Good Old Days

There is no date in this photo. I think it's better that way.

Do you know how old you really are? Do you really understand what year we're living in? Sometimes it is easy to forget: we spend so much time in a secular haze of materialism, after all. Deep down we know it's not real, and want to escape from it all, but what else can we do? There isn't much to the present or hope in the future. For some of us, all we can do is look back. And this is where things get dicey.

We've gone on for far too long talking about the dangers of nostalgia around Wasteland & Sky. The harsh truth us that it has been a crutch for us for so long that it is hard to forget how normal the obsession with the past actually isn't the way things are meant to be. Sometimes it is good to reflect, but one can't stare in a mirror forever.

However, that doesn't mean it should never be looked at to begin with.

There is nothing quite stopping us from going into another rant on the subject aside from needless repetition. For instance, did you know that the first Spice Girls album released 25 years ago on this very day and date? That's right, corporate bubblegum has been ruling an entire industry for a quarter of a century. Nothing at all has been learned, and nothing at all has been changed. We're still living in the ruins of the 20th century.

One could make another series of topics about how destructive this entire mentality has been. We've been stuck in a time loop for ages now, and it doesn't look like we're getting out anytime soon. Surely we could go on about it once again.

But that is not what we're going to talk about today.

Instead, for once, I wish to talk about the good side of nostalgia and looking to the past. Though it feels like an aspect of modern culture that should get talked up a lot, it surprisingly isn't. Nostalgia isn't reflective like it should be--it's been made into a cope. Where it could be a wistful look at where we came from has turned into mindless worship of a date on a calendar. It is basically the mirror image of futurism, and just as empty and pointless.

Most worship of childhood properties today comes down to longing for better times than current ones we are forced to endure. However, there can be more to it than this. Sometimes it really can just be wistful remembrance of memories of other times. There is also the fact that studying what happened in the past allows you to see how you got from one place to another. Knowledge of what once happened is important to see where we are going next.

Regardless, someone who has no nostalgia for anything is worse than one who has too much for one thing. This is because a person incapable of reflecting on the past at all will have no perspective to the future and are left helpless and adrift. They are prisoners of the present, endlessly reshaping their lives to be acceptable to the person the suit on the news tells them to. You have to be modern! There isn't any future here, because there is no future being looked towards. All this accomplishes is endlessly changing your wardrobe as third parties egg you on.

Ironically enough, modern mega corporations have figured out how to sell nostalgia to people who both have no interest in the here and now AND to people who hated everything that came before at the same time. It is quite ingenious, and they really should get more credit for this. You get the glossy candy shell of the thing you remembered stuffed with fashionable present trends ticked off like a corporate checkbox list. It's a poison pill that smells of roses. You get your nostalgia and the corporation gets paid. Everybody wins!

I should have added quotations marks around the word "wins" because nobody ever does these days. Every nostalgic "revival" you remember from the last decade or so is consumed and discarded almost immediately after releasing so you can be pushed to devour next old new thing they're shoveling out. You'd figure more people would have understood their hatred for the past was being used to fund people and systems they supposedly dislike, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Buy products to support the revolution!

They could just stop buying, but they can't. Instead, they'd rather feed the beast.

What you aren't nostalgic for is those Saturday Morning Cartoons you got up early to watch when you were seven; you are nostalgic for the experience of getting up to watch and enjoy them in the first place. This is where many, including those currently "creating" today's culture, get horrifically wrong. The product itself is not what you are longing for to fill the hole inside of you; it is everything around the product, everything that caused it to be made to begin with, that you crave. You long for a place and time, not things.

I realize this is difficult to process in a world where you are always being sold something new every five seconds and are expected to hop right on it unquestioningly, but it is true. Products do not cause any nostalgia--the trace feelings and memories of long lost times and people you experienced at the time engaging in said product does. What you are longing for is not an intangible feeling or a product, but to reconnect with that primal feeling of loving life for what it was back when you were younger and happier. You are pining for that simplistic and completely natural sensation of wonder that was beaten out of you as you got older.

I've heard a lot within the last decade about how common nostalgia was for other generations, but it's fairly inarguable that it didn't exist at the level it does now. This should prove that it is not as natural as the party line says it is. There has always been a heavy sense of nostalgia in the modern world that even used to extend back to the Old West, back when that was disappearing, though such things were usually painted over by the Cult of the New's need for progress. The future was always going to be better, so the past can be easily discarded.

How many times have I covered such a subject on this blog? Mythic and Futuristic storytelling was hijacked by materialist cultists in order to make their own religion out of at the expense of the art of storytelling itself. Any criticism of this corruption was deigned backwards thinking and heretical. You can't long for the past because it is Bad and the future is Good, so just forget about everything that came before. It's all uniformly evil, anyway.

