{"id":2925,"date":"2010-08-31T10:56:17","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T14:56:17","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-09-01T09:17:19","modified_gmt":"2010-09-01T09:17:19","slug":"hey-19-badge-of-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/hey-19-badge-of-honor\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey 19, or Badge of Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As of this writing I’m 47 years old. Hopefully a day will come when someone reads this and I’m 48, 49, or even 79. The point of stating my age is that I’ve been listening to, loving, and discussing music for a long time and any kids reading this owe their elders the time of day to attempt to understand what we may be getting at! I know what makes me tick, and I do my best here and elsewhere, whether by written or spoken word, to articulate that. If I fail to communicate what I intend to communicate now and then, I’ll do better next time. Today I want to take a misguided complaint someone made about a piece I wrote elsewhere and blow it up into a potentially more interesting thread for discussion.<\/p>\n

On a personal blog that I started years ago and now very rarely update, Overlooked Gems of My Lifetime<\/em>, some pipsqueak reacted to a piece I did on Tom Verlaine<\/strong>‘s Dreamtime<\/em><\/a>. He misunderstands a reference I make to the guitar work on some 1960s records I love and goes into this badge-of-honor rant about how I’m not capable of appreciating Tom Verlaine and how he was so inspiring despite his lack of popularity. He also pulls out a reference to My Bloody Valentine<\/strong>, a one-trick pony that also is frequently lauded for being “fucking inspiring” despite the fact that few people ever bought their records, to further tear down my stodgy, mainstream point of view. Here’s the full text of Pipsqueak’s reply:
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Comparing Tom Verlaine albums to Beatles singles is like comparing My Bloody Valentine to Van Halen. Clearly, you don’t understand what makes his music interesting.<\/p>\n

It’s unique! It’s not the same old guitar pop and he’s not trying to be some pretentious rock god. That’s why he’s cool, that’s why his songs stand out, and that’s why his fans are devoted. There’s more than coincidence to the fact that he influenced countless pop groups without having one thousandth the fame the Beatles did. He was fucking inspiring.<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s what you’re trying to pry out of his records with the lame Paperback Writer references.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is this guy, 19 years old? Hey man, I was 19 once too. When I was 19, when faced with a perceived old fart, I might spit out that Brian Eno quote about the Velvet Underground only selling 1000 copies of their first album yet launching 1000 bands as a result of those initial sales. BLAH BLAH BLAH…<\/em> I’m now 47. As a furious Charlie Manual, manager of the Philadelpha Phillies, once told a pipsqueak sports radio host who yelled at him to grow up and take some criticism, “I growed up long ago!”<\/p>\n

Where I really<\/em> want to go with this, now that I’ve done the rock ‘n roll bully thing and called Pipsqueak out in a larger forum, is discuss the Badge of Honor we readily grant to our favorite cult artists. I assume we’ve all pulled this move on someone before. In the light of day, what does it mean? Do we really think the cult artist whose inspiring, integrity-laden, and ignored works takes that much pride in his or her or their Badge of Honor? Is the badge ever actually for the artists, or is it always for us, for sticking with them and showing these artists how much we care? Hell, I set up an entire blog to honor the overlooked works of some of my favorite artists and objects. Am I trying to kid myself?<\/p>\n

Do we ever honestly think that more popular artists aren’t also capable of being inspiring or innovative? Did we when we were 19? Are we any wiser today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As of this writing I’m 47 years old. Hopefully a day will come when someone reads this and I’m 48, 49, or even 79. The point of stating my age is that I’ve been listening to, loving, and discussing music for a long time and any kids reading this owe their elders the time of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[133],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}