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September 15, 2007
Mindless Self Indulgence
It occurs to me it's a week tomorrow since the boyfriend and I went to see Mindless Self Indulgence at Rocket Town* in downtown Nashville. It was an amazing concert, and I think Alex put it best when he said "You really miss 50% of what this band is all about when you just listen to their stuff on CD." It's true-- they are a performance act, and even though I really enjoy their music, there is a whole other dimension brought out of the music by the onstage antics, the band's personality, the energy they inject into every show, and the energy the fans bring with them. If I had to guess what these guys would have been like in highschool, I would say frontman Little Jimmy Urine was that weird, hyperactive, sexually ambiguous theater kid who you were always a little bit attracted too, but also really put off by his bizzare stunts and drug-use. You know, that one guy who would show up to school in a dress no where around Haloween, just to get a rise out of the teachers and impress his friends, and then do a table dance in the caffeteria just for the fun of it.
If all this sounds intriguing, I'll warn you, I can imagine some people being put off by MSI's abrasive lyrics. The words "nigga" and "faggot" get bandied around a bit, as well as references to incest and a lot of sex. But I don't think you can pin the band as purely shock rockers, they don't present that material in the same way as, oh say, Marilyn Manson* puts forth similar themes. These words and concepts are presented in the way my generation communicates. Everything is a reference to something-- we quote viral YouTube videos, drift down memory lane to recall that great episode of Nickleodian's "Salute Your Shorts", and refer to movies we know everyone has seen. It's self-advertisement and commradery all in one-- by what you reference you're making your tastes as clear as if you were posting your "favorites" on a Myspace page, but also connecting with your peers with a bunch of huge, culture-wide inside jokes. We're active mirrors of pop culture, and MSI does something similar. I'd say the coarse langauge and themes are just the kind of stuff bandied about everywhere from the rap records they probably listen to on the tour bus to MTV shows to real glam and shock rockers from the 70s and 80s. MSI is a salute to modern adolescence, and the influences that run through it.
Little Jimmy Urine joked on stage about the audience masturbating to Disney's The Little Mermaid and then quipped, "this next song is The Little Mermaid on methamphetamines!" This is just the kind of nostalgia for childhood and then irreverent self-separation from that family-friendly time and connection of those innocent influences to more current, shocking ones like sex and drugs or violence that tiltilate the minds of people trying to push themselves into adulthood. I hear this kind of thing on campus all the time, I make jokes like this myself with my roommate every day. I don't know where this aspect of my generations culture came from, but I salute MSI for somehow tapping into to the influences my generation has in common, from increasing awareness of urban culture, to the ubiquity of rap music (just check out the YouTube video "White Chicks and Gang Signs") to references to Nickelodian's Clarissa Explains It All to sampled sounds from old Atari games.
*Even as an aside, I just have to put in a plug for the venue though, because it was one of the coolest places I've been to for a concert. They bill themselves as a "venue, skatepark and coffee bar," and I wish I'd had a place like that to hang out in high school. It was like the freak kid club house, with art shows, classes/tutorials in things like rapping and DJing, big comfy seats upstairs and a well-laid-out venue downstairs. Plus the staff seemed pretty intent on making it a safe hang out for underground kids, making a little announcement at the beginning about their policy on crowd surfing (sadly, can't do it there) and that if anything came up during the concert anyone felt they needed to talk about with an adult to just come grab a staff member.
*On me and Marylin Manson: I haven't been to any of Mr. Manson's concerts, and I wouldn't say I'm more than a casual listener, but I would also say I really respected what he had to say about how his appeal to his audience on Bowling for Columbine when asked about the accusations of his influence on that shooting. So with that preface, my somewhat uneducated opinion is that Mr. Manson is a pretty good example of careful marketing and revamp of shock rock. That's not a dis, but I do think it's stands in contrast to MSI's being very concious of who the audience is that is attracted to them (a LOT of gothy teens and college students with a smattering of others outside that box like me) and actively acknowleging and making fun of that in concert. More simply, they acknowlege who a lot of their fans are and where they are coming fromby seperating themselves from that, rather than folks like Mr. Manson who play into it. I.E. Jimmy Urine teasing the audience about goth stereotypes like all goth girls being fat and all goth guys being skinny, rather than just glorifying the goth image.
| By Spike | 02:30 PM
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