"But preferring Hank Williams or Charlie Parker or the Sun Sessions or the Velvet Underground to Squeeze and Rickie Lee Jones and the Go-Go's and the Psychedelic Furs is not nostalgia, it's good taste. Just like listening to Beck, Bogert and Appice or Clock DVA and the Fall are bad taste. So I'll take my bad taste and you're welcome to yours, and maybe someday something will actually happen again and then we'll both be happy."

Lester Bangs wrote that and I think about it a lot these days. Replace "Beck, Bogert And Appice" with "the new Rob Thomas single," "Clock DVA and the Fall" with the A-Frames or Soundtrack Of Our Lives or whatever indie-rock paperweight is nestled in the CMJ top 20 this millisecond and I can stand by his last two sentences, except I'm not someone who sits around wishing something would "actually happen." This obsession with The Transcendent New Music Moment is the reason the NME feels the need to say Danko Jones Might Be The Best Band Ever and that The Bloc Party is Clash '77 all over again. You're in for a pretty arduous adulthood if you make music-derived adolescent euphoria your desired state of being, so you can't blame peabrains for pretending they're getting high off clove cigarettes. It's nowhere as pathetic as the grumps who cling to messiah fantasies, retro-roseglasses AND pride in their cynicism. When rock hasn't been cutting your mustard for a decade, maybe its time you open a book or just stop. paying. attention.

Actually, this A-Frames album is growing on me a bit, but in general I may not miss the access to indie rock promos that the radio station has given me once I move to Philly. Being the first on your block to find the hot new voice isn't necessarily worth sifting through the gurglings of an unimaginative, uninspired clique that can't create anything better than digitally produced rips on post-punk past and has nothing better to say than "music is dead," "dudes are back!" or "Captain Flipper's Flantastic Flubbertygibbet." When that decent group's fourth album breaks the top 100 (just like KASABIAN!) I'll just go back and check out the early releases and hop the love train a few cars late.

This A-Frames album is getting annoying again. Distorted voice saying "nothing ever. good. stays." Woot. How exactly is this better than Rob Thomas? This is what I get for associating the deconstructive freedom or whatever you want to call it of indie rock with youth and adolescence. Mainstream pap can be my mature music.

I can't speak about Bangs' first sentence cuz I've yet to really listen to Charlie Parker or Hank Williams. For all I know, they might suck ass. And Rickie Lee Jones might not be as excruciating as VH1 Classic leads me to believe.