Rant #67043

You may have noticed that the average age of the things that I talk about on this blog is approximately twenty-one, and no that's not a number I picked out entirely at random, that number happens to represent the number of years I've been forced to endure existence on a planet that seems to lack any sort of quality control, and without giving the game away, I blame the internet primarily for this. But as for the number representing the true average age of things I talk about (not counting curent politics), I'm probably off by the same amount as the President whenever he talks about the number of jobs he "created or saved."

You see, there's more crap out there now than there ever was before, and by crap I mean both "stuff" and "stuff of bad quality." This blog, which will turn one year old at the end of the month, is one such piece of crap. Nobody reads it, nobody replies to any of the posts, and nobody points out that every one of my opinions are horribly biased against either the Democrat Party or just about anything younger than I am that's not Nu Who or part of the collective output of Joss Whedon or Quentin Tarantino. And frankly they don't get a free pass either because they've all had clunkers too. Oh, and if the Democrats ever want a kind word on this blog they can all go take Econ 101 and then run a small business for a few years. And frankly most Republicans should do that too. They're not in power at the moment so slagging them seems kind of pointless.

I love AC/DC, a fact that every day gets harder and harder to reconcile with my insistance on originality and quality; the Thunder from Down Under have made the same album sixteen times now (note: number does not include box sets like Bonfire or Backtracks, compilations like '74 Jailbreak, or live albums), and only about half of them are worth owning. Nevertheless, there's something to be said for a band that's never written a heartfelt ballad or a song about how the world sucks and how the singer wants to die. And there's comfort to be had in this consistency; you know you're about to listen to 40 minutes of 3-chord rock songs about the fun of sex and the greatness of rock and roll whenever you stick something with "AC/DC" printed on it in your CD player.

By comparison, music today is god-awful. This PC insistence on tolerating everyone else's artistic expression means that no matter how ear-splittingly terrible you are, you'll find at least a hundred idiots who "like" your "music" and thus give you a sense of self-importance, and speaking as one egoist to the most self-centered generation in modern history, it's not all about you. These hundred idiots will be idiotic because their music libraries are full of "free" stuff they stole. The average quality of the songs in those libraries will be comparable to the average Nirvana song, and because they don't know any better they won't realize that that's an insult. So, let me be clear in a way our President never will be: if you down-tune past either E-flat or Drop-D, if you complain about how mommy doesn't love you, if your solo doesn't last longer than one bar (I really don't care if you only know one scale, you can make something decent out of that), if you can't actually sing, if you can't write lyrics without using the words "oh" or "yeah" or "hey" to fill out the rhythm, or if you have to rely on sampling other songs to get any recognition at all, then please get out of the road if you want to grow old.

"But," says Dylan, the completely fictional reader of this blog who I in no way named after the first rockstar with no discernable performing talent (guy could write songs, I'll give him that with pleasure no matter how wrong the phrase "I'll give him that with pleasure" sounds), "if you're for originality, why won't you let us experiment at all? For example, isn't a song in baritone tuning an example of at least some deviation from the norm?"

Ah, I say, Dylan, old boy, in your haste to call me a stupid hypocrite (I am suddenly reminded of the hilarity of rock "stars" who are so obviously in it for the money and sex railing against "the rich"), you forgot to read my words more carefully. I require both originality and quality from my entertainment. Hence, I will not accept a song written in a tuning that makes it easier to bend notes or sing along.

"Then defend your admiration of AC/DC, since by your own admission they repeat themselves on every album and only half of them are worth owning," says Dylan, ignorant of the fact that I can barely hear him because I'm listening to Jimi Hendrix sing about a joker and a thief.

I believe I already have, I say, but in case you'd like me to elaborate: AC/DC were a refreshing gasp of fresh air when they pillaged England in 75 and 76 and America in 77. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were both getting overblown and punk was defiling all that was sacred about rock music. AC/DC did exactly what punk was supposed to do, strip rock back down to its essentials. I've got nothing against Zeppelin or Floyd, they're also two of my favorite bands and they both did a lot more experimentation than AC/DC did, but neither really did a lot for straight-up hard rock. (Blah blah "Black Dog" blah blah "Rock and Roll." Blah blah "Achilles Last Stand," which was probably the first song with thrash metal elements in it but don't quote me on that. Other than those three songs, the Zep were more blues-rock than hard rock.)

"But isn't straight-up hard rock itself fairly unoriginal?" Dylan asked, and by this point I realized that my imagination had conjured up a troll, and if there's one thing I hate more than every Cobain wannabe and rapper, it's a troll who thinks my opinion actually means anything. And for that, I especially blame the internet.