I am ready to admit that I do not understand what "kids" think is cool. I am completely aged out of it now. I felt like I had a tenuous grasp on it, even a few years back. This was probably an illusion. I would see bands play the Beachland with extremely young crowds, mostly 15-20 year olds, and be able to quickly assess the appeal. For example, I saw a band that was "electronic David Bowie with an emphasis on ironic 80s keyboard sounds". Got it. I saw "new version of California late 80s hardcore band" a bunch of times. There are plenty of "angry metal with cookie monster vocals". I get all those. It is a reinterpretation of something that has come before. Shit, that's all the Cowslingers and Whiskey Daredevils are if we are being honest. However, last night I saw something I really struggled to understand.
In the Ballroom was something called "Spider Gang". I am so out of it that even the listing doesn't make sense to me. "Spider Gang is a rap collective started by Lil Darkie in the genre of hyper punk featuring BRUHMANEGOD, MKULTRA, Wendigo, FL. VCO, JOHNNASCUS, and BLCKK." I don't know what hyper punk is. I don't know Lil Darkie, and I suspect I would lose my job and be imprisoned if I said his name out loud in a workplace environment. "Did you hear what that man said? Stone him! Stone him!!!" I start screaming "But it's his name! It's his name! I'm not a racist!" as rocks pummel me. I also am not sure how to pronounce most of the names of the members of the collective. I also don't know why some of them are all in capital letters while others aren't. Do I need to yell out the names in all caps? What's the protocol? I couldn't even attempt to ask anyone about it either. I would do an updated version of what my Mom used to do, saying something like, "Oh, are you listening to The Pink Floyd? You like him, don't you?".
The Spider Gang fans seemed to be primarily male high school age kids, the ones that likely get bullied a bit in school by jocks named "Brad" or "Dustin". They were visibly excited for the show and snaked through the merch tent that was set up on the way in to the venue where I assume none of them had either their ID or additional $2 underage tax ready to go. Still, I will bet that this crowd was easier to deal with than most hippie shows, a crowed that reliably never knows what the fuck is going on. The look of the crowd was sort of an updated My Chemical Romance look, a cultivated fashionable outsider vibe that clearly identified you to fellow members of the Tribe. They came out in force.
I snuck in the back of the room and watched the show for a bit. I saw a fairly traditional band playing hard rock while some guy with long hair screamed out some lyrics about being disconnected and angry that was like a slower version of Agnostic Front. There was a guy that looked like a landscaper that sang an emo song with a good hook that connected with the crowd. It was a rotating cast of characters. People came and went from the stage. This is when the really interesting part hit me. There were two guys on stage doing a live rap to a track, which always sort of sucks live because it's always impossible to understand the words if you don't know the song going in. Meanwhile there was a guy with a camera that just walked around on stage in between the performers taking pictures. Another guy with a video camera did the same thing. They were as prominent on the stage as the performers, so much so that you could successfully argue that they WERE the performers too. On top of that, about 20-25% of the crowd was holding their phones up making their own videos. So, a good part of the crowd was there taking video of two guys taking video of two other guys performing to people taking their video to a pre-programmed track so later all parties involved would share it on their own video platforms to all parties present who would then share the video to each other. It was a perfect circle.
Andy Warhol would have loved it. The fans were excited and vocal. There was great energy. Everyone in the room was creating content. They are all artists. They are also all consumers. There will be videos of people making videos that are shared via video to get people to come out and then make more videos to share to comment on and allow more video posting. This was a gala of content creation, the true commodity of youth. When I looked up some of the artists I couldn't quite grasp what they did. Things have moved on from simple definitions like "rapper". Everyone is working across multiple mediums. Using several aliases, one of the members is a musician, video artist, and game designer. All of these worlds seem to intersect as his fans will watch him play video games on Twitch, take highlights to post on other sites, listen to his music via stream, engage with him on his platforms, and all talk shit about each other in a tight community. This is when it hit me. This was the same as the punk scene in 1984.
In the early 80s, fans would come out to see bands in tiny performance spaces no one in The Public knew about. The music was underground. One of your friends found out about it, shared it with you, and suddenly you are buying all the records by the artists on SST. Bands like Husker Du, Minutemen, Black Flag, and Meat Puppets were huge to my friends, and no one else. I remember seeing fIREHOSE and it was like having Springsteen tickets to a "normal" person. This was my band, and the people in the crowd, part of a tribe that "got it". Arguments would rage in fanzines like Maximum Rock and Roll about minutiae of the scene. There was a community of passionate fans, like minded people that cared. The details might be different, but this was the same thing. These were committed performers that gave 110% on stage and were stars to the kids in the room. Undeniable energy flowed back and forth. They had created something by themselves and there was a DIY spirit to the entire endeavor. I ultimately don't know what Spider Gang is, and I don't understand what's really going on there, and I don't think I am supposed to, but I'll tell you this. I like what they've got going.
No comments:
Post a Comment