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No matter how much we mature and claim to be independent adults, our insecurities still wage a constant inner war that makes us gravitate toward groups or causes we find eclectic or interesting.
We will always desire to be unique and, at the same time, long to fit in.
Whether it’s suddenly becoming die-hard Magic fans now that the team is doing well or spending hours on the Internet trying to find an undiscovered band that makes us feel artsy and important, we often try too hard to make a statement or join a community.
I’m willing to admit that I’m a bit of a music snob.
My days of wearing nothing but band T-shirts and being too good to listen to the radio have been over for a while, but I still have to keep myself in check and make sure I’m not just listening to something because it sounds original or a trendy music magazine gave it a good review.
Last Wednesday I went to see Animal Collective, the kings of experimental indie dance pop, at Club Firestone on Orange Avenue downtown.
Walking up to the massive line of emo/indie/trendy kids before the doors to the club were opened made me laugh a little inside.
Nearly every outfit looked like something from an Urban Outfitters mannequin or a thrift store find made hip.
I got in line alone because the friends I was meeting up with were running late.
I ended up talking to the guys in front of and behind me and I was shocked when they all told me they were from out-of-state.
The two in front of me were from Louisiana, and they even had southern accents to prove it. The three behind me were from Chattanooga, Tenn.
They said this was one of the only shows the band was playing that wasn’t 21 and up.
One of them also proudly informed me that he was 21 and he just saw the band a couple nights ago in Tennessee, but still wanted to share the experience with his underage friends.
At this point I wondered how all this hype could be justified, but I was still anxious to see if my $15 ticket would get me much more than I had bargained for — especially considering the tickets were going for $100 on Craigslist the day of the show.
Once the opening band, Black Dice, filled the room with their noise rock and experimental sounds, however, my hopes quickly dwindled.
The New York City band’s nearly hour-long set was basically one continuous song consisting of a looped bass line, random psychedelic keyboard sounds and an occasional screech from a man who looked somewhat like a viking warrior.
From where I was standing, I could only see one or two heads swaying back and forth to the pulsations.
And while Animal Collective was immensely more enjoyable, I still found their 10-minute additions to every song, kaleidoscopic lighting and creepy images displayed on screens on either side of the stage pretty over-the-top.
The clincher came at the end of the concert, when the lead singer of the band told the crowd, “Listen to our music; let it fill your minds.”
The art they were trying to create just seemed so forced, and the majority of the people at the show looked like they were hypnotized, dancing and swaying to songs that masked their meaning and significance with obscure lyrics and trippy sounds.
A Paste magazine review of the band’s new album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, tells readers to “just enjoy the orgasmic rush of danceable rock. After all, hands are meant not to be jettisoned up in frustration at dead-end lyrics, but thrown in the air as if you just didn’t care.”
While I do agree that probing for some deep meaning is often futile and not what the artist had in mind when they created their piece, there has to be something we can agree or identify with so that we’re not just blindly following along.
Why bother having lyrics if they don’t contain any sort of message or story?
The identity that is wrapped up in those things is what creates community, rather than, as the Say Anything song “Admit It!!!” from their 2006 ...Is A Real Boy CD says, some “set of standards and tastes that appear to be determined by an unseen panel of hipster judges giving [their] thumbs up and thumbs down to incoming and outgoing trends and styles of music and art.”
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