Up All Night

I'm not usually one for nighttime entries, but it's quiet here and I just feel like ridding myself of some of the clutter that threatens to overtake the precious space between my ears. Grey matter, as Danny Elfman called it all those years ago. Oh, how I loved him and that band of his. Oingo Boingo were never quite as big on the east coast but we California kids dug them. They played an annual Halloween concert that Michele and I greatly anticipated each year and attended at least half a dozen times. There was truly nothing like it: thousands of people showing up in costume for a macabre parade accompanied by Boingo's matchless sound. Now Elfman's married to Bridget Fonda and scoring movies like Big Fish. I guess we all grow up sometimes, right?

Music is on my mind these days, after spending several hours recently updating my MP3 player so that all album titles and release dates are accurate. (Hey, I never denied being a certifiable music geek.) What I found more difficult was trying to assign a specific genre to certain artists, something the MP3 player insists you do, or does for you (calling Beck "alternative folk"... huh?). Some artists are no-brainers. Stevie Wonder = R&B. Yo La Tengo = Indie. Depeche Mode = New Wave. The Beatles = Classic Rock. The categories may not seem that straightforward to you, but I classified the artists in my player based on where I'd think to look for them, should I choose to search by genre.

Other artists proved more difficult to categorize. For example, His Royal Highness, Prince. Do I put him under Funk? R&B? Pop? And what about bands typically classified as punk that I nevertheless do not consider punk (i.e. The Clash or Police) or the use of the term "goth" (which I hate) to describe any band whose members have dyed their hair black and wear matching lipstick (i.e. The Cure)? How can I allow my MP3 player to categorize Morcheeba as trip-hop when I'm not even exactly certain what the term means? What about bands my MP3, in its infinite wisdom, horribly miscategorizes? For example, refering to Radiohead as Dream Pop or R.E.M. as Folk Rock? Again, the player is programmed to be as specific as possible, but while those genre classifications might be perfectly fine for some, they just didn't sit right with me. Not that I could always do a better job of categorization than my little computerized songster.

So, the categorization process -- employed as a lighthearted means of taking my mind off the bigger issues in my own life and in the world as a whole -- turned into something of a beast, keeping me up until all hours, taunting me to beat it at its little game of genre-defining. Which I'm not sure I did.

My categorization of rock bands from the 60s and 70s (Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Stones, et al) places them under the rather broad umbrella of "Classic Rock," which I consider perfectly appropriate. But then I began thinking of the playlist on our local classic rock station, which -- along with the requisite Beatles, Dead and so forth -- throws in songs by artists like Pearl Jam and Nirvana. On a station calling itself "The Classic Rock Experience?" Most classic rock stations' entire catalogs stretch just far enough to include 1979, but rarely delve into the Decade of Excess, let alone the 90s. I can understand placing current recording artists in the classic rock cluster if they happened to start their careers way back when (i.e. Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel, Aerosmith, etc.). But have I gotten so old that bands first emerging while I was in college are now considered classic rock? Judge for yourself. Here a few songs played regularly on 93.1, Humboldt's Classic Rock Experience:

Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Under the Bridge"
Pearl Jam - "Jeremy"
Nirvana - "Come as You Are"
U2 - "With or Without You"
Soundgarden - "Black Hole Sun"
Stone Temple Pilots - "Plush"
R.E.M. - "Losing My Religion" (now, if you're including R.E.M. in a classic rock lineup, shouldn't you reach further back in their catalog than 1991?)

I suppose the station could be applying the word "classic" to mean "memorable" or "unforgettable," but I always perceived the term "classic rock" as signifying something "enduring" or "ageless," thus pertaining to songs that have been around a hell of a lot longer than "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But I suppose the use of the term for newer artists is apropos, if you consider the actual meaning of the word. It just gets my knickers in a twist, for some reason.

At any rate, for those concerned over whether or not I can successfully manage to keep the disconcerting news of the world in the back of my mind while allowing the minutiae of my own life to dance to the forefront, fear not! It's quite obvious I've achieved just that.

Posted by ayelet at April 13, 2004 09:31 PM