Saturday, May 17, 2008
On the 20th anniversary of its release, Husker Du's landmark album "Zen Arcade" proves there was way more to '80s music than kitsch, camp and bad haircuts.
Jul 1, 2004 | Self-consciousness, maybe, is the hallmark of a dying art. Surely it's the case with what eventually became known as "alternative rock," a genre whose tailspin into artistic banality is unprecedented in the history of popular culture. Back in the day, we called it "indie" or "underground," until such adjectives grew wildly out of sync with its mainstream embrace. Today, bankrolled by billion-dollar labels and obsessed with little more than its own self-image, alt-rock drones on, a cadre of slicked-up sound-alikes whose smirks and snarls look up from compact discs across the country and around the world.
If I had to choose The Moment upon which I gave up on rock 'n' roll -- and it, perhaps, on itself -- it was probably the day in 1994 when Kurt Cobain shot himself. Peter Jennings was reading an obit during "World News Tonight"; I could vaguely recollect the name until he next said "Nirvana," and then I thought, Oh, right, them. A mainstream outfit as far as I knew; cock-rock stuff, wasn't it? As a kid who'd gone through high school in the early 1980s, strung out on hardcore punk, sure, I'd heard Nirvana's songs. And I hated them. They were everything punk rock had taught me to hate -- mangy, overindulgent and bloated with noisy self-assurance.
The 1980s were an intensely prolific decade for rock, a reality seldom acknowledged anymore. Indeed, one of the most annoying examples of pop-culture revisionism has been the focus on '80s camp. If you ever endured a half-hour of Fox's travesty of reminiscence, "That '80s Show," you'll know what I'm talking about. Rhino Records similarly went bottom-scraping when it gave us "Like, Omigod! The '80s Pop Culture Box (Totally)," showcasing the dregs of those nascent days of MTV -- including Toni Basil's "Mickey" and Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science," as if these artists, in hand with Duran Duran and Kajagoogoo, were the essence of the era's talent. Truth is, we laughed at A Flock of Seagulls as much then as we do now.
Behind the coiffures and kitsch was a far more intriguing and vital scene. The only trick was knowing where to find it. Indie bands of this era, often led by teenagers, perfected the art of creative self-sufficiency. Radio play was solely on college stations, usually late at night. Acts like Minor Threat, Black Flag and the Misfits -- promoted mainly through word-of-mouth advertising and a handful of independently published fanzines -- became legendary. They toured in station wagons, lugged their own equipment from the stage, and slept on the couches and floors of fans. Handbills advertised concerts. Imagine a group of kids from Boston renting a car and driving to a Grange hall in the western Massachusetts hamlet of Greenfield to see a show. Imagine hundreds of kids. Concerts were never more than a few dollars and musicians mingled with the crowd, holding impromptu interviews with zine writers and breaking down the artist/audience barrier at every level.
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