Some personal news: in the past couple of months, my older sister turned 40 and my younger brother turned 30. 2015 will be the year where my immediate family may no longer find comfort in having at least one last person under the age of 30. Not that we were all 17-year-old coke snorters three months ago and suddenly find ourselves responsible adults and productive members of society – no, this was as insiduous of a process as it gets. Birthdays are just fixed little marks in time that trigger, at least for me, an occasion to situate myself in it. Except that no, this is the first time this actually happens.
I’ve been to a couple of shows in the past two months — Yelle toured in San Francisco again, coming in town as a detour on her way to Coachella. She played in a rather small venue, that I didn’t find up to the standing and energy of the band. Sure, I had seen the same show just 5 months again — twice at that. It was undoubtedly lacking the punch I witnessed last year.
Throwback Sunday: over 14 years ago, one of the first concerts I attended was that of At the Drive-In, who played at the CCO — a rather confidential venue in a suburb of Lyon in France, near the school I was going to at the time. I also found it undeserving of the band’s fame and energy, but I couldn’t be more happy to have a chance to see the band I had been avidly following since my first listen to Relationship of Command 6 months prior. It’s hard now to exactly pinpoint what it was about that show but I hold it in my memory as possibly the best concert I’ve ever attended. It was just that good —
Antemasque is the closest thing to At the Drive-In since At the Drive-in died (twice) and I felt compelled to see what they’re worth at the Fillmore. The result ends up being a lot less exciting than Bixler-Zavala’s previous works, with only short punk rock stints and lyrics that, despite their remarkable intelligibility, feel washed out compared to what ATDI and the Mars Volta have produced. People apparently do tend to forget.
And in the past month, I was invited to attend a performance by Helmet. I was completely oblvious to that band – had never seen them and never heard of them, which was in sharp contrast with the friend who extended the invitation and for whom Helmet’s Betty appeared foundational to his taste for hard-rock. And sure, it was undoubtedly a solid alt-metal performance but it was hard to ignore the audience’s median age of 35+. Old punks ironically wearing suits, possibly to keep the promise they had made to themselves 20 years ago.
So, to me right now, feeling older means feeling less excited about things which once were central — I could probably keep up with the rate at which younger artists show up and release things but I presently lack the intellectual energy to sift and filter through all the stuff to find a nugget. Relying on Pitchfork feels irrelevant and artificial. I tend to naturally barricade myself in bands and albums that are familiar, comfortable like an old leather chair that has the imprint of my butt.
It’s a mixed bag of feelings – I feel attached to the stuff that shaped the person I am today and conversely content to allocate time to other things, like rolling my eyes when I hear Kanye West and scheduling when I’ll watch the next episode of Mad Men on Netflix – and realizing the show takes place in a time closer to my date of birth than today is.
I started writing this post about a month ago but this seems to be a common thread with something Jason Kottke published last week, where he ends up quoting Hank Green’s mindblowing XOXO talk from 2014:
You have no obligation to your former self. He is dumber than you and doesn’t exist
OK, cool then.