"My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana"

"I really, really dislike Ultragrrl [edited title - mod]"

is this the most moronic statement EVER:

"I find it incredibly hard to imagine that the average 35 year old rock journo can relate to MCR. But you know, it's not for them to understand or relate to. It's for them to accept, and until they do, they will be absolutely irrelevant to anyone who matters."

LMAO

MCR = streaming pile of cliched crap

by the way I am 35 !

When I was teenager I was listening to Big Black, The Pixies, Husker Du and Masters of Puppets

MCR are GRATE.

I have spotted some smart youngsters on rateyourmusic.com but they are few and far between.

When I was teenager I was listening to Big Black, The Pixies, Husker Du and Masters of Puppets

don't see why this is superior to listening to MCR, really.

This strikes home because I am a 37 year old person who works in an indie record store on a college campus and writes for two outlets that cater primarily to college-aged human beings so I do feel that I have a clue about what kids that age dig. Mainly because I ask them and observe. This isn't rocket science; I can't believe I am the only one.

just because "the kids" on "the internet" quite like them, they don't necessarily have any artistic validity. mind you, i always thought nirvana were vastly and enormously over-rated too.

xp grimy OTM

xxp etc also OTM actually because this is obviously a popular movement, but y'know my parents knew who nirvana were! I doubt MCR have that sort of recognition.

Well, why are you offering your own musical youth as a beacon unto the sheep?

They're big on myspace, but they've shifted a lot of units too, so they're popular. I'm a poptimist, and I believe that they are popular with reason.

the whole illicit (t-shirt i tried to post upthread), emily strange . . . everyone has a black hoodie these days, don't they? remember that video for that p-m0ney & scr1be goth-hop track where they had the drummer from 8 ft s4tiva (popular metal band) & the guitarist from elem3nop (chart-topping punkpop band) playing!

OTM.

FWIW the little of it I've heard repulses me not cos its boring or played out or whatever but because it is so authentically, unfilteredly, painfully, selfishly adolescent.

"Teenage Dirtbag" is funny! I guess some of this stuff is funny too. But musically it's structured more round a punchline so the funny-ness is to the fore.

I would like to see more writing about MCR and FOB and PATD and whoeverthefuck, and less writing about whateverthefuck.

I looked at the original post and comments - the Nirvana thing is a red herring and actually weakens what she's saying at the same time as the reactions to the N-reference kind of demonstrate it.

From a British perspective, Nirvana were only seen as important (onj a wider scale as opposed to a 10-out-of-10 from ET in Melody Maker scale) after they'd been on The Word.

. . . maybe I shld go & have a listen before saying anything else.

MCR are huge, just like many of their fans. Who doesn't know this?

The whole emo thing seems like millions of micro acts, and a few commercial pastiches picking up the signifiers on top (MCR).

But that's the thing. Were Tad really any more dominating to the landscape than Something Corporate are now?

OTM, but that was pre-Nevermind. Compare: Reading '92.

Another question is what does "this generation's Nirvana" mean? As someone who felt pretty in touch with the zeitgeist in 1991, left the US a few months before Nirvana broke, and returned a couple of years later and felt completely lost, I find the claim pretty hard to swallow. Beyond whatever quality judgment you may make about Nirvana, they were the poster boys for a huge change in radio and popular tastes.

Following that (Sean is actually younger than ultragrrl, if I read everything correctly) the fact that he (and I for that matter) has never heard a note of MCR suggests that their "historical" role isn't really comparable to Nirvana.

I think it's just using the sacred Nirvana cow -- I guess she doesn't like them -- that makes this controversial. If we picked a slightly different generation for comparison I think we "MCR is this generation's Bon Jovi" and it would be equally true and feel a lot less argumentative.

well, they're paid by either money earned from advertisers who want 16-year-old kids to buy their warez OR by 16-year-old kids buying their magazines. they probably have some commercial considerations in mind beyond "about music that they like and see value in".

xpost
Well, yes, obviously, but the market is larger than just 16-year-olds. Also, presumably, those commercial considerations would actually drive more media coverage (which is not necessarly the same thing as music journalism) of MCR if they were really as popular as Britney et al.

(And maybe I'm just proving that I'm 35 here, but the "commercial considerations" that drive Pitchfork and Stylus, Sean Gramophone and Matthew Fluxblog, Chuck and Xgau, Robert Hilburn and Ann Powers, etc. are very different.)

Bon Jovi were the Nirvana of hair metal.

What did occur to me was that, uh, there is this assumption that MCR "mean" s.th. to "this" generation, but when Nirvana were active & Cobain alive, I don't recall them "meaning" anything like that to the equivalent generation back then, though obviously layers of "meaning" have been applied to Nirvana & Cobain in the intervening years. Perhaps.

I've heard MCR on the radio a bit, but I didn't think they were particularly, well, particularly anything, really. Then again, I'm 40 and I like Hawkwind.

As always, it would be interesting to see some numbers comparing column inches, record sales, and airplay for MCR, Kanye, etc.

Bon Jovi were the Nirvana of hair metal.

Exactly my point, except that the rockists among us won't take umbrage at comparing Bon Jovi and MCR the way they do Nirvana.

Another question is what does "this generation's Nirvana" mean?

I have no idea what this means either! Does she mean they're a band that are changing the greater musical landscape or does she simply mean that they're important to angsty kids? Or both? I don't geddit.

i suppose the more subjective answer is that many music hacks still see pop and rock music as essentially 'youth' forms, not without reason, really, and that youth phenomena are important, a sign of the times. probably this is because more music obsessives are teenagers than 35-year-olds.

One thing about Nirvana I suppose is that yer old buggers were into them way before yer 16-year olds knew who they were. Is this her point? I don't know!

Also, at the time Tad were the media tip for the big act to come out of Sub Pop.

I don't really recall this, but I wasn't really paying that much attention. Was this on the evidence of God's Balls vs. Bleach? 'Behemoth' was good, but not that good, IIRC. Anyhow Mudhoney would've been the obvious choice to me, but it's nice thinking about a planet where Tad released Nevermind. If only Dave Geffen had listened to that demo of 'Smells Like Beef Dripping'...

If u/grl'z "it's yoof, you oldies don't understand" blather is true w/r/2 MCR's audience, then I don't see the comparison, & I bet she's just tossing it out b/c she knows it'll annoy some Cobain=godhead type ppl.

(blethering about the innate musical & rocking superiority of Mudhoney to any of this shit ruthlessly excised)

I saw them on the same tour, and yeah, that was what the crowd were like. Later on, it was more of your grebo-lite Neds types. But certainly not kids.

Yay! Oh wait...

MCR might not fare as well in the retrospective critical opinion, but does that matter to their core fanbase? I mean, look at the NME readers in the UK -- they think that there's some canon with Arctic Monkeys and this Pete Doherty stuff near the top! That sounds like kids thinking they're living in some crucial moment to me.

Pash, OTM It wasn't until the deification of Cobains death in the late 90's that the angsty kid's became their core audience.

these seem to be the four things that made nirvana the nirvana of their generation: loved by the kids, loved by the non-kids, enjoyed by the critics, suicide.

x-post the children of rich white people?

I accept My Chemical Romance. I think they are totally relevant for 2006, but certainly won't be remembered that way in, say, 2010. They write OK rock songs that are pretty fun now, but won't be much more than nostalgia in the longrun. MCR is this generation's Bush.

(xpost x 3)

Or maybe not.

ok grandad.

xpost

the children of white people?

My whole investigation was largely based on working with a 19-year-old metalhead whose description of the rock world was largely foreign to me, even when he talked about "indie" and pop-rock kids; he knew a lot about music, but the set of things that mattered to him and the lineages he saw in them were completely non-canonical. Unfortunately after a few months of listening the main thing I would up listening to a lot was Nightmare of You, who just sound like Morrissey.

In the UK, MCR have thus far had four Top 40 singles, none of which has climbed higher than #19, and one Top 40 album which spent one week at #34. So in British terms, "we" need to grapple with them about as much as we need to grapple with Dave Matthews or Phish or Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.

too funny...

Soundgarden, Primus, Alice in Chains -- these are 90s rock acts that "everyone" listened to, but none of them hold much critical sway anymore. Even assuming that MCR wind up in that category, don't critics benefit from knowing what Soundgarden, Primus, and Alice in Chains were about?

Further complication: part of why bands like that don't "hold critical sway" is that we ignore the people for whom they were formative -- people, so far as I can tell, in nu-metal acts. Same probably goes for the Get Up Kids.

????
Nickelback (sadly) sound more like Nirvana than Poison or Ratt!

Yes, if only to avoid having to "grapple" with them. We were too busy here drooling over transient novelty American acts like Jeff Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan, Will Oldham, DJ Shadow, etc.

Yeah, you find out that Godsmack isn't as original as you thought.

I would agree that if you have pretensions toward "big picture" criticism, then you should at least be familiar with someone like MCR. But that doesn't mean you have to buy into Ultragrrrl's premise that you have to believe they are central to music.

which I suppose they historically haven't.

