Is there hope for my generation?
 

There's so much crap on MTV (One Direction, Justin Beiber, Nicki Minaj, Pitbull, Pregnant Teens and Jersey Shore...) Is there going to be a punk revolution or something like that? Many people from my generation (2000's kids) would like to make things change.

I was thinking about this because I'm about to start a band with two friends...

Q1: Is there still hope for my generation?
Q2: Do you think it's okay for an all-female band to cover Sonic Youth, Dinsaur Jr, Pavement, Pixies or should we cover Justin Beieber and LAdy Gaga?

A1: no, music is dead R.I.P
A2: cover Justin Bieber & Lady Gaga, no1curr about SY & Dino Jr anymore

Don't fret girl. I don't know how old you are, but when you go to college, punk rock will find you, as long as you do enough drugs and sleep on enough dank floors of overcrowded houses. ;)

If you're in high school chances are very few wil know or care about Sonic Youth Dino or pavement, so I'd suggest covering bands that are more current: No Age, LCD Soundsystem, Deerhunter... Then when people ask you what you're playing, you can at least point them to some albums that have been released in the last five years. But just keep the spirit alive and you'll eventually find what you're looking for in the end.

As for girls covering those bands, fuck yes!!!! :) girls can do anything boys can do, except get decent jobs and achieve social status ;)

1: You're the hope. Stop looking for a savior and be one.

2: Cover what you want and the audience will find you. Meanwhile, write songs. Lots of them. A fuckton. Five a day. Write songs about this very topic.

Good luck.

well there's certainly no hope for cover bands.

a1


a2


and cover yr self.

Why?

A1: these days it´s very hard to say anything about the future, but I don´t either see very much hope in the future of pop music. To me it seems only few old pop/rock music makers seem to make interesting music these days.
A2: Play anything that you enjoy, covers or own!

not a big poster on here (not even sure if I've even posted) but I really thought I should interject here: music nowadays is not as bad as so many perceive it to be. yes, pop music as an art-form is dead, but Nirvana were indeed the ones who killed it in the first place. it isn't okay to cover Pavement and the Pixies not only because both of them are shite (kablamo! neither of them even compare to SY) but to exclusively cover bands is to admit defeat, to resign yourself to the fact that making artful yet commercially viable music is simply not an option in today's world.

in the simplest terms possible, music is by no means dead, it is just that the more innovative end of the spectrum has been relegated to the underground sub-mainstream aka those who dabble almost solely in the avant-garde. this is the strain of music that needs to be fostered as we will be royally fucked if that capitulates too.

I have to agree that starting a band with the intention to only cover other bands is never a great idea. It's ok if you're in junior high, but if you want to make music, start making your own as soon as possible.

The only musicians from my salad days who are still making music are the ones who refused to do covers, and got into songwriting early. The truth is that nobody just knows how to write good songs. You have to write a few years' worth of shit before you write anything good, and you have to create a style that you feel is uniquely you before you will be proud of anything you write. That may sound intimidating, but it's good advice. Learn to play "like you" by fucking around and having fun. Instead of covering Pavement, try to write new songs in their style. Or of you must cover, try covering something that sounds nothing like Pavement, and then play it the way you think Pavement might.

I have never been a good lyricist, but I can play, and have played, in a few bands. I never wrote anything I was proud of until I wrote collaboratively, and had friends with me who would take my lame ass dropped D riffs and say "why don't you do .... Instead?" At first, I was always reluctant. But I always ended up liking the variation on my idea better than my original idea, and I ended up making a few damn good songs with the help of my friends.
When we did do covers, we did weird ones. Like covering Jets to Brazil in a Minor Threat like way... Or Metallica in a Meat Puppets way... But don't just start a cover band. Girl or boy, it doesn't matter. Play for fun until you feel your serotonin rushing from an improvised chord change. Discover your musical self through jamming with people who are less subjective about your ideas; particularly those bold enough to tell you when your ideas are shit. Then you can start to create your own revolution.

Oh, and enjoy it while it lasts, because chances are you'll be working in an office with a bunch of republicans in the end... sitting at a desk all day in a Jcpenny suit, wishing you were still a gutter punk with a pocket full of Vicodin, and a microphone chipped tooth.