What has become clear in recent years is that nostalgia as a movement has actually been growing steadily over the years. It isn't that it is a constant: it is that it was a seed planted in the bowels of industrialism that has only flowered as we've sped through modern life. Nostalgia has strengthened over the years, there is no up and down wavering trajectory of it. It's not part and parcel of existence. It is a byproduct of a culture obsessed with always charging blindly forward. In essence, it is only going to get stronger as long as we live in the age we do.

You can find trace blips of this nostalgic obsession while scanning articles and footage from the past, but it was never that prevalent in, say, the 1920s as it is today. However, as the decades went on, looking to the past became a more and more common occurrence. Perhaps because, and a lot of people won't want to hear this, the times really were getting worse. Not only that, but we were abandoning many forms and ideas we never got to properly flesh out before they were discarded and abandoned by the Cult of the New.

Nostalgia is a way to cope with the present, but it is also a way to keep your bearings in a mad world where things are not what they could be. At least it is based on lived experience and not the vague hopes of a future utopia that will certainly be built any day now! This is what got modernists through the cultish secularism of the 20th century. We are almost there!

You just have to close your eyes and believe!

But the rabid hatred and misunderstanding around our complicated relationship with the past has also led to a lot of confusion and depression in the modern day about our place in the world. This came about from an insistent and dogmatic belief system that can best be summed up with six words: Old Thing Bad, New Thing Good. You better believe you have something wrong with you, nonbeliever! Now do what we tell you, and in the frame we tell to to do it in. Is it any wonder things are as skewed as they are these days?

Western culture had definitely reached a point within the last decade, which is pretty inarguable, that it was considered wrong to prefer anything that existed in the past to what exists in Current Year. It simple didn't Work That Way. And because of the current misunderstanding around nostalgia that barely exists outside of a materialist standpoint, it then became warped into the cruel mockery we do battle with today.

It's essentially another side effect of the modern medicine we've been mindlessly dosing ourselves with for as long as we have been alive. We have lost perspective with everything: our past, our present, our future, and even the nature of our existence. We've replaced it all with another new hit from our favorite drugs instead.

No wonder we mistake online discussion groups as "communities" even though they have nothing in common with real communities at all. We might as well be calling music videos movies instead. After all, they both feature moving pictures and music!

But this is veering off topic. The important thing to note is that we have it backwards, as we do so often in Current Year.

You aren't at war with the past--you are at war with your misunderstanding of it. You are at war with the false framing modernity fashions around you. This isn't as simple as the past, present, or future, being "bad" or "good" or anything of the sort. This is an existential issue about your place in the universe we live in.

Find the rest here (it's worth the read!)

I would add that it does not help when cultist Baby Boomers and reactionary Gen Xers went out of their way to create so much art that deliberately to cast doubt on the meaning of existence and insulted everyone who came before them as stupid and evil. They scrubbed that out for younger generations, giving them a biased, at best, look at the way things were.

They took this attitude into art and created a decay state we have been unable to shake for decades. Let us be honest, outside of b-movies, the movie industry as a whole had been on a downhill slide for a long time, replacing quality craftsmanship with flashy new computer gimmicks to hide the fact that their stories don't actually have anything to say. Message fiction stories usually don't have anything to say, which is the problem with them. They want to hammer correct thoughts into your head--they don't want to share the experience of life with you.

This isn't about "messaging" of the sort you might think. This is a problem of the plot itself not reflecting normal human experience or hopes and dreams, but instead being fashioned as Scripture to reinforce your ill-fitting place in the modern world. They don't believe in any sort of purpose to anything, so their inability to create a story that can instill that feeling in you has all but rusted away. Now the theme is little more than "obey the rules we put in this year" and expecting you to pay the big bucks for it.

They can't do this if you're still watching your beat up VHS copy of The Goonies instead of salivating over the remake and ready to buy the merchandise, can they? Therefore, the current destruction of the past you see around you has unfolded the way it has.

There is no reflection or love of the past. It's all material to them.

One of the reasons Hollywood cannot create a decent Christian character (or any religious character really) anymore that isn't a vapid cartoon character that always fills the same clichés over and over is because they took for granted the world they grew up in. They hate that world and want it destroyed for their oncoming paradise. That one was a world built with meaning and purpose which was then taken away as the younger generations came of age, now lost without anyone to guide these hopeless kids. Simply yelling "Future!" in their ear as they contemplate downing a handful of pills to end it all isn't going to save them from the emptiness we have been raised in. It very obviously never saved anyone at any point in history.

It's certainly not saving modernity from currently imploding.

