Written by From the mind of Jim Ryan (BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!), comes this week’s Matter. He brought it up a few weeks ago during another topic and I put it on the back burner until now, but now it’s unleashed like the ravenous beast it is! (I hope.) So at times in our life we grow up (Science) and sometimes, inexplicably, we leave behind something we, at one time, were very attached to. Sometimes, it even happens in the pop culture world, we love something and for no known reason, we just let it go for better or for worse. I’m not talking about your favorite toy that you don’t play with anymore, I’m talking about something which you could legitimately still be interested or in love with, but have tossed aside.
Those were the days?
Jim: Quick, stop me before I become the Diablo Cody/M. Night Shyamalan of this group…
The best example I can think of for myself I think would be the Dave Matthews Band. I have some pretty wide musical tastes, but back in Middle school/High school I had a years long love affair with DMB that bordered on obsessive. Checking the message boards at nancies.org was a daily occurrence for me, I was a Warehouse member for a time (spend $50 bucks a year so you don’t have to settle for lawn seats? yes plz), I sat in the 25th row at the last show they played at the Vet, I would read any piece written by just about any schmuck on the band, it was very all-consuming. And then I just, almost inexplicably, dropped them during the summer after freshman year at college. I haven’t been to any shows since, haven’t been to the websites I used to check on a daily basis, I can’t even name asingle song off of the album they put out a couple years ago. Dave Matthews practically taught me how to play guitar, but I haven’t looked up a tab for Ants Marching in years (though I bet if I put my mind to it, I can remember how it goes).
Now, why did this happen? Did my tastes change? Most definitely, but in any music related argument where DMB comes up, I’ll still probably fall on the side of the DMB apologists (I even had such a discussion last night before the Arcade Fire/Spoon show). Did I just tire of their fans? The number one reason people don’t like this band is because their fans are for the most part fratty douchebags. I cannot disagree, but there are plenty of fratty douchebags who listen to the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, and I still listen to those guys every now and again. I think if there is one explanation it is that we only have so much space in our brains for fandom and an obsession like the one I had was seriously keeping me from finding out about new music. The fandom itself was this vortex where you basically only found out about bands that sort of sound like DMB but aren’t as good (I’m looking at you Jason Mraz). I don’t think I ever would have discovered bands like LCD Soundsystem or St. Vincent or Titus Andronicus if I was still a DuMBhead. Ultimately, I like having DMB where it is, firmly entrenched in my nostalgia box for middle school and high school. Maybe down the road when I’m some old fart who doesn’t know what’s cool any more I’ll drop $150 to see them at whatever they’re calling the Tweeter Center 30 years from now. That will be sweet.
Caroline: Jim! I just spent a good twenty minutes composing what you just beat me to.
Honestly I am not a huge music fan, just much more a visual person. I appreciate it, but I don’t obsess over it. DMB was my one musical obsession. I could blame grewing up in the preppiest/fratasticky place alive–towson md…but I still pop in “under the table and dreaming” every road trip. I still love it yet I never bought another cd after “Everyday”. But I had every song memorized at one point.
Since “Everyday” I have bought maybe 5 cds total….now I just buy/steal mp3s of inividual songs I like, never albums. DMB was my last album band. Sad.
We are apparently no longer tripping billies, Dave.
Brad: I’ll go beyond calling out one artist and call you the whole music industry as a whole. I used to CRAVE new music/news/anything from a lot of artists–the big ones from my high school days being Weezer and the Pumpkins. Whenever there was a mention of them in a magazine,a snippet of a song on a commercial, an appearance on Regis and Kathie Lee (Shame on you, Billy) I would drop everything to read/listen to whatever tidbit was being broadcast. Taping live performances off the radio, collecting bootlegs, searching for new web images, etc. This was natural for me in high school–I was an obsessed fanboy.
Sherman: I wonder if there’s something about music that more than any other medium of pop culture it’s passion is based on a specific time and place and mood. There are many elements of pop culture I don’t love the way I used to that I know why (Star Wars, because as hard as I try, the new trilogy remains lodged in my head like some psychological trauma that appears in flashes while enjoying the real thing, for example), but for unexplained reasons is harder to pinpoint. And for me, like most everyone, it’s a band.
Pearl Jam was my favorite band exclusively all through high school and shared top billing for much of my college life as well. I had every studio album and even three of the live “bootleg” albums they released. Mind you, these are three albums from three different cities on theexact same tour. That means it’s the same set list, frequently in the same order, with only a few minor changes. There are only three bands I have ever purchased an album for, without ever listening to a single song on it: Pearl Jam, Radiohead, and The Roots. But more of those unpreviewed albums were Pearl Jam than the other two combined.
And yet, for some reason, it never left the hallowed halls of William and Mary with me. Since leaving college I have perhaps listened to Pearl Jam a dozen times (mostly one of those “bootlegs”). It’s not that their new stuff soured on me, I liked Pearl Jam and have never even heard Target: Brought to You By Target or whatever the newest one is called. And it’s not that I am on the verge of getting rid of their old stuff, Vs. and Vitalogy still have honored places in my CD collection, whatever closet it’s stuck in these days. I’ll get around to listening to it, I know, I just have no idea when…
We found a better man. I'm sorry, these are terrible.
Summer: I love the Olsen twins.
Full House, The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley, It Takes Two, Billboard Dad, Winning London, Getting There, Two of a Kind, Passport to Paris, Switching Goals, Our Lips Are Sealed, Holiday in the Sun, So Little Time, Mary-Kate and Ashley in Action!, When in Rome, The Challenge. I’ve seen it all, I own a lot of it. I still wear the Mary-Kate and Ashley perfume (I bought it because it was by them, I recently ordered two bottles of it because it smells like scrumptious honeysuckles). I will also defend them until the day I die (Their clothing lines are actually very popular and successful!).
BUT…I have NEVER seen their full-length film New York Minute. I can’t say I outgrew them because I still watch anything they have acameo in and check up them. But I just didn’t have time/anyone to go with when the film hit theaters and never got around to it after the DVD was released.
And I’m calling it now. MKAO will have a theatrical comeback…someday.
You don't got it, dude.
I apologize for some of the intense rambling that went down in this post. Lots of very mature discussion. It won’t happen again. I did try to end it with a funny image of two people who, apparently, have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (HOW!?) in milk mustaches. Maybe at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why. It just matters that they served their purpose for us while they did. Gave us something to identify with and lots of memories wrapped up in those times. They create their own kind of MASS nostalgia and create touchstones for us to reference when we remember the good old days. I think that’s enough for me. So thank you past obsessions, we love you for what you are even though now we barely talk to you. We’ll always have Paris. Or whatever.
MKAO DO have it, dude.