rock and roll lifestyle.
and how much did you pay for your rock and roll t-shirt
that proves you were there, that you heard of them first
- "rock and roll lifestyle," cake
in high school in the 90s, i was a self-defined and self-professed alternateen bad-ass (shout out that weird kid in my grade for coining that term for us). as such, i was VERY fixated on the idea of liking "cool" music for a VERY long time. this is not at all an unusual thing for a music-loving kid to be fixated on. and as i fully evolve into my encouragement auntie years, i find myself looking back at that attitude with a sympathetic but critical eye.
are you reading i have that on vinyl? i am sure you have to be if you're reading this. if not, boy HOWDY are you in for a treat. michele is the best writer and she has really put something special together with this site. [side note: watching her start her site is also the reason i started writing again, so thanks for the inspiration to do something i enjoy again.] she and i are about two decades apart in age, and you would maybe think that would put us in hard-boundaried different tranches of music fandom. but that's the beauty of her site and her approach to music as an art: in an age group that cool rock boys have long since written off to the lite FM graveyard of irrelevance, michele finds the best new music AND appreciates the soundtrack of her youth. it's a phenomenal screw-you to gatekeepers and a refreshing approach to writing about music.
and honestly, her writing, especially this absolutely killer essay, has rearranged my soul a bit on my own attitudes. it's a fun self-deprecating act of internet humor, for example, to play the "how many bands do you recognize at the pop festival" game. but in among the fun jokes are two competing strands of cool policing that have started to bother me:
ugh, this music is new and does not sound exactly like bands i loved in high school, and therefore it sucks, only MY CHOSEN SOUNDS are the ONE TRUE ART and everything else is DRECK
ugh, the olds are here, new things are for young people and YOU ARE OLD, don't you have something boomerish to do or something, OLD PEOPLE HAVE NO VALUE, YOU ARE RUINING EVERYTHING, JUST DROP DEAD
and both of those attitudes are, frankly, bullshit. i have been very guilty of the first one too many times in my life, and i have made a point in my 40s to actively resist it. the only music i can say categorically that i don't like is the maga/christofascist propaganda that music row puts on country radio and that really slow click-track slurry xanax rap. have tried them, don't like them. but i have found so much fun new music in the last couple years, all over the damn map, by simply getting out of my own way and letting myself have fun. it's balm for a troubled soul, y'all.
i have thankfully not encountered too much of the GOD DAD YOU SUCK JUST LEAVE stuff yet. it's coming, though, especially as my hair gets grayer and my wrinkles get deeper. at a time when it's super trendy to be vicious to old people - sometimes for good reason, often just because people are mad at specific old people and find it cathartic to just put them all on ice floes instead - i work VERY hard not to tell people they can't do things because they're old. one of the defining hypocrisies of the internet age is "be free to be who you are! oh EW, not like THAT." and in an era where free expression is under direct threat, gatekeeping something like art based solely on identity strikes me as extra gross.
let people listen to the songs they like and talk about it. i was a snide little twit about this for too long. i am having so much fun immersing myself in music of all kinds, from the late-70s new wave that made my hippie dad grumpy to the newest 2020s pop girlies. i was at a party during mardi gras and belted out "pink pony club" on a dance floor at the top of my lungs with a crowd of hundreds, all genders, all races, and all ages. i looked around at one point and thought damn, isn't this the whole point of what we're fighting for, right here. everyone, together, being who we are, no pressure, enjoying the day.
that's what it's all about. screw the performance of cool. love what you love. it's important. no matter how old you are.