In 1967, the summer of love was the hippie overflow into the mainstream. Both rock, and being a teenager, had different meanings then than they do now, and between drugs, the war in Vietnam, conscription, Haight Asbury, Black power , Swinging Carnaby, and, of course, they can't bust our music man, , there was a genuine sense of revolution.
1977 UK division was dubbed the Summer of Hate and between unemployment, rioting, work stoppages, and a general air of decline , and, of course, punk rock, there was a genuine sense of devolution.
2012? Is the summer of Blah . Unemployment, no work, no money, crime on the uptick, and a lethargy that comes from millions of teens with nothing to do and no urge to do it, and… not that much rock and roll.
2012 is just a whole lotta Festivals with nowhere to go, mediocre bands playing mediocre sets for well heeled 20 somethings paying upwards of $200. I do this for a living and you better believe me, this is a blah year and so far the teens have not been the noughts. How can a scene without a center hold? Now that everybody has stopped fooling themselves about Brooklyn, they've got nothing else to fool themselves about. And since no one has any jobs or any money, perhaps there is none around to make something happen, Even three years ago there was the sense Dance was about to transform itself, even last year there was Spotify.
But right now it is just about impossible to shake off the urge to take a nap.
There is no here, here. This is no us against them. There is no delineating line. Nothing to get upset about. Nothing to get excited about. All we can do is sit and snooze and wait for the General elections -what can save us from this season of apathy? It's not that the music scene is bad right now, it's not great but it's not terrible. It's that it is so spread out, it is difficult to feel it trending one way or the other.
When supporting the status quo (the President) feels like an act of insurrection, excuse us while we can't make heads or tails of our lives. While the best thing we can do is manage a yawn. And if Frank Ocean has the album of the summer (at least anesthetically), pop maybe has a problem.
The summer of blah, where nothing much matters and so what if it did.