I finished reading Chuck Klosterman’s “Fargo Rock City” over the weekend and I have a need to go into at least a bit of a discussion of the book. First, I really need to say that Chuck is living the life I would be leading if I had the courage to actually be an English major and a writer when I was in college. He’s a year older than me and is now making a living by writing about pop culture and music, which would be my dream job. When I was seventeen I was faced with the following decision: follow my dreams and become a writer knowing that I would risk having my dreams ripped out from under me or take the safe path and be an electrical engineer and have a guaranteed, well-paying job for the rest of my life. I took the safe path and will forever wonder if it was the right choice.
(And yeah, it says something that I knew that I could do EE at Illinois and have no problems with the material. Officially it is not cockiness when you are just that damn good.)
Anyway, Chuck grew up a heavy metal fan in rural North Dakota and the book is about metal, and specifically hair metal, in the 1980’s. First off, I agree with him that everyone dismisses the entire scene as meaningless, which doesn’t make sense given how huge the sales were at the time. Poison and Motley Crue were the absolute biggest bands on the planet (I think Motley Crue had the most requested video on MTV for a year straight). Then you had Bon Jovi followed by Warrant and Slaughter and Cinderella and every other band that featured guitars, drums and a surprising amount of mascara.
Now I’ll admit that this isn’t my scene at all. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to find a heavy metal CD in my entire collection. In my entire life I have only sold two CDs and both of those were heavy metal CDs I bought in college (Def Leppard purchased to impress a girl (it didn’t work) and Led Zepplin purchased before I realized how much I hate Led Zepplin). I was more of an alternative rock, R.E.M. and U2 in the 80’s kid. Can’t say I fell into the Depeche Mode, Morrisey, and The Cure camp but I definitely felt more at home listening to Michael Stipe than Vince Neil.
Klosterman’s point is that there are two types of people who listen to these different types of bands but in the end they want the same message. Kids like me who listened to R.E.M. were the intelligent outsiders in high school, people who saw how stupid high school was and how everyone around us were complete idiots and no one got the big picture and you felt like maybe you were the only one who thought that way. R.E.M. told you that you a) weren’t alone and b) you’re right and you are smarter and better and cooler than everyone else even if they don’t know it.
Of course, the kids listening to Motley Crue also felt that they were smarter and cooler than everyone else because they listened to Motley Crue, a band that had no undertones whatsoever. They were just “Here we are: sex, drugs and rock and roll. Live life to the fullest man.” And that was unbelievably attractive to a kid in high school who looks around and sees how stupid everything is. Just instead of oft-kilter guitars or Bono waving a white flag they went for sound and fury.
In the end I don’t know if I can argue with Klosterman because the music of your teenage years is so entwined with who you are and who you become I don’t think you can separate it out. I’ll always be an R.E.M. guy, even though I haven’t liked anything the band has done in the past decade. I just always focus on lyrics and meaning and insight into life. Other guys will always be heavy metal guys. I’ll defend what I listened to as a kid to the death, even though I’ve winced when I’ve had to listen to some of the discs when they came up on the random CD list (Rattle and Hum has not aged well).
That’s the point I want to close with. I’ve had a few people ask me why I haven’t moved into the iPod age. I’m still a CD guy, keeping at least one record store afloat with my purchases, and I have an account with Amazon UK for import purposes. And to them it seems silly that I have a significant portion of my apartment dedicated to housing all of these plastics discs. But the thing is, I feel that all you need to do to know who I am is look at that collection. It explains who I am, you can look through it and find a disc that you love and be amazed. Next to it will probably be something that makes you question my sanity (yeah, I don’t know how the Natalie Imbruglia disc got in their either). But the thing is, that is entirely who I am, in musical form. And somehow an iPod playlist just cannot make up for that.
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