'■ •
Musical identity exacts price
Bite-sized pieces of salvation in'
between a steady diet of urinal s
cakes and banal flakes. Ramshackle
turntables. Lights in corridors
blazing out in precedented glory;
always there, shining their radiance
upon whoever is seeking refuge
from the commonplace deluge.
In a land of consumeristic
uniqueness the foxhunt is always
on. We train the dogs to sniff fresh
blood and ingest the kill before
anyone else has a chance to savor
the sweetness. Everyone wants to
be different but there aren’t enough
pelts to go around.
Don’t even try to tell me that
I’m the only person who ever
scoured the Antiquarium to find
music so awful that no one could
stomach it but me. “Holy crap, they
have Rutabaga Bob featuring the
Hairy Nipples and Orthopedic
Short Cut Bean’s Jalopy Eskimo
Pie Vacancy!”
The pilgrimage for an identity,
the search for your own private
Idaho band. Why is it that we seek
out music to consider uniquely
ours, then evangelize it to anyone
who will listen — and upon
realizing that everyone now
perceives it as wonderful, get
pissed off even though it was our
endless preaching that caused the
whole quagmire in the first place?
We should take action to
prevent frustrated leaps from 10th
story windows and set expiration
dates for pop culture trinkets; the
point of no return when no one else
is allowed to make the sprawling
leap onto the bandwagon. “Last
call for punk! Sorry, we stopped
letting people listen to Jane’s
Addiction yesterday.”
How many thousands of you
were the “first one” in your school/
neighborhood/tax bracket/
NAMBLA group to own
“Nevermind”? C’mon, let me see
the hands. While we’re at it, let’s
spice up the Venn Diagram by
subdividing people who claim to
Aaron McKain
"Does bad music make
bad people or do bad
people simply ruin
everything? Music is a
war for territory. ”
have been listening to NIN since
“Pretty Hate Machine” and cross
reference that with individuals
insisting that they rooted for Mr.
Pink four score and seven years
before Pulp Fiction. Ah, the
bubbling, muddy, richness of
conflict comes swimming to the
surface.
Now the latest Rosetta stone of
undergroundism is Phish. I remem
ber a DN column last year, “A
really cool secret,” in which some
girl’s big brother passed the Phish
legacy on to her like he was the
Keymaster ushering in the reign of
Gozer with a fez and the secret
handshake of the Water Buffalo
Lodge. I like Phish, and I’m not
trying to smear them with verbal
shrapnel, but c’mon. Their CDs are
as hard to find as listless audience
silence during a taping of Saturday
Night Live. They’ve become one of
the biggest concert draws of the
1990s. To do that takes a helluva
lot of fans. To have fans you have
to have people, and the law of
averages says that most people are
insufferable clownfish that you
don’t want around in the first place.
The real fun starts when the
“fans” come together and realize
that their “really cool secret”
actually has millions of subscrib
ers; that rather than being a tightly
knit elite group consisting of
people just like you, it’s actually
polluted by facets of society that
make you more than a little queasy.
The Holden Caufield battle
royale begins as we witch hunt for
the true phony bastards. The holier
than-thous will sit around the
campfire tossing incendiary glances
at the Johnny-come-latelys using
that ever so precise litmus test of
devotion, the lip sync, to test the
mettle of their fellow man. Tie
dyed MaCarthyism will be waged
as they search out the scapegoat
who gets a panicked look in his/her
eye when trying to figure out what
song is being preformed in the
Name That Tune Spanish Inquisi
tion Home Game.
Nothing makes the new thing
suck harder than everyone digging
it.
Does bad music make bad
people or do bad people simply
ruin everything? Let’s nip this
Phish thing in the ass right now
and just duke it out. I don’t even
want to hear any of the “I liked
‘em first.” When you’re a Jet,
you’re a Jet. Let’s rumble. A big,
greased up, wet T-shirt, monster
car, deli meat decathlon, where
the contestants have to distin
guish between Golgi Apparatus
and Classical Gas and the loser
has to go back to listening to Bon
Jovi.
Me? I’ll be sitting on the
sidelines mesmerized by the new
Mr. Bungle. No son, disco didn’t
suck.