So many cling to nostalgia because it is the closest thing they have to a religious experience. It is the closest they can get to understanding the transcendent from their badly educated position in a badly educated time of existence. What else can they reach for that isn't being sold back to them right now for a special price?

Think about being brought up in a purely materialist world where only pleasure and "being nice" matters. You have impulses and desires floating in the back of your brain telling you that this isn't enough to be whole. You know that there is more. You might not say it, but you know it. This is why even materialists find excuses for explaining the existence of love. They know it is real, but they can't prove it through their shallow philosophy. But what exactly is it that you're reaching for? The only experience you have, the only understanding you can muster, is of the past. What other transcendent notions or experiences can you find in modernity?

What aspect of modern life encourages actual spiritual practices? Is it between the rampant consumerism? Is it aside from the talk of the oncoming materialist utopia in the commune? Is it after paying bills or buying groceries and utilities for yet another month? When is there time for anything transcendent in how things are structured today? The obvious conclusion to come to is that there isn't any.

So if you can't imagine a transcendent future or a transcendent present then what is left to connect with outside of the physical dimension?

That's right, it's the past.

When the programming kicks in

This is what makes the past so important to control for those who want to sell you on the present we are trapped in. Demonize the past, make people hate it, then you can sell them a new identity complete with the pretty wrapping of the old. For examples of this process, see every single reboot of an old franchise over the last decade or so that uniformly falls short. This is what they are doing to culture in an attempt to hijack your nostalgia.

But no one really buys what they're selling. Talk to anyone long enough and they will admit to liking, and even preferring, a lot of things from the past. They have to do this in secret because of the stigma that looking to the past has in mainstream culture, despite it being a normal thing that people have always done and always will do. It is yet more proof that modern times aren't what they should be that something so natural is detested for such silly reasons.

The term "the good old days" is usually said to denigrate nostalgia, or generalize to an absurd degree the concept of there being any good in the old days at all. However, the saying should be emphasized as the good old days, as in the better times from those forgotten days. When someone talks about the good times, they are referring to specific moments that stand out from the rest. Nothing in that hokey old saying implies that the person bringing it up believes the old days were all uniformly perfect and without blemish.

They are merely holding up the best of the old as the standard going forward. Is it really that ridiculous an expectation? Why?

And is it really any different than instead thinking the future they imagine will be a perfect paradise that no one dares question? No low points, no lulls? There was no glorious unblemished past, but there is also no advanced utopia on the way either. Neither of them exist, but we are supposed to expect one to be feasible.

Why else would they want to control the way you see the way things were? How many Ghostbusters movies do you need, anyway? At what point can Harold Ramus' creation by left alone by the people who wouldn't help him make a third movie while he was alive? They didn't have respect for him then and they don't now.

It should be left in the past. That it can't be is proof of the sickness of modernism. We need that hit, art be damned. Rewriting the past forever and ever will never create anything new. The state of things now shows that much.

However, we can use the past to help us understand the present and build towards the future. Should we skip out on any of these then the whole system crumbles. This isn't even really debatable since it is what the people currently running old industries into the ground are actually doing as you read this. Do not fall into their traps.

The past is gone, yes, but it isn't dead. It can't die, no matter how much we might wish it away. It is what lead us to where we are as people. We either accept and build from it, or we run from and bury it. Regardless, refusing to face reality has never failed to hurt anyone, has it? We only have an entire generation that prides itself on rejecting observable reality as they melt down for the entire world to see. In other words, we should probably reconsider the way things are now. Why in the world would you want the state of things today to continue on forever?

The past isn't dead, but those who refuse to accept that will kill a part of themselves in the process. A lot of genuine bugmen are out there, after all.

A bit ironic, but that's always part of the process. God has a sense of humor and we are always ready to fall for the joke.

And that's what modernity is: one crazy joke that has been going on for a long time now. Fortunately, the joke is over now.

But that doesn't mean you can't remember and appreciate the good old days when you do so. The times where things were at their best, when you could shine the brightest, and when everything was the way it should be. They might just be moments, but they are important moments that are cherished for a reason. You need to remember that in order to know exactly what to strive for. If you aren't striving, are you really living?

The conventional wisdom is that the days you are living right now are "the good old days," but they aren't really. You won't know what really worked and what didn't until you pause and reflect on what led you to where you are. That comes mush later. You need  the life experience to come in order to judge how good it actually was.

"The good old days" are always in the past, and they are always important. You remember them for a good reason, and it is up to you to keep them close for when they matter most. Otherwise, they will be lost and forgotten in the riptide of modernity and future worship. Lose your past and you lose an essential part of who you are.