?!?

Chris OTM.

Without Nirvana, there'd be no MCR. Without MCR there'll be no...?

And isn't Pfork the "young critical establishment"? They seem to care about MCR in roughly the same measure that they care about CCR.

"plenty of stuff by people whose fans are *younger*"

and

"half as fun or catchy as Poison or Ratt"

Also, somebody should force Ultragrrrl to read this:

Rolling Teenpop 2006 Thread

North America has scores of Mallcore/emo bands that are covered by
Alternative Press
http://www.altpress.com/

In the UK they aren't many of these type of bands, e.g the awful "Funeral for a Friend" have had a slice of commercial success.

Maybe becuse Teenpop ROCKS more than Teenrock does? (Just a thought.)

I'm sure in a decade or two when these kids are pushing a stroller through B&N and they see some book that establishes the favorite bands of their teen years in the critical canon that they'll take a look.

Er, just for the record, for most 26-year-olds I know, and even 24- and 25-year-olds, Nirvana was HUGE HUGE HUGE. They are certainly the reason I started listening to non-pop music, and indeed, for most of the people that age I play music with, it can be sorta hard to get them out of the Nirvana mindset sometimes.

The line usually peddled re: Nirvana was that Nevermind got a lot of attention but then In Utero was seen as something of a sophomore slump and they were regarded as fading before the suicide. I was pretty much teaching myself to sing by listening to that album, so I can't vouch for that either way, but I think that's the established narrative.

If Nirvana was regarded as important, I think it was for bringing underground music to the mainstream--someone or other from the Pacific NW saying "they were actually a good band having success" or something like that. Maybe today the problem is that the underground is already transparent to the mainstream, that the barriers to entry have been lowered. I dunno. It's an interesting question.

is my chemical romance the one w/the alice in wonderland video?

Without Nirvana, there'd be no MCR. Without MCR there'll be no...?

That's kind of the question. What will it mean, years down the line, that a lot of people grew up on stuff like this? What'll it mean that a lot of people grew up putting themselves in musical opposition to this stuff, hating it and reacting against it and feeling likt it was everywhere? Maybe nothing, maybe something -- it'll be people who know something about the genre who'll be best at figuring it out.

(Chuck you're right about Mikael; keep him working.)

-- The Man Without Shadow

Nirvana meant a lot to me when i was 16, but it was more for the music they led me to - all the american 'underground stuff' that preceded them - than any particular identification with the lyrics or anything. tho kurt's unsubtle anti-macho stance was something i appreciated.

Also: Bright Eyes

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

You really think that's interesting?

xpost Anthony how could that not be interesting/meaningful? I feel like any critic who's not at least a little curious about what that means and how that works is ... well, weirdly uninquisitive! It's one thing if you think you know those subgenres and know what they mean and just aren't interested -- if you feel like you've dealt with them enough -- but otherwise hell yeah, it seems fascinating enough for me.

I was the only one who has Lovespirals on mine. That they're obscure and MCR are huge is the obvious point of difference, but I don't think Jess and I are running for a position in terms of who is the best amateur sociologist here.

It was a remarkably productive tension, though, which it isn't anymore.

Nabisco's right, but I find it pretty hard to write about that class of bands in any interesting way, which is not even the case with other rock bands, it's just the emo ones. I just end up grumping like an old man. It does seem remarkably derivative, but maybe it would be better to regard that as a conscious borrowing rather than just lazy defaultism.

note also that it's technically a 2004 album and got 7 votes in that year's P&J:
http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/pazznjop/04/ballots-votedfor.php?titleid=250905

also most of the people who say "i just listen to what i listen to" also end up inevitably complaining about they'll never get as excited about an album as they did when they were 14 or 18 or 22 or whatever. could it be because since they were about 22, they started slagging off every new band as "derivative"? enjoy life in that hermetically sealed bunker. hope you don't choke when the air runs out.

I think there needs to be a finer -- and much more flexible -- line drawn between 'critics' as such and individual interaction with music as a point of relative importance. It might have been clearer in an era divided between 'critics'/'everyone else,' but that artificial construct has long been on life support.

High school != college. Very different. But even if specific individuals change between high school and college (and they do), they don't forget the high school part.

I have in my life liked hardly anything at all that has anything whatsoever to do with any kind of hardcore lineage.(*) Flat-out. I don't feel in the least bad about this. At the same time, I'm well aware that it keeps me from understanding or having good things to say about a lot of music. If I were a career journalist, I certainly wouldn't want to get into that situation with more and more stuff.

(*) This is not entirely true.

xpost to ned

people having different experiences is what i'm after as a reader. the problem is that there are too many older crtiics having the exact same reaction to the music ver kids are listening to, and it's so predictable. admittedly some people do it well -- even though i am wildly suspicious of aging Dylan fans, Greil Marcus is still interesting and the last new band i can recall him liking was Sleater Kinney -- but most are just old bores, and it's easy to see how they got that way.

also the difference between critics and everyone else is that i'll forgive my buddy who i used to go to shows with for fixating on Springsteen and never moving on because he's my buddy, and although he's really boring to talk about music with, that's not why I hang out with him. i wouldn't read Xgau or Xblogger or dumbass ILX poster X if he wasn't saying interesting things, because reading an interesting perspective although what i'm hoping to gain by reading him. i'm not doing it because i want him to come over saturday so we can play mah jongg.

To me, this seems really a main point in the MCR-Nirvana correlation, and maybe also why I might not be able to completely nix Ultragrrl's point.

They're not are pretty "mall-emo," but nonetheless, a plausible gateway.

nabisco, I sincerely mean no offence by this, but this is often exactly how I've felt when reading or talking with people who come from what I'll crassly class as soft-indie/Britpop/goth/80s/new wave backgrounds, including yourself. This is one of the things that drew me to FT/ILM in the first place though.

Anyway, I was listening to Three Cheers the other day and it's glorious non-stop pop energy. I don't know or care if it's this generation's Nirvana.

("Helena" did OK in the P&J singles poll FWIW.)

I do know kids in high school that were fans of MCR's 2002 debut (which was underground to an extent), and four years later the same kids are hardly following any of the mainstream trends, i.e. listening to non-pop music.

This isn't to say that all critics have to understand everything -- that would be pointless -- but there's no reason to go out of your way to avoid engaging stuff.

I kinda have to come back to the professional point here again, which is what Nabisco brought up and which makes sense *for that kind of professional,* and even that professional finds themselves in more limited amounts these days in terms of 'traditional' media. If the majority of music writers out there are (like, dare I say, me) less interested in a full-time job/freelance life than in a participatory but less temporally-invested approach to writing about music, then the active need to 'engage' drops off. It ain't my life to keep up with everything, bluntly put.

I have a hard time believing that any rock act - emo/hc-inspired, whatever - could be this generation's Nirvana. It would be difficult to overcome the advantage hip-hop has in sales and listeners.

*hears MCR*
"Huh. Bleah."
*time passes*
THE PRICKINGS OF MUSICAL CONSCIENCE: "They're mondo huge!"
"Good, very good."
THE PRICKINGS OF MUSICAL CONSCIENCE: "Which means you must listen to them again to better get a sense of things."
"I'll get back to you on that.")

Well yeah, Ned, note my wording throughout: "career journalists" and terms like "would do well" or "it would behoove them." Nobody has to pay attention to anything. And nobody's going to get very far paying attention out of duty. But there's a level on which we make decisions about what we want to investigate, and how receptive we're going to allow ourselves to be to it, and in this case it seems like a bad strategy to go putting up walls.

I also said it's fine if people find it wanting -- just that it might turn out useful or interesting to them to know the stuff. I found it not-worth-attention for a while; then I made a conscious decision to start listening to some and figuring it out; and no, I didn't get all that far, really, and still find loads if wanting -- but I'm certainly glad I know that little bit more about it all. Maybe that's just me, and others find nothing there at all.

The xpost part -- that dialogue involves two very different things, though! The initial reaction was to the music, deciding to be uninterested. The latter pricking is more about trying to figure out how exactly the music is functioning, and what people are getting out of it and what it'll do -- which is, yeah, more ethnomusicological than just critiquing the music, but it can totally totally be of use.

(*) Now this is just an outright lie, because I did have that curiosity, and bought various hardcore albums and just never listened to them BUT STILL.

Yes, except WHY IS THERE ALWAYS ONE WITH A SHITTY PERM??

What I was getting at earlier is that "this generation" has to refer to today's teens -- I still don't really buy the whole "Nirvana : teens of 1990s / MCR : teens of today" argument though.

I just hope she realizes that before long, IT WILL HAPPEN TO HER.

So just to talk about the kind of music under discussion here more generally, here's the thing about these bands. They're the biggest group of white-people guitar bands in recent decades to combine three things -- actually let's say four things. All of these terms are used advisedly, because they're not quite accurate, but let's give it a shot:

- fashion
- earnestness / stylized torment
- hard rock (relatively)
- grand pop ambition

There are a lot of exceptions here -- exceptions to the idea that we haven't seen that combination in a while -- but most of the ones that spring to mind (for me, anyway) seem like some of the main influences on lots of today's bands: Smashing Pumpkins, NIN, etc.

