So from having my Spread the word of good newer grunge bands facebook page, which now has 700+ bands that have been posted, I have realized certain things. Mainly, that there are SOOOOOOOO many really good and amazing and incredibly talented and really hard rocking and totally revolutionary style bands today. There are also tons of modern grungers, tons of whom really want grunge to come back, tons of whom have good and genuine ideals and the same ones that folks like Kurt Cobain had, tons of kids who hate generation Y and feel alienated by today, tons of kids who want to rock out and rage against the machine and want some sort of revolution etc. Us modern grunge kids grow up hating our generation and thinking the ever-present thought, "Why doesn't today/my generation rock? Why do the kids of today sound softer than the older people of the rock generations when rock has always been said to be for the youth? WHERE'S THE FREAKING ROCK!?!?!?" Well, there are tons of bands today that totally freaking rock and kick ass, they just aren't getting to the masses, and aren't getting much attention at all.
It only takes so many really good modern grunge bands that could totally knock all the pop people off the charts, and really make you feel like moshing, and totally connected to their music, like all the best bands of the 90s do, before you start to realize that there is NO lack of hard/heavy/rocking/actually talented and good/revolutionary/unique etc. etc. bands today. So...what does this mean? There must be some sort of barrier stopping people from hearing of them. I think this has to do with the way things are today, and the internet. We have developed a generation that has less and less actual word of mouth and sense of real-life community, no more MTV, a zine culture that has died down, less record stores etc., more and more older people enabling kids liking the garbage of today and not telling them of actually good things because they figure it's the special "technology" generation and they'll like what they like and they don't really speak their opinion on how much they think it sucks, more people being apathetic and thinking "well it's all there is today, so what can you do? we have to like it/but into it/accept it", and people being more and more shackled to the internet (which has many flaws.)
The average person on facebook, for example, isn't like me to where they friend hundreds of music people and can see updates of music things from time to time or checks out tons of pages for mentions of things (which is really the only word of mouth that exists on the internet) but rather people who have average friends and do average things, so since the outside world doesn't tell them of things and they are friends with people that also don't know of these bands, they won't end up hearing of them. Like I tell people all the time, the internet has many flaws, some being that you have to know of what you are looking for before you look for it, you can't just type in a question mark in the search bar and have everything you would have wanted to know about come up, not everything gets put on the internet in the first place, tons of stuff gets taken down off the internet all the time, you have to do tons of advertising for something if you want it to get even the littlest bit of attention, but even then, lots of other comments and things will bury yours, things are actually pretty hard to find on the internet, search functions miss a lot of things and don't have them register, post tons of things that have nothing to do with what you searched for, and post only the most popular things, making the smaller things hard to find. If someone makes a page and doesn't advertise for it or tell anyone of it, it will never get any likes or anyone knowing of it. You have to do hours of searching on the internet for something you might like in order for it to actually be worth it and to find anything, and most people don't have that kind of time. The audience of bands is now limited to the fans who specifically search for them, and try really hard at that, and somehow find out that they would exist in the first place.
Then you have the media and music corporations today pushing all that pop garbage, so the only thing that ever does get spread out there is the pop stars that are already as famous as can be, which leads to kids only knowing of pop. I have a feeling the people in charge of that have a big hold on what music ever gets anywhere. It seems like the mainstream media is pushing out a smaller and smaller amount of different types of music. I keep hearing that in the 90s, there were all sorts of styles of music that had mainstream success simultaneously (grunge/alternative/pop/r&b/latino/rap and hiphop etc) What do we have now? Pop, maybe some rap still, then the "underground" is the hipster indie which I'll get to next. All of this has made it very hard for anything new to come about in any sense where it gets attention. It's like there's a middleclass has disappeared so now it's poor vs. rich/99% type of problem in music where the underground is really underground and the mainstream is really mainstream, and the crappiest quality and smallest amount of music is getting the most amount of attention and the people behind them control all.