Remember that tomorrow never really arrives, but yesterday always stays behind. It's up to us to use the time we have as they were intended to be used. Otherwise there really never will be any more good old days. We will have lost them along with ourselves.

I don't know about you, but I think I've had enough of that in one lifetime. The 20th century is over, but it never will truly go away, even when we do.

The past remains no matter how old you get. Maybe the question at the start of this post shouldn't have been to ask if you know how old you are, but how much time you have left. Without knowing the past, and everything you've gone through, can you really know that answer? Even if you were to die in a freak accident, God forbid, would you be remembered for your present or your future? No, you would be regarded by your past. 

Because that is what we are all destined to become. One day we will have no present, no future. One day all we will have left is the legacy we leave behind.

Perhaps it would be best to try making these current times the "good old days" before we go and leave the world behind to its eternal march towards an inapproachable future. And all we can do with our frame of reference is to use the past as our guide forward.

After all, how do you make good old days without the good and the old?

Check out this recent podcast of Superversive's Halloween special! Lots of great stories being shared here, including one from yours truly!

You Gotta Pick it Up!

The 1990s were a strange time, looking back. It was so strange that there was nostalgia for it mere seconds after it ended, but does that mean they were all that good? Though those of us who lived through the decade think of it in one of two ways (the first of many bland decades to come, or the last bastion of originality) the truth is that through the first half of it a lot of interesting things were happening both in the mainstream and in the underground that affected many people's lives in ways it still does to this day. So in many ways, the 1990s never really went away, unlike, say, the 1950s or 1980s which faded pretty fast after the decades' end.

We take some of it for granted now, but those in Gen Y, due to their long memory and nostalgia obsession, managed to keep most of what happened in the forefront of our minds even during the emptiness of the '00s. This laser focus has done a few things, some of which is positive, such as preventing cheap nostalgic cash-grabs from taking root and having as much of an effect as it has for said above decades, and to keep the past constantly in mind so that it can be taken forward by those who would want to. In many ways, the 1990s was the last decade to really have any character at all, which is why it is remembered so clearly by so many.

The 1990s never really went away, even during a period (the '00s) where it was uncool to even so much as smile or have fun. 1980s nostalgia has since returned to freshen the landscape up a bit, but it was due to the constant counter-cultural act refusing to let the 1990s die that anyone could put their mind in a framework that would allow them to accept the past. Remember, we're only supposed to be blindly marching forward. The more were pushed forward and told we ca't look back, the more we are going to fight against it and do just that.

This is why as long as Gen Y is alive the 1980s and 1990s will never really go away. It's the last reminder from the generation of when things were stable, yet there was something new and exciting awaiting around every corner.

Take for example, Ska music. If you are a '90s kid you are having one of two reactions, either rolling your eyes, or nodding your head as the memories and sounds of this forgotten genre fill your brain. In the era of the transition from cassette to CD, the strange surging sounds of Alternative, New Jack Swing, and Third Wave Ska, made the decade a lot more interesting for pop music, at least until the late '90s suddenly banned all three from the radio overnight.

However, as stated above, the 1990s never really went away, but those paying attention did take notice when things they enjoyed were suddenly and unceremoniously thrown away for things that were 180 degrees its opposite. That's how you went from positive and fun music like ska to negative and abrasive stuff like Nu Metal by the end of the negative, and almost overnight.

But we should start from the beginning.

Though it began in Jamaica in the late 1950s/early 1960s (before Reggae!) and was popularized by such artists as Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker, and the Skatellites, influenced by Jazz, R&B, and local Mento music, Ska really managed to hit mainstream influence during the shift from Punk to New Wave in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was one of the last periods Punk was doing anything interesting and the addition of a dance groove to the then-fresh 1950s Rock n' Roll revival sound gave it an even more energetic flow. This era was known as Two Tone: the second wave of Ska. Being the child of so many disparate styles is what makes the genre so fascinating for those listening, especially how it clicked with the normal working class who loved music they could blow off steam to, and is a shame that it is looked down on by so many today.

An example of Two Tone:

The first two waves never really died out, they just waned in popularity, but they were the base for what came in the late '90s. You see, despite the popularity of the genre, it never really affected the mainstream all that much. That was, until the late 1980s. While Metal and good Rap were on the radio, the underground was starting to get weird again, despite its initial stale nature throughout most of the decade. Punk was quickly realizing it was getting too far up its rear, its sound was getting too formulaic and tired, and few bands out there were anything close to the fresh and exciting sounds of the 1970s Punk bands. Aping Black Flag, Bad Religion, and the Descendents first two albums incessantly, would eventually smother the genre into bland pop punk and badly dated hardcore ranting, but for now there were those looking for another way. The genre needed something new, a kick in the pants to remind them that the genre was more than what it became.