Maybe people should listen to music instead of spending all their time placing it in some historical social context.

It's interesting how on ILM instead of having arguments about a band's authenticity we have arguments about the audience's authenticity.

http://news.softpedia.com/images/news2/Nine-Inch-Nails-banned-out-from-MTV-Movie-Awards-2.jpg

http://www.andiemarkoebyrne.com/2005/my%20chemical%20romance325.jpg

Kee-rist, man. Can we not do both?

Kee-rist, man. Can we not do both?

Absolutely not, there's a law against that.

We can do both, but I find the "next best thing" idea to be a bit infantile. Don't you? Isn't this topic basically older guys living vicariously through the rock heroes of today's kids? It's one thing to have idols when we're teenagers, but to look for idols when we're supposedly adults is a bit odd to me. Does it matter what rock band becomes the next Nirvana to the kids today?

From a sociological or cultural perspective, this might be interesting. But I can't imagine mustering more than bland, neutral pleasure from trying to experience it as kids today do.

Anyway, I'm calling MCR = this generation's CCR.

people have niches, that's fine, but niches age too. if MCR falls in your particular row to hoe and you ignore them in favour of similar bands from 10 years ago, that's your prerogative, but you will likely find that the audience for your writing will rise in average age, as well as steadily decrease in size.

And I actually agree with some of what Ultragrrl is saying.

no, the problem with all this is not not the writing of how to not be able to not enjoy some dumbass group that does not cut the mustard just like the rest of 'em, not.

And oh how my heart is bent.

Keep in mind that Ultragrrrl likes to think that she 'discovered' MCR (although they were widely known in NY/NJ long before she knew who they were, and on their way to a major-label contract), and it's pretty obvious to me that she sees herself as this generation's Malcolm McLaren or something. She probably thinks the Misshapes parties are the 00's version of Max's Kansas City or CBGB.

Completely true and OTM, but then someone says something like this --

some dumbass group that does not cut the mustard just like the rest of 'em, not

-- which doesn't fly for me. The issue isn't this group in particular; it's a lot of groups like this, and the fact that they're actual formative favorite-band material for lots of kids. It's a whole musical worldview and grounding that a sizeable number of people are going to have. Casting any one band as not-cutting-mustard is fair enough and often accurate, but insufficient to really understand the gaps between those different musical worldviews.

"MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
(Warner Bros.)

Now that after-school programs and arts funding are being excised from our public schools thanks to the Bush tax cut and the states' subsequent budget rejiggering, music has become the latchkey baby-sitter, educator, and supporter of our world-weary teens. Guess what, Mom and Pop, you'd best be keeping tabs on your children's favorite bands, since they'll likely have as big an effect on the kids' worldview as you will. And if your kids have any sort of taste, New Jersey newcomers My Chemical Romance's "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" rocks their Discmans regularly. The MTV-ready single—featuring a playful, Rushmore-lite video—puts some pump in the slump of many a tragi-lescent with its peppy, let's-group-hug-the-pain-away chorus and all-inclusive sentimentality. The rest of the quintet's major-label debut similarly sandblasts dimples on middle-class ennui thanks to Gerard Way's hyperactive, hiccupping vocals and guitarist Ray Toto's unabashed love for both the Fugazi and Guns N' Roses catalogs. Considering the smart, sensitive, and melodic pleas of "Helena," "Cemetery Drive," and "It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Death Wish," we could do worse than a generation hooked on emo. Sure, it sucks that there ain't much adult supervision or book learnin' going on, but why educate when the only goal of our education system is to raise more burger flippers, right? YANCEY STR1CKLER"

You really need excuses and pseudogrievances like these to justify the fact that one of the most affluent groups of people in history (middle-class Americans) are incredibly self-indulgent. What problems do emo and MCR fans have that need to be "hugged away"?

It's hard to symptathize with bands and audiences who whine and cry a lot unless you give them all sorts of big problems for which they are trying to cope with (real or not). They just look like brats without the grievances and so you can't make their crosses fast enough.

if MCR are her Sex Pistols, what will be her Bow Wow Wow? or duck rock, for that matter.

MCR looks like such a caricature of a "Hot Topic band" that I can't see them expanding their audience too much outside of that audience and the Arctic Monkeys seem a little too tied to British culture to have the kind of success Franz Ferdind had in America. We'll see though.

i could do a LOT better than a generation hooked on (m)emo.

OTM

A more important discussion is: why are the top three threads on ILM right now about a plagiarizing PFork 'journalist', whether SPIN is still relevant, and whether a band calling themselves 'My Chemical Romance' has any significant impact on music?
We've got bigger problems than this thread, people.

He's mentioned it before.

no way! Manson gives great interviews at least

I'll bet you any sum of money you like the bands that have success in MCR's wake, if any do, will be a hell of a lot more enjoyable than those that did in Nirvana's wake, too.

I put Nirvana in the '90s on footing with Elvis of the '50s, The Beatles of the '60s and the Sex Pistols in the '70s in that their influence was felt beyond record collections, beyond simply influencing other bands. Call it the "Life Magazine" factor. (Or the "People Magazine" factor, if you prefer.)

Call it a "before/after" effect: Nirvana is one of a handful of bands whom you can point to their emergence and draw a line that everything was different after their arrival.

Has My Chemical Romance helped spur the worlds of fashion, the media, other forms of artistic expression? I don't think it's debatable.

If Ultragrrl is equating how the lyrics of MCR are just as poignant to this generation as Cobain's was to his, that is a little less cut and dried and frankly, kind of silly to debate. I would at least concede this point because I don't begrudge any generation for grasping onto music. (My biggest fear is be a generation that doesn't.)

So yeah, if she means their lyrics are as inspiring to a new generation of kids, fine. I'll have to mention a dozen other groups that can probably claim at least as much of an impact in this regard, however, whereas Nirvana seemed head and shoulders among their peers at the time and even in retrospect, but otherwise, I could care less.

But equating MCR's impact on pop culture as a whole to Nirvana is kind of silly.

I read a SPIN article a few years back where they said that 2004 was going to be the year they tried to market mallpunk as the new grunge (meaning the genre that would get kids excited about "real" rock music again) with MCR as the new Nirvana (meaning the band launched the genre into the mainstream), and "I'm Not Okay" being the "Teen Spirit" of 2004 (meaning that both songs and videos explored similar themes and targeted the same demographics). However, Ultragrrrl or any other critic could have been said about Green Day's "Longview" in 1994, Korn's "Got The Life" in 1998, or The Strokes' "Last Night" in 2001.

It's gotten to the point where there are too many alt-rock subgenres played on modern rock stations for there to be another Nirvana. What made Nirvana special was that they sparked the concept of the modern rock format, and anyone who says that MCR wouldn't have blown up without Nirvana is 100% correct. There is no "modern day Nirvana" right now. If you want to believe that MRC is the closest thing to it, go right ahead, but their impact is nowhere near what Nirvana achieved.

Also I still hate every Nirvana thread ever. It's when ILM sounds the most ignorant to me.

Brian, I still don't buy this for a second. And never have. Haircuts changed, I guess.

This is about the 80th time I'll be saying this on ILM, but it's still incredible to me that people trot stuff like this out, stuff that suggests they have never before interacted with human beings. It turns out -- this will shock you, I know -- that middle-class American people die, too. Middle-class people get sick and hurt one another's feelings and fuck up and do hard stupid things. Middle class people are sometimes dumb and ugly and nobody likes them. They may have a whole lot less to complain about, on balance, than most of the other people on this earth, but I can't see that that's ever stopped anyone from feeling like shit all the same. The fact that a lot of this music stretches that little-to-complain about into something unreasonably grand -- the fact that it sells back to plenty of kids who don't have much to feel bad about but would really like to feel that they do -- is so so not an excuse for pretending that there are people of every sort who have genuine-ass Problems. Even worse, intellectually: wanting to cast an entire race or class or social group as one that has no problems is such a deep anti-human affront to the fact that, duh, things still happen to individuals.

The last time I got pissed off about that was when someone said something stupid about how Columbia students have "never known problems" about a week after a Columbia friend had a family member kill himself. Same thing just happened to another one this week. Shock, horror: doing okay in one single sense does not insulate people from the basic problems of being a human being!

anyways, go on calling them a Hot Topic band. kids who listen to MCR and shop at Hot Topic are clearly a bunch of worthless MTV-nursed conformists, right? not like you when you were fifteen with your brand new, freshly ripped grunge jeans and flannel you bought at K-Mart. (cue choruses of "i never" and "i was into Whitehouse and Anal Cunt!") i mean really, what is wrong with these incredibly stupid young people and their awful music?????

What made Nirvana special was that they sparked the concept of the modern rock format

Survey says... I find it difficult to believe that anyone who paid attention to music in the late 80s would say that.

