Premier Rock Forum

Like everyone else I'm being subjected to these "best of 2003" lists and jesus fucking christ if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs et al aren't on every last fucking list.

I've always told myself this "garage revival" thing isn't as pervasive as it appears, that really it's hyped by a few people in New York who make it seem like a much bigger thing than it actually is.

This "movement" takes its cues from the Poison/ Whitesnake/ Def Leppard etc. movement in the eighties as another dubious co-optation of a very fertile genre. Also in the casualness of the fans' estimation of the music. I would argue that Whitesnake et al co- opted Led Zeppelin much more responsibly than the Yeah Yeah Yeahs et al co- opt the Ramones. I've really been enjoying "Out of the Cellar" by Ratt lately. Will I enjoy the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the 2020's?

Is this current revival more insidious than the 80s revival because it's fucking with more sacred things? Of course everyone's always pointing to everything as the death knell of a previously fertile underground movement. But seriously, I'm depressed.

Correct my historical myopia! Please prove me wrong!

How is garage rock defined? I mean I've played in garages before, and it was rock... But seriously how can this be a genre? I've heard the yeah yeah yeahs, Call me Billy Joel, but it all sounds like rock and roll to me.

-wilson

alex

i know what you are talking about, i think

i believe these things are cyclical, and we are in a period very much like the mid-80s, when most of the interesting music was happening way out on the margins, with a little bit of it right up on the surface. and hardly anything of any lasting importance in between.

this assessment hinges on some appreciation for modern r&b/hiphop....

anyway, back then, say 1984, new wave had surfaced as a culturally acceptable alternative to punk rock. the 'new wave approximating punk' dichotomy might be more like what you mention than the 'hair metal approximating hard rock' deal. you had duran duran and myriad hacks of that stripe as the face of, uh, hip--it's as easy to write that shit off today as it will be to write off the shit you are talking about, but at the time people...actually...took...some of that music seriously.

the really exciting music was not covered in mainstream press much. there were intermittent glints of entertaining music in the mainstream, like...i don't know, prince or the gogos or some cyndi lauper single you might like or whatever. van halen. you know how it goes. but it was obvious what was of lasting importance back then, and i think it's pretty obvious what's of lasting importance right now.

the key was: there was this imposter music that bore some superficial relationship to music that people like me or you might actually like. this didn't happen so much in the late 80s after new wave burned out. most of the crap on the charts was charts crap, and most of the interesting music was the product of an underground that was more or less self-supporting.

nowadays, that underground has blown up--it became a commercially viable thing, and once that happened, the record companies and imposter bands did their best to coopt its saleable elements. the 'scene' of interesting music, such as it is, is incredibly fragmented--the network it used to work on has been perverted to other uses. the music, as a result, is as underground as it's ever been. you see fewer bands selling enough records to sustain themselves, etc.

you can start with the advent of rock and roll in the mid-50s and look at popular music since then--this pattern repeats itself about every ten years or so. golden age begets commercialization begets a new underground begets golden age etc.

it's not a lot of fun to go through if you pay attention to the implications--it's harder to find the music you like, and it's harder for the people who make that music to make it. but it's still out there, and it won't stay like this forever. the bands that you talk about will be gone once there's no hype surrounding them, having completed their art projects.

i think we usually tend to see things through our own eyes... deep, huh?

how can you jump from the 80's hair metal to the modern garage revival without addressing what came between? remember the ska-pop movement of the 90's? yeah, me neither. that's probably what will happen to your garage revival in 10 years. it will have barely existed. who knows. seems like what usually happens with those huge mainstream success stories (i.e. the strokes, def leppard, etc) is that they tour big and make a fuckload of money, and then are boring and yesterday's news. remember the punk-pop revival of the mid 90's or whenever that green day thing happened? remember green day? yup, me neither.

everything repeats, goes away, comes back, sucks, rules, whatever. in more recent history we had the big thug-hop movement which is still lingering, the britney-clones or janet jackson clones or diana ross clones or whoever all these young chicks are emulating that sing like showtime at the appolo and dress like whores... mmm... um, what else... yeah, that garage rock thing that happened or is still happening, or is it, i dunno... all those nu metal bands aren't/weren't much more than varying amounts of 80's/90's crap rock meeting 80's thrash meeting a larger amount of grunge-type stuff...