Enter Third Wave Ska.

As said before, the first two waves never really died. Through the 1980s there were bands still playing both styles, including groups such as The Toasters, Bim Skala Bim, or Bad Manners, even as big Two Tone groups such as The Specials or The English Beat broke up, or others such as Madness moved on to New Wave and more mainstream pop. At the same time, new bands such as Fishbone and Operation Ivy formed that had the spirit of Punk, but added the dancibility of Ska, adding a whole new edge to the genre and adding fresh new sounds to the landscape. This new underground sound began to tickle the fancy of this getting tired with the endless nihilism and whining of the then-modern Punk scene, and by the decade's end, Ska had flowered into a sensation into the radar of the mainstream. Despite what you might have heard, it did not happen overnight.

In this writer's opinion, it was the shot in the arm both genres needed for the time, as Ska had been treading water for a few years and needing a jolt of energy, and Punk was starting to feel the hyper-serious and joyless weight bands such as Bad Religion and Black Flag had put on it. If you go back and listen to the Two Tone or Punk of the mid-80s, it's pretty bland stuff and easy to see why they only fell further to the fringes. This was the rejuvenating boost both needed to finally reclaim the fun they'd been missing for near a decade.

While Punk would eventually shed Ska, and a segment of the scene always hated it, and kill itself in the '00s, Ska would spread to other countries and continue to flourish as an underground style. If anything, the 1990s was exactly what the genre needed to get its head on straight again.

I recently watched a documentary centered on this weird part of pop culture where Ska broke out big in the late '90s. Called Pick it Up: Ska in the '90s this piece was made to finally document this odd time in pop culture and perhaps give some context to all this madness. The story itself is fairly interesting, and more or less an example of the last pre-Clear Channel musical style allowed to actually gain natural popularity. There is a reason for that, and the documentary waste no time getting to the point within the first few minutes.

The very first thing that is brought up those who were there at the time was that it made them feel good. This is important to the genre's success. The positive vibes, the energy, and the fun, was what made it click with so many listeners and caused so many bands to form back in the time when the scene had nothing else going for it. There was something in the air that connected with a lot of people at the time and wanted them to spread positivity instead of the negativity the 1980s scene had fostered by the end of the decade. Just like in the mainstream, where exciting things were happening, the underground also wanted to have good vibes. And they did, for the first and only time since.

In this context, it's easy to see how Ska grew from underground sensation to mainstream explosion, especially in the sunny times of the early to mid '90s where arts and entertainment was still at high quality threshold. It was also the perfect music for Gen Y kids, and for those who simply felt good about where they were in life. It should be remembered that things were looking up at this time, whether accurate to reality or not, and the belief that things would only ever get better was the highest it had ever been, and will ever be again. Positive music would only match that feeling, unlike the dour Grunge scene that died out within the first two years of the decade. Gen Y didn't want any of that: they wanted to dance!

This is a bit hard to understand now, since there hasn't been a musical movement since Ska described as "fun" or "positive" in a very, very long time, but the reason the genre blew up was because it was the quintessential '90s attitude in spirit, or at least what the younger Gen Xers and Gen Y kids thought at the time. Things were looking up, and they wanted music to reflect it. Just seeing it from this angle gives the genre explosion that came out of it a lot of context.

However, as suddenly as it came, by the end of the 1990s, 2000, it was over. You could blame overexposure, but the fall happened so suddenly and abruptly that it was almost comical. '80s Metal and the Grunge scene didn't die overnight, it took a few years for them to vanish from the mainstream. But Ska? Suddenly you couldn't play an upstroke or a horn without the payola dregs radio DJs throwing your album out the window, unlistened. While the constant play and overexposure from MTV and radio was part of the fall that only tells half the story of what happened. Now, in 2020 it is next to impossible to find anyone, especially Millennial and younger that even know what the genre is. Then again, they probably don't know what MTV or Rolling Stone magazine is anymore either.

But we'll get to that.

The documentary goes on to describe much of the music scene at the time of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including how most of the Third Wave bands formed, why kids dressed up for shows, and what exactly is that crazy dance they do and where did it come from? There's some good information for those completely unaware of the genre such as what's the difference between a Rude Boy, Mod, Skinhead, Punk, and so on . . . the differences are quite fascinating for those who remember when scenes had character (and weren't erroneously called "communities"), and it was impressive that so many different types of music scenes and listeners could come together under one banner to enjoy the music. It was something that brought people together.

Yes, racial unity was one aspect of Ska, but it went beyond that. Just like the crazy amalgamation of musical styles, it brought vastly different people together with the sound--it connected them at a time when it felt like we were all closer than ever. THAT is why Ska achieved the popularity it did. For one moment everyone put their cares behind them, got together, and danced, enjoying the lighter side of life where the junk and hardship that weighed you down didn't matter anymore. We're all in this together, and you know what? It's actually not all that bad. We can get through this.

