Together We Can Play Some Rock and Roll

Dubstep is the new wild Western frontier and I’m feeling like Billy the Kid.  I don’t mean there will be Skrillex remixes of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly soundtrack (even though that’d be AWESOME) but in American pop music culture, the poor man’s music rules.

Even the Addams Family is in on it.

It started with blues where all you needed was a depressed guy with a cheap guitar singing about being a depressed guy with a cheap guitar.  Then there was jazz, which was the same thing as the blues, only faster and with a few more crazy guys playing on cheap instruments that sounded cool and cheap.  When rock came to the forefront it was just another poor guy slamming a cheap guitar against a wall with his band (composed of other poor people with cheap instruments) singing about how to have fun when you’re a poor guy with cheap instruments.  The story was the same with punk and grunge and even rap only with a dj instead of a band.

Well, needless to say these styles just don’t do it for us anymore.  In niches these styles are still just as gripping and exciting as they were back in the day (even if that day was last year), but the public wants more.  The public is the cliché unhappy housewife in a corny movie that leaves her workaholic husband for the poor but exciting pool boy (see Sandra Bullock).  But why does the public not go for these styles of music in the same way they used to?  It’s simple: they’ve all been taken over by the old, the elite, and the rich.

No one wants to see Donald Trump or Bill Gates jamming to Bowie tracks.  Believe me.  NO ONE.  Rock and jazz have become the music of the rich, old white man with a midlife crisis and male-pattern baldness.  When The Who went back on tour I sat there hoping the backstage was stocked up with replacement hips for Roger Daltry (no disrespect, The Who's one of my favorite bands).

It’s all a matter of perception.  No one wants to play music that would make their middle school band teacher go “groovy, man”.  These styles are no longer attainable to the public.  You have to think too hard to listen to them.  To put it simply: NO FUN.  We listen to music to have a good time; party, flirt, dance, whatever it is that you wanna do.  Enter dubstep.

And I was like "BWOM BWOM BWOM SQUEE BWOM".

To some people it sounds like two robotic whales humping for dear life, but for the poor youth it sounds like a good time.

Dubstep is the next step in musical development (even if it’s been around since 1999) because it’s music for the poor, partying masses who wanna forget about 10% unemployment and $8.00 gas until the E wears off.  Unlike jazz and rock, which have come to be about virtuosity and expensive venues/instruments, good dubstep can be made on Garageband and pumped out through a 10-watt amp.  Unlike rap, which has become so obsessed with an image that’s unattainable by 99% of its listeners (we can’t all be Snoop), dubstep is just some random person cranking out oscillated bass drops to a bunch of high people who love it.  Dubstep is easy, dubstep is simple, and most of all, dubstep is cheap.  People who tell you that it’s not these three things are the same marauders who murdered the pop music of yesteryear for all of us.

Contrary to popular belief, Nero was not in The Matrix.

Even if dubstep isn’t here to stay (and I don’t think it is, let’s be real here people) it’s good to have it around right now.  For all the pretentious indie bands, dopey rappers, fake country musicians, and pop divas eating our brains, it’s nice to have some scrawny little guy with a half-shaved head banging on a turntable until some crazy noise comes out.  That strange little man in the DJ booth reminds me that there are other poor little creeps out there hellbent on good times and even better music.

~Viva amigos,
   ~D. Merrick

PS - Follow me on Twitter, it's good for you! @DylanMerrick6