(...and it goes without saying that there are totally genres I love and am extremely engaged with that I don't think every music critic, or even most music critics, should engage with!)

it's like saying old country is great and new country is dumb music for hicks -- you don't have to love new country as a whole, but if you like old country and you can't find anything at all to appreciate in new country, i find it hard to believe that you're not in some way falling back on prejudices that have little to do with music, and not being honest with yourself. this is bad generally, though somewhat forgivable when the guy on the street does it, but particularly for a critic, falling back on your prejudices when listening to music seems like a very bad idea.

Back to the original point: High schoolers rarely have a sense of music history, especially compared to music journos (even ones just starting out). That's the big difference when it comes to a lot of music. That's why Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sounds new and fresh enough to garner 'shins will change your life' hype. Journalism, especially soft journalism, is incredibly bound to history and chronology. That doesn't necessarily make it more or less conservative, but it does increase the tension between the competing interests of the novel and the temporal context.

As for "new Nirvanas," there's not going to be one, at least for a long time. The market is just too fractured for an album to feel like such a rallying point anymore. The diffusion of modernism into a million subgenres means that each clique will have its own new Nirvana, but there won't be one for the greater culture. On one level, that's a little sad, thinking that there won't be a level of unity. On the level I prefer to think about it, it's great because it means that there will be thousands upon thousands of bands that can exist on their own without having to worry about playing to everyone. And that's good. More for anyone who's interested in looking for more music.

OTM. Rock critics live in a myopic world where just because something existed it was important. If a groundbreaking album falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Nobody doubts that Nirvana was hardly innovative. They were essentially the Pixies meets The Wipers. The issue is that Greg Sage and Frank Black never had any meaningful kind of an impact on pop culture. Nirvana did. This should be pretty obvious to anyone who was there for it, who saw it happen. Unless you're a kid, you really have no excuse to not acknowledge this. You don't have to like it, but as much as I think GWB is a moron, he's still our President.

You can kick and scream that they were the most overrated band in the world but that doesn't change the fact that they did influence pop culture and that influence has had a ripple effect that continues today.

...Even worse, intellectually: wanting to cast an entire race or class or social group as one that has no problems is such a deep anti-human affront to the fact that, duh, things still happen to individuals.

What kind of person would think that nobody in a given social group is free of any problems? (answer: A strawman!)

People have serious problems (!) I am aware of this.

As you said, middle-class Americans have less to complain about on "net balance". It should stop a lot of people from wanting to feel like shit and actively looking for grievances when they have that much more to be thankful for, though. When most black Americans had some "genuine-ass problems" they sang the blues and gospel music. They knew they couldn't afford to constantly throw all-day pity parties as it's costly in more ways than one. Only people up the economic ladder can afford to actually want to feel like shit. Hence my attitude towards these mope orgies.

Why were blacks more thankful than most kids today despite an immediate history of slavery? Did they not see death and tragedy? Were they being chumps for not just concentrating on that?

But anyway, even if it were an all-day pity party (which, again, I don't think it is, especially compared to a lot of music that is beloved by critics), it's just one album. There's nothing that says that its fans don't put on happy music some of the time as well. This would be the equivalent of criticizing a blues artist (though I know they usually have a lot of emotional range as well) for being miserable without taking into account that sometimes his or her listeners sing gospel tunes as well.

But wow, is liking this whilst simultaneously decrying Nirvana ever postimism point-missing at it's zenith.

Do you not think Nirvana had HOOKS, and massive pop-teen-outsider appeal too??

I think what turns people off about this band (and emo more widely) is how premeditated, knowing & meta it all comes over image-wise (even in the music it's often a cliche recycled past the point of credibility & definitely past sincerity. That is if you're not "involved" already (i.e. young & emotionally confused) and blind to all this.

Either that or it's some heavily, cleverly, and deliberatly impenetrable phenomenon akin to Gothic Lolitas in Japan. I can't quite credit them with the same creativity though but perhaps I'm just way too familiar with it's antecedents to be impressed with the relative not-newness of emo. And vice versa.

Hot-selling up and coming rock bands in 1990 and early 1991, the year before Nirvana hit: Living Color, Faith No More, Midnight Oil, King's X, Queensryche, Jane's Addiction, Ugly Kid Joe, hell let's throw in Sinead O'Connor, too. (World Party? I dunno.) Obviously Nirvana inspired a feeding frenzy; nobody denies that. But alternative rock - alterenative rock with loud guitars even -- was hardly falling in forests without making a sound before Nirvana showed up. Did they change how some music after them was marketed, and did plenty of other bands get signed thanks to them? Sure. You could say the same about Green Day or Limp Bizkit or Poison or Britney Spears or Avril Lavigne or, I dunno, Dashboard Confessional or whoever. (And plenty of rap and country and r&b acts, too.) Within a few months, you'll be able to say it about *High School Musical,* I bet. The game changes all the time.

1990 on
http://rateyourmusic.com/top_albums/year_is_1990

1991 on
http://rateyourmusic.com/top_albums/year_is_1991

nirvana only the 8th most popular album of 1991 on the rock oriented rym

what nirvana did though was kill off the popularity of hair metal bands. Kerrang instead of being full of bands that looked like trannies [Hair Metal] become full of thick lumberjack shirt wearing [Grunge] bands

also beavis & butthead taking the piss out of stewart re Winger & Warrant

No they didn't, not at all; that's one of the platitudes and delusions that arose out of Nirvana's myth. Check the list a couple posts above. Hair metal was pretty much gone before Nirvana showed up. What was being marketed and selling by 1990 was blatantly art-metal. (And I left out Extreme, who, though their biggest hit was a power ballad, were as artsy by their big second album in 1990 as any of the other bands I listed.)

I'm not really sure that's analagous. (Trying not to take this personally as there is lots of new rock I like and I'm really only indifferent to screamo; emo I find repulsive, but that is pretty directly descended from hardcore.) People aren't arguing that you should be engaging with nu-country simply because it's new, they're saying you should do so because it's good, and because a lot of what's putting people off are signifiers that you just have a knee-jerk reaction to. Also, ageism? Since when have music critics not fetishized teenagers?

That's the "buyer's guide" end of it, which is important, but not the whole enchilada as far as criticism. There's the Frommers guide and then there's travel writing. There's the cookbook and then there's MFK Fisher. Each has its place.

And oh yeah, late '80s pop was great. Nirvana, if anything, made things worse (partially by making people distrust rock bands who sounded happy.)

I'm putting this from a rock fan's perspective, obvs.

Chuck— How can it be a difference of degree and not genre if they didn't sound like Nirvana? As far as the Michael Jackson thing, I think that it was a pretty symbolic thing. Nothing like Nirvana had ever been a #1 before, and Jackson was the "king of pop."
And a difference in degree on its own is significant, if only based on the magnitude of that degree. Again, triple platinum in three months. That's amazing, and seems to imply that there were a lot of people out there who were waiting for an album like Nevermind to come along. Commercial radio was suddenly playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a mopey nonsensical muddle of angst and gibberish. It didn't sound like anything else on the radio, aside from a few college stations and that nascent X format. Nevermind was a milepost like Thriller was a milepost (and it was a better album than Thriller, just to toss the obligatory bomb).
And yeah, a lot of their legacy has been crappy. A lot of the My Chemical Romance appeal still owes itself to the legacy of the angsty suburban kids who bought Nevermind. But Nevermind was the first album like that which didn't require actively looking for it. And I don't blame Faith No More and Anthrax for Korn and Limp Bizkit, even though I might (Limp Bizkit opened up for FNM on FNM's last tour, and played three Rage Against the Machine covers).

Uh, because not everybody in every genre sounds exactly the same?

"Symbolic things" matter to people who want to create myths. ("King of Pop" is another myth, by the way. Michael's sales hadn't exactly been on the upswing through the '80s. Being displaced by Nirvana means zilch.) (And he was having hits long after Nirvana, as I recall.)

And lots of hit songs don't "sound like anything else on the radio." If you doubt me, go ask Chumbawamba or OMC or Lou Bega or Crazy Frog. Or Living Color or Faith No More or Queensyryche, for that matter.

As for *Nevermind* vs. *Thriller*...well, nevermind.

I think there might have been an external factor playing into that.

Chuck— Right. So why'd Nirvana have the traction that those other one-hit wonders didn't? And even though I love LC and FNM, they were one-hitters in terms of popular conception.
For all your "not that great, not that big of a deal," there still seems to be the popular perception that Nirvana WERE a huge deal. Where'd that come from?
And again, if you can't tell the difference between what Nirvana was doing and art metal, you're not really trying.

On a mostly unrelated note, my sister is engaged to a guy who has a band that is influenced by "Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Silverchair, and Soundgarden" according to something I just read. I really just want to cry, sometimes.

