This is something I've been thinking about a lot, recently. What I found out about myself is that, at least at first, music became a way to experience culture.
I grew up in a ratty, blue collar town where mullets and Iron Maiden T-shirts are still in vogue. I would describe it as a cultural black hole. I was a reactionary teenager who didn't just want something different from what I was getting, I wanted the total opposite. This of course lead to rather unfortunate phases, as teenagerdom tends to do, such as an embarrassing stint as a deistic Satanist trying genuinely to practice voodoo.
But perhaps the most fortunate thing it lead me to was the record store where I would find myself digging through CD's and finding the most beautiful, different things.
"The Sex Pistols? Who names their band that? What's a Sex Pistol?"
"Gangsta rap? This is everything I've ever been told is scary about cities and racial minorities! I'm in!"
I became lost in a world of what I would describe as "outsider art", at least from my very limited perspective. Punk rock, novelty music, hip-hop. Why rip the bong and listen to Styx and zone out for the umpteenth time when you could put on Tiny Tim instead and sing along in a bad falsetto and giggle your stoned asses off?
And I found I could empathize with these artists more than, say, Metallica or whatever country-pop act was buzzing that year. In my area a popular saying was "rap is crap" but Eminem is a piece of white trash from a broken family that does more pills than he should and is mad about it, just like I was/am. Nihilism and desperate socio-economic situation has driven the members of NWA and/or people they knew to do unseemly things. Sure my family didn't come from the same environment and I knew nothing about the black, inner-city life that they talked about, but I was ready and eager to learn and to some degree my family was the same. It's survival and the seeking of empowerment by the disenfranchised. I even empathized with the "moneycashhoes" rap that is so disparaged. I've never had a lot in my life and it feels good to be able to buy myself something nice. It's a very novel experience.
Then I started forming my own bands and music was no longer a way to absorb culture, it became a way to create it, to shape at least a little piece of what was my rural community in my own image for better and for worse (but mostly for worse, admittedly). We made T-shirts, put on house shows, gave our fellow bored teenagers something to do. Sure it wasn't always constructive but I think that's powerful.
Lately, that's what has been drawing me to music, that feeling. Not just in the music I listen to but in the music I create. Experiencing the lives of others and sharing my own experiences.
I grew up in a ratty, blue collar town where mullets and Iron Maiden T-shirts are still in vogue. I would describe it as a cultural black hole. I was a reactionary teenager who didn't just want something different from what I was getting, I wanted the total opposite. This of course lead to rather unfortunate phases, as teenagerdom tends to do, such as an embarrassing stint as a deistic Satanist trying genuinely to practice voodoo.
But perhaps the most fortunate thing it lead me to was the record store where I would find myself digging through CD's and finding the most beautiful, different things.
"The Sex Pistols? Who names their band that? What's a Sex Pistol?"
"Gangsta rap? This is everything I've ever been told is scary about cities and racial minorities! I'm in!"
I became lost in a world of what I would describe as "outsider art", at least from my very limited perspective. Punk rock, novelty music, hip-hop. Why rip the bong and listen to Styx and zone out for the umpteenth time when you could put on Tiny Tim instead and sing along in a bad falsetto and giggle your stoned asses off?
And I found I could empathize with these artists more than, say, Metallica or whatever country-pop act was buzzing that year. In my area a popular saying was "rap is crap" but Eminem is a piece of white trash from a broken family that does more pills than he should and is mad about it, just like I was/am. Nihilism and desperate socio-economic situation has driven the members of NWA and/or people they knew to do unseemly things. Sure my family didn't come from the same environment and I knew nothing about the black, inner-city life that they talked about, but I was ready and eager to learn and to some degree my family was the same. It's survival and the seeking of empowerment by the disenfranchised. I even empathized with the "moneycashhoes" rap that is so disparaged. I've never had a lot in my life and it feels good to be able to buy myself something nice. It's a very novel experience.
Then I started forming my own bands and music was no longer a way to absorb culture, it became a way to create it, to shape at least a little piece of what was my rural community in my own image for better and for worse (but mostly for worse, admittedly). We made T-shirts, put on house shows, gave our fellow bored teenagers something to do. Sure it wasn't always constructive but I think that's powerful.
Lately, that's what has been drawing me to music, that feeling. Not just in the music I listen to but in the music I create. Experiencing the lives of others and sharing my own experiences.
