Rock Dreams

26 September 2006
Arsenal 2 - 0 FC Porto
37' Henry
47' Hleb

This job is starting to heat up, eh? I get a two-week break after this weekend, but after that I get to do these every week (or twice a week!) consistently until the middle of March. That's going to be the real test, especially in the environment that I'm envisioning for my future apartment. If I can get through that period with all entries written of a generally similar quality (good), I will consider this experiment, by and large, a success. These first entries, through August and September, can be considered the introduction. From October 14th to March 17th, the meat of this work will be conducted. It will be an exploration of the depths of a writer's soul, it will scrape the bottom of my creative heart, and there is a solid chance most of it will be utterly terrible. But we didn't start this to eject early, did we? No, I think not. So grab your gear, for we are setting off into the wilderness, and we shall not be returning for some time hence. There are a couple things I want to address, one which pertains to Arsenal, an important topic no doubt, and the other which pertains to England on a more cultural note. Let us save the football for later on in my discussion. You may have noticed my adoption of a stranger tone within this piece, and that reflects my desire to keep this interesting for myself: if I am to write nigh-on sixty of these suckers, I am going to have to spice things up from time to time. So I hope you can excuse me and my wild inclinations. If not, you know where the door can be found. I put my finger on the pulse of the music landscape recently and sensed a strange shift. It went to a land I was not entirely familiar with: incidentally that of Sheffield and the surrounding country. It would appear that a large portion of indie rock is coming from Sheffield and the United Kingdom in general: the Fratellis and Dirty Pretty Things are an exceptionally strong point in this regard, but I literally cannot list the huge amount of bands that are exploding across Britain's radio waves. It's interesting because it is hard to create a new scale for this emerging music: I feel like we cannot simply plop it into the indie sphere, the one populated by the Shins and Modest Mouse and Stereolab and Belle and Sebastian - that is the old world, the world of the Great Transition. We kids, who did not like metal or rap-rock, found safe haven in that old world. Those bands gave us comfort, they smiled at us knowingly for they felt the same way: they were equally terrified by the lumbering pop acts that made MTV a brothel. Yet as always happens in music, as sure as the moon will sometimes appear full and will sometimes appear not at all, tastes are changing and bands are changing. No longer do most of these small indie acts shirk the spotlight, no longer are they surprised when they blow up on the internet. The internet is of course at least partly to blame for all this, suddenly bands do not even have to try to receive publicity: you put up a song and sit back, waiting for the audience to do the work for you. It's brilliant. I think rock and roll, as a cultural entity, lost a lot of self-confidence in the nineties when hip hop, contemporary pop, and big beat all caught on at the same time. Rock lost its relevance, and the real rock-n-rollers disappeared in the mist, replaced by the likes of Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback. These radio-friendly unit-shifters became the rock norm, and for a while we all forgot what fun it could be to just rock out. We got disheartened by Default, Chevelle, SR-71 - the list goes on. So when I first heard The Young Knives and their 1977-influenced bass riff on "She's Attracted To", it was like a jolt of heroin. Oh yeah. Bands can fucking do this. I had completely forgotten. To this realization, my compatriot Zach and I are beginning work on what is known, in the parlance, as a podcast. Of course, exactly what I need on top of this work (and, presumably, the other novel I'm working on) is yet another side project. Sometimes I feel like Mike Patton - except the way lazier, way less successful version. I think the important thing to remember about this budding new music scene - which I desperately want to name, I want to ascribe them their place in Rock nomenclature - is that it finds roots in a scene that it is also inherently very different from. A lot of the bands, The Young Knives especially, hearken back to 70s punk yet with a twist. No longer does the DIY ethic re-enforce humility, or sponsor shying away from the spotlight. The new indie landscape is all about becoming known: no longer are people or bands scared of saying, "we want to be popular; we want to make it." In fact, today's do-it-yourself (DIY for future reference) ethic is all about the spotlight, it consists of ways to seize it and let somebody hear your music. With the internet and the creation of websites like MySpace and PureVolume, users can sample bands quickly, and bands are forced to be readily entertaining or risk losing a listener. Much in the same way that bands used to be forced to create singles rather than albums, I feel like bands are realizing that they need to grab the listener with a great beginning to have them stick around for the rest of the song (let alone the rest of an album; God, who has time to fucking listen to albums anymore?). None of this is to say that punk bands did not want to be famous in the 70s, but it was often far from their minds. DIY is easier today and thus has broader goals. I have to let this digest for a while, but I will broach the topic repeatedly until I feel I have explored the cavern to a suitable depth. What did I have to say about Arsenal? Oh right. The last few games have not been displayed on Arsenal TV but they have provided live audio from the games. So the last couple of matches I have experienced much like Hornby describes listening to on his radio: leaning intensely forward, head bowed because I have nothing to look at, silently imagining the game as reported to me in very confusing British. This game I in fact listened to while at work, adjusting the volume with every cheer. I pumped my fist in a joyful silence as Henry scored and almost went into a state of shock when Hleb put them ahead two-nil. I wanted to tell everyone at my office what had happened but of course did not. That is a sad reality I will have to contend with for my life: Arsenal will always be playing at inconvenient times during the week. However, on the flip side, it frees up my Saturday nights: instead of having to stay in to watch a game that starts anywhere from 5 to 8pm, I get to watch it around Noon. I can go out afterwards and drink up a storm (either out of depression or victory, depending on the result). I anticipate the day when someone at work discovers me listening to a game. I won't be in any trouble because we're allowed to listen to music, but I will have to once more explain my love for a football team in a place I've never traveled to. Which brings me to my final point for the day: how am I going to reconcile this difference in location and time? Additionally, since this book is at least a little bit about trying to get Americans to enjoy football, how do I advise they reconcile the difference? For me, it comes down to whether or not I want to move to London at some point. I want to, of course, but then I will be separated from my family and friends (and the Yankees!). Sometimes I think, maybe when I am old I can move there - but I won't want to, for the same reasons. So I probably never will. However, I most definitely will visit it on occasion, and maybe if I'm lucky my schedule will be flexible enough in a couple decades where I can see a game or two a season. That will most likely be the extent of my live games. Hopefully SkyTV will get its shit together someday and broadcast in the states so I can TiVo games, but until that fine day I'm stuck with live audio in my office and finding copies of games in various corners of the internet. I'm sure most American fans won't be obsessed enough to resort to those methods, and so for them the best they can do is follow a big team in a big market (re: Arsenal, Chelsea, AC Milan, Madrid, etc.) and get live updates, audio or ideally video from their respective websites. It's a tough grind, but one I have found rewarding. The connection I feel to Arsenal now runs very deep, and it is all thanks to this glorious little tool called the internet.