20,000

Counting the hits up and down.

alternative

 ”And yet for several months in the spring and summer of ’98, “Closing Time” was everywhere in a way that songs would soon never be again.”

The Simmonization of Steven Hyden is nearly complete. Even though towards the end of the piece he acknowledges that “Someone Like You” is, indeed, everywhere, he tries to wriggle out with the following qualification: “it’s like the flip side to the reaction expected for “Closing Time.” But he’s already shot the tires out of his supposition. Songs are still everywhere, even rock songs, and just because these songs aren’t impeccably-structured Midwestern pop-rock, it doesn’t follow that Semisonic are some vestige of a bygone shared mental space.

I love the A.V. Club’s total immersion in the workings and effects of pop culture, but they still fall prey too frequently into conflating personal experience with inherited truth. His disclaimer about “how remarkably unremarkable our personal relationships with pop culture can be” notwithstanding, a lot of Hyden’s writing - I’m thinking of Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? - foregrounds the (admitted) pull of nostalgia, to say nothing of the winners-write-history canonization that makes such relationships seem unremarkable. Just because he cared about Urge Overkill (who had one hit and quickly exited the minds of nearly everyone who isn’t a Gen-X Chicago resident) doesn’t mean we have to - and I’m not sure he cared about UO much beyond their rule-of-three article padding.

The A.V. Club has been showing some signs of bravery - recognizing that rock has long lost its hegemony, for instance (but their hip-hop coverage is largely confined to Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, and Odd Future). Of course, they’re still a rock-centric publication, from the albums they review to the artists they interview (especially the endearing “Set List” feature, which surely baffles their readership with every hair metaller that’s chatted up). The A.V. Club is in the business - like most music mags, admittedly - in explaining who’s winning, who’s won, and who’s going to win. Jason Heller, who used to be all over the site, and now seems largely limited to reviews and the monthly noise-ghetto Loud, is my favorite non-TV writer on the site. He combines a vital sense of history - both mono- and subcultural - with a clear sense of his personal champions. That’s kind of what I’m going for with The 20000, my TSJ blurbs, and the music-writing career I’m going to spend 2012 finally pursuing. The framework of big band-Elvis-Beatles-classic rock-punk-New Wave-underground-alternative-indie is an OK one to have, but each transition is studded with a thousand exceptions and alternate pathways to follow.

In Hyden’s piece, and probably in the culture at large, Semisonic is a bygone group (from only 10-15 years ago, mind) with an ingratiating hit. To me, they were a delightful guitar-pop band that gave me nearly-Beatley levels of joy throughout high school. I won’t pretend they were emblematic of anything, or even particularly world-shattering, but they were mine for a time, and songs like “Get a Grip” and “California” are still there to access. With a little help, Sugar Ray’s “Fly” or Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” or Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” (which I’m pretty sure has been poking its head into pop culture lately) could serve the same pop-cultural purpose Hyden tracks.

A fiercely personal history is what keeps “Closing Time” or “Hypnotize” or “Rehab” fresh. A dedication to occasionally separating history and nostalgia out and immersing yourself in those elements that made each song such a surprise, or such a delight, in the first place. And, of course, our musical memories aren’t exclusively made of songs you hear in malls and movie theaters. Everyone’s got a George Koelle or a Billie Jo Spears or a Butt Trumpet waiting to score a mundane moment. Hyden himself admits that memory is a distorting and distortable force. I guess I’m just hoping we can ease up on making monoliths out of songs (or artists) - if we’re listening right, our cranial cityspace ought to contain hundreds, or thousands of such structures. Give me strange cartography over projection debates any day.

  1. the20000 reblogged this from sallyo and added:
    Shoot, Sally pointed out something(s) I missed. Maybe a lot of us remember it because some bars used it as aural code...
  2. sallyo reblogged this from the20000 and added:
    indeed,… I enjoyed “Whatever Happened...Alternative Nation?” but I’ve been noticing lately...
  3. imathers reblogged this from the20000 and added:
    be reading Brad, if you...already (the rest
  4. the20000 posted this