Sunday, January 24, 2010

Is Underground becoming a trend?

It's an annoying element to see the numerous trends that emerge in and out of the music scene, but nothing can beat the stink when underground starts becoming a trend.

Take a look around. It's one thing to have a striving metal/hardcore scene. It's another to ruin it by making it a trend. What do I mean when I say that? Well, okay, look here.

Last year, we had kids going to indie gigs because the indie scene was at its peak then, splashed around with kids dressed in colour and scarves. There's nothing wrong with that. One thing wrong is, well, those kids used to bitch about underground music and bitch about metal or hardcore. They used to laugh and diss at hardcore kids. They never listened to a lot of metal or hardcore stuff.

Then you take those kids and look at them now. Those same kids who used to laugh at other genres and say "Aku budak indie" now are dressed up in "Underoath" or "Sick of It All" T-shirts. And now they are laughing at indie, the scene they used to love. So what exactly do you love? Or is your passion for music fake, changes with the season, changes with the motion? All these newbies who buy metal shirts just because indie has fallen and metal has risen... do you even know what these bands sound like?

Or are you just buying the clothes, and dressing up like hardcore kids just to fit into what you guys think is a 'growing trend'? Underground music has always been raw, rough and most importantly, real. We never worried about becoming mainstream, never worried about being a sell-out.

What if. What if, that's what its becoming? Because of the mistake the younger generation is making? It's fine if you want to explore the genres, it's fine if you follow the flow, but don't be hypocritical about it. Don't say you're all hardcore or all indie just to turn around and backstab what you used to be when it's fallen to the pits. Who says you have to hate another genre to love one? Who says you can't love all types of gigs, ranging from reggae to acoustic to hardcore?

I love how the hardcore bands are now striving to puncture through as many gigs as possible, by keeping it real, all these bands who've been around for quite some time. Then I look at the new kids who are all deciding to join the scene by starting a hardcore band, a screamo band, a metal band. Are they doing it just because that's the in thing now, or because they really want to do it for the passion and music?

Don't start making the underground seem fake, don't change the reputation of all the bands that have been working hard to maintain the purity of what music is all about.

Go to gigs because you love it, not because you love being seen there.

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With Love,
KL Mosher

1 comment:

Danial said...

Yeah, I guess the problem here is the mentality these kids have nowadays about just "following" a trend without understanding the core values of a certain scene or movement.

Do I blame them? Not entirely since we've been bred in a culture of "saya yang mengikut perintah" i.e. a subservience to a higher authority or if absent, your fellow peers.

The only way is to educate these people about the real meaning of being a part of a music scene; you have respect your kind of music & other people's kind of music instead of dissing here & there which will eventually lead to the same cycle repeating itself.