Touch & Go was one of my favorite labels in the mid '80s too, for whatever it's worth. I wrote a ton about Killdozer and Die Kreuzen; interviewed Scratch Acid for Spin while they were still with Rabid Cat, *before* Corey and Lisa picked them up. Touch & Go's music? Art-metal, mostly. Whether Cobain would have called it that doesn't particularly matter. (Flipper and lots of stuff on SST fit here, too.)

Please show me where I said this.

Anyway, the basic Seattle Subpop soound, five years before Nirvana hit, was basically Sabbath + Stooges + early gloomy Aerosmith (as in "Seasons of Whither"; Green River even put "produced by Joe Perry" on an early single as a joke) + the Birthday Party (HUGE influence on bands like Killdozer and Scratch Acid from the gitgo). Of COURSE the classification (like any genre classification) is only an opinion, but how that equation *wouldn't* add up to art-metal is sort of beyond my ability to understand taxonomy. Soundgarden tossed some Zeppelin (who were also a fairly blatant influence on both Jesus Lizard AND Jane's Addiction) in there; Nirvana made the sound sweeter with melodies that might have come from the Replacements or, especially, Husker Du. And yeah, the metal influence was filtered though early '80s artsy hardcore bands (Flipper, Black Flag, Wipers, etc), but what had set those bands apart from punk rock per se in the first place was that they *were* drawing on stuff like Sabbath -- slowing the songs down, making the bass sound heavier, letting their hair grow longer, and so on. The Replacements and Husker Du, at least early on, hadn't been especially shy about their metal influences, either. (One of them covered Kiss, for instance, and the other one named an EP *Metal Circus,* but that was only the beginning.) By "art metal," I mean a sound that mixes up "traditional" metal influences with seemingly more esoteric stuff. That's what Jane's Addiction did; it's what Living Color did; it's what Faith No More did; it's what Nirvana and Soundgarden did. No, they didn't all do it in the SAME WAY. But it was something that was happening in many corners at the turn of the '90s.

I would disagree with them as much about them as I do about Nirvana even though the unprecedented sales of Nirvana (something the Pistols never had) is evidence that can be submitted here.

I went to High School BC (Before Cobain). I was thinking back to my High School years while watching some current HS kids walk through my store. I cannot recall anyone with tattoos. I can recall only a couple of punk rockers with piercings. It was revolutionary for a guy to even have his ears pierced. I was not in some backwoods enclave either - I went to HS in Manassas which was then a fast-growing suburb of Washington DC. And this wasn't *that* long ago - I graduated in the mid '80s.

In my class was a kid, Kenny Thomas, who took guitar lessons from Brian Baker. Nobody in school knew who Brian Baker was even though DCHC was a few miles away! Yet, how many kids at my old school saw Bad Religion headline Warped tour a couple of decades later? A lot more than heard him in Junkyard. And I happen to feel that "Values Here" is a much better song than anything Nirvana ever did.

The kids in my school *made fun of* people who listened to the bands that inspired Nirvana even though most of them could be heard on the then-progressive WHFS.

If we laud the Pistols for changing musical history (and really, feel free to hate them but the band was definitely a "before/after" group), how can we not laud the band that took the same things that the Pistols promissed and put it on Wall Street, Madison Avenue and other places quite far from the Bowery. But more important, it left Manhattan entirely and played for the kid in Idaho who felt alienation and found a soundtrack to that.

I guess there were kids in Idaho in 1978 who read Creem and also found music that spoke to them. But what was fascinating about Nirvana was how a whole generation felt that this cynical, loud guitar punky band spoke to them.

Sorry xhuxk that Nirvana killed fun but you know, the kids didn't need fun. Not then. And I think that's what Nirvana did. It made things mainstream that weren't before. And everyone in High School with a belly piercing, tribal tattoo or even just the kids who listen to bands such as My Chemical Romance owe a debt of gratitude to Nirvana. Whether we like it or not.

I was back in DC the day that Cobain died reviewing a Pearl Jam concert. It was a surreal moment for me. I watched the MTV coverage. Somehow I don't think that had Geoff Tate or Vernon Reid died that day that things would have been the same.

i know people get sick of hearing about nirvana blah blah blah and i do too, but to say that they were the same to kids that graduated around 91 as living color or something is just bullshit.

>The Ramones came first and did it better anyway... The Sex Pistols were overrated...<

Has pretty much nothing to do with anything I said about Nirvana, for whatever it's worth. What I've been writing has nothing to do with how good they were; it has to do with how *important* they were.

As for not needing fun "then", I wish you'd elaborate on why you think "then" was any different than any other time, because I sure don't see it myself. (Also the music of the '80s wasn't *just* fun. I still think Nirvana took away a lot more than they added. ) (And did Guns N Roses really not inspire any kids to get tattoos? I'm shocked.)

now, whether or not the music, in retrospect is as good as living color or faith no more or soundgarden or whatever, that's another matter....

...it's the same with, say sabbath....i mean that band was a part of its time and there was a thread of music that was heading in that direction regardless of sabbath, but for whatever reason, they were the band that seemed to make a bigger impact....lots of this feels like people saying "Oh man, Sir Lord Baltimore and Atomic Rooster and Crushed Butler are at least as important to the development of heavy metal as Black Sabbath."...in a way, I see what people are saying, but for average kids it just wasn't like that.

i'm sure, in a way, they did inspire kids to get tattoos, but - in my memory at least - alt rock, esp. the lollapalooza midway, was the first time that so-called "regular kids" started getting tattoos..before that it was more of a statement, i.e. you were a hardcore metal dude, long hair, leather, etc....more of a hesher thing...after alt-rock it was everybody, preps, nerds, whatever, getting tattoos.

I think when you're younger some people are using bands to express a personal aesthetic, and Nirvana helped popularize one that was seductive to a lot of p.c. nerds like me. 'fashion' means a lot to some people. plus kurt was a sardonic goofball with drama queen moments, which was something sadsacks could identify with. it's easy for me to mock it now, esp. when you realize what bunk a lot of the heroic myths about it are, but its worth remembering why you bought them.

Fine, but my post didn't address your comments alone (except the one part that addressed you in particular). Some people are using musical merits - or their personal oponion of the musical merits more accurately - and saying that the band isn't important because of this. And as much as I feel that you are wrong, I feel that argument is *doubly* wrong because it's wrong for the wrong reasons.

But sure, that's not your point of contention. Noted.

As for not needing fun "then", I wish you'd elaborate on why you think "then" was any different than any other time, because I sure don't see it myself.

All times are different from all other times. That sounds evasive but I can't put it any more succinctly.

As for why did that particular time "need" music that wasn't fun, I can theorize about it and have that theory get quite convoluted and then we can debate about causal relationships and how society and pop culture are necessarily intertwined until we are so far from the OP that even Untragrrl doesn't recognize it.

So I'll just say that it doesn't matter *why* that generation didn't want or need "fun." What matters is whether they did or not, and I feel they did and I feel the evidence that bolsters that view is what sold during that time.

(Yes, that might be a circular argument but what more evidence can we use to decide what teenagers wanted then to look at what teenagers consumed?)

Also the music of the '80s wasn't *just* fun. I still think Nirvana took away a lot more than they added.

I am just guessing here, but I think the crux is that Nirvana took away stuff that you liked and added a bunch of stuff that you didn't like. And you don't like that. I wouldn't either, for what it's worth.

Exactly.

Are Dracula collars the new skinny ties?

I love when people who graduated before I was born pretend they're still young.

Fuck off, kid.

Hot 100 number-one hits of 1991 (USA)
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These are the Billboard magazine Hot 100 number one hits of 1991.

Issue Date Song Artist
January 5 Justify My Love Madonna
January 12 Justify My Love Madonna
January 19 Love Will Never Do (Without You) Janet Jackson
January 26 The First Time Surface
February 2 The First Time Surface
February 9 Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) C&C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams
February 16 Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) C&C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams
February 23 All the Man That I Need Whitney Houston
March 2 All the Man That I Need Whitney Houston
March 9 Someday Mariah Carey
March 16 Someday Mariah Carey
March 23 One More Try Timmy T
March 30 Coming Out of the Dark Gloria Estefan
April 6 Coming Out of the Dark Gloria Estefan
April 13 I've Been Thinking About You Londonbeat
April 20 You're in Love Wilson Phillips
April 27 Baby, Baby Amy Grant
May 4 Baby Baby Amy Grant
May 11 Joyride Roxette
May 18 I Like the Way (The Kissing Game) Hi-Five
May 25 I Don't Wanna Cry Mariah Carey
June 1 I Don't Wanna Cry Mariah Carey
June 8 More Than Words Extreme
June 15 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
June 22 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
June 29 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
July 6 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
July 13 Rush Rush Paula Abdul
July 20 Unbelievable EMF
July 27 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 3 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 10 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 17 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 24 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
August 31 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
September 7 (Everything I Do) I Do It for You Bryan Adams
September 14 The Promise of a New Day Paula Abdul
September 21 I Adore Mi Amor Color Me Badd
September 28 I Adore Mi Amor Color Me Badd
October 5 Good Vibrations Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch featuring Loleatta Holloway
October 12 Emotions Mariah Carey
October 19 Emotions Mariah Carey
October 26 Emotions Mariah Carey
November 2 Romantic Karyn White
November 9 Cream Prince and the New Power Generation
November 16 Cream Prince and the New Power Generation
November 23 When a Man Loves a Woman Michael Bolton
November 30 Set Adrift on Memory Bliss P.M. Dawn
December 7 Black or White Michael Jackson
December 14 Black or White Michael Jackson
December 21 Black or White Michael Jackson
December 28 Black or White Michael Jackson

Hot 100 number-one hits of 1992 (USA)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
These are the Billboard magazine Hot 100 number one hits of 1992.

