The Great Music Game of Tetris

Image courtesy of Heli Luoma

Ah music journalism, it manages to combine tabloid and snobbery in a perfect toxic mix. Whether it’s jumping on bandwagons or narrowing creativity with lazy comparisons, it always manages to miss the point and herd the cultural ruminants (see, I can be a snob too).

One of their worst crimes is labelling. They applaud genre breaking artists and then create new boxes to house them in. It’s a journalistic game of Tetris, where the highest achievement is to label something that’s bubbling up underground and homogenise it. As the saying goes, the tragedy of a good idea is that everyone wants to join in.

As some labels become so specific as to be a memory of the original point, a kind of musical homoeopathy, others become so broad as to be meaningless, which is how you get Classic Rock. 

I’ll meet you at that crossroads of 1991 …

BC - Before Cobain

Despite the purifying reputation of Nirvana, they are, to me at least, offensively mediocre. Farty power chords, clumpy drums and the type of self-pitying lyrics that you’d expect from an arrogant, self-loathing junkie. They’re also nauseatingly snobbish. “He’s the one who likes our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along … but he knows not what it means (snidey guitar fart)”. 

“Oh, but they killed the spandex rock stars of the 80’s”, so the narrative goes. But they did no such thing. Ironically, it was Guns n’ Roses that killed that scene. No one had worn spandex since about 1987, four or five years before Nirvana broke. They were pushing at an open door, with the full backing of a major record label. These weren’t plucky outsiders, just a more marketable version of the far superior Pixies. It has the volume, but none of the energy.

And what exactly was he rebelling against? Rock stars? In that case, he’s the worst rebel of all time. It’s an easy thing to avoid, almost every human being in the history of the world has managed it.

Don’t join a band, don’t write songs, don’t play gigs, don’t sign a record deal, don’t sign a record deal with a major label, don’t make videos for MTV, don’t go on world tours, don’t do interviews selling your music and don’t die at the age of 27. Cobain did all that, accidentally apparently. Give the man a perm and he’s every bit an 80’s cliche as Whitesnake.

But facts matter little, only legends, which are largely informed by journalists.

Classic Rock and Metal Trousers

The label Classic Rock didn’t really appear until the late 1990’s, before which it was mockingly called “Hair Rock” or the more amusing “Cock Rock”. But, as the “curse” of pre-1991 refused to die, they wanted a catch-all term and  “Classic” fit the bill. It wasn’t serious, like Straight Edge Grindcore Prog Acid Punk, but it’s nice to have something ironic to sing along to at Glasto.

And so everything from Little Richard to Motley Crue, The Who to T-Rex, The Rolling Stones to Motorhead, is put in the sepia-toned, nostalgia box of “Classic”. Meanwhile, a skateboarder changes the shape of his trousers and Metal gets a new subgenre. 

Brit Pop

The always appalling journalist Stuart McConie came up with the cringe-inducing term Brit Pop, in part as an antidote to the furrowed brow of Grunge. It was mainly born of sensitive shoegazers who, once Oasis broke, suddenly became “Fackin geezers!” The most infamous of these were Blur and their Parklife impression of The Kinks, but they were far from alone.

Other, far more interesting bands were also thrown into the label, such as the Manic Street Preachers and Pulp, again narrowing artistic expression to a fleeting fashion. It was soon adopted by New Labour under the equally cringe-inducing “Cool Britannia”.

Within a few years, those who claimed to hang around Walthamstow Dog Track, suddenly found their original accents and were “serious songwriters”, with as furrowed a brow as any Grunge poseur.

Metal, Punk and the Lamination Process

There are two genres that escaped the Classic Rock catch all label and it’s telling which two they are. Punks and Metallers throughout the 1980’s, were labelled racist untermenschen, but by 91, it was suddenly decided that these unwashed noise merchants were laudable, well sort of. 

As is always the case, they have to redefine it years after the fact to suit their worldview. The Sex Pistols were fine when they banged on about the “fascist regime” but that nice son of a diplomat, Joe Strummer of the Clash, is the real King of Punk. He dresses up like a Sandinista and it’s so edgy. 

Metallica were fine and all that, but couldn’t they throw in a few ballads? So we end up with the Black Album, produced by Bon Jovi’s Bob Rock.

After Grunge, it was all put through a lamination process, which is how we ended up with Nu Metal and Nickelback.

Gluten Free Punk

In 1993, Tom Waits won best Alternative album at the Grammys, responding with “Alternative to what?”

Alternative means nothing, it describes nothing, other than not being like some other undefined thing. The nearest to a description you can get is it isn’t mainstream, but it is, and has been for decades. In fact, “Alternative” has been the mainstream of Rock Music since 91, which is as long as “Classic Rock” had existed before it. 

Straight Edge has to be the most galling of all alternative music genres. It doesn’t describe music, or even fashion, it just means you don’t drink or take drugs. It’s the music equivalent of veganism, it only exists to announce its superiority. 

Transcending Labels

Language works by labeling things, they’re shortcuts that allow us to communicate in as concise a way as possible, so it has some uses. But it’s ironic that the era so proud to break down such labels ended up being the most narrow in its outlook. I think that’s because they missed the point.

Labeling can narrow vision and close of minds. Like arguments about gender, crossing genres wasn’t the point, paying no attention to the labels in the first place was. 

There are many reasons why this century has started so vapidly regarding music, but the “genius” of Cobain and what followed is certainly a large part of that. It’s not Cobain's fault, he was a weak man with a guitar, an unsuspecting victim of a narrative that he somewhat willingly fell into. 

These are, along with heroin and all the arrogance and self-pity that always comes with that drug, the more likely reasons for his suicide. That’s a less interesting narrative, however, for a necrophiliac media. 

Thankfully, music journals, and therefore most music journalism, is mostly dead, which is partly because there doesn’t seem to be much to write about anymore.

Perhaps pop(ular) music is just dead, it’s had its time, and there’s a new artform brewing that will explode once the censoriousness of this era has subsided. I certainly hope so. But let’s create new labels, with exciting fashions and art, then subvert them with creativity, not self-regard and snobbish cliques. 

I for one want no part of the Vegan Grindcore Digital Poetry scene.