when suburban kids attack!

When I wrote my best of/worst of list for the passing year, it dawned on me that although there were some albums that I enjoyed, there was nothing that really popped out as being an album that would reach classic status. Then I started thinking about albums that were being heralded such as Fall Out Boy's "From Under the Cork Tree" and The Bravery's self-titled debut, which led me to think of Orange County hardcore, which led me to think about a question from an old co-worker of mine. He once asked me if I thought he listened to too much "white music." I suppose I never thought much of it because I thought he listened to a lot of pop(ular) music, which had nothing to do with race or ethnicity. But I started thinking about how he grew up and the kind of life he was living at the time and I started to understand why Dave Matthews, Ryan Adams and John Mayer appealed to him so much. In fact, to be truthful, I could always see the appeal of the modern suburban jam troubadors such as the man people refer to as "Dave." The guy's tunes can be boiled down to (mostly) two things: drugs and sex. When I thought about the kind of contempt I had for fans of Dave Matthews, I started to realize that I probably have the same dislike of fans of contemporary pop-punk/screamo/emo.

Generally, Dave's fans are easy to figure out. They have human emotion and issues like everybody else, but rather than dwell on them, they use the power 15 minute saxophone solos during an already extended song about getting fucked up to emote. Newbie pop-punk kids are a whole different story. As mulled over in Andy Greenwald's book, "Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo," punk has gone from a politically defiant genre to a sappy-boo-hoo marketing tool. I guess what really bothers me about this obvious difference is that kids allow themselves to be lied and sold to (an issue I've stressed numerous times on this site).

But I guess that's the suburban burden. Most of these bands such as Fall Out Boy, Bleeding Through, The Starting Line, Gatsby's American Dream hail from places where there are no problems.

Gatsby's American Dream is from Kirkland, WA, a wealthy Eastside suburb of Seattle, where there are no visible problems with the homeless, employment, or rampant violence. They sing songs about girls because that's what they know. Even their half-assed concept album, "Ribbons and Sugar," is trite because they're just repeating Orwellian ideals and not their own. They've done nothing but further the problem that there are too many suburban kids with record deals who are saying nothing and feeding into a generation of children who don't know any better.

This generation of kids are wildly obsessive with the aforementioned bands in addition to Dashboard Confessional and horrid new bands such as Valencia and Forgive Durden. These are the kind of kids who don't have real problems so they listen to music that makes them feel like shit. Do I think this is the case for every fan of Chris Carrabba and Pete Wentz? No, but I think for the majority of them, it certainly is the case.

The consensus from the fans is that these bands make music that they can relate to, and that's fine. But how many times can you listen to the same message before it goes from relation to lack of diversity. Here are lyrics from a Fall Out Boy song:

"Am I more than you bargained for yet/I've been dying to tell you anything you want to hear/Cause that's just who I am this week/Lie in the grass, next to the mausoleum/I'm just a notch in your bedpost/But you're just a line in a song."

And from Hawthorne Heights:

"And I can't make it on my own/Because my heart is in Ohio/So cut my wrists and black my eyes/So I can fall asleep tonight, or die/Because you kill me/You know you do, you kill me well/You like it too, and I can tell/You never stop until my final breath is gone."

Both convey similar images of death while comparing and contrasting it to love and lonliness. I think there are grade school children who can come up with better literary allusions.

Some may argue that I place older bands such as Lifetime, Weezer, and the Promise Ring on this pedistal of legend, yet I often criticize bands who are derivative of their style of music. We live in a time where kids are obsessed with how the wealthy live, even if they are well off themselves. Kids in suburbia have nothing to talk about other than what happened on "Laguna Beach," "The O.C." and "The Real World." These shows weren't around, or were played on a much smaller scale in the pop culture spectrum, when early Jade Tree bands were gaining traction. And given that these were also the mid-90's, this kind of music seemed fresh. These bands are a reflection of America's teenage obsession with suburban reality. Shows such as "Laguna Beach" do so well because kids want to emulate this wasteful and ridiculous lifestyle. The new pop-punk shows that as well. Nobody is trying to write anything new and everybody wants to be like each other.

When one producer does well for a band such as Neal Avron, Howard Benson, or Ed Rose, then you have 50 more bands reaching those same producers trying to make their version of "Sticks and Stone" or "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge." There hasn't been a band in that genre to redefine it in almost three or four years (or maybe more depending on who you ask). Now it seems as though everybody and their grandmothers have screaming choruses and keyboard players.

Another part of the suburban burden is sporting gear from your favorite band. These kids have taken something like a band t-shirt, which used to symbolize that you've helped a small rock band make it to the next town, to becoming this beast of fashion and trend. Everybody is about selling merch. Websites such as Absolutepunk.net deliberately post messages such like "Say Anything has new merch!" as if it were real news. But it's not to the general public, only to suburbanites who have no problem dropping $35 for a hoodie. These days it's about being a walking billboard for a band whose probably gotten so much money in sponsorships from clothing companies such as Atticus or Heartcore (ugh), that all kids are doing is supplying them with coke and whore money. And don't even get me started on the trenches the mall punks call Hot Topic.

Jesse Lacey and Andy Greenwald were right to liken screamo/emo to hair metal. There's an abundance of these shitty little bands everywhere, all vying for a record deal from a two-bit label. Now all we need is a Nirvana to save the day. Or even a Dave Matthews.