Issue Date Song Artist
January 4 Black or White Michael Jackson
January 11 Black or White Michael Jackson
January 18 Black or White Michael Jackson
January 25 All 4 Love Color Me Badd
February 1 Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me George Michael and Elton John
February 8 I'm Too Sexy Right Said Fred
February 15 I'm Too Sexy Right Said Fred
February 22 I'm Too Sexy Right Said Fred
February 29 To Be With You Mr. Big
March 7 To Be With You Mr. Big
March 14 To Be With You Mr. Big
March 21 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
March 28 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 4 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 11 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 18 Save the Best For Last Vanessa Williams
April 25 Jump Kris Kross
May 2 Jump Kris Kross
May 9 Jump Kris Kross
May 16 Jump Kris Kross
May 23 Jump Kris Kross
May 30 Jump Kris Kross
June 6 Jump Kris Kross
June 13 Jump Kris Kross
June 20 I'll Be There Mariah Carey
June 27 I'll Be There Mariah Carey
July 4 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
July 11 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
July 18 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
July 25 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
August 1 Baby Got Back Sir Mix-A-Lot
August 8 This Used to Be My Playground Madonna
August 15 End of the Road Boyz II Men
August 22 End of the Road Boyz II Men
August 29 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 5 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 12 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 19 End of the Road Boyz II Men
September 26 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 3 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 10 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 17 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 24 End of the Road Boyz II Men
October 31 End of the Road Boyz II Men
November 7 End of the Road Boyz II Men
November 14 How Do You Talk to An Angel The Heights
November 21 How Do You Talk to An Angel The Heights
November 28 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 5 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 12 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 19 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston
December 26 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston

xpost— Mark OTeponymous.

Of course, what do I know? I'm now the 35-year-old, so I'm hopelessly out of touch, right? But when I look back at my writing at 22 or 23 -- even my Kurt Cobain interview for a NYC magazine called New Route -- I cringe at its hyperbole. Today's music journos most definitely should stay respectful and plugged into music for "the kids." But they shouldn't be panicking about pandering to 16-year-olds who worship My Chemical Romance at Myspace -- at least if they're interested in writing for people who actually READ. And MCR's situation is NOT up for debate as was argued a dozen posts up. Comparing My Chemical Romance's cultural impact to Nirvana's is utterly laughable.

-- scott seward

Have you heard From the Muddy Banks of the Wiskah?

trent reznor has proven to be way more influential than just about anyone

Oh heck yes.

Maybe it was someone from the Roots.

1991 didn't happen in a vaccuum.

otmfm

(ps: destroy nyc)

"Well..."

"Wrong! They are, and you're a fool to argue!"

(As a sidenote, right after Cobain killed himself, my gramma heard Heart Shaped Box and declared that his voice wasn't going to last to 30 if he kept singing like that... 'Least of his problems, gramma.')

It's hard to bargle naudle zauss with all these marbles in my mouth...

http://www.shirt66.de/images/products/98009.jpg

I write this at someone who bought into the myth of Nirvana's exceptionalism at the time. I remember 1991 very well, and Nirvana's breakthrough did seem like a watershed moment to me at the time - but the more I think about, the more it seems like a watershed in terms of subcultures and scenes than it does in terms of music. Bands are being plucked from little subcultures and thrust onto the national charts all the time, but unless you are a part of that little subculture, this usually doesn't seem too remarkable. I think this is what physicists call the "anthropocentric principle". Nirvana seemed like a watershed moment to me because they came from a little scene that I happened to be plugged into, not because they really changed music that much.

oh, andrew, we sure can.
and if yr still listening to the same thing when yr in yr 20's as you did when you were 16, then you probably deserve to still be listening to MCR...
sorry, but what about drug abuse again??

OTM.

This MCR post is the clearest evidence yet that Sarah is willing to champion the tastes of whatever audience she has, so she can feel like she represents something more than she actually is. And not surprisingly, the audience she attracts is young, impressionable, and desperate to find an easily-defined social construct that allows them to feel part of something. Music genres were always that sort of construct, but blogs have turned them into cheap condos. If you see someone you want to be, hear a song you want to hear again ("How do you start, where do you go, who do you need to know..."), blogs are both the blueprint and in cases like Sarah's (Misshapes etc.) the roadmap to actually participating in the fantasy. Which would be great if everyone was 16 and honest and passionate and nobody was taking home half the bar and the door and telling people at major corporations they've really got a solid alpha-adopting demo under their thumb. But they are. This is New York City. Wake up.

When I first met Sarah, I think she was 23. I was 27. She did not know that New Order and Joy Division were related in any way. In the last year she has tried to tell people her "record label" (which has not amounted to anything, and won't) is named after a Joy Division song, and that she is deeply connected with their music - it's the same reductive Goth worship of Ian Curtis so many have fallen for. But Sarah's is not a geniune depth of feeling borne of burning their music into her mind alone at night when no one knows - it is the attempted cooption of the gravity she has discovered this music holds for so many others, the gravity associated with Joy Division. In short, she wants to be taken so seriously - at least as seriously as the stuffy 35 year-olds writing for other 35 year-olds...

I knew and breathed the relationship between New Order and Joy Division before I even turned 16, because music was important to me, and I wanted to know as much as I could about it. Because I wanted to talk about it with older, wiser people, and absorb as much of their knowledge as I could. Because I didn't want to ever end up looking like an idiot when someone asked me if I'd heard of this band or the other. Which is really a sad admission in a way. It's not a prequisite to know about bands, nor is it inherently cool. It's certainly nothing to base your self-confidence on, but the point is: Sarah does base her self-confidence on trading band names, without doing her homework. That is an untenable incongruity, especially at her age.

She wants the attention, the credibility and the authority she has always envied (cf. her sycophantic relationship with mentor Marc Spitz and redefining, Toni Basil hyperbole for every third band she sees in concert). She wants to be convincing, to enforce her taste (MCR = Nirvana, The OohLalalas are the future of music), and, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, walks around imbued with a sense of pride and/or ownsership over the success of a band she mentioned/got drunk with/texted once, or a slang word she tried so casually to insert in some post (Julianne Shepherd, here's looking at you). But there is nothing to support her opinions. They are billboards.

Like every other half-assed blog scenester out there, she carries her stats in her back pocket - "This many people love me." But she takes no responsibility for her failures, self-contradicitions, or her complicity in the promotional cycle she is so deeply and willingly embedded within, instead ignoring and deflecting those "icky bad thoughts" as cynicism and stagnation, barreling toward a brick wall with constant positivity and occasional "A Very Special Ultragrrrl" emo posts about the time the guy from Elkland crashed on her floor (OMG he was supercutetastichotttnesszz).

The harshest illustration that there was indeed an ordinary, unseemly face behind her rah-rah mask was when Sarah had her roommate IM me asking for a Top Ten Shoegaze songs, for her worthless iPod cash-in book. She didn't know anything about the genre and was too embarrassed to ask me herself (or worse, thought her roommate would have more pull with me). I declined to assist. I can't imagine what that list looks like, if it made it into the book.

(And for the record, Nirvana were the singlemost important mainstream rock band since the Sex Pistols, and just like the Sex Pistols, it had almost nothing to do with their music).

I was trying to pinpoint why the Ultragrrl phenomenon is so irritating to me, and this sums it up beautifully. I keep meeting 20somethings of both sexes whose music knowledge seems to exist for the sole purpose of bluffing one's way through a party conversation, and that's just fucking sad.

No, not OTM. I'm 25 and I still listen to a lot of the music I liked when I was 16. Or am I missing the point?

BTW, I'm Not Okay (I Promise) is one of the greatest complaint rock songs in history and it manages to have a sense of humour as well.

