A Tale Told By an Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

Now to art. Sorta.

                Saturday night I spent the evening in a relatively-typical fashion with my wife. Glass of wine, rented movie, stayed up late enough after the movie for some Saturday Night Live. I went to bed dwelling upon the poor-quality “art” I encountered (namely the movie and the musical guests on SNL), and felt this was a trend I’ve seen a lot lately. Thinking that perhaps I was tired and cranky and over-thinking about the state of the world, I turned in. Yes, by “thinking” I’m sure I mean “hearing from my wife.” When I woke up, I was rested, but in no way consoled.

                That movie sucked.

                That band sucked.

                Okay, okay, that happens. We’ve all seen bad movies and heard bad bands. In fact, bad enough movies or songs can really be quite enjoyable experiences. It’s like a flush of the system, seeing something you hate that much, feels good.

                I could have left it at that, except the film wasn’t just bad, it was horrible, and yet critics, the masses, the supposedly smart and the unabashedly dumb, that is, everyone but me and the missus, loved the film. The band was similar to many I’ve heard and seen creeping on SNL lately. It was bigger picture. Sad state. The world is sucking, we need a revolution (so, I guess this is Part 2).

                The film in question was Drive. I persuaded my wife to watch based on the numerous reviews I had seen and heard just screaming what a grand movie experience this one was. One of those leap out and grab you Forrest Gump or Little Miss Sunshine or (closer, but still not there) Taxi Driver types that everyone gets something out of. Well, if anger counts, count me as part of everyone. An art house action thriller, huh? Half-way through we realized that it (and, for my suggestion, I) were unforgivable. What a hunk of crap! Taking a gory snoozer with a paper-thin plot, no characterization, no discernible theme worth mentioning, then slowing it down (presumably because if you played it in real time it woulda been, like, 25 minutes long), screwing with the lighting, using Blade Runner’s soundtrack and then unimaginative “guy driving and thinking” scenes (Taxi Driver again) does NOT ART MAKE! In doing everything to put together anything butt just another action film, Nicolas Refn used all of the above to try to toss together a film with substance. Then he told us it had substance. Then the critics told us it had substance. It’s like people who brag about reading an especially hard book that they didn’t get at all, but pretend they did for fear of looking stupid, ignoring the fact that it probably just sucked.

                It’s been so revered, that I went through a moment similar to the analogy above where I thought either I’m stupid or everyone else is. In this case, sicerely, I must say it is everyone else.

                Sitting through it hoping it might redeem itself, too lazy to shut it off, guilty for having paid for it so feeling we must ride it out, we experienced relief when the end credits flashed. Here we clicked on SNL (I won’t address the skits, which appeal widely to moods as suited, and never express to be art), and took in the band. Who they were doesn’t matter. Wait, that’s not quite right. Who they were matters because they don’t matter, because they were so typical, the kind of band you can get twelve of for ten cents, as the saying goes when butchered.

                I try not to get too caught up in that thinking that the music I grew up with is best. This can be hard for anyone, and I do find it trying at times because the music of the first half of the 1990s was reactionary in many ways. There was something revolutionary there. Like punk before it, “grunge” (shudders, but admits ease necessitated) and its ilk cast off the excesses of the previous cycle, in this case the glam and sheen of hair metal and the worst pop ever,  music that reflected the materialism of the 1980s.

                Fifty years ago, when modern popular music was well under way, a revolution occurred. At this point they were saying—for the first time ever!—that rock was dead. The pop, doo-whop, she-boom, ooh-baby themes was being hucked aside for more experimental music, more revolutionary music. Music with meaning and message. Someone read a book, they wrote a song. George Harrison dabbled in Indian mysticism, he wrote a song. Neil Young lost a friend to heroin, wrote a song. Bob Dylan saw inconsistencies in a wealth-driven society, song = written.

Suddenly pop stars had become activists, leaders. Everyone on earth was already listening to their voices, so many of them tried to say things that mattered. Success varied. (This has remained a mandatory job requirement in musical stardom, for better or for worse. They are expected to form and express opinions. Never mind that most of them failed to even finish high school, or were so wealthy at such a young age that they can’t ever be accused of being in touch with reality on any level. What does Angus Young think of the famine in Africa? What, can’t find it on a map? Immaterial!)

So, when the same happened in those early 1990s, heroes like Pearl Jam, Sinead O’Conner, REM, U2 (hanging on from the 80s), started standing for issues. We, the youth who worshipped them, made decisions about these issues as well.

How we need a revolution of thinking music now.

Back to my disgust at the past few musical guests I’ve caught on SNL. With only one exception—Lady Ga Ga, whose spectacle is only matched by her talent—the groups have been composed of airheads. Doofuses who couldn’t form a concrete thought on anything outside of Twilight and the kind of shoes they want to wear if their hairstyle depended on it. And so many doofuses! Why do you need seventeen members in a band if you’re playing fewer chords than the Sex Pistols on one string? What’s the deal with that guy who just hits something with a stick once every second verse? Or that dude doing jumping jacks in the back? What's he for? Why does every group need to have an overweight black man? That stage is getting so crowded that the two lead singers in skinny jeans or pleather tights or whatever can’t properly strut as they spout “nu-uh-uh” or “yo-oh-oh.”

Excess and excrement, that.

Talk like this can come off as sounding crotchety, outside the times. I have a healthy respect for that opinion, although I don’t share it. Just am aware. As with all other matters on which I like to electronically opine, in music I know my fair share of older folks who have a decided “with-it”ness. A favourite uncle of mine is approaching sixty, and he has not lost step with what is current in music since the Beatles were still together. Because I’m not happy with the state of popular music should not see me labeled as a middle-aged codger. I have an awareness of what is now and the ability to appreciate what is GOOD in something that is not MINE. These navel-gazing whinies with their grandiose yet simple, loud but unlistenable nonsense is the sign that, hopefully, we’re about due. That musical revolution is a-comin’. Punk did it to stadium rock in the 70s, grunge (ugh) did it to glam in the 90s, we’re about due for that two-decade shift. But be sure to grab hold and love it while you can, because it only lasts for about seven years before Hanson and the Backstreet Boys take over.

Mainstream art is at a low. All this 80s worship has us producing art like in the 80s, a decade notable for the great distances between works of relevance. Flash and dash, sound and fury, little substance.

My hope is the wheel, or the worm, is set to turn.