Author: DC
Word count: 1322
We’ve all had the conversation. Every person who has at some point realised that they aren’t just “into” music but are completely smitten with it has. It’s usually with someone older, but occasionally can be with someone your junior, but wise beyond their years. They tell you that you’ll grow out of “it”, “it” being your musical obsession. That as you get older and develop other worldly concerns, and take on more responsibilities, it’ll somehow come to mean less to you. That it will be able to do less for you, to be less transformative of your moods, to contribute less to your overall sense of psychic wellbeing. I have always wondered whether those people would come to be proven right, to have been talking sense based in experience. I have always hoped that those people are wrong, and never more so than now.
I don’t want to hash over how tough times are for many people at the moment, or how pressing and overwhelming the burdens of adulthood and responsibility in the modern world can be. We are all experiencing these things, or are discovering them, or are observing others go through them. However immediate or distant they may feel, we are all operating with them as the giant, foreboding backdrop behind us. We have talked in this space before about how music has been hugely consequential to some of us while we have been trying to work out how to deal with and how to survive these things, about how music can, on some level, ‘save us’ when things get really tough. We have shared how music has helped us an individuals, how it has affected each of us personally. Somehow, however, our discussion was limited because our experiences were just that – personal. They were so specific to us that it’s often hard to explain to others how much they meant to us, or to share some of the magic of the moment with people who weren’t there, and as a result our friends and families often can’t draw anything from them. Most of the time that’s enough, most of the time it is sufficient that that something has meant so much even if only to one person.
There’s just one problem – now isn’t most of the time. Now isn’t typical. These times are something else entirely. They aren’t historically unique, but for those of us who grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s they are something very different. Recent statistics suggest that rates of depression are rising, that people’s self-reported levels of satisfaction with their lives are falling, that we are losing our collective ability to turn our backs on the bad stuff and just keep moving along. This, to me, suggests that many people out there haven’t fully realised and explored the uplifting, redemptive power of music – this may be a hopelessly naïve, romanticised view of the power of art, but I genuinely believe that hearing a good song played by a great band at the right time can change our outlook on everything else that is happening in our lives. Based on what you have shared with us before, I think that some of you feel the same way, and as fans and believers in this power I think it’s time that we tried to use it as a force for good. We must begin to export our music-derived joy. We must become evangelists for the feelings and transformation that can be created by some guys[1], some Fender guitars and some drums. And maybe a piano[2].
We must each develop new ways of curing what ails our fellow men, new prescriptions and cures. Here and now I will humbly offer one idea, to get things started. Find one, or ideally several of your blue, downcast, moping friends. Give them a couple of drinks[3]. And take them to see Against Me!!![4] I have written about these guys a ton before so I will only repeat the headline facts – punk band, Floridians, folk-tinged beginnings but with an increasingly anthemic leaning, political but not in a tedious way, love/hate relationship with the traditional punk community, overall pretty fantastic. The live show that they put on is a thrilling, loud, life-affirming mood turnaround plan. During their frenetic 90-minute sets they offer a remedy for anyone with a negative outlook, a salve for the sprit that is applied in three stages:
1) Empathy. Think about it – when you’re bummed out, do you want a shiny happy person to tell you how lovely everything really is, if only you could get over yourself and experience it? No, that would just piss you off further, and convince you that your well-wisher didn’t really understand your situation. Instead you want some empathy, some indication that they get where you are coming from. So Against Me!!! Start with that, outlining commonality of experience with songs that ask questions like “are you restless like me?” and “do you share the same sense of defeat?”, as they acknowledge that hard times can make even “open minds clog up with cynicism”. They feel your frustration; they share your sense of dread.
2) Stoking the fires. Having established some common ground, Against Me!!! then remind us that we all, regardless of how worn down we may feel, have some fire left within us, some reserves of spirit and courage to draw on. That we all have the potential to do something, to change something, even if it’s only our perception and our behaviour. They stoke this fire gently, before getting to the point – that it’s pretty much a human crime not to draw on that energy, and that once you’ve drawn on it it’s a terrible waste not to use it positively. The way out isn’t to direct your energy aimlessly, it’s not about “how to fuck things up”, but about how to focus it, to harness it, to “fuck things up right”.
3) Reinforcing. Against Me!!! then really drive things home, and make sure that your gloomy cohort don’t backslide as soon as they leave your venue of choice. Just as it’s easier to swear off alcohol in a safe room full of supportive twelve-steppers than it is to resist the bottle of JD waiting for you in the lonely confines of your home, the flashing-light crowd-adulation “nothing can stop us” vibe in a rock club can induce an artificial sense of positively that can easily be eroded when you return to the wet and cold world outside. And the band realise that they can’t be with your friends every step of the way; like a good therapist they must empower so that you people can go the final, hard yards by themselves. So they preach self-empowerment (“this night is gonna end / when we’re damn well ready for it to be over”) and seek to neutralise the voices of those who would seek to bring about recidivism (“they don’t know nothing about redemption / and they don’t know nothing about recovery”).
The wonderful thing about Against Me!!! is that none of what they say is cheesy or fake in the way that a lot of ‘guidance’ is. And that’s because the songs weren’t written as self-help primers – they were written by a confused singer searching for his own answers, by a man trying to balance out the darkness that he seems around him with a realistic awareness of the power of human positivity. It just so happens that some of his answers seem relatively universal, that he can communicate some of his personal experiences in a general way, which we couldn’t.
If all of this doesn’t work, or if the temporary optimism shot in the arm only lasts a few days, then there is one simple solution – repeat. Find another band, another show, and another, and another, until the person you are taking has a magic moment of their own.
[1] Or girls!
[2] No flutes though. Sorry, prog fans.
[3] Or, for you non-drinkers, some of your favorite mood-enhancing substance. Even if that is soy milk, straight-edgers.
[4] Yes, their name really does include all of those exclamation marks. It’s not just that I’m really excited about the band. Well, I am, but you’ll have to take my word for it when I say that I’m not a three-exclamation-mark kind of dude.