FUCK OFFS!

when i was 16 one of my favourite albums was the miseducation of lauryn hill and i still listen to it, but not as much as i did. another of my favourite albums from then, boys for pele, i hardly listen to at all now, though i'll still defend it.

i don't think this in any way means that my love for those songs (and by proxy the band responsible for them) is less than that of a new order crate-digging obsessive, or that i'm less qualified to talk about them. and i'm pretty disgusted by the assertion that one can only have genuine feeling for the music if you've sat up all night alone with it. fucking indie kids.

i feel that privileging the "doing of one's homework", as if one's love of music can only be fully realised by approaching it as if it was an exam, is spectacularly wrong-headed.

but don't you think it is if you are basing your whole identity on the 'fact' that you are someone who, you know, does that homework? i mean, what's the difference between sarah's solicitation of chris' shoegaze list so she can put it in her book and look informed, or at least hip to the genres that the bands in the 9 pm slots at the mercury lounge are biting, and jonah goldberg's solicitiation of his readers' explanations of laws so he can put it in his book and look informed?

chris said pretty clearly that knowing about bands is neither required, nor inherently cool, but the problem is that sarah bases her whole identity on the 'fact' that she is discovering bands like louis xiv, mcr, etc. -- and then she hypes them to the moon, and name-drops certain 'trigger' acts to get the attention of, yeah, people like us. not to take the homework analogy too far, but there's definitely an amount of cheating going on there. do people buy it? i don't know. the world of blog comments is not exactly a scientific measure.

her f-list 'celebrity,' fleeting and blog-echo-chambery as it is, is sort of perfect for the gawker media/vh1-talking-head age -- 'we'll show you this item of popculture, please react to it on-the-spot and we'll totally put a chyron of your latest project under your face, we promise.' as long as she can babble on for long enough and keep up a good face, she's going to have her little slot as a faux expert sewn up.

I really don't think that someone who loved, say Joy Division, from the age of 16 is necessarily more credible than anyone who started listening at 23, other than the chance for reflection and the perspective that time allows. It's that annoying tendency to treat knowledge as some sort of credibility while obscuring your source ("Oh yeah, I've always listened to them," etc.) that really differentiates people who like music from people who think they can use it as social currency.

(Music Reviewer): This new band Y really sounds like old songs from X.
(Scene Kid listening to band Y): I have loved band X forever!

but don't you think it is if you are basing your whole identity on the 'fact' that you are someone who, you know, does that homework?

yeah, that's lame, but kind of DOUBLE lame - firstly for the lying/cheating and so on, though if this is what she does it's not as if she's anything like the only one among music hacks. but even if she HAD done her homework, had lived and breathed those bands she claims to love, and was trading off that - that's lame as well! unless she can write really, really well, and if you can do that you don't need to trade off anything else. (what, incidentally, makes people think that she doesn't love them deeply? there are several old bands i love deeply even though i only discovered them through a greatest hits, like, last year.)

but whether Current Song X sounds like Old Song Y is generally the least interesting thing about it - that sort of cross-referencing journalism can be interesting but it shouldn't be a template.

That is a world of difference from hearing a Joy Division song on the net, on the radio, or seeing the video for "LWTUA" on MTV, or reading about another band and finding out they were very into Joy Division, and quietly going about the business of finding out about this band because you like their music. To get to Joy Division from the Unknown Pleasures t-shirt you saw at Urban Outfitters (7 out of 10 kids do not know what that image is, by the way) or as an attempt to ally yourself with the band because of how they're viewed by your peers is vilely insincere.

We are not talking about some 15 year-old kid who doesn't know any better. And that's what you're saying with the "I have liked band X forever" rejoinder - that it's terrible and wrong to shit on someone who's new to something just because you're so invested in it. I completely agree, but for a person in her position, with her history, to post things like "OMG I LUV JOY DIVISION THEY ARE IN MY SOUL" is both shallow and vilely strategic. Stop taking her at her tone, it's a put-on.

or: people note that lots of other people, some of whom they may respect for their cultural knowledge or whatevs, are talking about Old Band X (eg joy div). so OF COURSE they will gravitate towards exploring that band, yeah partly because it's the in-thing but also because they want to hear the music. and if they already know that things which are dark/austere/cool/romantic appeal to them, and joy division seem to be all those things, it'd be kind of counter-intuitive NOT to check them out. basically: i don't see that getting into a band via a chain brand t-shirt is anything to be ashamed of. nor do i think that getting into them because you think it'll make you look cool is necessarily a bad thing, either.

and again, i don't know who this sarah person is, but 99% of arts journalists do things which are shallow and strategic.

Kidding aside, I was referring to people who are technically adults when I said "scene kid." It wasn't meant as a rejoinder at all, I was basically echoing some of your sentiments. I have, in fact, run into people who have claimed a long-term love of bands that they heard of literally a week ago when mentioned in the context of their new interest.

Nice Joy Division book, Chris. I'd ask you, though: If the reading that someone did to decide "..Joy Division seems to be dark and austere and unassailably cool" was from your own book and they walked around passing off knowledge from it without actually listening to the music, how vile is that? I've also heard people do that sort of thing without even being able to hum a few bars.

Don't get me wrong -- I realize you're talking about people who glom onto surface images and use them as some sort of shorthand of credibility. I just think that there is more than one type of misrepresentation that goes on.

But for Dog Latin— No, if you're still listening to exclusively the same music you did when you were 16, that's more likely a deficiency than something to be proud of.

Precisely. Close thread.

No, not OTM. I'm 25 and I still listen to a lot of the music I liked when I was 16. Or am I missing the point?

I enjoyed Nirvana a lot in middle school (92-94), was bored with them in high school, got really into them once again in college, and now post-college they are my favorite band of alltime. They seemed to make more sense to me after my tastes matured, I guess. I think MCR may have the opposite effect.

I think we would all agree that if your musical palate hasn't grown (both deeper and broader) from 16 to 25, then it's a problem. But all the original poster said was that he would still listen to MCR, not that he would only listen to them.

I had never heard of Ultragrrl before this post pointed me to her blog. But generally Chris seems OTM, if we're talking about her (as opposed to her argument). If you read more of her posts, you definitely get the sense that music is on one hand a fashionable accessory to her "beautiful life," and on the other, something that she's used to build/maintain that life.

And, nothing against Lex, I do think there is a difference between the love of New Order that you describe and that of the "crate-digging obsessive." Saying you love New Order because you love Blue Monday, True Faith, and Regret, is different from saying you love New Order and having five albums (or ever just a singles comp). Not that it's wrong, just different.

if i'm feelin nostalgic, i'll throw those in, but that's not often.
and usually while drunk.

not to say i don't like the music, it's just too much of reminder item/wrapped in memories to lend itself to being something i feel the need to listen to anymore...that and i burned those disc OUT!

i'm not saying ultra's doing that. i don't know her. but there are surely many who do.

at age 16 i was already crazy for early rough trade, pillows & prayers and bands from athens. i fail to see how i've progressed since then...

It's strange to think that as recently as 1992, this was considered an untouchable record-breaking phenomenon. In the same respect, I'm still surprised it too as long as it did before Pearl Jam's one-week record was killed by... uhh it was probably BSB or Eminem or someone.. I forget.

Now, I don't mean this as a knock against MCR. I like "Helena" and I think that frankly, MCR are targeting a significantly different audience than the one I am part of. But I also think that comparing MCR to Nirvana is considerably hyperbolic, if not in an artistic sense, than definitely in a sense of cultural impact. Nirvana altered the playing field, changing the rules of the game for at least a decade (for better or for worse, as undoubtedly many of you will argue). MCR, by comparison, is not an abberation in today's pop landscape, but a clear continuation of a phenomenon that was already thriving before they emerged onto the scene.

For some people, MCR may fulfill the role that Nirvana did for others a decade ago in their youth. This point is ultimately inarguable. However, I don't think that MCR have had nearly the broad-based cultural impact on this generation that Nirvana did in their time. I could be wrong, but with siblings at the age in question, I certainly don't notice a perceptible trend.

"yeah man by the time I was 6 I was already through with most of ornette coleman's ideas, and it wasn't until about 9 that I really got into atonal as a concept"

i don't think i'd subscribe to that angle, but i'm glad i've shifted my taste! if only for the people around me (whom i am certain are ALSO very glad!!!).
MCR just isn't the 'phenom' that nirvana was. it's just that simple.
i still see more kids touting Misfits gear than any MCR stuff! and the Misfits have been done since '84 (well, technically i guess)!

i'll gladly suffer thru some 'crap music' but, damned if MCR is something i can sit thru...
bring on that Mclusky 3 disc, and git wit it.

In 2006, I am obviously older, but I listen to a lot more current music. My kids are music-obsessed older teenagers with similar friends; eventually if they or their friends like something I tend to hear it. I have yet to hear note #1 of My Chemical Romance, or to meet any teenager (and I talk regularly to dozens of 15-20 year-olds) who cares enough about them, one way or another, to mention them. Ever. I did see a picture in Newsweek or something, and recently discussions of this Ultragrrl thing; otherwise I would not know they existed.

Which is not to say that they are good, bad, or whatever. Only that there are quantum-levels of difference between this band's general social presence and that of Nirvana in its prime, and that if it is the signature band of this generation someone forgot to tell my kids and everyone they hang out and go to shows with. And by "someone", I mean Pitchfork, which is their main media source for music tips, etc. Which I don't think is dominated by 35+ muso types.

So I don't get what this is about, except for a self-promotional kid playing the age card because it's what she's got to play.