the important thing is to remember that pure creativity does not exist. that nobody out there is capable of completely removing every influence on them, from songs they listened to a thousand times as a teen to songs they heard on the radio twice as a toddler. everyone is influenced. whether or not you're aware of it. if you're like me, you prize creativity and really lean towards music that has its own kinda thing going on (even though it's got its influences, because *everyone* does)... i love polvo. they really did things their own way, i think. moreso than any "garage rock" band, since in my perception at least, "garage rock" tends to be very tonal and straightforward pop music, right? which is a very, very old formula, like, as old as coca cola or something.

but my prizing of creativity aside, i can't invalidate a band solely on the basis of the fact that they sound like another band i like. though i still do. and to answer your question about whether or not you'll like the yeah-yeah-yeah's in 2020, i have a guess. i think just like the kids today that get a boner for the yyy's probably don't give two shits about ratt, in 2020 they'll be getting back into the yyy's and talking about how much they hate the dancehall-raggae revival that's going on at the time. or the rockabilly revival. or the grunge revival, or the disco revival, or whatever it is that comes back into favor in the year 2020.

and i'd like to add to your list : the shins, the white stripes, the hives, the vines, the etc etc... all of the "the" bands. and the most important of all, the suckfest that ensures that the revival is over, Jet. do they have anything beyond that one song, y'know, the ipod commercial song? i'm hoping that next up is a Journey revival.

If the "garage revival" is a blip in the sense that the "new wave revival" of the 80s was a blip, then what was the Williamsburg of the 80s?

alex wrote: But seriously, I'm depressed.

Correct my historical myopia! Please prove me wrong!

well, the problem there is with history is that it doesn't end. sure enough we can tell when it began to be interesting for us (me, 1917) but until our death it's not gonna stop and, as far as r*ck goes (me, 1972), it's going to get worse than it is now simply because as we get along there will be more and more revival fodder.

Yes, there will be a white stripes revival sometime in the next 20 years, oh yes I tell you now.

There will be a revival of everything there was and you (and me) won't learn anything from them, we will just hate those and hopefully that is because we will know what is happening right now.

ok, next question is:
what is happening right now ?!

It just seems like the imposter bands are rated right there next to the good bands unlike ever before. By people who should know better. Like if Forced Exposure had Whitesnake or Duran Duran in their top ten list in the 80s. When Lincoln Park was first being gentrified it wasn't about music, was it? They stuck to their Jettas (what was the Jetta of the 80s?) and the Gap and found underground music repulsive, right? That's the way gentrifiers should be, stop meddling in our business.

I blame, you know, postmodern spurning of authenticity. All art is only simulacra so the more overtly co- opted the better.

But let's face it, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs wouldn't even garner a second glance if there weren't a girl in the band. You get to the point where if someone recommends a band with a girl in it you have to be default suspicious because people are always overlooking the music when there's a girl involved.

So girls and postmodernism. That's who's to blame.

It just seems like the imposter bands are rated right there next to the good bands unlike ever before. By people who should know better. Like if Forced Exposure had Whitesnake or Duran Duran in their top ten list in the 80s.

but i don't think there's an equivalent of forced exposure today--on that level, with that impact

that's kind of my point--that kind of discourse was a byproduct of a fertile underground. that fertile underground begat some things, one way or another, that made money. mainstream culture vultures took the things that made money and either bought them outright or made some simulacra of them to make money. and that's where we're at today, with a more underground underground to go along with it. to wit: anything remotely like FE, i don't know about it, and FE was impossible to ignore 'back in the day.'

"guy mercier" wrote:

There will be a revival of everything there was and you (and me) won't learn anything from them, we will just hate those and hopefully that is because we will know what is happening right now.

that pretty much sez it all

if i think something is bogus, i move on because:

1. i don't care
2. i would drive myself crazy trying to suss out why it is what it is
3. i don't care
4. i would waste time i could have spent with something that pleases me

julie from mod squad wrote:if i think something is bogus, i move on because:

1. i don't care
2. i would drive myself crazy trying to suss out why it is what it is
3. i don't care
4. i would waste time i could have spent with something that pleases me

Yeah, it's this year end onslaught that's making it hard to ignore. But what was I thinking? People who write top ten lists are quantifiers at heart anyway. What the fuck do they know.

But wouldn’t it be exciting if American arguments over authenticity were more like this?

don't get me wrong

i understand completely

i cannot read the music magazines anymore, for they tend to depress me in this way of which you speak

the bouzouki controversy is very interesting