EastScene

I grew up with Grunge.  The music was reaching the height of its popularity when I was entering high school, and the sound that embodied the grunge movement became so deeply entrenched in my life that it began to shape me in ways that I could even begin to explain.

I’m certainly not alone in this, and I’d be willing to bet that any fan of music has had a similar experience, it might not have been Alice in Chains, or Nirvana that made you feel that way, but there was certainly a moment where you awoke.  A moment when you leave behind the music your parents listened to, and start bringing home music your parents hated.  It’s normal.  I did it to my parents, my parents did it to their parents, and so on down the line.  It’s evolution, and it’s the best thing that can happen to youth–finding something that resonates with their moment in time.  Nothing will live up to that moment of discovery, the moment you hear an opening riff to some unknown track, by a band you’ve never heard of before.  How something one moment can be completely unimportant to you, and in the next define your being, is something that I’ll never fully comprehend.

The scary thing is when that moment continues over time, building on itself, folding itself over and over again.  You get so entrenched in a moment that it becomes impossible for anything else to sound so good.  I tend to get obsessed with bands, and often overplay them throughout the course of year, much to the chagrin of my friends and family.  Everything else that’s released gets compared to a select few albums, and frankly, nothing can ever live up to them.

I spent some time today looking over NME’s top albums of the 00’s (naughties), and I had a new moment of realization, something that can only be realized with age, something that I never thought possible. We spend so much time relishing in the music of the past that we forget about just how much great music is being created today.  Nothing will ever live up to Alice in Chain’s Facelift for me, it’s not because of music today, it’s because I’ve spent the last decade building up Facelift in my mind.  It’s reached untouchable status, and that’s okay.  What’s not okay is completely writing off new music because it’ll never live up to your expectations.

Here’s a call to music listeners everywhere, artists constantly evolve, maybe their fans should too.