Barely ten minutes into the Grammy's Sunday night and I had had enough and by the time I turned it off one and for all, I could feel my skin crawling.
Now, I am sure there are lots of people who hate mainstreet pop but I'm not one of them. I like quite a bit of it: Taylor Swift,LL Cool J, Pitbull, Jlo, and fun. I've got nothing much against any of them. Indeed, two of the names here are among my fave performers in 2013. But stick em in a tux and have them perfect public acts of self-felllatio and I can't watch it. I have to move on.
How is this possible?
The problem with modern rock is twofold
1. Social Networking has turned it into a reality show.
2. And Hip Hop has changed the Gekko creed Greed Is Good into the meaning behind the culture.
In the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s 1990s and 2000s there has been an alternative culture behind modern pop (the 1920s as well). But there wasn't in the 1980s and there isn't in the 2010s.
In 2013 music is wide and deep and if R&B and country are a little flat, dance has never been better. But there is no meaning behind it, no governing concern. It won't change your life, and it won't help you through. If you can take it on its own terms, it might well get you off. But the flip side of any one can do it is any one can listen to themselves do it, and music because a closed cell.
I am not saying we need or want (and I am saying I DON'T NEED OR WANT) a new punk movement, but punk taught me about socialism, racism, sexism. It gave me a very clear idea of social things that mattered to me. As well as changing the way I spoke, dressed, acted. Really, punk made me. But what is making today's teens?
There is no heart at the heart of rock and roll, there is no there there.
For all my love and admiration for huge chunks of music, maybe, on a daily basis, I love more new music than I have ever before, still, I love it from a distance and I can't and don't see it as anything more than what it is. One part balm, one part distraction. You might not be able to live without music but is there any musician you can't live without.
In 2013, to love rock and roll says nothing about you, implies nothing, is nothing: I love "Police Procedural" and "Rock And Roll". Oh, really?
In many ways I see this as a golden age but only musically, culturally it is irrelevant. If you don't agree, if you think the music doesn't matter because the music is no good, than obviously you won't connect it to the vapidness of its surroundings.