My friend Anthony said he thought Interpol was the best until he heard Joy Division, which is a pretty succinct example of how the further we stretch history, the more backwards we make it. It's fair to say that Interpol never would have happened without Joy Division's influence, and thus listening to Interpol without knowing about Joy Division comes off as something like a superficial appreciation of dark, gloomy post-punk. Know your roots, as they say.
Of course, not everyone spent their high school years listening to Turn On the Bright Lights, and even though I might consider Joy Division's Closer a rite of passage to a certain degree, it's certainly not the kind of universal, know-where-your-parents-come-from and learn-where-rock-music-comes-from rite of passage like Bob Dylan or Led Zeppelin.
Joy Division are important to Interpol's story, just as the Velvet Underground are important to the Strokes' story. But that doesn't necessarily require that every high school kid wearing a Strokes shirt owns any Lou Reed records. For all rock bands that come out during our lifetimes (assuming you, the reader, and I, the writer, are of similar ages) it's often up to us to backtrack and discover bands' influences—which requires more effort than a lot of people are willing to put into it (which explains why so many people liked the first record from Jet).
It's also worth noting that we're talking about comparatively niche groups. The further back you go in history the more you're prone to encounter broader influences, which logically occurs at every genre's genesis. That's why, no matter how far removed we are from their discography, My Bloody Valentine will never be considered classic rock the same way more prototypical ""rock"" groups like the Jimi Hendrix Experience are. They'll be classic shoegaze, maybe, but someone will need to register a new Sirius satellite radio domain before we bother talking about that.
But just because classic rock is set in stone and concepts like ""classic shoegaze"" open a pandora's box of cult history doesn't mean history stops once the central tenets of genres are defined. Nay, quite the opposite. Certain sounds force us to read backward through historical catalogs, but we also get more and more fragmented genres that make brand new starting lines. They put us at the ground floor of the sort of music our children or grandchildren might fail to recognize as the source material for their niche or cult-leaning favorite bands—our generation's own Joy Divisions and Velvet Undergrounds, so to speak.
Enter: dubstep. Of course, there are myriad incarnations of dubstep that predate contemporary strains, but just as we're only beginning to discover what technology we're capable of, we're only scratching the surface of what electronic music can accomplish.
No doubt, Bassnectar is often associated with the genre's formation, he remains relevant because of his progressive and performance-based approach to dubstep. Unafraid to mix elements of glitch and breakbeat, Bassnectar creates what he refers to as ""omni-tempo maximalism,"" and he does this all live and in concert. Now, this is important for two reasons.
It matters because the culture of constant creation ensures that Bassnectar (and thus dubstep as a whole) does not stagnate. Lorin Ashton, as his mother likely calls him, engineers shows specifically to engage with how the audience responds, allowing a consumer-based approach to where the genre moves to. Live mixing is nothing new, though, and its success rate is wholly dependent on the producer's skill and openness to adapt, but Bassnectar's strong focus on the performance aspect assures at least a little more time before it falls flat. Certainly, it means his influence is a significant rite of passage for dubstep performance.
Second, it means his live shows are awesome. And as luck may have it, Bassnectar is returning to Madison this Friday, and there's an easy way for you to nab free tickets. The Daily Cardinal, in conjunction with Majestic Madison (and, I suppose, this very column), have hidden a set of tickets somewhere on campus, to be available after 7 a.m. They could be anywhere, so here's a hint: Take the first letters of the last 13 sentences and unscramble them to spell out the name of a campus monument. And if that seems unnecessarily complicated and stupid, just remember that being the president who abolished slavery was no easy task, either.
Email Kyle at ktsparks@wisc.edu and he will politely not tell you the location of the tickets.
