your my icon marilyn manson!!!!

He is helping to heal the hurt; the antithesis of Marilyn Manson and Eminem.

After all, the more campus shootings there are in America, the less under-age girls there will be for R. Kelly to potentially urinate on.

I mean I often have these same thoughts. Where are the iconic stars? Where are the defining movements? But then I realize I’m 29, and I probably wouldn’t feel a “movement” or maybe not even recognize it if it happened. Aren’t most of these things defined in retrospect anyway and are largely created by an aging group remembering their youth? Somehow even Fall Out Boy will be remembered as influential day when the youth of today begin to age.

And regarding “I can’t think of any new musical trends in the last decade that weren’t just tweaked versions of older genres,” isn’t this the way music has always been honestly? Haven’t all “movements” just been evolutions? Even techno had its forebears.

Enough babble, hope at least some of it makes sense. Nice post Ronan.

“It’s not like I personally miss the lack of big controversial stars, just exploring what it might mean.”

Well yeah, I see where you’re coming from. The decentralization of media and, therefore, music. I think this progression also brings it’s own brand of iconic stars, only that in a more local scale, almost community based.
There have been crossovers, like the whole “”new-rave” whatever” scene that both the fashionable indie hipsters crave and the clubbers look for. Talking about little iconic superstars like Justice.
Mr. Minimal Villalobos, for example, another contemporary iconic figure.
But this has been around since the beginning of the music biz, our “pop culture” is coming to an end and a “local pop culture” is replacing it, in my opinion.

“There is no big mystery to this situation - i) the guy wasn’t well in the head and should have gotten help sooner and ii), probably the most obvious yet also the most ridiculous, he bought his two guns legally.”

I blame society, haha.

“Virginia Tech shooting inspired by depraved Korean movie”.

It then went on to describe how the movie Oldboy (one of my favourite movies of all time and one of the cleverest of recent times) was somehow responsible for all this just because Cho Seung-Hui loved it and held the protagonist in very high regard, which can be seen in the photos he took mimicking him. What a load of bullshit. Oldboy is one big allusion to Sophocles’ play ‘Oedipus the King’ (Oedipus Rex) which was written about 2500 years ago and is equally violent, so why aren’t we seeing any news headlines blaming the shooting on the aforementioned Greek tragedian?

There is no big mystery to this situation - i) the guy wasn’t well in the head and should have gotten help sooner and ii), probably the most obvious yet also the most ridiculous, he bought his two guns legally. There’s only so much the rest of the world can do but if the American people just want to sit there and keep guns legal then let them all shoot each other to pieces and see if the rest of us care.

ps sorry for straying from the topic somewhat..

My point is not so much that there’s a lack of unconventional music, more that there’s a lack of the traditional iconic mass movements. hiphop, rock, dance, all kinda flat in this sense at the moment. most of the good stuff is burbling away under the surface.

There is plenty of unconventional music out there, for sure, nor are we bound to listen to new stuff alone in the quest for it.

It’s not like I personally miss the lack of big controversial stars, just exploring what it might mean.

And Jeff said, amongst some kind words, thanks! “One last thought- a world where “discourse about records is bigger than records themselves” is in grave danger of being indistinguishable from a kind of post-structuralist publicist’s wet dream”

Yep it is a little intimidating maybe, that idea. It does seem to be what we’re moving towards now though (if we’re not there already).