Yesterday I watched the 2000 Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous for the first time. After taking Hollywood by storm with 1999’s Jerry MaGuire (yuk), Crowe got the green light to make his pet project: a semi-autobiographical feature film about a teenager who becomes a reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine in 1973.
This actually happened to Crowe in real life, and in the movie, the young stand-in protagonist drops out of high school to interview, write about, and follow a mythical band called Stillwater on tour around the country.
The film was okay. Nothing special and not as good as I’d been led to believe. But what I found most interesting was its portrayal of Rock n Roll as central to American culture.
Almost Famous does a good job of showing just how seminal Rock music was in the lives of many white American teenagers. Albums were precious, concerts were events, Rock stars were iconic, and their fans were dedicated and legion.
Rock still signaled rebellion against the square mainstream, even though by 1973 Rock itself was thoroughly enmeshed in the mainstream. It still dovetailed with sex and drugs (in a pre-crack/meth/hydroponic/ecstasy world) to summon a heartfelt ode to dreams of freedom and angry optimism, which in practice often took shape as fist-pumping, nihilistic hedonism.
But either way, it was there. Rock n Roll was front and center in American culture at large, and it simply dominated white youth culture.
And when Almost Famous debuted fourteen years ago, that seemed reasonable. In 2000, it was still possible to think of Rock music as something vital and relevant. One could still smell the fumes of Grunge, Rock’s most recent foray into popular culture. Little did most people suspect, however, that Grunge was actually Rock’s farewell tour in many ways.
Watching Almost Famous for the first time in 2014, I was struck not by how long ago 1973 was (I was only 6), but by how foreign the concept of Rock n Roll as a dominant part of American culture now seems. I won’t bother dwelling on all the reasons. The bottom line is this: Rock is all but irrelevant to today’s youth culture.
Indeed, music itself no longer holds adolescents under its sway the way it used to. And to the extent it does, Rock n Roll has been eclipsed by other forms, primarily hip hop and country pop. Rock, as a dominant cultural ideal, an adolescent identity, and a vital musical form, is the stuff of prior generations. It’s moment was the second half of the 20th century, not the 21st.
I’d already been thinking about this during the last couple of weeks as I binge watched the Showtime bedroom farce Californication. The show’s okay. To some degree it’s just one, long, icky male fantasy. But I took it with the nudge and wink that is intended, and that was enough to see me through all 7 seasons on Netflix.
The show revolves around a bad boy writer played by David Duchovny (b. 1960) who, despite having a wonderful baby mama and daughter, drinks too much, smokes too much, and can’t keep his dick in his pants.
Californication is pure male fantasy. But specifically, it’s a Baby Boom/Gen X version of male fantasy. And so our hip, witty, charming, leather wearing, hard drinking, fast punching, man-child protagonist openly embraces and even genuinely espouses the Rock n Roll ethos.
You know, as if that’s still a thing in the 21st century.
Duchovny’s character, Hank Moody, writes about Rock music. He drinks whiskey and idolizes the likes of Led Zeppelin and Warren Zevon. His pubescent daughter emerges as a talented rock guitarist. The show’s soundtrack is laden with largely letharg
Watching the show, I’d often sit there and shake my head. The world spawned by Californication creator/writer/producer Tim Kapinos is intentionally over the top in many ways, which is part of its charm. But at times it also seems just downright delusional in the way it proffers Rock n Roll as a vital and relevant thing that people of all ages still care about deeply in 21st century America.
When I look at a sea of 18 year old faces in my classroom, I don’t see people who care about Rock n Roll. Shit, most of them don’t even care about music as a standalone cultural product the way American youth did from the 1950s-1990s. To many of them, music is a movie soundtrack, the score to a video game, a ring tone. I’ve even stopped asking them who their favorite bands are. Most of them don’t have one, and many of them just stare at you blankly, as if to say: “Why would even ask that? Who the fuck has a ‘favorite band.’ That’s childish.”
When I walk to the train station in Baltimore, I pass a School of Rock kinda place situated in an old factory down by the river. And it occurs to me: this thing doesn’t exist because kids are clamoring to play the Rock n Roll music. This exists because it’s the cool version of today’s parents making their kids take music lessons. The irony of which is so fucking deep that it boggles the mind.
Once upon a time, kids forced to study classical music lessons on piano and violin just wanted to play Rock n Roll. Now kids are being forced to take Rock n Roll lessons. And today’s parents are probably just as oblivious, if not more so, than their own parents and grandparents were about all of it.
With all of this in mind, I woke up this morning to the yawn-inducing news that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its latest inductees. When I saw the link, I thought two things.
-Green Day? Really?
-How the fuck is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame still a thing?
Honestly, does anyone born after 1980 give a flying fuck about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy much of the music. I’m very happy for an amazing artist like Bill Withers if induction means something to him. And this is not the rant that people have been making since the place opened, about how the very concept of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is antithetical to everything that Rock stands for.
But maybe that old rant is more on the money than many of its advocates realize. Maybe it’s time that Rock be relegated to a museum, one that opened thirty-one fucking years ago! Maybe Rock is to today’s kids what Perry Como was to kids in the 1960s and 1970s. Square, man. Or just not all that, pops.
I still love Hendrix and Skynyrd. Hell, I’ve even learned to enjoy Perry Como. But let’s be honest with ourselves. While some (though hardly all) of that music stands the test of time, Rock as a “thing” that defines and shapes American popular culture is almost 20 years in the past.
Mark the death of Rock with something dramatic like Kurt Cobain’s suicide, or mourn its slow fade from relevance in the face of Hip Hop’s steady rise since the 1980s. But either way, Rock n Roll is no longer the thing. And it never will be again.
Rock was a moment and an ethos and an art form that (mostly white) Baby Boomers and Generation Xers claimed as their emblem. But now, as even the youngest Boomers will have turned 50 by the end of the month, and the oldest ones are nearing 70, it’s time to accept the reality that popular culture has largely passed them by. Their kids and grandkids don’t care about the Rock and Roll, and their erstwhile pop culture relevance has now transformed into a sparkly nostalgia machine with rusty hinges.
Enjoy the ride.