No More Icons: how we killed 'em with text messages and iPods

I'm not claiming to say anything new in this post. I'm not even claiming that I'll still sound young by the end of it. These are just a web of thoughts that collected themselves in my head over the last week; cobwebs that I need to clear out.

I was in Virginia Beach last week to see Pearl Jam and the Kings of Leon. It was my second time seeing Pearl Jam and my first time seeing the Kings of Leon. My first time seeing Pearl Jam was a few years ago in Philadelphia. It was on the 4th of July and during "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World," fireworks went off over the Ben Franklin Bridge that crosses the Delaware--the sky was on fire.

The audience that night was in sync with every pop of the snare and every slow hand on the guitar. People of all ages moshed, hippie-danced, and headbanged for three hours with Eddie, Mike, Stone, Jeff, and Matt. During a cover of "Baba O'Riley," Eddie donned a George W. Bush mask and banged tambourines together like some wild ape, and we all pranced like monkeys before the stage. The scene was straight out of Disney's The Jungle Book. Eddie was King Louie, and we were Mowgli, being introduced to our more primitive, perhaps even better, side.

Now, flash forward five years from the night of that concert to 2008. Pearl Jam was a bit more mellow, and in some ways, the mood can be explained. They had just headlined Bonnaroo a couple nights before, they're older, and the sky was no longer on fire. Instead, a full moon glowed like a lone ember, like this was the last place bits of Chuck Berry's Promethean fire still burned, and I wondered out loud:

Is rock n' roll dying?

I'd never thought this before. I'm usually in denial of apocalypses. During sporting events, my father thinks it's over as soon as our team falls behind, even if it's the first quarter. I still think whatever team we're rooting for has a chance five minutes after the final whistle blows. I believe in destiny, second chances, resurrections, Willis Reed's, MJ's second three-peat, and that Tiger Woods will always sink putts on 18 at Torrie Pines. A girl dumps me; I write love poems everyday for weeks, months, and even years, thinking I can will love back into her heart. Did I watch Return of the Jedi too much as a kid or read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at too young of an age? Maybe, but for this post, I'm going to blame The Who's Tommy.

Tommy went from deaf, blind, and dumb to seeing and hearing. He starts a social movement, a radical revolution of spiritual pinball players. I've always wanted to believe in radical revolutions, especially if they revolve around individuals reaching higher spiritual planes. It's why I relate to the film Almost Famous-- I want rock 'n roll to be some sort of savior. I want rock albums to open my mind and everyone else's. The concert I went to last week showed me that I may be asking too much, not of the bands, but of the audiences. A congregation has to actively participate in its deliverance.

Tommy's Uncle Ernie takes advantage of the miracle that sets Tommy free of his physical barriers, practically televangizing the movement. T-shirts are made and sold, and everyone is plugged into their very own pinball machine, expecting their own miracle cure. The cure never happens.

People want instant gratification, they don't get it, and they call their savior a hoax, an ape in lion's clothing, a Chauncey Billups. Last week, this rejection of waiting for the moment when salvation arrives could be seen full blown in the lawn of the Virginia Beach ampitheatre. I have never seen so many people texting at a show before, unless it was a Dave Matthews or O.A.R. show filled with sorority sisters. Video didn't kill the radio star, but the text message is definitely holding a gun to the concert's head.

This show had transcendental moments like "Not for You" and "Rearviewmirror" being stretched by latitudes and longitudes beyond their album versions, but whenever there was a moment that did not completely overwhelm the audience, or the audience needed a break, attention spans would falter and the phones would come out.

Rock 'n roll isn't dying, but the collectiveness of the audience is.

Kings of Leon opened for Pearl Jam. They were amazing. Eddie came out and performed their closing number with them, "Slow Nights, So Long." Kings of Leon returned the favor by performing "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" with Pearl Jam, but I was amazed by how many people either didn't know who Kings of Leon are or shrugged their shoulders at the duets; but were able to keep on texting.

Rock 'n roll is not dying. Bands like Kings of Leon prove that it's still got a pulse, as do Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, MGMT, Dr. Dog, Band of Horses, The Black Keys, and a host of other somewhat indie bands.

But what is dying is the audience's collectiveness, and with that die the iconic moments that make rock music seem vital to the human experience, that make Bob Dylan switching from acoustic to electric bigger than Nixon to China, that make The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show a riot, that make Elvis' hips into tectonic plates, that make the wall between Aerosmith and RUN-DMC akin to the Berlin Wall, guitars on fire into prayer flags, flannel into kudzu, and a man sliding backwards on a dancefloor into bigger and badder than Neil Armstrong's wildest dreams. If Pearl Jam came out today, would they even sniff the cover of Time magazine? If they did, then it would certainly be a lie for the headline to read: "All the Rage: Angry young rockers like Pearl Jam give voice to the passions and fears of a generation."

The most iconic music image of the last decade was probably an exposed nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show, an exposed nipple that I missed because I took a second to dip a hot wing in ranch dressing. If musical moments can change lives, then they need to last longer than it takes to dip a hot wing.

Is it our attention spans? Is it text messaging? Is it the lack of diversity on the radio that's robbing music of its unifying power; its ability to give a generation's memories a collective soundtrack? Maybe, but it could also be because we all have our own personal pinball machines. We all have iPods. Maybe generational soundtracks are not needed. Maybe individual soundtracks are more empowering because they are exercises in free will, and maybe the iconic moments I'm looking for need to be found in my own life. Still, they will not be found on the screen of a cell phone, and still, I can't help thinking that Pearl Jam is like that orange moon, a lone, dying ember in a vast sky that will soon go black.

I'm not scared of the dark. I just know that times are changing, and where we once waited for Prometheus to bring us fire out of the sky; we will now use our iPods to light our own paths. The difference in where we get our light raises an age old question of free will versus determinism. Do we wait to be directed or take our own musical journeys? While gaining individual confidence in our own choices, do we lose something that can not be described in the dissipation of the group? Do we lose the tribe? Do we lose the campfire? Do we lose the ape in us? Do we lose our starting point, the sun? Do we lose the allusion, the King Louie, the Mowgli, the bedtime stories, the etc? And what do we gain?

These are all big questions. These are all "I'm full of it" questions, preacher and homeless man questions. I guess what I'm saying is that the iPod, iTunes, Pandora, MySpace, Facebook, etc give each and every one of us the chance to create the illusion that we have a different orbit than everyone else, which raises the question Against Me! asks on their song "Up the Cuts," "With the instant availibility of information. And content so obtainable. Is the culture now a product that's disposable?"

I have no idea, but it keeps me up at night, just like Mick Jagger's words:

"Afterall, it was you and I...."
(that play the part of the killer)