Lately I have been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan lyrics, I also have the No Direction Home DVD, but still have to finish that one. What strikes me the most about his lyrics is the will to critisize the things he's seeing AND being huge doing that! He had a very big fanbase and the people really cared about what he was singing. There were more bands those days that really tried to change things.
Now I'm not saying there aren't artists that care these days, but when I watch LiveAid and I see Coldplay performing their new hitsingle and Madonna crawls out of her shithole to dance around with an Ethiopian woman I somehow feel sad about the whole industry. It's one of the reasons for me to listen to smaller bands or bands that seem real to me. Everytime I think like this I'm trying to tell myself that times have changed and that it's not that bad, but it actually is bad. It's very frustrating that most people don't see this or don't want to see this. Hearing about American Idol or every variant of this in every Western country in the world makes me sick. Music is supposed to be an art, something you do to try and make people feel something. I always listen to artists that bring up all sorts of emotions and I'm NOT talking about Celine Dion crap, I mean emotions that are complex to describe. Every cunt can write a Celine Dion style lovesong. What also doesn't help is MTV and channels like that. MTV (Music Television) only shows how rich and famous "stars" are these days. Shows like Cribs, The Famous Life of... etc make me sick and anhry. I don't fucking care if Brad Pitt has a house where ever the fuck it is. And no, I'm not jealous either.
This shit should be brought back to how it originated. We need a musical culture again. The 90's were a terrible decade, since the change really kicked in then, but at least there was the grunge era. I'm not even a fan of that, but it started off pretty well. Unfortunately all the huge record companies and music channels fucked it up, so up till this day we still have to listen to crap like Nickleback and stuff like that. I sympathize with Pearl Jam. They hardly sell records these days compared to their debut album, but they stayed true to themselves and their fans.
Since grunge there hasn't been a culture. Well, the rap and R&B era maybe. But that's horrible. And rap fans, I'm not talking about the guys who still do their thing and stay true to who they are. No, I'm talking about that cunt P-Diddy and Destiny's Child and shit like that.
The 2000's have been terrible when you look at what the mainstream can come up with. Underneath that there's been good and very good stuff, but it hardly gets any airplay. A positive side is that you can still listen to bands and really think they're singing it for you, since no one knows them. A bad thing is that kids will get the wrong examples when our generation raise them. I will let my children listen to anything they want, but when their babies, I'll play my Freewheelin' Bob Dylan record while they're asleep and I just hope they will pick up on the creativity, the honesty and the dignity you hear through the lyrics. And one day I'll pass on my music collection to my son or daughter and I'll hope they'll continue the legacy.
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