NOT FADE AWAY:
Which Way to the Mainstream?

by Rob Brookman

In my whole life, only three personal characteristics have placed me firmly in the majority of American life.

I am white.

I live in a metropolitan area.

I watched the last episode of "M*A*S*H."

Other than that, it sometimes seems I've had precious few shared experiences with my fellow countrymen.

I don't attend church services. I tend to vote for the losing side in political contests. I regularly buy books that wind up in the remainder bins. And the movies I enjoy are lucky to take in as much money as the theater concession stand. Apparently, my tastes and opinions are shared by a population approximately the size of Topeka, Kansas.

My track record isn't much better with music. For every chartbuster my collection contains - a Graceland, a Born to Run or a Let It Bleed - it offers up two or three LPs by bands lucky if their recording careers covered the cost of their van rentals. Obscurity would be a step up.

Despite the occasional disappointment that my views on music aren't more widely held among others in society, I've had about 20 years to come to grips with the fact that five million Americans aren't going to shell out for, say, the latest Tom Verlaine CD. Honestly, I've even grown a bit smug about my rarefied tastes.

Lately, though, I've experienced a slight and rather dubious change of heart. Perhaps it's a regrettable by-product of the aging process, but I find myself longing for the half-remembered sensation of a widely shared rock and roll experience. I've even become a bit sentimental about certain pop music landmarks in which I participated: Some Girls, for example, or Rumors, or Born in the USA, or Nevermind, albums that dominated my home stereo even as they dominated the zeitgeist. Unfortunately, any hopes that I might be on the verge of participating in another thrilling confluence of mass culture and artistic virtuosity were quickly doused by a look at the recent industry sales charts. Not only don't I own a single album in Billboard's top 50, I haven't even heard of a good dozen of the artists thereon. Who the hell is Creed, for example? Or Christina Aguilera? Or how about this one: Lou Bega. Anyone? Where's Kurt Cobain when you need him.

Okay, so maybe the Billboard charts have never quite reflected my musical preferences. Unfortunately, I had about as much luck with CMJ's list of top "college music" sellers. Macha? Lamb? Get Up Kids? I mean, who the hell are these guys? I buy enough CDs every year to keep a small record store afloat, and I don't even have anything in common with the so-called alternative nation anymore?

It shouldn't surprise me, of course. The sad fact is that shared experiences on even a modest level are hard to come by in 1999. Twenty-plus years after punk codified the DIY revolution and sent countless bands and fans underground, the idea of pop music that's both artistically significant and commercially successful now seems almost quaint. Sure, there are plenty of talented bands that make a damn good living off damn good music. REM and Beck come to mind, just for starters. But even they don't approach the mass appeal of 80s-era Prince or the Rolling Stones a decade earlier. The modern marketplace in general is so splintered and the amount of product on the shelves so immense, any illusion of collectivity is just that - an illusion.

For instance, in my little corner of the marketplace, PJ Harvey, Pavement and Sleater-Kinney might lead the voting in a Best Artist of the Decade poll. Among my friends, they certainly outsell the Backstreet Boys and Jennifer Lopez. But in the real world, I bet any one of them would give their eye teeth to move 200,000 albums (an album by Jennifer Lopez's backside would sell more). Maybe Moby's the big ticket in your cultural cul-de-sac, or Massive Attack or Pulp. Same thing. You'd be lucky to find two other serious fans in a crowded football stadium.

So who cares, really? Assuming good records are still hitting the stores and good bands are taking the stages (and they are) what difference does it make if they're beloved by one fan or one million?

The answer is, it makes a great deal of difference. At least, it does to me. As anyone knows who's ever shared a memorable evening of music with 15,000 like-minded strangers, under the right conditions a kind of community can form. And on a good night, if that community is looking for something to rally around, what results can be magic. Not to say a great album or a committed performance can't generate sparks all on its own. But a huge and raucous crowd of believers can accomplish something more: It can actually transform the way you hear the music.

The Grateful Dead, of course, was the apotheosis of this phenomenon. A band whose albums ranged from good to unlistenable, they and their followers nevertheless built a community, which in turn invested the songs with a sense of significance they didn't originally contain. And numerous other artists (and their fans) have accomplished something similar, from Springsteen and the Stones on down.

I got a nostalgic a whiff of a good old fashioned pop music community late last month as I stood beneath a statue of Michael Jordan hoping in vain to scalp Springsteen tickets for somewhat less than my monthly mortgage payment. Watching thousands of concertgoers - and hundreds, like me, who wouldn't get in the gates - suffer huge crowds and cramped conditions for just a few hours of music reminded me that sometimes being part of community of fans is a valuable and sublime experience all its own. The music - no matter how outstanding to begin with - gains meaning, depth and a little extra resonance by association.

The fragmentation of popular music may well continue, dissolving what's left of the commercial center in the process. Nonetheless, I expect it won't be too long before some as-yet-unimagined artist I enjoy breaks out of obscurity and into rock and roll history. When and if it happens, I'll be right there, hoping to remind myself why rock and roll once seemed to promise a little more than just entertainment.