Sunday, May 07, 2006

this blog could be your life

I've been reading Our Band Could Be Your Life, which is a history of indie punk-rockish music from basically Black Flag to the dawn of Nirvana. Much of the book is about bands dominated by young men in the throes of their own anger, like Black Flag, about which it is said:
This was a band whose stand presence one fanzine admiringly described as "comparable to an epileptic boy scout molesting a bag lady" and "possessing all the humor of a muscular dystrophy telethon."
Or, at least sounding angry even if they really weren't, like Husker Du (insert your own umlauts):
"People have misconstrued the pessimism and anger in our songs. We're really the opposite of all that; we're not callous, insensitive people. But we're frustrated by the fact that most people seem to end up that way--hopeless, defeated. We're afraid of ending up that way ourselves...
Against this backdrop comes a chapter on the far more happy-go-lucky Beat Happening:
They were resolutely unmacho and played melodic, downright quaint-sounding music. They could barely play or sing. Implicit in Beat Happening's music was a dare: If you saw them and said, "Even I could do better than that," then the burden was on you to prove it. If you did, you had yourself a band, and if you didn't, you had to shut up. Either way, Beat Happening had made their point.
(As for the title of this post, it occurred to me that many of those who occasion this blog might think of themselves as being too old to have a punk band be their life anymore, and yet they are still alive and not sure what to do with that fact. So, anyway, if nothing else, this blog could be your life. You could sleep over in the sidebar and store your belongings in my archives. Whatever. Just know that mi casa es su casa, mi blog es su vida.)

7 comments:

dorotha said...

i like beat happening, and i have never thought that i could do better. i'm very lazy. very, very lazy. and my blog could never beat yours, jeremy. i don't tend to introduce as much controversy.

i guess, in a way, i already live in your sidebar. i feel like that invitation is like saying, "you may, if you choose, live in my shadow." maybe i don't quite get the idea that a band or a blog could be my life.

jeremy said...

I don't understand how it would be like living in my shadow at all. My shadow would be hard to live in because it moves around and doesn't always exist. My blog, on the other hand, is always up and in the same place. Here I am, trying to be nice and neighborly, and all I get is suspicion/scorn/snark. Notice that Dorotha has a blog but won't let it be your life.

carly said...

I think if a blog were going to be my life, I'd like it to be my own blog. Maybe that's just me, though.

jeremy said...

Hear that, Dorotha? Carly's blog can be your life. So, you have multiple options now for what to do with your life.

carly said...

To be fair, I said that I would want my life to be my own blog. I didn't specifically invite dorotha to make her life my blog. Not that I'm against the idea, or anything.

But I would charge rent.

jeremy said...

See, Carly would charge rent. I offer my place for free. And what do I get for it? Criticism. Abuse.

Brady said...

The Replacements chapter in that book breaks my damn heart every time I read it.

Seriously, I'm getting sad just thinking about it.