So then you have the false "underground/indie" made up of those popular, overly atmospheric and soft, hipster, "indie" bands that don't sound anything at all like rock and roll and sound half-dead, to give the people a sense of some sort of underground/indie "cool" culture when really these people are famous and I think a lot of them are signed to major labels anyway and they are probably being controlled and marketed as well, so it ends up in a level system for the underground, where the actual underground bands are really underground and no one's ever heard of them, because when you go looking for non-mainstream bands or bands that sound like 90s indie, you get the not-as-popular-as-pop-but-still-kind-of-mainstream "indie" bands.
Being the type of kid I always was and before I started this page and all that, you start to get fed up with the world and think "Ok well if no one's going to rock today or form a revolution, then I'll do it!" while also simultaneously thinking that maybe it would end up happening because you don't see anyone that wants to rage or has passion like you do and you know there would be a fanbase for it if you ever did do it because now would be the perfect time because polished pop has been around for so long and people would want raw and your thoughts are the same as Kurt Cobain's, and that it'll never happen because that'll never happen to you, let's get real here, it doesn't happen that often anyway, no one's ever going to pay attention to you, it's just not going to happen, but it's about the music anyway first and foremost, so it doesn't matter that much. The page also made me realize that there are so many bands that are so much further along at this game than I am, so much better, and would totally form a revolution before I do. It really makes you think, even if someone did form a band or help push a band thinking they would be totally revolutionary, they probably would just end up in the pile of bands that are already like that and haven't gotten there yet.
My page as of now has around 3,000 likes, 700 bands, and I'm sure it's not that famous. I'd say that's pretty good for a small-time page, but it doesn't have any sort of mainstream attention on it. I bet most grunge fans checking out the hundred-thousand-like grunge pages have never even heard of my page. Imagine the impact if it actually got any sort of attention. There'd probably be millions of modern grunge bands posted on there!
Luckily, there has been a little bit of attention here and there for some of these bands, like Violent Soho going to Lollapalooza a few years back, and selling out the shows of their recent tour, and The Indecent going to the Warped Tour, and them and a few others having facebook pages that are in the tens of thousands of likes, or being produced by cool people like Steve Albini, and I think a few of them opened for some more famous bands, so perhaps there is some sort of revolution but it is only just beginning. One can hope. At the very least, we need to find some other way of showing people these bands, because they aren't going to learn about them elsewhere.
You know what, as I am writing this, I am reminded of a few points that this recent article brought up. I think this kind of proves a lot of my points, The 13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry...
It only takes so many really good modern grunge bands that could totally knock all the pop people off the charts, and really make you feel like moshing, and totally connected to their music, like all the best bands of the 90s do, before you start to realize that there is NO lack of hard/heavy/rocking/actually talented and good/revolutionary/unique etc. etc. bands today. So...what does this mean? There must be some sort of barrier stopping people from hearing of them. I think this has to do with the way things are today, and the internet. We have developed a generation that has less and less actual word of mouth and sense of real-life community, no more MTV, a zine culture that has died down, less record stores etc., more and more older people enabling kids liking the garbage of today and not telling them of actually good things because they figure it's the special "technology" generation and they'll like what they like and they don't really speak their opinion on how much they think it sucks, more people being apathetic and thinking "well it's all there is today, so what can you do? we have to like it/but into it/accept it", and people being more and more shackled to the internet (which has many flaws.)
The average person on facebook, for example, isn't like me to where they friend hundreds of music people and can see updates of music things from time to time or checks out tons of pages for mentions of things (which is really the only word of mouth that exists on the internet) but rather people who have average friends and do average things, so since the outside world doesn't tell them of things and they are friends with people that also don't know of these bands, they won't end up hearing of them. Like I tell people all the time, the internet has many flaws, some being that you have to know of what you are looking for before you look for it, you can't just type in a question mark in the search bar and have everything you would have wanted to know about come up, not everything gets put on the internet in the first place, tons of stuff gets taken down off the internet all the time, you have to do tons of advertising for something if you want it to get even the littlest bit of attention, but even then, lots of other comments and things will bury yours, things are actually pretty hard to find on the internet, search functions miss a lot of things and don't have them register, post tons of things that have nothing to do with what you searched for, and post only the most popular things, making the smaller things hard to find. If someone makes a page and doesn't advertise for it or tell anyone of it, it will never get any likes or anyone knowing of it. You have to do hours of searching on the internet for something you might like in order for it to actually be worth it and to find anything, and most people don't have that kind of time. The audience of bands is now limited to the fans who specifically search for them, and try really hard at that, and somehow find out that they would exist in the first place.