In this aspect, Ska very much was the anti-Grunge only not a corporately-made label. In fact, most of the music from the 1990s is fairly miserable . . . aside from Ska. This is interesting, because when most people think of the 1990s it's not misery they think of. They think of a stable society, a local community you can trust, bright fashion, the rise of video game consoles, explosive action movies, and the last remnants of good television. Ska fits into that groove a lot better than any other '90s music scene does. The genre represents the feeling of those who lived at the time in a way none of the others really do. It's also aged much better than those have, as a result.

When people ask me why I still listen to Ska, this is why. This is the reason the music connects with me in such a strong way, and why I'll still put on Hang-Ups by Goldfinger, Willis by the Pietasters, or One Step Beyond by Madness, to this day. Ska still manages to inject energy and life into the listener in a way that has been forgotten. It's a musical style that represents a lot to those who like it, and it is one of the few musical experiences from the 1990s that still holds up today since it more accurately reflects the mood of the youth at the time.

In fact, speaking of video games, Tony Hawk Pro Skater's influence on the popularity of the genre was paramount. The documentary even mentions just how surprisingly influential such things as inconsequential things such as video game soundtracks were on the careers of bands. Tony Hawk personally picking Superman, for instance, ended up changing Goldfinger's entire career trajectory. It is funny to see just how different it was back then when video games are only considered big today. Back then, they could help jump-start entire careers. It is almost as if the industry had more pull back then than it does now.

Of course, not everything lasts forever, and neither did Ska's time at the top. Everything goes up most come down, and musical trends are no different.

Almost from the outset, a large chunk of the Punk scene disliked Ska, not to mention the Two Tone or First Wave purists that had it in for this crazy combination from the outset. Then there were the Emo kids who disliked it for being the antithesis for everything they wanted to do. It's hard to really emphasize, but the genre had a lot of enemies--including with itself. To this day, there are people who irrationally dislike the entire Ska genre because one band with a lead signer who overdosed in the mid-90s wrote a song about Santeria that ended up on the radio. It's a bit crazy to think about, but it's true. I'm still not sure why the genre has this image to these specific people, but there it is. If you missed out on the positive vibes and energy because you wanted more misery back, well, congratulations because that's what you got for the next 20 years in mainstream (and underground) rock music scenes. I hope it was worth it so you didn't have to hear Sublime rapping about a dalmatian in one overplayed radio song. No fun allowed, indeed.

At the same time, the people in the genre who got successful began feeling guilt that their "frothy" sound appealed to a lot of people. They started putting more overt messages and lecturing in their music (As great and as popular as the Mighty Might Bosstones Let's Face It album was, that song has their most embarrassing lyrics, by far) by assuming those listening to their music needed political issues dumped onto them, because apparently they were stupid. As if listeners don't already think about these things and are using a music based on unity and fun to blow off some steam instead. You know, the whole point of the genre in question?  Once you get pompous, the audience will walk away, and that is what happened here. Put yourself and your "causes" over your audience at your own risk. Ska wasn't immune from this.

There was also over-saturation. Because the music was so bright and energetic, and hit with so many people at the time, bands were falling over themselves to form and play shows. You couldn't escape the sound for awhile, and the overexposure still irks people to this day. The context as to why this happened is completely lost.

However, the one thing nobody wants to talk about, even in the documentary, is that around the same time Ska was forcefully taken off the radio around 1998, so to was Swing music, Blues, New Jack Swing, Alternative Rock, and many other genres that were enjoying success throughout the decade. It was replaced wholesale by bland corporate music that persists to this day. It was as if the giant labels didn't like that there were too many musical options that they couldn't control and decided to force only their gruel onto the populace. Of course their payola lapdogstotally and coincidentally like-minded radio DJs fell in line to offer the same sort of crap to their listeners.

And now the music scene in the West is dead.

The reason for this has already been discussed on this blog multiple times, but the record labels had created their own pop stars that they owned, lock, stock, and barrel, and were instead using them to maximize profits off of teenybopper girls while flooding everything else out that anyone else might enjoy. Even Rock itself would devolve to post-Grunge Nu Metal in the mainstream and post-Punk Emo in the underground, thereby sapping all joy out of the musical landscape. Neither of those are around anymore, though, and neither is Rock's presence in the mainstream except through very old, and very safe, bands that haven't put out anything exciting since the 90s themselves.

