| |
|
It's what the bands are singing about that people are fighting over, or what they sound like. So it becomes a battle of ideas or asethetic preferences masked as a battle of bands. Yet kids are stpuid, so they don't realize what they're actually fighting over. At least that's my take on it.
Yeah, that's basically it isn't it.. and fair enough I suppose, a lot of the time it's cool for kids to feel like they belong to something, have a readymade gang of allies in any given situation etc. You could go into the sheer ridiculousness of the position taken by all these kids in Slipknot hoodies carrying on like they're so much better than those other dumb kids with their stupid manufactured pop etc., but give 'em a break, they're only kids.. If they're still saying that when they're 30 I suppose then it becomes something of a problem..
what was I talking about again?
Oh yeah, musical cliques and so forth. I actually really enjoy watching the way they develop, figuring out which people fit into each one etc. It was interesting the other night, I went to see Converge play, and they seemed to attract a really wide variety of different kinds of fans of 'heavy music' - straight edge hardcore kids, drunken punky kids, metalheads, bearded stoner dudes, braver species of indie kids, nerdy noise-freaks etc. It was interesting watching these different groups whose taste in music was basically the same but with different haircuts and vocal styles interact, especially given the similar variety of the support bands - this band made up of grumpy skinhead guys come on and start with "we are hardcore from Belgium, this song's about falling down and picking yourself up" or some similar nonsense, and all the H-C kids go nuts for them while I stand there thinking "god, this is lame..", and then a stoner/metal band follow them and I, and the stoner/metal people in the audience, are like "yeah, this is great!", while the hardcore folks wander off to pointedly NOT go to the bar or whatever it is they do..
There was no huge musical difference between the two bands, just that the latter one had longer hair and guitar solos and growly vocals, and yet completely different reactions, from me as well as everybody else, just based on preconcieved sub-cultural divisions, and pretty small ones at that..
And what's that rousing tale supposed to illustrate? I dunno.. I guess the fact that, given my wide-ranging musical taste, I find myself trying to fit into any number of different sub-cultures as the occasion demands, and it's surprisingly easy to get caught up in one of them or the other, even if it's only for one evening, despite oweing equal allegiance to all of them and constantly reminding yourself that strict genre divisions are pointless anyway.. or something. |
|
|
