Music today needs teeth, ferocity

“They got the guns but we got the numbers. Gonna win, yeah we’re taking over.” The years… “They got the guns but we got the numbers. Gonna win, yeah we’re taking over.” The years have proved the Doors very, very wrong. The young got old. The guns got stronger. And, we, we’ve lost the numbers.

The more honest and aware musicians who started writing and performing in the last 20 years have still managed to capture society’s ills with a triumphantly fierce bite, but it’s been distorted by an unspoken impotence, tainted by living in a world that could withstand and package Dylan and the Doors — a world that could keep sitting when Marley told us to stand up. However loud we play it, however violently they perform it, music’s been muzzled.

What was catalytic is now cathartic. Music’s fallen from a participatory to a vicarious experience. Even passionate, aware and articulate music accomplishes for today’s youth about as much as a charitable donation does for the parents: It’s a moment of belonging to something greater, and a way to feel sane and guilt free at work or while paying parking tickets.

The fault lies in two places. One is with us. It’s with our generation. It is our responsibility to transform a song into an anthem. All music, from the ethereal solemnity of Gregorian chants to the subtle romance of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” can provide any cause with momentum and unity. But for that to happen, we have to do just a little more than drive around stoned holding a toaster and experiencing the complete depth of “White Rabbit.”

The second thing, binding music and perhaps paralyzing those of us who would otherwise respond more actively to those muted calls-to-arms that must still exist in popular music, is the industry. We are submerged, inundated, gift-wrapped, pinioned, pacified and flanked by media of all kinds.

There’s no shame in relaxing to something that is just entertaining. There is nothing evil about distracting yourself with a favorite TV show or the greatest hits of a band your parents played non-stop when you were 5. It doesn’t matter if you’re watching soap operas or listening to Foreigner.

The problem is that it becomes ridiculously difficult to distract yourself with one thing and stimulate with another. It is a constant and Herculean effort to keep distinct that which is significant and well-liked from that which is just significantly well-liked, particularly when they’re so frequently and so closely juxtaposed. We enjoy both — and we should.

But that complicates things. Some musicians recognize the position they’re in.

“The world is collapsing around our ears/I turned up the radio/I can’t hear it.” R.E.M.’s “Radio Song” demonstrates a thorough understanding of the situation. It also just so happens to precede “Losing My Religion” on Out of Time. They still play “Losing My Religion” about three times a week on the safe-for-everyone radio station I have to listen to at work. I think the last time they played it between Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and Simple Plan’s “Perfect.”

In the ’90s we had bands like Tool capturing the hurried hypocrisy and shallow nightmares of Los Angeles with songs like “Aenima:” “Fret for your figure and fret for your latte and fret for your lawsuit and fret for your hair piece and fret for your Prozac.” Radiohead got a computer to read us a description of exactly what we’ve let ourselves become: “Concerned but powerless…a pig in a cage on antibiotics.”

Now it’s 2005. We’ve had Americans dying in Iraq for quite some time now. We’ve a President that history will remember as a dim Nero. And we have a world that we’re continuing to alienate.

Why aren’t the radio waves full of rabid debate? Why hasn’t the War on Terror turned feral at least a few corporate lapdogs? Surely the combustible make up a decently sized market. It may not be as large as the one for the apathetic, but there’s money to be made in undermining the status quo. Always has been. Always will be. So, where is it?