Music
Jun 25, 2009
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All contents © Index Newspapers LLC
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That said, I'm inclined to be ambivalent about all experience, and those years were fraught for me, as they were for you, with self-doubt and second-guessing. Perhaps the music didn't strike me as being particularly sexless because it sounded, more or less, like the sex I was having (or at least like the way I felt when I was trying to have it).
My favorite sex music is Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Is that weird (aside from the title)? My wife doesn't seem to think so, but she's hardly less odd than I am.
Oh, and I don't think it's as impossible as all that to get it on to Big Black. I just think that the kind of sex you have to Big Black requires all kinds of prior agreements and safe words.
Thank God I was dropping LSD and having sex to the Swans and Lydia Lunch before the 90s came and distorted the pure pleasure of fucking. But it did take awhile to rediscover the child-like simplicity of romance and tenderness without sarcastic irony. Not that indie rock helped there, either.
"You look at that broader audience, at mega indie-rock-oriented events like Sasquatch! or the Capitol Hill Block Party, and you see demonstrable sexual confidence, even peacockishness, both in terms of the dress-extra-in-a-DeBarge-video fashion reality—all those louche sideways baseball caps!—and general presence. Not much neurotic discomfort on view, unless you count the nerve damage caused by skinny jeans. Compared to the way similar gatherings would have looked 15 to 20 years ago (not that they could have even existed; an indie-rock festival filling the Gorge for three days in 1994 would have been a laughable prospect)—all uncomfortable-verging-on-apologetic slouches, body-deemphasizing garments, chewed cuticles, and autistic gazes."
2 words: Cocaine use.
In the 90's everyone was stoned on the strongest pot on the planet in this state in between discovering new beers from Dechutes and whiskey when the OK Hotel finally got their license for hard liquor. Nothing like whiskey dick and paranoia to put the brakes on any amorous intentions.
As for the music festival, it was called Lollapalooza and it looked pretty much EXACTLY like that. On the other hand it had fewer and better bands. Yes, less can be more concert promoters.
"When we did turn on the radio, the rock stations were obviously unlistenable (stuff like Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam sounded unbearably macho in this context..."
I have to defend Ed's bunch on this one. The Oedipal myth is a staple of psychology and the reversal of being hit on by your own mother was a pretty good twist. I would have labeled Vedder as most likely to cry over something that mattered (Ticketmaster) than macho any day.
That said: Best piece in this paper in ages. You and Charles are in rare form at the moment.
In 1994, 5 friends and I drove from Denver to Chapel Hill, NC, to spend 3 nights at Merge Records' 5th Anniversary gala, where they had 15 bands (including Archers of Loaf, Superchunk, Squirrel Nut Zippers [not yet a big band in the underground], Coral, Pipe, etc) play. We were all single, and one of us was a girl, but no one tried to get laid. It wasn't that we were sexless per se, it was that we weren't macho and didn't measure our self worth by the number of chicks we screwed.
Indie rock was music by and for people like us. The zeitgeist of the time briefly gave it wide appeal, but the fact that today's "indie" rock has the sound but little of this attitude, shows that it was meant for a more select audience.
The fear we had of the desired sex in "alternative rock" in the early 90s helped teach many of us some manners, raised our consciousness so the scene could be safe to approach someone and not repeat mainstream/mean punk rock game-playing. (As an 80s punk, I was just lousy with how to treat young ladies.) My wife was looking for a truce with a boy, for someone to play with (our courtship was reading "Love & Rockets" on the floor of my apartment and slamming in the pit at fairly safe all ages punk shows). She'd admit it herself that if I had acted at all predatory our deep, sweet, traditional but very emotional romance would never have happened. I chalk it up somewhat to her shaved head and toughness, the sexism-baiting songs and zines of the period, "dead men don't rape" graffiti in Belltown, and a swarm of sweet new adolescent energy growing in a scene that was often mortifying beforehand.
If the "uncool" becomes "cool" around twenty years after its initial debut, then you see where I'm coming from. 2009 marks the end of this decade, as well as the dissolution of our preoccupation with wealth, power, sex, etc. It is not unrealistic, then, to also mark the the end of this decade as the point where we trend toward the decade that preceded it twenty years ago. Our fascination with the 1980s is now coming to an abrupt end (this can be witnessed in the wider-embracing of 80s trends by those in our society who possess the least influence on trends in general - the "late comers").
So, the question is, are we now poised for a revival of so many aspects that shaped the 1990s? The answer becomes apparent as we look at politics and culture. With a liberal democrat in highest office and marijuana again gaining widespread popularity, the answer is superficially "yes" (drugs and politics are good indicators of societal direction). Whether we will now develop the same fascination with the 1990s that we are presently letting go of in regard to the 1980s remains to be seen. Next decade should be interesting nonetheless.
Editor's revision: Indie rock encouraged us to not act like macho idiots 'cuz most girls actually don't like that.
Did I leave anything out?
Bullshit. You weren't looking to get screwed because of feminist or anti-macho messages in the music you were listening to. You weren't looking to get screwed because you were playing it safe like many younsters in the nineties. You listened to safe, boring music while being bombarded with the media's "safe sex" and messages during the most impressionable time of your lives.
Any real grrls left at the stranger?
I think things are reverting back to pre-90s mentality with faux sex-positivism being touted by people who aren't comfortable with their sexuality outside of the way it's viewed by others. If I had grown up with Suicide Girls and burlesque, I think I would have been missing the point.
What the 90s told guys is it's up to you to change your attitudes about women - we're not here to educate you. If you want to know the definition of feminism, look it up in a book. So maybe guys did feel that the culture of this decade left their sexuality deflated, because for the first time, they had to take some accountability, and I'm sure for a lot of guys that was a boner kill. But for the girls I knew, it was awesome.
234 has a point, too.
duhduhduhdudhduhduhduhdDUHDUHDHDUHDUHD...
'this bed is on fIRE..' when the songs were overtly sexual, even, the dominant modalities were starting to be challenged...awesome...xx
sasha
classic rock 'n' roll, anyone?
your capacity for self delusion is astonishing. as a species, we will always be preoccupied with wealth, power, sex.
for what its worth, this was easily my favorite part of the pop conference. even more than john rodderick on the groupie panel.
I got laid, but didn't have to go under the whole macho schtick.
But oh well, whatever, nevermind.
I still think the thesis was challengeable on other bases, for reasons I noted above, but reasonable people could still disagree. Losing most of the goth, synth-pop, and industrial contingency from the alternative movement, however, looks in hindsight like stacking the deck.
That said, this was still the most fun I've had reading a music article in The Stranger in some time.