) in
the mid-80s (via old Beatles films and Monkees TV episodes) and
in no time had catapulted myself into all the late-60s psychedelia
in a big way.  Any time I saved up enough money from mowing lawns,
I could go down to the record store and buy another LP that
would blow me away and some blank cassettes to dub more Dead
shows onto :)

     Despite a perverted liking for Def Leppard, I had to hate
all modern popular music as cheap toss with too many slick
and cheezy synth-keyboards and not enough guitar jamming.

> Then I heard this incredible, fire-breathing, kick-ass tune on CFNY
> Toronto.  I thought it sounded like what I'd imagined "grunge" to be,
> so I signed back onto GRUNGE-L and asked everybody what it was.  It
> was "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which was already old hat to them,
> because it had climbed the college charts and sat itself at the #1
> position so long ago that only their grandparents remembered a
> different album at #1.  ;-)

     Ah, and by the time I heard it, it was all over MTV,
the trend-hoppers were there, and I had to hate it.  Besides,
my formative teen-age years had been filled with bands in
my walkman continuously telling me everything would be groovy
if I chilled out and went with the flow, so, like, don't
worry about it, man.  So I just couldn't get into the
abstract misery trip!

>> faced with loads of rich suburban kids from LI's north shore
>> saying "Dude,
>> I my life is so crap and I so identify with this music".
>
> Those are the people who eventually destroyed GRUNGE-L, by turning it
> into the Eddie Vedder teen-angst fan club.  That was never, EVER,
> what Grunge was about.

     Yeah, I hated all those people who hung out in the car park
at Dead shows and made a mess.  I'd gotten into the band a couple
of years before their big success and so instantly got pissed off
with everyone "destroying the scene" (which I had never actually
experienced, but was arsed off that I hadn't and now couldn't--
classic old bastard response before my time).

>>         That and a "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video with
>> loads of cheesy moshing high-schoolers may have biased my
>
> Did you notice how burned out and disinterested the "moshers" and the
> cheerleaders are?  And how dingy and depressing the whole thing is,
> despite the effort to everyone all rah-rah?  There's some serious
> social satire going on in that video.  It was the perfect answer
> to the 80's.

     True, but seeing it when the world was suddenly filled
with teeny-boppers lining up to imitate it rather inverted
the message.  It was a damned teen anthem by the time I heard
it, for all the wrong reasons.

> And it hit me like a breath of fresh air when I was suffocating...
> I guess it's just all in the context.  :)

     Very true.

     Now to get back to this list, Hawkwind appeared at just
the right moment for me, about 92.  The Dead were starting to
suck hard again, Phish were clearly about to become so big
that it would almost as difficult to get tix for them ...
     I had gotten into BOC, who provided me with a much needed
dose of music both intelligent and powerful, and with some
very serious guitar sounds.
     And then there was Hawkwind, who jammed on like freaks,
and had all the heaviness and aggression that the old psych
bands I knew had never had.  And joining BOC-L cracked open
a whole new world of sound, what with finding out about all
sorts of other things I'd never heard of and opening my mind
to things I'd never thought I'd like (like Motorhead).  My
record shelf (and bank account) have never looked the same
since.  I taught myself to plink along to the Dead on an
old acoustic, but after Hawkwind I had to go electric :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/