so i went and saw the ‘rock school’ or ‘school of rock’ or whatever it’s called movie this evening and it was very sweet. kind of like ‘dead poets society’ for the lollapalooza generation. my only criticism is that the female bass player didn’t get a solo as the credits were rolling.
everyone else got a solo. why didn’t the female bass player get a solo?
i don’t know why this bugged me so much, but it did. a lovely movie, compromised by the fact that the female bass player was the only member of an 8 piece band who didn’t get a closing credits solo.
she should’ve been given her own solo. poor little bass player.
my only other criticism was the shrill and one-dimensional portrayal of the roommates girlfriend. apart from that it was a very nice movie and jack black did a stellar job, especially when he’s singing his song, a capella, for the class.
ok, enough about popular culture.
although it is bizarre to routinely see the marginal culture with which i was raised routinely referenced in main stream, 21st century pop culture.
the buzzcocks?
the modern lovers?
the sex pistols?
the clash?
i remember wearing a sex pistols t-shirt in high-school and having garbage thrown at me for being a punk rocker.
and i guess in my naive way i had hoped that the mainstream appropriation of punk rock and alternative music culture would’ve ended a bit differently than it has.
some mainstream appropriation of punk rock culture has been healthy, like the ‘school of rock’ movie. but 90% of the mainstream appropriation of punk rock and alternative music culture has been dreadful in the extreme. the violent, homophobic, and misogynistic ‘rape rock’ that we’ve had to endure for the last 6 or 7 years is, unfortunately, the offspring of the pacifist, tolerant, and relatively enlightened punk rock and alternative music scenes of the early to mid 80’s.
i guess we can only hope that things will change, and that the violent, homophobic, republican, misogynistic, lowest common denominator, greedy, mercenary, abusive musical and cultural crap that we’ve had to endure for the last few years will eventually go away.
maybe, as i’ve said before, as music becomes less profitable it’ll become more special. and maybe kids in suburbia who want to make money will no longer think of music as a potentially lucrative career path. i know, i’ve made some money through music. but, for what it’s worth, that was never my intention. my musical dreams as i was growing up were solely of the ‘make good music and try to get signed to a small record company’ brand of musical dreams. i hope that the fact that i’ve made money through music doesn’t invalidate my belief that the profit motive as applied to music and music culture has yielded more than it’s fair share of crap. and if the fact that i’ve been co-opted by the mainstream somehow invalidates my opinion, well, then i hope that people who have never been co-opted by the mainstream come to the same conclusion that i’ve come to, which is that music that is created solely in the interest of acquiring fame and money always sucks and is always damaging to the potentially beautiful and noble things that can be represented by music and music culture.
ok, enough from me for tonight. i’m going to go to sleep.
moby