You can deny this truth, if you'd like, but then ask yourself when the last fun thing you heard on the radio that wasn't pure studio gloss written and produced by a team of highly paid professionals singing about sex or drugs. You're going to have to go back decades to find an example. The big record labels own the industry, and they don't want you to have good music: they want you to consume theirs for eternity. Which s probably why there will never be nostalgia for the '00s, to be honest. As said earlier, there was '90s nostalgia five minutes after it ended due to the back half of the decade already being a departure. There was even 1980s nostalgia in the '00s. What is there to be nostalgic about in the '00s? Corporately owned radio stations, depressing music, and empty bubblegum pop? We still have that. It never went away.

Nonetheless, the music of Ska itself, just like other abandoned American genres like Rockabilly or Blues, found fertile ground overseas and in neighboring countries such as Mexico or far off in places like Japan, where they aren't so hung up on genre labels. Ska is still around, it's just, like every other good genre, not really alive in the West anymore. You have to go deeper than even the irrelevant, poseur-filled underground scene to find it. You can just chalk that up to the times, I suppose. Find it on your own, like everything else.

As I said, the 1990s were strange. In many ways it was the last gasp of the 1980s and mid-century trends in the West, but despite all that there was still a push for something better and a hope for better times. The slinking sludge of nihilism popped up with Grunge (featuring countless future suicide attempts and victims) and book-ending with the empty slink and forgotten bang of Nu Metal, but in between there were flashes of something else, perhaps a world that could have been if we had kept talking to each other. But that time is passed, and over. The 1990s are done.

Ska is still around, as is just about every musical genre that blew up at one time before being dumped by the labels, but it's never going to reach that point of popularity again. And that's fine. That's just the nature of the beast.

You can find the documentary on Ska's rise to popularity here. If you have any interest at all in what was going on in the 90s pop culture scene and how different it was, the documentary does shed some light on the times and put it into context. There's also some bonus features hat talk about religion in ska, shows off some of the art of the time, and has various background bits for different bands. All with a surprising lack of contemporary political crap everyone is sick of sick of hearing about. It's a good documentary that shows glimpses into the last embers of a shared culture before it was extinguished in our move to the 21st century. The party might be over, but at least you still have the memories, and you can still share and pass them around. Connection is what art is all about, after all.

Before we go, have a listen and hear why it was this bizarre off-kilter music connected with so many people at a time when it seemed like it shouldn't. This a music meant to appeal to normal folks, and to make them get up, dance, and have fun.

Grab the mates, go out on the town, and remember that life's an adventure. Today might not have been great, but there's always tomorrow, and who knows what's coming up next!

Isn't that fun? Sure it is, and fun is what the music is all about.

Create your own fun with the Pulp Mindset!

Welcome to 2019!

The future I'm still waiting for.

It's the end of the decade! I'm sure out flying cars, wicked cool motorcycles, and trench coats will be arriving any day now.

It's a bit hard to believe that this year I will have been writing at this blog for five years now. Half a decade! This whole thing mostly started as an outlet to get thoughts and ideas written somewhere as I wrote novels and dealt with real life problems in the background. I wasn't sure it would last as long as it did, never mind for 300 posts. Little did I know how much things would change in such a short time.

But all that aside I suppose it is time for a general update post on where I am at. It's been a while since I made one of these.

Over the last year I wrote two novels, one is with my editor right now and the other is being heavily dissected and rewritten by me in the background while I am also in the middle of writing a new one. Pulp speed is still something I engage in, but it is not a method I can use to publish the content, merely produce it from my brain. Editors, artists, formatters, and readers, all have their own schedules and I can't do anything about it. As it is, I didn't get to publish a novel last year, but that will change for 2019.

I wrote seven short stories (and am currently near the end of an eighth) but I also wonder if I should keep my focus on them, much as I enjoy writing these pieces. They don't garner a lot of attention and there are so few markets who actually buy Action and Adventure stories that it's the equivalent of playing Russian Roulette in getting the work out there to an audience. I have a few more I absolutely want to write and put out (mostly to get a functional themed collection) but I don't think I will put as much of my attention into them going forward.

Because of all these choices I didn't get as much published this year as I would like compared to 2017. I only had three short stories released, one of which I put out myself via newsletter and amazon, and no novels. Compared to what I wrote that result isn't much. It's a bit of a disappointment, but at least I should have a novel out within the next few months via my publisher and a story or two in a collection or anthology on top of it. So my efforts for the year were not a total loss.

On the personal side, 2018 was not a great year. The first few months went well until I lost someone important to me at the end of March. That cloud hung over me for the rest of the year, spoiling much of the mood and stifling productivity that should not have been. Several others were lost along the way and I learned some things that were not pleasant, but were certainly necessary to learn. On the other hand, because of all this my motivation to move to a better location has been renewed. I don't think this will cut down on writing, whether blog or otherwise, but it should help me regain focus on what truly matters. 2019 will be an improvement.

