08-05-2016, 12:20 AM
(08-03-2016, 01:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I feel two ways about people liking such stuff as grunge, heavy metal, core punk, rap and shallow pop. On the one hand, as John Lennon said, whatever gets you through the night, it's all right. Whatever people enjoy is OK with me. I don't disrespect people for liking the music I don't, or vice-versa.
On the other hand, I say people ought to know better. That stuff is obvious trash (in my opinion). It is the worse stuff I have ever heard from any time in history, and I know a lot of times in history. That's why I think some of you guys can't really be serious, and why I even might say that that stuff is noise for boise. Of course, we all have our boys sides, and we never really fully grow up and throw out that part of us, so why is that an insult, Tara? "Shake it off," Tara. Stop preaching, and chill out, Miss angry, volatile Scorpio/Pluto young lady Millennial! It really is tiring. And this is not going to be the start of an endless squabble. I've said my piece, and I'm NOT going to change my mind due to insults from you, Tara. Grow up and stop being a boi.
I have an ideal: that we the people need to be more sensitive, gentle, feminine, discerning, interested in beauty, imaginative, open to mystical experience in the arts; and NOT just insist that our music has to be only macho and aggressive or else it's somehow inauthentic. Rubbish, and you ought to know better. The right balance is what I like.
To me, grunge embodied that balance. The music was aggressive, robust, and there was a madness to it. Yes, it was sloppy, but the sloppiness added to the emotional power. Pounding music, guys (with long, flowing romantic hair) screaming, thrashing, throwing themselves into a teeming crowd to be tossed back up again. Yet, as Mills pointed out on the other thread, the music was often melodic and sensitive, if tinged with cynicism, and they sang songs about Mother Earth, the downtrodden homeless, women trapped in abusive relationships, their own mental labyrinths. This was masculine virility with intellect, and soul--and directed toward the feminine. Not in a "oh baby I want to f*ck you" sort of way, like the hard rock bands of the two previous decades, but more towards the mystical feminine--the thoughtful, the sensitive, the vulnerable. The early 90s seemed to me like a blast of Byronic Romanticism.
From wikipedia:
Quote: Historian and critic Lord Macaulay described the Byronic Hero character as "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection".
Sounds a bit like Kurt Cobain to me. Well, maybe without the "implacable in revenge" part. Substitute that for perverse sense of humor and self-destructive heroine addiction. And ratty cardigan sweaters.
