Standard Mischief

But that doesn’t explain things exactly. Maybe it might be more accurate to say that I’m burned out over music. Or I refuse to get passionate again about music. Or whatever. Or whatever you are listening to is fine. Unless it’s all rap, all the time or mind-numbing, headache-inducing, repetitive techno. How anyone can listen to that techno crap without chemical enhancement is beyond me.

For a while there I just left it on the local “progressive” station, whatever the heck that means. Right away there I noticed the bane of top-40, the play list. The rock stations weren’t any better, playing the same damn three acceptable-to-the-target-demographic, white-guy-remakes-old-blues-songs, over and over on light rotation. I listened anyway, because everyone else was too and there was some unfed need for polyphonic sounds of dissent. I got disillusion at a festival at RFK stadium. I had the foresight to bring some binoculars, and by sharing them and looking towards the stage’s big screen, you could barely make out the set while the music, constrained by the speed of sound, arrived to my senses like a poorly dubbed late-night b-movie. My now ex-significant enjoyed herself immensely. I went on a strict diet of news and talk radio.

By my reckoning it was just years before, I stood at my first and last show at WUST music hall, right up against the stage, the toilet tissue stuffed in my ears as ersatz earplugs, as the live sonic wave passed through me and a diver landed directly on my head on his way to the thrash pit. Made a lasting impression (not physically) of how a live venue performance ought to be properly pulled off. Live shows at the Mall and other small venues echoed this.

Even here is the eliteness, sellouts, minimum required trivia and minutia to be memorized. Do you have your ripped jeans and plaid, and your boots laced the proper way? My favorite gothic plate cut his hair short and now I don’t know exactly how I should express my individuality. I can’t believe that you’ve never heard of those guys! The paisley guy that slid into emo. Here’s a collection of music mixed with you in mind.

It’s just some music, not a lifestyle or a philosophy or the sink for my disposable income or a movement. Let me assure you that this exclusive scene has the same sameness as that one. The players, and markers, and the movements are merely different.

What brought this on? Well I’m not dumping angst here. Not at all. It’s the junction of a major threat that derailed into a rack of pre-distressed six pocket BDUs available at a major department store. The combat boots I have at home that are older than the kid that’s giving me looks because I’m wearing something that’s akin to his gang colors. Stuff that a younger me wouldn’t even rate as ?mediocre-core? on heavy radio rotation and labeled as the oxymoron “pop-punk”. Remembering what I was like at seventeen and something that has struck a chord in my head and perhaps my heart as I dug it out of an archive of a few years ago.

I’m not going to name anything here. Well OK, I will, but I’ll put it under the fold. Because I’m not terribly interested in what you listen to unless I say ?this sounds pretty good, who does it?? and I think you are the same. I’m not aiming to get you to download something that you can listen on your fashion accessory headphones in the dark and feel you have a connection to me.

It’s an experiment. I’m always experimenting and I think the guy will eventually ego search engine himself to my place and I think he deserves the same little lift that I get when someone points to something I’ve created and indicated it gave them a little lift. Because that’s pretty neat. And maybe I am venting a little angst, but just a little bit.

-under the fold-

You read this far.

I’m listening to (I think) Folk-Rock, or Anti-Folk or something. He’s Counterfeit Matt. The songs I recovered from the archive were My Maryland and Dark November, and they seem to be available over here. Press albums tab and poke around a bit.

I don’t particularly share the same political philosophy, but perhaps me at 17 might see more eye to eye to his 17. Besides, there are so few ?mutant? libertarians out there that play music.

I’ve found a presumably older Matt here. There I liked Ballad of an Anarchist and Oh Roman.