A Few Thoughts After Watching The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards

When I was a young man, in college, I studied music and discovered that there is a long and storied history of people disliking new music.  For a long time, people have been incredibly resistant to innovations in music.  History tells us that musical conventions that are completely commonplace nowadays—for example a seventh chord—were met with hostile resistance when they were initially introduced.  People actually believed that any composer who could put such a horribly dissonant sound into his composition must surely be demon possessed. 

Seriously, this was the kind of reaction that musical innovations received.

The basic principle seems to be that our ears get comfortable with music styles as we know and understand them.  That seems pretty reasonable, right?  So, as time goes by, when something new is introduced, the tendency for most people is to dislike it.

Although I was a young man, I understood this basic principle of resistance to new music from the firsthand experience of hearing my elders complain about the music that the “young folks” of my generation were listening to.

“You call that music?” I recall an older adult asking while an album was playing on my turntable [if need be, you can do a search on Google to find out what a “turntable” is].  “That just sounds like noise to me!  It sounds like a couple of cats fighting.”

Of course, being young and impudent, that comment was my cue to turn up the volume a notch or two.

[By the way, the album I was listening to was titled, “The Fighting Cats”, so, frankly, the older guy was making a pretty good point.]

I told myself, as a young man, “I’m not going to let that happen to me.  I’m going to continue to listen to current music and maintain an appreciation for new music as I get older.  I want to be able to know and understand and enjoy the newer styles of music, even as I age.  I’m not going to become one of those old codgers stuck in a time warp, living in the past, as the world continues on.”

Okay…I told you all of that to say this: Last night I watched a fairly good portion of the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards program and once again the carefully conceived and logically airtight plans that I made as a tremendously wise 20-year-old have been foiled.  I wasn’t too keen on the music that I heard on the show and I’m not really interested in developing an appreciation for it.  In fact, during a couple of the performances it occurred to me that I seem to be an “old codger stuck in a time warp, living in the past, as the world continues on.”

And—boy, I know this is going to make me sound hopelessly, cluelessly, pathetically old, but—I just can’t take Lady Gaga seriously as an artist.  I’m sorry, but she only made me laugh.  But at least laughter is a fairly positive reaction.  Some of the other artists actually made me slightly sad.  Not really, really sad.  I’m not sitting in a dark room crying or anything like that.  But sort of sad.

Fortunately, I know how to start feeling good again.  Yep, I got out my old turntable and cranked it up and I’m enjoying some rock and roll classics. 

…Well, I thought I was enjoying some old classics.  It turns out the turntable is broke.  What I was really hearing was two cats out in my back yard fighting.

They’re not bad.

*NOTE:  Lady Gaga wore a dress made of meat, at one point, last night.  I'm not sure if that's the "Meat Dress" in the photo of her, above left, but it might be.  A dress made of meat at an awards show...now, you have to admit, that's sort of funny.