Myself aside, the indie writing world sure was full of surprises this year. There is a new movement for mecha series starting up (Beginning as #AGundam4Us) it looks as if genre magazines are beginning to find an audience to be sustainable, at least in the short term, and several upcoming projects like Heroes Unleashed are beginning to spring up. Imagining this back when I started this blog back in 2014 was impossible. Things have changed quite a lot.

Though to be fair, this decade has to be the most dull one in my lifetime, especially if we're talking entertainment.

The top ten grossing movies of 2011 and the top ten grossing movies of 2018 are fairly interchangeable with each other. Even comparing it to a list from 1991 and 1998 would yield it shows a culture in complete stagnation. Case in point, the two movies this year that will probably be worth seeing from the big studios had their first entry release in 2012 and 2014.

That might be the biggest takeaway from all this. Compare entertainment and the culture of any decade from the first year to the last one.

Television... is dead. I don't have any way to spin that one. The networks are still offering the same swill from 2012 and 2013, just occasionally changing the title and actors involved. Reality television's stranglehold killed audience investment and single cam post-modern sitcoms successfully murdered traditional sitcoms and general audience interest with it.

The music industry is a dead man walking. It has no influence left, just as it had near the start of the decade. It has no superstars, no crossover appeal, and no performer than isn't completely interchangeable with any other one. Tik Tok by Ke$ha (a song I've never heart because this stuff is easy to escape now) was the highest selling single of 2010. 2018? God's Plan by Drake (another song I have never heard) and the same list of performers you've heard hundreds of times. Now, compare 1980 to 1988. Call Me by Blondie compared with Faith by George Michael. They aren't even the same genre.

But because of the rise of services like bandcamp that successful movements like Retrowave came about, and where many indie bands now put their work. You probably won't ever hear a new band come out of the labels before the collapse, but it won't be because they don't exist. It will be because the labels are clueless.

In fact, it is the mediums where the independent and middle market have a chance to succeed that are doing the best creatively.

Video games have had a creatively bankrupt decade, still milking games and formulas from 2008 (Batman: Arkham Asylum and Uncharted 2) as well as the ever-tired Grand Theft Auto template. About the only interesting console release was the Nintendo Switch which easily overtook the sales of every other console in the decade by simply offering something other than the same thing as previous systems with pwettier gwaphics that Sony and Microsoft did. However, within the last few years middle market studios, once nearly hobbled by the first HD generation, have made a return and are finally back on track. Games such as Cuphead, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Dusk, all released to rave reviews and offered something the AAA companies couldn't. Going into this year we should hopefully see more from the middle market as they overthrow the safe and tired mainstream from their undeserved pedestal.

As we enter into this last year of the 2010s I suppose that is the best takeaway from it. The dinosaurs are dying, and the new age is beginning. Let us just make sure we are not caught in the extinction event with them.

Happy 2019!

Ten Rules For Authors

*I got the idea for this post from author Declan Finn's "A Pius Man" blog and the entry "Ten Rules I want Writers to follow" which can be found here. Be sure to check his blog out and read his books if you're interested in fun thrillers that Dan Brown wishes he could write.*

We all have certain storytelling niggles that send us into a black rage with constant use. There are some rules that make for good storytelling that some authors just can't seem to follow and that others outright reject either purposely (the more annoying) or ignorantly. I had recently come across writer Declan Finn's list of his own rules that I basically agree with, but wanted to expand on some more of my own.

When reading books I have strange tastes, but I still wanted to give making this list a chance.

Now, these might seem either strange or pedantic, I can be that way, or straight up odd depending on who you are, but I'm going to try to be specific.

So, enjoy.

Intent

Before I start I just want to mention that my first novella is now for sale at Amazon! I've been working on it a long time, so if you have the time to at at least read the "look inside" excerpts, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

Today, I wanted to talk a bit about intent. Mostly, the intent of the writer.

There's a lot to talk about, but first I wanted to bring up an incident that happened to me not that long ago. It's fairly mundane, but it sticks with me like most mundane things do.

I once read the forward to a rather popular book that struck me a bit odd. The author was commenting on "Turn of the Screw" by Henry James and how the ending of the story fascinated and changed the way the person saw literature, in fact helping to inspire the very book I was holding in my hands. There's nothing wrong with all that, but here's the thing:

The ending was taught to the author by a college professor on how the narrator was a villain and really the monster of the piece. Now, that's a very valid interpretation, but, there's a problem with teaching such an interpretation as being exactly what James intended. That problem being, we don't know what James intended.