The Problem with Self Esteem

Last weekend I was talking to one of my bandmates during one of our infrequent opportunities to play together—this time, actually, to record a song for the soundtrack of an independent film. I really like the people in my band but we’re also so busy; we all have busy careers, and we live in two different cities, so not only do we hardly ever practice, but we hardly ever talk—we basically rush in, play for two hours, then rush out, and see each other two months later. (This is also my perspective—the other people in the band are all longtime friends and I just joined last year). Anyway, if you’ve ever recorded or been around a recording band, you know that the process involves a lot of waiting around, as do most professional or semi-professional activities in the music business. So even for this one-song session, we ended up waiting around for awhile as the engineer put together a rough mix on the spot.

It was a pretty funny scene if you’re into “white-people-are-so-lame” humor. There was a hip hop band recording next door, and there was a big entourage-ish presence in the hallways, and a guy had set up a mini-office in the studio’s front lounge from which he seemed to be operating a record company or at least the career of whoever was recording. And then there were we, between 35 and 40 years old (I’m pretty sure), sitting around in our studio talking about the Oscars and our jobs and whom we ought to hire in my department (one of my bandmates is a colleague), etc. Paula, the keyboard player, asked what I was doing for the rest of the weekend, and I said I was going to see Cracker in Philly the next night. And her face lit up, and soon we were sliding into “kids-today-are-so-lame” territory, or at least I was.

Paula was all like, “Man, that guy is so awesome (meaning Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven leader David Lowery, whose hand I actually shook at the gig because I was on a date with someone who used to date him—is blog writing all about the aside, or what?); you know, all these bands today like the Decemberists just owe so much to him.” I’d never really thought about that before, but it’s true; Camper Van Beethoven brought a kind of seriously quirky folkiness to indie rock that’s having a big renaissance right now, in the freak folk thing but also in poppier bands. And in what was perhaps a recording-induced bit of what seemed lucidity, a whole theory, that I’d been gestating for awhile, took shape.

I saw the Decemberists in the fall, and they were good, but. . . there’s something about them and a lot of other indie bands today (cf. Ben Kweller) that’s so alien to me—the vibe, for lack of a better word, is too sane, or comfortable, or something. What I want to chalk it up to is, of course, generational difference; specifically, I think these bands are made up of kids who were raised, unlike my generation, in the era of high-management, all affirming self-esteem all the time parenting. Their parents are baby boomers, yuppies. Their parents made sure they had lots of stimulating group activities in which to participate all the time, and that they were happy, and showing their creativity, and sharing their goodness with others. Unlike the parents of my generation, who if they weren’t dictatorial would leave you on your own for hours and hours (especially during the summer), and you would have to figure out how to pass the time. And you would spend a lot of time watching TV, but also coming up with some crazy shit that you never showed anybody or told anybody about except a couple of friends at best. And later, when you got old enough to be a musician or an artist, that crazy shit might end up in your work. And it didn’t have to do with pleasing your parents, or worse, affirming your own sense of how talented and creative you are, a sense initially generated by your parents and the adults running these organized activities. Am I ranting yet?

While I was talking to Paula and putting forth a more rudimentary version of these remarks, I had a revelation, which I’m nevertheless sheepish about stating openly. In the current New York Review of Books, Vaclav Havel writes something like, am I allowed to say I hated the World Trade Center yet? Well, I am writing, am I allowed to say I hate Sufjan Stevens yet? Because I think I do. I mean, in a vacuum, I like his stuff fine. But then, in the fall, I went to see him, with a friend who loves, loves, loves him. The band, all 600 or whatever of them, all came out wearing butterfly wings, to the delighted oohs and aahs of the audience. They stayed on, lightly flapping, throughout the show. And it was only after the show that I was able to put a label on my ambivalence: there is a slight but significant “Up With People” vibe to this music, and to its performance. That’s because they’re all so talented—the 75 violin players, the guitarist who looks like he just graduated from Berklee School of Music, the girl who sings on every song and plays three or four instruments—they’re all so nice, and creative, and talented, and Sufjan himself, of course, is the king of all this, because he is just so FUCKING TALENTED with his banjo and his weird time signatures and his slides and his sweet ideas about dressing his band, and so on. At least, that seems to be reason a lot of people have heart attacks or orgasms over him—he’s talented and we’re all so happy about how beautiful and nice that is. If it wasn’t Up With People, it was Fame. Talented kids—how we love them—watching them, having them, being them. I think Fame, Up With People, and perhaps Zoom have had a serious, serious influence on the norms of bourgeois parenting for the past 15 or so years.

What I’ve described is just so different from seeing a band like Camper Van Beethoven, who were of course incredibly talented and creative, but who were, well, if nothing else, stoned. And just not so totally transparent about why they were great. Paula was talking about having seen the documentary about Klaus Nomi the night before—obviously a very different kind of music—but there again is an example of someone doing really weird hybridizations of musical forms, but not in this manner that seems to all come back to the safe wonder inspired by talent.