where is my angst rock? (1)
Posted 24 June, 2004 in music
recently i’ve been listening to a lot of pop, mainstream rap, electronica, and dancehall music. this is because a. i listen to the rap, pop, and electronica stations when i drive around, b. o listens to a lot of electronica and dancehall music, and c.my favorite things to download are really bad pop and mainstream rap. the funniest thing about this is when our guy friends come over to play poker, as they do sometimes, and we put the ipod on random, and suddenly britney spears starts playing really loudly. i can’t help but laugh.
but i can’t help noticing a void in my musical life that used to be filled by rock. i don’t mean stuff like lynyrd skynyrd or led zeppelin, both of whom i will always listen to. i mean young angsty dude type rock. rock that makes me start to relate to the lyrics, and then i start stewing about my relationship with my mom/dad/husband/friends/lack thereof/ex/self/heritage/work/clothing etc., and i get all misty-eyed and start pondering the meaning of life and my purpose and stuff. then i feel really lame for being so teenagery. “man, that davey from AFI really *knows* what he’s talking about.”
there isn’t any perfect angsty rock out there right now, in my opinion. AFI=too pooty. same with dashboard confessional. linkin park=ok, but not really dark enough. evanescence=too piano-y. korn kept making the same album over and over again, limp bizkit suck without wes borland, and mike patton just got too damn weird for me. i know i should listen to stuff like down and superjoint ritual, because from what i have heard, it sounds angsty as hell, but i haven’t been able to find it anywhere to downl….i mean i am too poor to buy it. yeah.
i have been getting depressed to rock music ever since i was about 12. my friends and i would listen to hysteria, the album by def leppard, on the stereos in the music rooms at school, and lounge around staring into space and sometimes complaining about guys we liked. when i moved to america, not only did i discover classic rock, but i stepped right into the wave of butt-rock that swept over southern california in the late eighties. poison! faster pussycat! guns n’roses! i went to my first show, aerosmith and skid row. after that, i went to several guns n’roses shows in several states. i owned a jack daniels t-shirt. i was rock! but my favorites were always anything angsty. it didn’t have to be a ballad, it could be “peace sells” by megadeth, but it had to have that special misery- or rage-inspiring quality to it. i was a misery and rage junkie.
later, when butt-rock went away, i got into alt-angst like nine inch nails and smashing pumpkins. i also had a metalhead boyfriend who turned me on to pantera, and then wished he hadn’t when i insisted upon playing “cemetery gates” 5 times in a row on his mom’s car’s cassette player, rewinding and fast-forwarding. when we broke up, i sat in my room and listened to metallica’s ride the lightning album. oh, the bitterness and darkness that pervaded my soul! i loved it.
later, in college, i discovered fugazi, bad religion, and operation ivy, about ten years after everyone else had discovered them, and made everyone sick of them, if they hadn’t been already, by playing only those bands for six months straight. (i don’t know what it is with me and my need to hear certain songs over and over and over again. it’s some strange obsession that grips me periodically. i vaguely remember one night i was at a bar in london, very drunk, and i made the bartender play rufus and chaka khan’s “ain’t nobody” four times in a row on the CD player. then, i am told, i went downstairs and collapsed in the toilets.)
angst rock was plentiful in my post-college years. the deftones, radiohead, coldplay, sigur ros, the verve, stp… but radiohead have gone a bit too squirly and bleepy for me, coldplay and sigur ros keep writing the same song, and richard ashcroft’s recent album kind of sucked in a new-agey peaceful sort of way. i liked him better tormented. i know that is not a nice thing to say, but dammit, i sometimes am tormented too, and when i am, i need music to be tormented to!
so i am getting my misery and anguish from different and sometimes surprising musical sources, i saw the streets live at the wiltern in los angeles a few weeks ago, and was totally blown away by the song “dry your eyes.” sometimes the weirdest and most awkward love songs, like those sung by the rotten-toothed shane mcgowan of the pogues, are the ones that really touch me. this song, sung by a skinny limey runt in too-big pants and with lyrics including the word “mate”, made tears come to my eyes. i love that there is finally a rapper from england who is actually good, apart from slick rick, of course.