A Little Bit Of Rock and Roll

Is anyone else tired of the sense of exclusivity exuded by a good part of the musical community? It happens in every genre in some way. You can't sing pop unless you weigh three pounds and dress up in leather (or unless you go the opposite way and shove your promise ring in your fan's faces). You can't do rock unless you're a coke addict. You can't play indie-type music unless you've proven yourself properly offbeat. You can't sing country unless...well, actually, they'd probably let anyone in at this point. The requirements for that job are probably "can play banjo" and "has semi-functioning brainstem". But that's not that big a deal. When such strict limits are created, it's all the more fun to watch truely creative and innovative artists flagrantly break the rules. I'm talking less about the people who make the music and more about the people who listen to it.

Music has always connected people, and it always will. A person with only a middling amount of appealing qualities will most likely seem much more tolerable if he shares your passion for the Ramones' original lineup and knows that their song "The KKK Took My Baby Away" is not a commentary on civil rights but rather Joey's slightly offensive way of yelling at another band member for stealing his girlfriend. And let's face it: you love her, you really do, but you get the nagging feeling that you would love her so much more if she were to let you burn all of her Fall Out Boy albums and roast marshmallows over Infinity on High. That sense of connection is why I'm actually not going to be bitching about hipsters in this posts. Hipsters don't care about connection within their own ranks. That whole culture is about the egotistical desire to be more ironically obscure, because obscure equals hard to reach which equals cool which equals wanted. They exclude everybody, so it's less annoying and more ridiculous.

What's ridiculous is when a large group of people unite and decide that just because they all like the same music means that you all have to think the exact same way.

It's a more particular set that does this. You'd expect it to be pop, maybe, but it's not. Pop just wants your money. These guys want your souls.

There is no place where this specific type of exclusion is more prominent than in Rolling Stone. Actually, that's false: there might be a place somewhere, but Rolling Stone is the place where I noticed it. Specifically, I was looking at a feature that they have every moth, an info-graphic called "The Good, The Bad, and the Scary." It was comprised of a large horizontal line with two arrows surrounded by a bunch of news blurbs and pictures. On the blue end of the arrow was what the author considered good things, and the bad things resided on the red end. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't for the labels. The positive side read "With Us", and the negative one said "Against Us."

Okay. So not only does this sound totally freaky and 1984, but it's totally hypocritical! If you ask most liberals what they hate about conservatives, one of the reasons you will hear is most likely going to be "closed-minded" on issuses such as gay marriage, reproductive freedom, etc. But these people are practically making republicans into the anti-christ. I mean, North Korea launching nukes was lower down on the Scary Scale than Iowan Republicans stumping for the 2010 election! Basically, they are saying to their readers that if you do not share one outlook on life, you shouldn't be reading their magazine or listening to the music featured. You should probably be watching Bill O'Reilly somewhere.

I guess in the end this isn't really about music. It's about people and their bizzare need to deamonize and exclude and create an Us and a Them in every situation possible. And let me point out that I consider myself a liberal on most issues, besides maybe drug control. But I am all for gay marriage. I would really like people to stop shooting abortion doctors. I went to Obama rallies and own a t-shirt with his face on it. I just think that this is something that needs to stop. When we beleive that people with different social, political or moral views than us are evil, we sap ourselves of the power to ever sit down, talk and come up with a solution to important problems. It's a good way to make sure that the things on the red side of the arrow never go away.