AudioShocker

For as long as the Bad Brains' song "Fearless Vampire Killers" has been one of my favorite songs, I've always been proud of the fact that the title of one of my favorite songs is "Fearless Vampire Killers." It strikes me as pretty much the perfect hardcore song: just over a minute long, with a very simple metaphor (capitalists are vampires, we kill vampires) and two riffs that work well off of each other. The fact that I like hardcore in the first place has always been somewhat mysterious to me, in that I'm fairly certain that my taste is much more aesthetically driven than it is political--though, once I started to like any punk, certainly some amount of the political influence then looped back into my aesthetics (e.g. When I was in high school, something about the sound of the band Fugazi drew me towards them, caused me to start liking them, and then, through their political stance I came myself to a stronger anti-corporate stance about music, though, again, this to needs to be weighed against the fact I already was disinclined towards Top 40 music (of all genres) aesthetically, and that aesthetic decision was then reinforced by my political decision to not listen to corporate rock (which is how I made it all the way until 2005 before hearing Radiohead's OK Computer in its entirety)).

So what are the obvious things that make hardcore (or, more broadly punk (or, more correctly, maybe hardcore-punk (or, in the case of Bad Brains, the then-burgeoning genre of metal-influenced hardcore)))? Pace, noise, anger... part of it, I think, can be understood if I also mention the main band that I liked in my adolescence, before coming to punk as a better answer to the problem of what to listen to: They Might Be Giants. The thing that I still like about them (well, still like about their old albums (cutting off right around Factory Showroom; I don't really know what they're up to these days) is the way that their vocal lines were oftentimes longer than the lines of the accompaniment--what they sang often rolls along over atop the music beneath them, usually, in fact, over-running the pace of the rest of the music. Punk, on the other hand, reverses this, where there is continual noise at the instrument level, and a more rapid-fire staccato delivery of the vocal lines, oftentimes in rather complete disconnect with the rest of the music. It may seem like a bit of stretch to identify these two musics as opposite sides of the same coin, but when you consider the ever-so-neatly-gelling interaction of music and singer in almost all popular music, these signposts of alternative options seem more similar.

Not that I'm claiming to be a punk--I've always been against aligning myself with much of anything--I could never get into the idea of having to dress a certain way or affect various personality traits in order to identify with a certain genre of music (I never liked wearing tuxes to play symphonic music either). But still, and with a due amount of tongue in my cheek, I certainly would claim to be somewhat countercultural--actually enjoying any punk (and honestly, most of it fucking sucks) certainly sets one against most other humans on the planet. And there is a certain joy in saying, in answer to the "what's your favorite song?" question, just after someone else has said "[insert Radiohead song here]," "well, one of my favorite songs is 'Fearless Vampire Killers.'" It's almost better not to mention that the "vampires" in question are the hegemonic patriarchs of capitalism.

The other good thing about hardcore is its generally difficult to turn into pop (whereas, punk, of course was notoriously easy to convert (again, my stance for the purpose of this post is aesthetic, not political; I am not currently railing against the fact that many kids out there that potentially could effectively rebel are sucked right back into the system with quasi-rebellious corporate rock (whether that was emo, nu-metal, pop-punk, or whatever)). The last time that there was any obvious dialogue with hardcore was back when grunge was the big thing, and I would argue, of course, that that was the last time that mainstream rock music was any good (other than giving Rage Against the Machine a little bit of credit).

Almost all discussions about aesthetics, however, are painfully after the fact; that is, in making any kind of argument about the quality of hardcore music against the quality of pop music, I am almost certainly just going to be rationalizing my tastes after the fact. Taste is certainly some part immanent and internal, but also, obviously, socially constructed. My enjoyment of this so-called "metal influenced hardcore" pegs me as being almost certainly white and middle class, and probably well-educated. And, again, since this argument is not political, that really doesn't matter. And most Americans prefer bland music. That's just the way it is. Is it fair to characterize their music as bland? I think so. Which is not to say that, at core, hardcore isn't bland (since the chord progressions are pretty much that same as any other (with more parallel motion and chordal progressions by half-steps and minor thirds)) for the most part as well, except for the above-mentioned example of the way the vocal lines interact with the rest of the music.

I could also tie in various other genres of music that are also similarly un-boring, but that remains the basic argument of what I'm getting at, that liking a song like "Fearless Vampire Killers" isn't nearly as political as it might seem to be when looking at what genre it falls into.