"They'd lock me in a room and say, 'write 10 surfing songs,' and so I wrote heroin and I said, 'hey, I really got something for you."

that's how I learnt: improvisation and moving into this amorphous little sound-world sort of thing where I would just take everything I loved and throw them at each other. like I always loved Fahey and, as with anyone who hears him, I wanted to emulate that incredible sound. but his fingerwork was impossibly quick, so I slowed it down to a crawl and started moving around the emphasis and resonance of notes, and as I was always a fan of monolithic, heavy music too (Earth, sunn o))), Melvins) I used it as a means with which to sort of drone away. I also love (and always will more than anything else) MBV, for the way they existed at the intersection of noise and melodics, but somehow I always wanted more from them, like a more musically human element, something to make their later stuff less robotic, like more chord changes, perhaps some variation over their extended break outros, stuff like that, so I did it myself and just moved on from there.

that's all it is. music is purely a form of enjoyment, of catering to what you want, of ascertaining what will evoke something from someone whoever the fuck that may be, not rehashing what someone else did two decades ago, let alone in the exact same style. do something original that you want to do and don't ever bow to anyone else.

I think it has been very rare artists that has made totally original, great music in the music history (and specially in popular music history) without any influences from anybody...Now only Pekka Airaksinen comes into my mind.

dont worry about it; hope can be very tricky.

quoted for troooff
sonic tooth

oh dear. just read that. should turn thread page to see, but this is so true in my case. i think thats the main reason, i have been down past month. because i know, that this is more or less my future and i dont want it.

something does not have to be 100% brand new to be original. All it has to be is different in some manner from what came before. playing tennis is not original, but playing at Wimbledon buck-nekkid would be.

sad to say, Thurston's folk crap sux.

and unless there is some sort of return to communal music listening, a la MTV in it's first decade, or radio, then there is no communal music experience from which to draw influence. This leaves a ton of middling bands with middling audiences, which is why your generation is doomed.

Absolutely. It gets me down all the time. Some of the people I used to play music with are (despite being in their mid-late 30's and, on the whole, almost completely lacking in education or marketable skills) actually becoming professional musicians. Most, of course, are complete failures and love on food stamps... But a few are paying the bills with their music.

I read about it on Facebook, and want to cry... As I shamble off to work in the morning; a Minutemen shirt under my button down serving as my one remaining punk statement.

Ugh.

this is my favorite new board member and i keep wondering if nik got by the ip ban

I can only speak for myself but when I was in an all female band we wrote all our own songs. And when I say we wrote all our own songs I mean we did cover versions but changed the titles.

Haha.

I want to go in and edit that, but it's damn funny

bring back ni'k

i'm not sure if he has internet right now but he is permanently ip banned stu should undo that please stu

Oh god. I hate the word swag with a passion.

Pssh. I'm seeing loads of people, north and south of 20, out at shows supporting live music, actually communicating with each other then forming meaningful relationships through 'social media'. The underground (as such) isn't a feeder economy for the mainstream any more. The problem, if there is a problem, is that people can't see 'the underground' because it's not conveniently sending emissaries to the mainstream and doesn't have the platform to communicate. But also, that's a fucking good thing because it means that there's loads of strong local scenes. Sort of. There's a massive economic gripe I have and it can be really short-sighted, but there's plenty going on that you're not seeing because you're looking in the wrong place, in the wrong way. It won't happen the way it did when you were 16 so don't expect it to.

I also get a bit pissed off at teenagers going on about passed generations having it better. They might have done, but you weren't there so meh. There's probably a scene nearby. Unless you live in a rural backwater, in which case I apologise. But generally, there's stuff in most large-ish cities, as far as I can see. Go, find. Or go, make a scene.

I should add: listening to miserable, jaded, cynical old cunts like me is only ever going to prematurely age you.

I too miss the RAWK. All the new music I hear sounds so pussy soft, I blame Air Supply, I mean Arcade Fire... ha!

Aren't you a fan of Codeine though, Rob?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cscHL...=results_video

Arcade Fire is a good band...

Good does not necessarily equal RAWK

when I first went into the record store and put Codeine Frigid Stars LP on the listening station I thought the shit rocked so hard, so awesome, then I got it home, put it on the stereo, and my room-mates at the time said, "Jesus what a fucking depressing record!"

ha! RAWK must be in the eye of the beholder.

Things were more fun in the underground 80s than now.

This is so obvious, I won't even bother to back up this statement.

For a start, you almost never came across people saying the 50s were better. Almost never. They didn't even have an internet in the 80s. What a bunch of losers!

Edit: ok, they had some internets but it only came on at 9pm, in black and white, and was mostly just a picture of YOUR MUM being racist.

sure you did Glice, what you think Happy Days was about? Ayyyyyyy

Gnostic propaganda - The Fonz was mercury Christ, Richie Cunningham was archon saklas - it all makes sense when you think about it.

the gnosis is deep in this one...