As a pre-teen, my friends and I just thought Nirvana was really catchy and rocked, and there was no shock as if we had never heard anything like it. Everyone's discman would either have one of the Use Your Illusions or Nevermind, with no consciosness of the gap between them, which is less musical than cultural and therefore irrelevant to an eleven-year old's mind.

-- Vornado (joh...), April 21st, 2006."

OTfuckinM!!!
but, i'm guessin this is what ultragrrrrrrrrrrrrl wanted, right?
some reactionary thoughts...

Now, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE (thanks for the venom)
Preach all you want but who's gonna save me?
I keep a gun on the book you gave me, hallelujah, lock and load
Black is the kiss, the touch of the serpent son
It ain't the mark or the scar that makes you one

It may just be me, but the MCR's lyrics are way better than Nirvana. Sometimes you need good lyrics to go with the songs, and MCR is on the money. Nirvana was..well...yeah

kid, some real from-the-heart advice here. you're right about nirvana! but you should also put down the mcr rekkids, and go and listen to CIARA.

i can't help that i had awesome taste back then.

-- 25 yr old slacker cokehead (miltonpinsk...), April 27th, 2006."

so did i! and then i aged+changed. as did my music.

some may say...they'd be wrong, tho. I would say it's still pretty alright, maybe not by a 16 yr old me's standpoint, but that guy was too wasted and young to know the difference, so fuck that guy!
he just HAD to learn the hard way how wrong he was.
good thing he's not around anymore...

Oh baby let me in
Oh baby let me in
I'm knocking let me in
Oh baby let me in
Oh baby let me in
I'm knocking let me in
Oh baby let me in
Oh baby let me in

-Some crappy My Chemical Romance song

Look up small sample size in an encyclopaedia.

http://www.vmix.com/vidthumbs/0ef1ac9c4eda96832ae9124040763564_1.jpg

YOU GOT SERVED!!!

http://image.com.com/tv/images/story/voltron.jpg

IS BETTER THAN singing about insects and health abnormalities!
eg.!
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My libido

I mean, Elvis Costello wipes these douches out when it comes to lyrical prowess; Bob Dylan and Ghostface Killah to boot. Hell, go read some fucking T.S. Eliot to music if you want to be deep and meaningful. However, if you wanna rock (and I know you do baby) then you don't need to have your stem wound any tighter than

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?
YOU'RE IN THE JUNGLE BABY
YOU'RE GONNA DIEEEEEE!

Oh baby let me in
Oh baby let me in
I'm knocking let me in
Oh baby let me in
Oh baby let me in
I'm knocking let me in
Oh baby let me in
Oh baby let me in

vs.

CAN'T YOU HEAR ME KNOCKING
AT YOUR WINDOW?
CAN'T YOU HEAR ME KNOCKING
AT YOUR DOOO-OOOOOR?

Nope. Kids were doing that when I was in high school, back in 1992.

Every generation likes to believe that they've discovered something new (sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, self-destruction), but they're really just part of a continuum.

And you know what? That's perfectly okay.

So I have no idea what I'd like now.

So, even though there were four slots and only four bands tried out, they only accepted three--us not being one of them. According to the members of 'R0ckaholics Anonymous,' we were creative and could pull it off, but we wouldn't appeal to high schoolers (despite the fact that instead of students, the judges are somewhat respectable figures in the local music world). It's too bad; I wanted to scare my classmates by performing some lascivious Serge Gainsbourg cover (they're afraid of other cultures).

they have *CHANGED* Music and wil lbe remem*BERED*.

they *DSERVE* to be talked about, to theexlucusion of *TOEHR BGANDS.**

HAHAA!!! does that mean MCR are going to be playing the York Town Fair then?!!

how about this, MCR=this generation's MCR? seems fair.

"hello, i am teenager with a 4.0, and an IQ of 120 and i love my chemical romance."
well, hello teenager w/a 4.0 and IQ of 120.
i'm not so sure how that makes any difference as to music, but good on ya! keep them grades up and stay off the drugs/cutting/alcohol/pre-martial sex/etc.
emo=emotional?!!! ZOUNDS.

-- eedd (e...), April 28th, 2006.

Exactly. Which is why I said he would have spit them out of his ass, like throwaway lyrics. But your'e right about the content.

I'm pretty sure most people who like music are gonna know what "emo" stands for, it just seems like the kids today have no clue that it started before they were born. To all those emo kids out there, DO SOME HOMEWORK! YOU'LL FIND SOME GOOD STUFF!!
And no, there is nothing wrong with liking mcr. Just like how it's not wrong to like whatever band you like. It's just totally ridiculous to think they are even in the same league as Nirvana.

http://www.pgcps.pg.k12.md.us/~pointer/images/teacher.gif

so what youre saying is, musicians have a responsibility to play the role of guidance counselor?

even though im sitting in seattle, home of this so-called nirvana, and despite how early it is, this statement has to be the most ridiculous thing i've heard all day.

regardless of how meaningful music is in my life, i'd never let an entertainer have that much sway over my life.

I wasn't in the Nirvana generation and therefore have no clue how a band goes about being a generation's Nirvana - to me Nirvana were this cultural albatross around our necks, something you had to like whether your heart was in it or not, something you had to treat as a cultural touchstone. They was nothing exciting about them; they were part of the 'alternative canon', like the Sex Pistols or the Doors or even the Stone Roses, and liking them didn't even give you any sort of identity since every single person you knew would know and recognise and no doubt like their hits. There must have been a brief period when I liked Nirvana as Nirvana, surely, but mostly it was just that you had to-- you had to own the albums and say 'In Utero' was better than 'Nevermind' and have read Kurt Cobain's suicide note (and put him in your (im)personal pantheon of Doomed Idols, sid vicious brian jones kurt cobain richey manic whoever). As far as I could tell, Nirvana were the Oasis of a few years previously, that same cultural position. I'm so, so glad to be old enough now that I don't have to act like Nirvana mean anything to me; maybe if they hadn't been forced down my neck from an early age I'd care? or maybe i wouldn't have recognised how important they were supposed to be without everyone telling me so.

So I hope MCR don't occupy that position, and I don't think they will. They seem more... smashing pumpkins levels of popularity, influence? They're not doing anything new - it's gothy pop-punk, basically, isn't it? and songs like 'I'm not okay' are really exciting, thrilling to listen to, but they're never going to dominate a whole scene. They'll be massively important to some people's lives, though. And sneering about people using music, and pop lyrics, as an emotional support is pretty fucking sad; I'm sorry, what do you use music for? A lifestyle accessory? You were never fifteen and miserable? I'd hate to be someone who had never had that emotional capacity.

Or, to talk about MCR another way, MCR=Bombast. To repurpose an old zinger: Wagner is the MCR of music.

I'm trying to remember what it was in my generation that you "had" to like. I actually had to think about it before coming up with U2 / R.E.M. although the kind of obsessiveness described there still sounds kind of foreign.

As far as the roots of emo: i thihnk your point is obviously correct musically, but what I'm too lazy to do is trace "emo" lyrically, where there comparisons may be more accurate. (Not that I've listened to Fugazi.) MCR couldn't have existed without Husker Du or the Smashing Pumpkins, it seems.

Most on the mark post. But then, I've only read the first and last 5 posts of the thread...

As for Nirvana.. well, you can't really compare ANY artist at this moment to Nirvana - that kind of impact is rare and even more rarely duplicated. And definitely not within a decade of each other. Just Ultragrrl being silly again. Seriously, why do you people care so much about her?

I had never heard of her before I read this post. And if discussion of her comments generates threads like this -- one of the most interesting and thoughtful on ILM for the last few months, well, great.

AS IF 90% of joy division fans EVER didn't get into their music this way

Not enough incredible b-sides. And Gish is way WAY better than I Brought You My Bullets.

Collective Soul = Jet
Live = The Vines
Candlebox = The Bravery
4-Non Blondes = The Donnas
Cranberries = Evanessence
Filter = Trapt
Stabbing Westward = Three Days Grace
Jars of Clay = Switchfoot
Dishwalla = Breaking Benjamin
Seven Mary Three = Audioslave
Tonic = The Ataris

I'm well aware that most of this makes no sense at all, and I'm just matching up the first bands I can think of.

"FWIW, I'll give you "this generation's Smashing Pumpkins" if you really want.
-- Brian O'Neill (e7jey4a0...), May 1st, 2006."

OK, but whomever it might be better be LSD fried AND angry.
AND a complete control freak and egomaniac.
AND have to be able to solo for 20+ minutes at a pop.
AND write something that's as good or better than Silverfuck or Hello Kitty Kat.
so, give it up!

Bombast, bombast, stupid lyrics, bombast.

and can we then count on the lead singer to DIE then?????
if not, then it don't work!

Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock and roll band who'll throw it all away

.........
i got nothin.

now this is ironic, given who sparked this whole thread in the first place

-- maura (maur...), May 15th, 2006.

OH!
SNAP!
!!!

I somehow doubt it -- that guy was literate.

i will 2nd that emotion.