Anyway, I am now (at least chronologically) an adult, and like many adults who shared my tastes when they were younger, I have two sets of feelings when it comes to wild bashing and screaming music. On one hand, it was very important to me then, and I still have a great deal of affection and nostalgia for it. On the other hand, I also think almost all of it is comically stupid. In fact, I remember almost exactly the moment when I started feeling that way. It was during college—that heady time when the influence of the “Wednesday Weed” mingles with reading about intellectual stuff such as Freud and psychoanalysis. I was probably under the influence of both of these things, at which point I put on whatever album by whatever wild bashing and screaming band I favored at the time. Then I had the unsettling revelation that I was basically listening to the musical equivalent of a protracted scatalogical temper tantrum in which an out-of-control child is screaming while twirling a soiled diaper over his head. (Or, to put it more simply, a “total shitfit.”)
From then on, the spell was broken. No longer could I put on a bashing and screaming record and feel that little thrill you get when you’re giving the middle finger to society. Instead, I just heard someone trying to sound scary while refusing to clean his room, and quite frankly, it was embarrassing.
Loading...
