Laziness and looking back

I was living in Houston when the year 2000 rolled around.

That was the first year I'd been invited to a New Year's Eve party, but my mother was terrified of Y2K and the promised Armageddon, so I stayed home. I spent the countdown standing on the balcony to our apartment, wearing shorts and a tank top, drinking champagne with my parents and watching the fireworks go off over the city to the northwest of us ...

All the critics are weighing in on the meaning of music in the past decade, so I figured it was time for me to dust off the blasphemous laziness that's kept me from writing here and share my own wisdom, for what it's worth.

My favorite of the many opines on the meaning of music from 2000 through 2009 is this one from USA Today's Edna Gundersen. She called the last 10 years not the "oh-oh's," for the final digits of the new millennium, but the "uh-oh's," for the devastating blows the music industry suffered since the turn of the century. RollingStone.com has a nice photo gallery.

The past 10 years saw the rise of the iPod and mp3s and the resulting fall of the music industry. When it became easier to download pirated tracks than buy a new CD, people did it, and record stores everywhere shuttered their doors, music industry profits dropped steeply from their 1999 record-breaking numbers and some very big names in rock started promoting their music independently. Labels made moot.

I think that because of that, we saw the first era of modern rock 'n' roll which couldn't be neatly packaged, as Gundersen said, into a neat little decade. This wasn't the British 60s or American revival 70s or nu-wave/hair band 80s or grunge 90s ...

No, the music of the past decade split into innumerable genres, sub-genres and mini-trends that last as little as a few months ... There was emo, screamo, alt-Indie revival, the return of garage, pop re-hit, smart pop, a review of blazing guitar solos a la 80s hair metal ... Sometimes all of these mini revolutions were happening all at once, for, while the music industry was shrinking, the great many beasts of the music consumer was growing (thank you, "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band") ...

Some of the best minds in music are saying this culture cluster bomb has devalued the impact of the song, that an artist's ability to reach a heart is dampered by the fact consumers now are more interested in the digital gadgetry than the songs themselves.

It's hard to pin down an impact, when trying to follow all the many sects of song the past 10 years and give this decade a name, as music critics like to do.

But if you take a step back, a big step back, and look at the whole picture, you see that this decade was one of literally dozens of mini revolutions. The literally unstoppable access to music each music fan had at their mouse-clicks made music personal again, as it hadn't been in at least 30 years.

Before downloads and this wide dizzy array of genres and sub-genres, music fans were mostly subject to whatever genre music execs, TV execs and radio execs decide was cool. When you could only get what they marketed, you took what you could get.

Now, you can get whatever you want, from anywhere, and you can follow, as I often do, local and regional music that big-name labels have never even heard of. I never could have found Medicated Kisses if I relied solely on the record store or MTV.

Music, the great communicator to the soul, is best handled personally. And for that reason, I call the past decade one of the most revolutionary of all modern rock. There. I said it.

This decade has meant a lot to me. It was in 2000 that I decided I wanted to learn guitar and began writing lyrics I would later to put to songs. It was 2001 and it was 2002 I finally figured out how it worked. It was 2003 when I started my own band, 2004 when we put out our first demo, 2005 when we did our first real show, 2006 when I started writing songs I was finally really proud of, 2007 when I ...

And I did most of that inspired by music I found on the Internet.

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OK, just because I can't get out of it, and I am a critic, here are what I would call the two best albums of the past decade. It's gotta be a tie:

• "Relationship of Command," by At the Drive-In — If were to say there were any true genre-creating revolutions of the last decade, I would say it was the emo-screamo-alt-punk-rock At the Drive-In helped forge. I felt more energy coming from these tracks than anything else created in the last 10 years.

• "Stadium Arcadium," by The Red Hot Chili Peppers — Because John Frusciante's guitar playing makes me weep and I feel closer to him because of his notes than I ever felt to my family through years and years of talking.

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What I'm listening to right now:

• "Stockholm Syndrome," by Derek Webb. Best track: "Freddie, Please."

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And one last thing. Click here to vote for your favorite 2009 track from "Loud & Local," the Enquirer's online streaming local music player.

Comments

[vibram five fingers]

a step back, a big step back, and look at the whole picture, you see that this decade was one of literally dozens of mini revolutions.

[vibram five fingers]

It's hard to pin down an impact, when trying to follow all the many sects of song the past 10 years and give this decade a name, as music critics like to do.