corporate magazines still suck

i'm a fiend for pop music. i'll die loving it. but lately pop music is all about the bling and posing which in turn is all tuned by corporate interests to sell. there is terrific music out there now, bands such as arcade fire, death cab for cutie for example fill me with hope. but you are not gonna find many of their tunes on mtv and vh1 because those supposedly music stations no longer play music videos.

the same for their awards shows, or any awards show, they are so orchestrated and bland that they are better for putting you to sleep than a couple of hits of valium. but in 1992 change was in the air. at least i felt it. finally there was a democrat heading for the white house and hope for the better seemed possible after coming of age during the long dark years of the reagan era.

below is what i consider the best performance in the history of the mtv music awards, or any awards show, by a band: nirvana in 1992 performing 'lithium'. when was the last time you saw stage diving during a commercial event on national tv, or the fact that kurt cobain begins the set by playing and singing the first bars of 'rape me', or krist n. pummeling himself by throwing his bass into the air and having it land right on his noggin that it nearly knocked him out. it is an extreme and extremely moving performance. it was i think the expression of anger and of hope for what was then the start of a new era.