extreme rock

I was in the record store recently when I came upon a section I hadn't noticed before. "Extreme Rock," read the placards above the CDs.

"Hmmm," I mused. "I like ‘rock.' Certainly this ‘extreme rock,' which must be like regular ‘rock,' only more . . . um . . . something, will be for me!"

I decided to see what sorts of acts were included in the section. I expected to see unfamiliar, scary-sounding names. Instead, I saw the same old tired names that had once graced the heavy metal section – Cannibal Corpse, Motörhead, Deicide, etc.

"I've been robbed!" I screamed.

A smarmy little clerk sidled up to me. "Are you finding everything OK?" he asked with a nervous smile. "Yes, no thanks to your confounded filing system," I barked. "I expected to find a whole new crop of bands playing this new music you call ‘extreme rock,' but all you've done is slap a different name on the same old stuff!"

Same old stuff, indeed. It's no wonder that the music industry (a frightening term in itself) is trying to get rid of the "heavy metal" category; the phrase has been virtually an obscenity for years. In 1991, with the explosion of "grunge" (another dubious category), music critics hailed the death of heavy metal. Never mind that Kurt Cobain cited AC/DC as a major influence. Never mind that Soundgarden was in essence an unusually inventive heavy metal band who adapted such techniques as dropped tunings from Black Sabbath. Never mind that Alice in Chains started life as something of a "hair band" before repackaging themselves to meet changing tastes. Nevermind . . . hmmm, sounds like a good name for an album.

One of my least favorite questions is, "What kind of music do you listen to?" I don't listen to kinds of music; I listen to music. Whether it be Neil Young, Fugazi, Mozart or Lubricated Goat, I listen to music because it pleases me, not because of some inane categorization.

However, I do have some experience with identifying myself with a certain kind of music. You see, I spent my teenage years as a heavy-metal snob – a real butthead who listened to only one very narrow kind of music. Of course, I saw heavy metal as a very broad umbrella under which many different kinds of bands operated. I could expound at length on the oh-so-subtle differences between thrash metal, speed metal and death metal. When I became confused or unsure about the distinctions, I didn't fret; I simply made them up.

As I got a little older, however, I became increasingly unable to fit some of the music I was listening to into an acceptable pigeonhole. Sure, Led Zeppelin III had heavy songs like "Immigrant Song" and "Out on the Tiles," but what I liked most about that album were the acoustic songs, such as "Gallows Pole" and "Tangerine." (Steel guitar! Heaven forbid!)

Having such experience with dedicated categorization, I feel qualified to designate as bogus industry-driven designations such as "extreme rock." Granted, some categories have some sort of value in describing and differentiating pieces of music. For instance, if I see a flyer for a bossa nova show, I won't go expecting to hear gangster rap.

The problem emerges when people become too insistent on these categorizations. When you restrict yourself to certain genres of music, you're unnecessarily abiding by boundaries that are largely meaningless in the first place. Who's to say whether Lubricated Goat is alt-rock or indie-rock? Arbiters of taste such as Spin and Rolling Stone? That reminds me of a quotation (variously attributed to Charles Mingus, Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello) that says, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." The point, of course, is that words applied to music are generally insufficient and irrelevant.

Since my misspent youth, my musical tastes have broadened considerably. That's not to say, however, that I consider myself musically well-read. There's so much stuff out there that I haven't gotten into – perhaps because of ignorance, lack of time or money, or maybe even a lingering over-reliance on the music that's familiar to me.

I fully intend to broaden my horizons (musical and otherwise), and I encourage you to do the same. Don't be bamboozled by corporate conceptualizations of music. (I ask you, how often does the corporate world get anything right?) If you can remove such limitations, you'll make things a lot easier and enjoyable for yourself. You can walk through the record store untroubled by the changing names on the sections. More importantly, you can listen to Lubricated Goat without worrying about whether they're alt-rock or indie-rock; don't we all long for that freedom?