an open letter to the rock and roll scenesters

Listen, scenesters, last year’s hipsters late to this year’s party, kids, and arrested-development 30 something lurkers,

Yep, the weird anonymity of the web does afford us peepers a glimpse at your inner workings and partyings. It's not nice to take cheap shots. You’ve got me! I peeped your website and wrote something nasty under cloak of anonymity. I’m taking shots from a concealed location and it isn't very nice. I can admit it.

Also, to be sure, I don't hate any of you. I welcome your scathing responses. Maybe you all really do care about something. Maybe I’m totally off-base. Maybe I'm the asshole, after all. (I’ve been called worse!) But unfortunately, you irritate the hell out of me and I’ve had it.

I feel a little bit bad about spying on you as you degrade yourselves and give up your privacy for a few moments of dubious fame in a microcosm of the internet, but I come back to look from time to time because it’s like a science project. I find myself curious: what drives this weird scene? You seem cheap and careless to me, like you’re dedicating your lives to something as empty as the endless social chase. For what? Is it hedonism? Apathy? Alcoholism?

What do I care? The reply that I’m writing is already a long one and my guess is that it will stretch out for many paragraphs. But first, what makes a random stranger write this much, besides the aforementioned lack of a life? Well, unfortunately, you’re living all over me. I can't even go out the door without running into the herd. And it's not just that you piss me off. It's that you SCARE me. I see the same faces, night after night after night. My job is to entertain you because I’m in one of the disposable bands. We are what we are, and you are what you are, and in some ways we’ve got a symbiotic relationship but frankly, I want out. I want to take you by the shoulders and ask you why you’re so easy on yourself and why you’re ruining things I used to like. You come to see my band when we roll into town and sometimes I make small talk with some of you. And I can’t help but judge you and count down the moments until I can get away. You look haggard, tired, and spent. No one pays any serious attention to the spectre of alcoholism hovering ever nearby. Sure, have a drink or 7, it’s the weekend. It’s Thursday. It’s Wednesday. It’s some malevolently titled dance party on Tuesday. It’s always five o’clock somewhere…

It’s easy to dismiss you as kids, or to remind myself that I partied a lot in my younger days, too. But we’re the same age. You’re mostly in your late twenties and you’re still not making noticeable contributions. Some of you are well into your thirties. Where’s your shame? Life is passing you by! You’re all afflicted with a terrible case of arrested development, but nobody notices because you’re all in the same boat. Is this the new society? Is this our future? Is this social scene your calling? Is this what the kids are calling “art” these days?

What differentiates you from the pop culture scenes of the past is that yours appears to be nothing more than self-congratulatory partying that seems to celebrate the moment. You drink away the hours of the day you don’t sleep away. And what do you hold dear? Music? Each another? I’m really asking – the question is not rhetorical. Do you really care about one another? Who among you will remain in touch in ten years time? I’m sure some of you will. But if you’re honest with yourselves, I bet you’ll dispose of the bulk of these people just as soon as you all grow into your real personality, whenever that is.

Music is important and music is important as a cultural bond. But you don’t even really seem to experience music, as a whole. Sure, there are exceptions, but the bulk of you don’t really understand music. You’re not paying attention. You’re paying lip service. And you’re not doing the work. You’re influenced by your friends and by what the internet tells you is cool. You go to all the right shows and list all the right influences on your myspace page, but you stand behind me at the shows and talk about yourselves and each other. As a variation, you might mention how long you’ve known about this artist.

While we’re on the subject, how DID you find this music? The internet has brought immediacy to music, which is undeniably a good thing. It means my little 14 year old cousin listens to, and loves, “old brown shoe.” It means her brother, a 16 year old metal-head, also lists the Velvet Underground as an influence, and means it. When I was in my mid-teens, I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t really know the difference between Marvin Gaye and Ralph Tresvant. Still, it takes absolutely no effort to find new bands anymore, or even to uncover the good stuff, which was once buried treasure. Along with this, the clientele, if you will, of a band like mine has diminished even while our audience is growing. There’s no effort to it anymore, and no commitment. You’re committed to self-promotion within a scene to which music, particularly “indie rock” is the main glue. AMG has made music so accessible that you self-involved people disrupt my forays to see good music with your urgent social needs. This same self-promotion makes it easy for me to peek in on your trivial little website and take a crap on it. Every city has its version of you. You probably think you look like Exine, or Polly Styrene, or Lou Reed, or Nico, but the truth is you you're miserable even at fashion: You're all decked out in the same variation of the same worn out style. Girls look edgy by hanging a breast outside the ubiquitous ripped up H & M sweatshirt, and boys look edgy by adopting a wardrobe that could have been appropriated from the extras in an old Madonna video. What's original about you?

