August 1999 posedown by Joe Procopio |
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I had a dream. I had an awesome dream. In my dream I was fifteen again. I
was playing hackeysack in the parking lot outside Saratoga Performing Arts
Center in upstate New York, pint of peach schnapps in one hand, half-gal of
orange juice in the other. In between courageous attempts at chatting up
dangerous looking, hair-band-half-T-beshirted shed-vixens, my friends and I
never once debated whether or not we would spring for scalped tickets to
that night's event, which I believe might have been a Bryan Adams
double-bill with special guests the Hooters.
My greatest fear from those days forward was the inescapable probability of
getting old before I died. Becoming what I so carelessly mocked. Lying down
in the middle of the road. Swimming the mainstream. I was a living,
breathing teen anthem, the walking protagonist of every whiny-assed Rush
song. As time went by, that fear manifested itself as self-examination and,
while I never lapsed into dread, I almost always found a spare moment to
check my taste.
Do I really want to get into Lenny Kravitz? Does R.E.M. suck yet?
Wait, I still hate Dave Matthews, don't I? That kind of thing.
I wanna rock. I was born to rock.
Rock is a murky term at best, and it encompasses so much more than just
music. On that level, grunge rocked. Punk rocks. A good deal of rap and
about half of jazz rocks. Pop can rock, if it's smart. Surprisingly, rock
usually doesn't rock. Disco is still the anti-rock. Metal never, ever
rocked, except Ozzy. Lilith Fair, try as hard as it might, won't rock until
it actually gets out there and, well, rocks. But Chrissie Hynde rocks.
Rock is not so much a movement as it is a calling and, as is to be expected
with any higher order, it's not always an easy decision to throw down your
hammer and follow. I mean, you can only wear so much black before you start
looking goth. You can only smirk so long before you become a cartoon. There
are only so many ticks on the clock before certain rock-like actions garner
you the mid-life-crisis tag. I'm pushing thirty like Sisyphus. I have to
take these things into consideration.
It's tough to name more than a few veterans who rocked convincingly for an
entire lifetime. I've always had this recurring nightmare in which I wake
up one morning and look into the mirror only to come face to face with a
less interesting version of Dr. Johnny Fever. I know this lifestyle choice
is inherently doomed to end poorly. Like hooking. I had always assumed I
would grow up to be the rock version of the ex-whore turned pudgy model
housewife, constantly suppressing the awful secret of my checkered past. Or
maybe I'd simply pick a spot that looked comfortable and jump off the crazy
train, doomed to remain forever frozen in a moment, trapped in a life
consisting of State Fair nostalgia tours and waiting for Nick-at-Nite
to catch up with me.
So I never imagined, not in a million years, that my angst would outlive my
youth. For the life of me, I always thought I would someday put down
Rolling Stone and shut off MTV and stop laughing at must-see TV
because I just didn't get it anymore. Not once did I figure that I,
as an adult, would read an article on who's hot and who's not and know deep
within my gut, "Wait a second. They're not hot. They're not. They're
so not!"
It turns out I rocked my twenties.
Now, one would think this self-satisfaction with my own sense of
chic-security would resolve all those issues that plagued me as a teenager.
One would think. But the fact that I've made it this far without
compromising my rock criteria has only allowed another equally hideous
anxiety to come bubbling to the surface.
What if I'm niche?
The nightmares of my youth have suddenly been replaced by a new dream. In
this one, I wake up, look into same said mirror and I find myself staring
at a slightly more annoying version of Janeane Garafolo. Or at least the
bent, bitter, emotionally starved caricature of herself that she played in
Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. Also, in the dream, I'm
taller, I'm wearing black eyeliner, and I talk in a thick Scottish brogue.
Note to self: See someone about this.
What if I've gone so far over to the outstream that I'm subconsciously
blocking out any form of entertainment or artistic endeavor even remotely
smelling bourgeois? What if I've been such a harsh critic that I've lost any
sense of judgment and, by rote, everything sucks? Then someday I wind up
growing old and lonely in a very trendy apartment with a lot of cats with
names like Westerberg and Grohl.
The solution, I suppose, is to avoid leaning in any direction. To accept
each new experience with an open mind and allow myself to learn from all
corners. To temper the prejudice of being hip with the kinship of the human
condition. To forge a new type of cultural expression that bears not some
long-dead anachronistic concept of loyalty, but an understanding of the
message concealed within the work itself.
Wait. That's crap.
Never mind.
Long live rock.
in the junk drawer:
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