MY BROTHER DIED IN VIETNAM. JAMES BOND, WHO IS HE?

Welcome to what this is. And what this is, I will tell you.

The name for this blog is from Jean Luc Godard. Godard coined the teen anti-heroes in Masculine Feminine "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola" referring to the political ideologies AND pop culture consumerism that youth instigated/ingested during the 1960's. Teen culture had been on the rise a coupla decades or so earlier, even more rapidly after the radio waves started to have a new musical pulse.
The 1960's naturally harbored enough cultural ripening to produce a fruition of teen rebellion at its most iconic (and probably its most organized as well). The 1950's had their jukebox classic leather jacket teen rebels and by the 1960's teens and college kids alike had more leeway to take over.



Some religious forces and "upstanding members of society" feared rock n roll's wiley wild influence; the loud sound of TOO MUCH freedom in the Land of the Free (and beyond) had all the capabilities of making the world less contained, quiet, and quaint. Youth's threatening presence stood against Parent Culture powers ensuring they would eventually have less control over the future. By the late 1960's, Youth all over the world had become an obvious resistance against political powers in regards to civil rights and war. Youth also became more of a target for capitalism. Teen desire demanded fashion, records and sub-cultural symbolism thus wildly influential on the hyper growth of modern consumerist markets. Godard romanticized the wild wily tragedy of rock n roll's teen children while noting the market's twinkling eagle eyes and corporations' ideas of how to bank on subculture. And in true Godard fashion, the film notes this phenom with a heavy hint of cynicism. What's more demeaning to a movement than dumbing it down by SELLING IT OUT??


What's more so worth noting is how Godard combined the romanticism of cinema with grim realism, exploiting the excited naivety and unfulfilled expectations of youth during that time in a way that could be poking fun. A flip side to the mirror, an emptiness of contradiction living parallel to the world of Wild Things. Where there were boys in black peacoats and Beatles boots reading Sartre and throwing Molotov cocktails, there were also girls drinking soda pops in plastic diners dancing to saccharine music wearing candy colored lipstick. Those boys were trying to fuck those girls in all his films and both boys and girls aren't ever on the same page except for brief moments via sex and sometimes in the name of love. Of course genders could vice versa but even more relevant was the amount of hypocrisy that we see EVERYWHERE today, marketing underground culture for monetary gain, SELLING CULTURE to teens who think they are "going against the grain". The selling of culture to teens is more relevant now than ever and Culture Spies, Culture Vultures and Media Marketing Monsters are hard to keep away from Youth's ability to keep any organic culture they can create in the "not-for-profit" zone. Someone is PAID to steal "movements" and turn them into products in present times.

Because music was integrated as a huge part of youth culture, music became a representation of the vast resistance movement in the 1960's and 1970's. As the world changed politically, socially, spiritually and economically, music changed with it, sprouting off into sub-genres according to the different collective ideas from the 1950's until now. Social ideologies were expressed through rock n roll (directly or accidentally) and the target audience happened to be a certain ripe impressionable age. Teenagers smoking cigarettes posing as a total societal threat, loitering in shopping malls, pretending to be "cool", remains a trusty societal persona, a mainstay in the landscape of culture since the mid-1900s, still regurgitated and kept alive, even if there is less and less to resist. Or better put, even if the youth just now doesn't give a shit. We are counterculture without cause. We aren't about anything.




Perhaps it's a long shot to tie rock n roll to social tides or philosophies or reactions and of course electric guitars were not what changed our civil rights movements. War time resistance and class problems were not fought by drug-addled juveniles with instruments. Still, it would be ridiculous to not note how influential the loud sound of celebration, anger, and sexuality was in challenging the hips, hearts and heads of generations of kids and adults alike aiming to become more free socially and spiritually. Rock n roll was a messenger. And the message has changed, many times again and again. What's happened to youth over time and where are we, ex-youths and current youths alike, heading? We're at the crossroads, we're at the crux wondering what the fuck is up and where to go from here. Maybe on the road to nowhere.


