29th
WHY I AM SO WISE: HARDCORE (SORT OF) EDITION
So I am establishing a new feature here on tumblr that I have spontaneously decided (right now) to call “WHY I AM SO WISE.” The goal is to present to you, readers (mike agresta), musics that Thuggie and I think were key to our present greatness. The secondary goal here is to not bullshit yall. Sometimes not being full of shit is a full time job. In this spirit, I pledge to you to disavow no CD, to claim no cred, to attempt no reverse-I-was-such-a-dork-it-is-actually-cool-now revisionism. To what end? More cred, clearly.
Let’s start with my pseudo-love for Southern California hardcore music. Hardcore was the first time that I had any contact with a “scene.” Hardcore is a “scene” in the purest sense of the term, because at any given time, 79% of the audience ACTUALLY HATES the band that they are watching. I liked hardcore because my friends and my brother liked hardcore and also for a whole bunch of dorky reasons that I never let on to any of my hardcore friends but that I will tell you now.
1) Feats.
I love feats. One of my main theses about the suckiness of modern culture is the decline of the feat. A feat is something that is very difficult to do that is utterly useless. Eating fire, walking on glass and, of course, shredding ridiculously on some fucking guitar. What differentiated hardcore at the time that I listened to it was that it was very technical–let’s face it, if you are straight-edge what else do you have to do besides work out and practice tapping–there were mad time changes, there were no choruses (or 8) and everything was very fast. All of this meant that you watched Converge and you were like, HOLY SHIT THAT IS SOMETHING I CAN’T DO. I appreciate that. Nowadays people want bands that are essentially indistinguishable, talent-wise, from the audience. This helps the video-store clerks that form the audience nurse the illusion that they could achieve Fader-fame if they REALLY wanted to. Nah, dude, too busy making tall bikes.
2) Rhythm.
In many hardcore bands, there is no real distinction between the rhythm section and the rest of the band: the whole band is the rhythm section. This yields some pretty complex approaches to rhythm that run counter to the “do this three times and then play a fill and then repeat that until we hit 4 minutes and then stop” approach to music. Now, usually rhythmically complex music is associated with sexiness, but that is not the only option. Violence is clearly an option. What is not an option is cliche, earnest-sounding pap about boarding school.
3) No wusses.
Just because you are being honest and positive (don’t forget that most hardcore has that “you can do it” angle) doesn’t mean that you have to be a wiener. This is a lesson that has been lost, somehow.
With all of that as the background, I give you:
Bet Against Me, You Lose–Death By Stereo
