Tuesday, June 22, 2010

James Murphy says old people are okay.

I once tried to talk to James Murphy. I had a VIP pass to the LCD Soundsystem show in New York (because I'm just that important). I had a bit too much to drink though, so it didn't really work out all that well. It was actually really awkward because it was like me and him and maybe four other people. It hurts to get ignored like that. I talked to the singing/keyboarding girl instead. She was really nice. She guided me to another pub down the street where I ended up watching a Suns/Spurs playoff game with a Hasidic Jewish guy. I barely made it back uptown. I'm actually surprised I made it back uptown.

Anyhow...I read his interview in Pitchfork today. This loosely counts as culture. He talks about how old people are pretty much awesome and things created by old people are better than things created by young people (not quite). Old being thirty. This gives me some comfort.

So I just think it takes a couple decades to kind of clear your brain now. So it makes more sense to me that I could find my footing when I was 30 instead of when I was 19. It seems a little more clear. You know, novelists are older now. Things are happening later in people's lives. They're kind of living lives and then creating things about the lives they've lived. Rather than being an artiste at an early age and coming out with a ball of fire. That energy has been co-opted because you haven't immunized yourself yet against media. It's easier to get swept up things then take a couple of years to get over your, like, indie rock hangover. I'm scraping the fucking Quarterstick Records crust out of my eyes when I'm like, 27. You know, "Why am I playing in 5/7? How is that fun?"

2 comments:

  1. I like the ideas in the last paragraph. That he's going to keep producing, and might even release singles, but isn't tied into the album-tour-album schedule. It's nice to see a musician get to the point where he can afford to do different things. Or rather that he realizes that he's at that point, and he actually has a couple of ideas. Doesn't happen often enough.

    There was an interview with him on NPR's Fresh Air a week or two ago. It was funny for a bunch of reasons: Terry Gross, the host, came off like she heard of him for the first time last week, and she made a huge deal out of the fact that he basically plays every instrument on his records - she mentioned it about 8 times and was totally blown away. But they were talking about "losing my edge" and he made the same point about being over 30, only with more of his own autobiography: he was a party DJ in NYC till he was 29 or 30, then realized he could make his own stuff, and then the rest happened. Anyway, I like the idea of starting after 30. I'm old. Young people annoy me.

    But it raises the question. Rock music has always been so thoroughly tied into the marketing of youth culture (& rebellion, etc.). What does it say about right now that Murphy's sort of a hipster messiah, but his FIRST SINGLE was about not being young anymore?

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  2. It means that "rock" music is left to the "young people" who are now old, and the new young people have now moved on to more rebellious pursuits. Like Justin Bieber. Down With Webster. Kei$ha (the dollar sign in her name suggests she's crazy. Like mall crazy. Crazy for a junior high girl.) Have you watched Much Music lately? It's kind of bizarre, this new direction in which we are heading.

    Didn't I tell you about the pitchfork article at the turn of the new decade? They talk about how it's all right there for some crazy new shit to take over and blow our minds. Like "indie" has become "alternative" and shit has just gotten too mellow and it's all about to just blow up in our face and destroy our conceived notion of what music is. This sugar coating, popifying, soft cuddly puppy nature of popular music suggests that this might actually have to happen.

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