14189 - Music, part 2 of 5

The moment when I started considering myself “old” was in 2001. I went with a friend to see a 90’s cover band. It was 2001 and I was listening to a band that was covering Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains; what made this band suck though was that they covered Hootie and the Blowfish, Dave Matthews Band, and Counting Crows. I’m not a huge fan of the later three bands and they do not sound good when played after hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. It was a good thing they didn’t try to cover Dr. Dre as well. What a mishmash of different styles the 90s were, from the downfall of “hair-metal”, to the “alternative” scene, rap, hip hop, and the beginnings of teen pop. I think MTV even played music back when I was going through high school.

Back when music was helping form my identity there was no internet downloading of music, American Idol, or hit bands doing the opening theme for shows. There also was making cassette tapes for friends, and loaning CDs (and inevitably losing them) to others. Automobiles had cassette players in them and for many playing a CD meant having to make a tape, or get one of those tape shaped adaptors.

Back to my original point though; every generation has some musical influence upon them that stays with them and will always seem better than “whatever is out now”. Once in 1992 (or 1991) I was wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt to a family gathering (Christmas I think) and someone said “Who is NIN?” At that point NIN had not left my CD player for about a year now. To some of my associates that were older Motley Crue and Poison were the musical influence; whatever I was listening to could not compare. Now that I have gotten over caring about how commercial a band is; Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Nine Inch Nails were those bands for me, simply better than anything out there because they are part of my musical identity. There are bands/performers that are so good that I just don’t compare their work with anyone else’s; this would be the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Rush, and Tori Amos.

Am I old because Nirvana is better than Fall Out Boy? I think that this is a big part of it. There are a few new musical acts that I really like (The Dresden Dolls) but they do not provoke the same reaction in me that older bands do. This goes to albums too, the new Pearl Jam and Tool albums are great, but it takes much more than great to beat “Ten”, and “Undertow”. October 19^th, 1993 I went across the street to “Sound Warehouse” where I bought “Vs.” the new album by Pearl Jam and “Counterparts” the new album by Rush, with a friend of mine. The store manger pointed out to me that Pearl Jam will never be as big as Rush, they were just a fad. Their second album was to fail and they would fad to obscurity. This point of view was preposterous at the time, I have come closer to this line of thinking by making it too difficult for a new band to be a modern classic.