If you've been keeping track (why would you?), most of my blogpost titles are songs. Music is important, some bands more than the other. My older brother is 8 years my senior and he was in high school/college in the early 90s. That was when GNR, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Metallica, Megadeth were setting the world on fire, one tape at a time. Contrast that with me in the late 90s - we had Backstreet Boys, NSync and Britney Spears. Thank god my brother was too busy dating to notice I was stealing his tapes.
While I have been angsty (at times) as a teen, I've never truly felt my life sucked or that the world deserved to burn. Chaos is never self sustaining, and being jaded and disorderly gets old really fast. Watching bands careers unfold as they spend year after year expressing discontent is a surreal experience. Case in point - Nirvana and Cobain. They were hailed as the creative geniuses of their times, the true voice of a troubled youth, and friends in misery for the MTV generation. Their tunes were angry, incoherent, garbled and messed up - reflecting the truly troubled times. All this no doubt makes for a great wikipedia entry, but really - it's all utter bullshit. I'm sure the African Americans in the 60s knew something about pain, and they found the Blues. I see BB King has no songs that go "Albino, mosquito".
It must be really hard to feel the anger when your records are fetching millions, and so follows the inevitable "self destruction". I'll never know what it is like growing up in a broken home, with divorced parents, gun running neighbors, drug peddlers on the street corners and all that. But somehow I find it hard to believe incomprehensible lyrics represent the struggles of suburbanite white youth.
How much did it amount to anyway? What happened to the angry young kids of the 90s who thought they'd change the world with their anger? Why don't you ask the guy in the cube next to you?
Thursday, April 16, 2009
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2 comments:
Oh just because you mention it there are jobless people in this world who are keeping note of the trend.
Haha! You know just the other day I was thinking how the angry young man image is so passe and the whole concept-ideology has had its run and is now as ancient and hideous looking as our desi angry young man, AB. I never really understood the angry and young concept anyway- deal with whatever is at hand in the most optimum best possible manner. Being angry with the world is just such a bloody turn-off. More so when men think it will get them laid. Ha, yeah sure!
I think the 70s were different in India. It was the time for the angry young man. We were shrugging off socialism, trying to get rich and boy were we pissed. AB - tall, thin and red eyed represented all that and more.
Now it's almost comical. Like screaming "YEAH MAN LINKIN PARK!"
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