Then you have the media and music corporations today pushing all that pop garbage, so the only thing that ever does get spread out there is the pop stars that are already as famous as can be, which leads to kids only knowing of pop. I have a feeling the people in charge of that have a big hold on what music ever gets anywhere. It seems like the mainstream media is pushing out a smaller and smaller amount of different types of music. I keep hearing that in the 90s, there were all sorts of styles of music that had mainstream success simultaneously (grunge/alternative/pop/r&b/latino/rap and hiphop etc) What do we have now? Pop, maybe some rap still, then the "underground" is the hipster indie which I'll get to next. All of this has made it very hard for anything new to come about in any sense where it gets attention. It's like there's a middleclass has disappeared so now it's poor vs. rich/99% type of problem in music where the underground is really underground and the mainstream is really mainstream, and the crappiest quality and smallest amount of music is getting the most amount of attention and the people behind them control all.
So then you have the false "underground/indie" made up of those popular, overly atmospheric and soft, hipster, "indie" bands that don't sound anything at all like rock and roll and sound half-dead, to give the people a sense of some sort of underground/indie "cool" culture when really these people are famous and I think a lot of them are signed to major labels anyway and they are probably being controlled and marketed as well, so it ends up in a level system for the underground, where the actual underground bands are really underground and no one's ever heard of them, because when you go looking for non-mainstream bands or bands that sound like 90s indie, you get the not-as-popular-as-pop-but-still-kind-of-mainstream "indie" bands.
Being the type of kid I always was and before I started this page and all that, you start to get fed up with the world and think "Ok well if no one's going to rock today or form a revolution, then I'll do it!" while also simultaneously thinking that maybe it would end up happening because you don't see anyone that wants to rage or has passion like you do and you know there would be a fanbase for it if you ever did do it because now would be the perfect time because polished pop has been around for so long and people would want raw and your thoughts are the same as Kurt Cobain's, and that it'll never happen because that'll never happen to you, let's get real here, it doesn't happen that often anyway, no one's ever going to pay attention to you, it's just not going to happen, but it's about the music anyway first and foremost, so it doesn't matter that much. The page also made me realize that there are so many bands that are so much further along at this game than I am, so much better, and would totally form a revolution before I do. It really makes you think, even if someone did form a band or help push a band thinking they would be totally revolutionary, they probably would just end up in the pile of bands that are already like that and haven't gotten there yet.
My page as of now has around 3,000 likes, 700 bands, and I'm sure it's not that famous. I'd say that's pretty good for a small-time page, but it doesn't have any sort of mainstream attention on it. I bet most grunge fans checking out the hundred-thousand-like grunge pages have never even heard of my page. Imagine the impact if it actually got any sort of attention. There'd probably be millions of modern grunge bands posted on there!
Luckily, there has been a little bit of attention here and there for some of these bands, like Violent Soho going to Lollapalooza a few years back, and selling out the shows of their recent tour, and The Indecent going to the Warped Tour, and them and a few others having facebook pages that are in the tens of thousands of likes, or being produced by cool people like Steve Albini, and I think a few of them opened for some more famous bands, so perhaps there is some sort of revolution but it is only just beginning. One can hope. At the very least, we need to find some other way of showing people these bands, because they aren't going to learn about them elsewhere.
You know what, as I am writing this, I am reminded of a few points that this recent article brought up. I think this kind of proves a lot of my points, The 13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry...
