I read several online comics everyday and I just thought I’d mention that this is the second reference to blogging in a Doonesbury strip. I guess it really is mainstream now.

I went out Saturday night to hear The Raveonettes and I thought they rocked. There were four of us together at the show and two of us thought it was a cool show and the other two were slightly underwhelmed. They liked the songs, but thought it was unoriginal and that the band was boring onstage. It’s true they just sort of stood there, but I didn’t really find it boring. However, we all agreed it would’ve been nice if they’d been a bit more aggressive onstage. They were too nice and goofy and said weird things between the songs. It would’ve been cool with a bit more arrogance and edge to match the music. But the songs held up nicely live and they were louder than hell. They started off the show with an insane version of Buddy Holly’s Everyday, which sounded like an outtake from Psycho Candy and from there on it was just one ear shattering track after another. Unfortunately, they only played 50 minutes, but since they’ve only released an eight track EP and most of their songs are short of the 3 minute mark it’s forgivable.

We talked about the show afterwards and we couldn’t really reach an agreement about the quality of the show or the band. But it got me thinking about how jaded you get, when you listen to a lot of music and go to a lot of shows. Just like you can never go home again you can never listen to music like your 16 again. Imagine listening to Nirvana, The Sex Pistols, The Doors, or anything like that for the first time again. Everything after that just seems less interesting and always inspired by something you've heard before. And even though you try to keep an open mind it’s tough. There are still bands that impress me, but there seem to be fewer and fewer new bands I get as excited by as when I was younger. I’d like to think that it’s because bands like The Vines and The Calling genuinely suck, but chances are that I’m going the way most people seem to go. The older you get the more you start to think all the new stuff isn’t as good as the stuff you listened to, when you were younger. And no matter how much you try to stay current you don’t have as much passion or time for music as you used to and before you know it everything’s too loud and you only buy records when Dylan or The Cure releases new stuff.

But hopefully I’m not quite there yet. We went to a thing after the show and while I was in the bathroom my brother, who is 22, asked the host if she thought I was the older or the younger brother. When I came back my brother said: “Looks like you’ve lost the age game again”, because she picked him as the older brother. My response was that if she thought I was 21 then I’d definitely won the age game.

Oh, and I'm so getting this.

Posted by John Fogde at October 21, 2002 04:14 PM | TrackBack