Loosely, the drug/music connection in rock n roll itself (and society's approach to drugs) was a huge shift in modern society mid-century. T. Rex's "Children of the Revolution" are now grandparents; drugs were decadence for a secret club of glamour freaks who boasted the egotism in furthering Rock Star idols. In the 1980's, the drug culture that was a side dish to rock n roll in previous decades (David Bowie & cocaine) had become a standard way of life. American teenagers during the Reagan generation had high school class-ism at best in regards to any sort of "political" concerns, unlike the 1970's who had standardized high school boozing and weed smoking but Vietnam on their backs. The 1980's teen directed their "resistance" towards what personally affected them: Black Flag's My War was personal (title, duh), a big step from something like MC5 and their "Kick Out the Jams" anthems any day of the week. The suburban Swatch-wearing juvenile's right to party and fuck on Saturday nights while mom and dad were indulging in their own safe zone Disco-Glam leftovers of the sexual/drug experimentation had permeated society for once and for all.

EVEN 20 YEARS AGO, IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT YOU WEREN'T A REBEL JUST BECAUSE YOU FUCKED MULTIPLE PEOPLE AND DID BLOW. It's common place, dude. It's the 1st World Coming-of-Age story.


By the 1990's, everything was pure ridicule, self-absorption, too serious. There wasn't much external to focus on and workaholic parents didn't have the time to teach their kids about "work ethic" or self-care. Classic American laziness prevailed. A lack of purpose allowed self loathing to take over as the current wave (the idol takes new form). Prozac Nation prescribes media-infused shotgun wounds to the brains of Grunge gods, only for Riot Grrrls and skater boys to scoop bits of brains off the stage and mesh them into their liner notes, salvaging earlier indie rock to spin off house show circuits of the late 90's. Zines claim SOCIETY STRANGLES US. And then 4 tracks become easily accessible and everyone's getting guitars at Christmas, parents hoping it'll wage compromise for their kids to make better grades. Soon enough there will be no "alternative". 20 years later, everyone will be "alternative".


Marx's utopia didn't get a hold of shit; America's struggles for a better society were being buried underneath the expansion of capitalism, kids who embodied classism unable to take responsibility for being part of the problem all because they were wearing anti-establishment outfits. And secret wrong-doings overseas may have been shouted about all day long but changed nothing, only marinating poorly as political resistance in the hardcore scene of the mid-to-late 1990's, a Politically Correct empire of veganism and self righteous behavior. Above all, the history of underground musicians is so well documented that it inspires every kid who will eventually obsess over the underground to push that underground to the surface, and if the underground lives over ground where does that take us? That's kind of why we don't use the word "underground" anymore, you know?

Definition of CRUX

Marx is dead.
Crux is real.

There are many questions about the movement of sound, the change of sound, the change of ideas, the shifts and cycles and how everything comes back around again, leaning more this way or that, fusing this with this but talking about something else all together, is it washed out or is it still strong, what's meaningful, what is progress... where's the dialogue about it? Essentially this is a music blog; I love music. But I find myself having these conversations realizing that even though we're just talking about bands and music history it expands into more and more questions about culture and humanity. We can ask questions and draw conclusions that aren't real, so perhaps it's pointless, but it's what we think about. And, sure, there are no answers but there certainly are patterns.

Most of all, if you don't know your Past, you don't know your Future.

There's a lot in the Past, a lot in the Present. The Future is, however, uncertain as fuck. There's both the microcosm and macrocosm of it all, the yada yada Space and Time, the here/here, here/there, here/then, there/then. One individual right now in one city relates to a whole movement in another country from a time past. I give you motifs, the ties that bind: TEEN, DOOM, ROCK 'N' ROLL, REVOLUTION, CULTURE, MOVEMENT, SOCIETY, SOCIOLOGY, GENRES. It's the Song That Never Ends. It's the questions that I'll ask forever.