5. Don't You Evah, by Spoon.
You've probably heard this song, but conveniently you can hear it _right now_ in this MOG post. It is for dancing and rocking out!
I have a couple weeks to go before the Spoon tour makes it up to my corner of North America. I'm super excited, even though I am pretty sure this show will attract the now-familiar contingent of fist-pumping frat boys who are twice the size of the traditional indie show-goers. (Hipsters, meet college students. Everybody, reacquaint yourselves with the absorbant powers of the mainstream.)
I am trying to open my heart about the meat head guys and the Girls Gone Wild, because I'm pretty sure that complaining about "the wrong people" coming to "my" shows is blatant snobbery and basically classism. They don't have the right manners? (Fists down, please!) They don't have suitably exclusive tastes? (How can one enjoy both Spoon and Nickelback? And WHAT are they drinking?) Those are the markers of LOWER CLASS, not an actual social crime. I'm thinking this is not the traditional income-based class system at work. It's more about cool points, where mainstream is the low class, and the higher ups are artists and outsiders and people who liked their first album.
This cool points snobbery has always bugged me about alternative/slacker/indie/hipster culture. (Seriously, if you constantly need somebody to be uncool in order to advance your revolution, that's a pretty shitty revolution.) So here's my big chance to cooperate instead of competing. Finding a way to exist in mindful, mutual respect with the meat heads. I'll let you know how THAT goes.
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I always thought it was a little unfair that the hipsters held the meat heads in such contempt, because the meat heads hold the hipsters in such high regard. Of course, I suppose it is to be expected, because one look at a person and you know exactly what type of music they enjoy and how much they contribute to society. It has always left me wondering why people don't just dress as they want to be perceived rather than actually making with the actions. It is an odd mix of admirable and foolish that so many people are out there going, "fuck what I look like, I'm a good person doing good things." They're just so fucking clueless. It's sad, really.
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Heee! Best comment ever. Say the opposite, say the opposite...
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The limits of my creativity have been sussed out and laid bare. Thanks, Ookpik!
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First of all, so glad to see you posting again! Second, my ultimate experience trying to co-exist within the meathead/hipster dichotomy happened at a Beck show during the Midnight Vultures tour in Austin. Texas is home to thousands of frat boys, but I was taken aback at how many showed up to see Beck. I cared less about the fact that they were frat boys then the fact that most of these guys insisted upon singing every lyric along with Beck. There seemed to be no point for me to be at the concert, I might as well have been at the local karaoke bar. Actually, i'd rather be around Joey's in cargo shorts and baseball caps than Pretenda Bonehard's in beards and skinny jeans. I'm freaked out when i'm surrounded by a cooler-than-thou contest! It's so exhausting.
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It's true Kate. It's kind of lose-lose. You can be subjected to the withering glances of the excessively cool, or just trying to survive among people who have a dog-eat-dog show-going mentality (drowning out the music, blocking the view, harrassing the ladies, etc...). Perhaps the optimum is just a healthy mix, so that no one subculture can get out of hand. Maybe I should be out there inviting hip hop heads and RPG geeks, to balance things better.
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I think the "cooler-than-thou" attitude transcends genres...the BF and I stuck out like sore thumbs when we were standing in line, waiting to get into the Troc to see Jello Biafra. Everyone was SO punk, especially the kids born well more than 10 years after its heyday...and then Biafra comes out on stage wearing the tackiest rainbow-striped mesh button-down shirt!
OK, so that was more a story of redemption.
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That's awesome, nicki.
I just read The Rebel Sell, about commercialism and competitive cool points in counter-culture. It had some problems (I mean, it's a pop-politics bestseller) but I thought it was pretty on the ball about the long history of cooler-than-thou. I think we get to blame the original hipsters, the beats. At least in North America.