Thursday, June 02, 2005
Tanning Soundtrack vs. Teenage Angst
Don't get me wrong. I'm 100% in favor of Tears for Fears AND Duran Duran (though "View to a Kill" is not their best). The difference is: you listen to metal while you are lying out, thinking of nothing but your gorgeous tan and/or skin cancer, or while you sit next to the pool, trying to be cool. Tears for Fears, Violent Femmes, Duran Duran, B-52s: these you listen to while you drive around in your car with your same sex friends while you lament the lack of attention from the opposite sex and/or how much your hometown sucks and how your life is going to be amazing and fantastic as soon as you move out of this terrible town. Sometimes you stop and get a Big Gulp or a Frosty. Sometimes you cruise, but you aren't trying to pick anyone up. You are, for once, enjoying your angst, reveling in it, finding in it an expression of the basic human condition. The only music for this: Scritti Politti, Tears for Fears, Violent Femmes. Even Prince, sometimes. My point is: they are not mutually exclusive. I need many soundtracks, including "Summer Metal" and "Summer Angst."
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5 comments:
"Pour Some Sugar On Me" is not metal. "Jump" is not metal. Neither is Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again." These songs are Something-Other-Than-Metal and deserve our derision. And I resent that "'View To a Kill' is not their best" comment! That song is a masterpiece! Have you ever tried to sing it at karaoke? It's impossible! That whole upper-register "Dance into the fire" bit is perfect for public humiliation...
But ultimiately, there is only one group in this world, Dr. Write, and that, as I'm sure you know, is Public Enemy.
Aha, an important distinction. I am now jonesing for some Panama ala David Lee Roth. And some hot rays. But not too hot--I'm liking 70 degree summer so far.
I love Scritti Politti!
If I think back to my own youth, however, as opposed, say, to yours, I realize that summer music for me was stuff like the early, great McCartney solo stuff, seventies soul, and the reliables--Paul Simon, Jackson Browne (Late for the Sky--the very, very best), Joni Mitchell, James Taylor.
I will say, however, that certain kinds of harder rock--Zeppelin, for instance--does really trigger the aura of teenage years. You don't have to like it to have it be evocative, either. For instance, I have never liked Def Leppard, but hearing "Pyromania" brings back a sharp whiff of certain of my young mom years, when we got our first color tv and cable, and thus, MTV (back when they showed videos).
1: Well Van Halen is the start of glam metal, Sleep. Tell me they did not inspire Faster Pussy Cat and Poison! Go on, tell me! I think Dr. Write is thinking purely of glam.
2: Notorious. Need one say more?
3: Wow my summer soundtrack is actually the Donnie Darko soundtrack. Go look on iTunes.
I must clarify #3: my 80s summer soundtrack.
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