Brightest Young Things. Even the name is appropriated, and ironically, it seems unintentionally apt. When Evelyn Waugh wrote his book, his use of the term “bright young things” was decidedly sarcastic. The social butterflies were castigated throughout his novel. In fact, he quite famously changed its title to the more direct “vile bodies” in order to portray his estimation of their lives. So Brightest Young Things could just as easily be an unintentionally hilarious photo-documentary about the decline of human society and the rise of a new, bizarre, social order where failure and mindlessness is not only excused, it’s celebrated. The cast of this charade seem defined by a shared, singularly-overwhelming characteristic: emptiness.

So please, BYT, continue to celebrate your diminishing daily existence with a fervor normally reserved for life's major accomplishments. Hide your lack of creativity by setting yourself up in a bizarre little fishbowl stocked with identically troubled fish. We all suck, it’s true. And it’s also true, I check in from time to time. But checking your website is a bit like sniffing that sour milk that’s still in the fridge. You know it's no good, but sometimes you open it up for a second whiff all the same, just to see if it's as sour as you remembered.

Let me leave you with some advice from your friendly neighborhood lurker. I’m the one asking you to please take your conversations upstairs at the rock and roll hotel while a band is playing. I’m the one looking over your shoulder after you corner me after one of my own shows (I’m looking for real people). I’m the one who lives in another city but used to actually love coming to DC for the music scene, which you’ve ruined. Here’s my advice: If you insist on running this self-perpetuating mutual-attention machine that allows you to live out round two of your whispered high school popularity fantasy, you might want to fine-tune your machinery or at least, give some thought to what you’re contributing to.

People might be watching, but they’re laughing at you, not with you. Nobody, outside of your own small social circle, thinks you’re glamorous.

My sentiments exactly:

Food Depression

This afternoon I went to a local chain restaurant near Gallery Place.

First of all, that place has all of the atmosphere of an abandoned coal mine. We had to walk up a long staircase and across a football field before sliding akwardly across an overlong booth to my position three persons deep against the wall.

Adding to the oddity: we arrived to hear the theme song from Hair ("grow it, flow it!") issuing from the speakers, lending our lunch an element of absurdity.

I ordered a portobello mushroom sandwich. This was described as a grilled portobello mushroom on foccaccia with herb aioili and roasted tomatoes. Unfortunately, the revolting little number arrived slathered with runny mayonnaise, limp lettuce, and sauteed onions that had the texture and consistency of stringy, pale snot. The whole affair was heaped onto stale, half-heartedly toasted mutli-grain bread and served to me about 30 minutes later.

The greatest offense to my senses? The onions.

Onions are a matter of taste, of course. Maybe you like them. Clearly, the chef likes 'em. But I don't. I detest onions. I also detest when restaurants neglect to apprise me, on the menu, that I might expect my sandwich to arrive covered with the rabid little bastards.

Seriously, I'd rather eat a fried rat.

So a question: Is it just me, or is it completely annoying when a restaurant fails to accurately describe its offerings? I'm not talking about an instance where the menu offers an inadequate description, which is also annoying. Still, if a menu says, "sandwich," I should know to ask "what comes on it?" When it's described with a seemingly high-level of specificity, however, only to come out looking and tasting significantly different, I not only want to send the sandwich back, I want to assault somebody with it.

I could have just sent it back. But to be honest, I wasn't interested in anything else on the menu. I left it sit, abandoned, on my plate, until I almost started feeling bad for the mushroom clad as it was in such unappetizing trappings. If the server noticed I'd left the sebacious monstrosity untouched and uneaten, she made no comment. It showed up on the bill, and I paid it. Maybe that's my fault.

But I won't be back.

Update:

I sent the restaurant a complaint email and got a sincere apology from the general manager. And a gift certificate.

I might be back. Also, I might be a jerk.