And for the love of sweet baby
Jesus, don’t turn Tarantino into a
fraternity slogan.
McKalnisan undeclared sophomore and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist
Quilt can t cover social stigma
I didn’t expect to cry that day.
Somehow all that journalistic
cynicism and objective thought
went right out the window the more
time I spent talking to volunteers
and walking around the NAMES
Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.
I tend to be critical of things I
consider empty symbols or icons.
Earlier this semester, I blasted
ribbons representing AIDS and
breast cancer. I still think all too
often the people who wear them
take the easy way out. I would
rather see people becoming more
conscious of an issue and incorpo
rating it into their own lives.
But I underestimated the
emotional power of the Quilt.
Maybe I think of it differently
because even though it’s a symbol,
it asks nothing of the viewer other
than to remember and respect the
people it represents.
Even though most of us have
grown up with AIDS at least in our
teenage years, we missed much of
the epidemic’s early days.
The day I visited the Quilt, the
only people allowed inside the
auditorium were press and area
high school and junior high
students. That generation, to me,
should be the most aware of AIDS.
The disease burst onto the
national scene before they ever
headed into a sex ed class, and will
continue with them for the rest of
their lives. But these students, like
me, don’t know how painful the
early 1980s were for people living
with AIDS.
Although Ronald Reagan has
been out of the presidency for more
than seven years, his reputation
remains with us. I hate Ronald
Reagan. I hate hirnTor the extreme
fear that led him to suppress any
knowledge of a growing epidemic.
Even after all this time, with
HIV and AIDS at the forefront of
domestic and international health
issues, the lost time cannot be
regained. I bring up Reagan not to
criticize him for that time, but
because history is doomed to repeat
itself.
Krista Sctiwarting
“AIDS needs to be, not a
political issue, but a
human one. ”
And from the looks of the
students I saw at the exhibit, it
looks as if doomsday is on its way.
In their words and actions, I saw
gross disregard for the people
represented in the quilt panels and
those they left behind.
With all the love and effort
apparent in the panels, you would
think it wouldn’t be asking too
much to stop and think about a
disease which has left such a mark.
But obviously, growing up with
knowledge of AIDS doesn’t make
for any more compassion and
understanding than my or any
previous generation.
What the Quilt has attempted to
foster is greater understanding of
the breadth and depth of people
affected by, living with, or dead
because of AIDS.
The Quilt came into being in
1987 and was displayed for the first
time at the march on Washington
D.C. by gays and lesbians demand
ing recognition of their rights. It
came into being because of
Reagan’s ignorance and hypocrisy.
Even Reagan’s friend and
biographer Lou Cannon notes that
his response was delayed and
inadequate. In what now seems a
smaller-scale version of the
Holocaust, he ignored the issue
when the numbers of those dying
were relatively small but growing.
One of the reasons the trend was
so easy to ignore was the demo
graphics of the people who were
dying. Mostly gay men living in
New York and San Francisco, they
had little if any political clout.
Why was he so frightened he
couldn’t even mention the disease
until 1985, when it became clearly
apparent something deadly was
going on? He didn’t want to upset
conservative elements, people who
wanted to dismiss AIDS as the
wages of sin for people involved in
homosexual activity. And all this
time, people continued to die.
They died by the hundreds and
then thousands, without the benefit
of government money for research.
More importantly, his mention
ing it early could have taken away
the stigma remaining with AIDS to
this day. The students I saw the
other day may actually know the
fastest-growing group of people
with AIDS is heterosexual women,
but what we continue to hear about
is the disease moving among gay
men.
So the stigma remains.
AIDS needs to be, not a political
issue, but a human one. There are
people behind all the facts and
statistics most of us have heard
repeatedly. Over 30,000 of them
are represented in the Quilt that
made me cry. I believe what it will
take to stir more of us to action is
knowing or at least relating to
someone infected by the disease.
It was a panel at the end of the
display, almost hidden in a comer,
that got to me. It commemorated
someone from New Orleans, I city I
still consider a second home.
Sections of it represented different
sites across the city, places I
enjoyed and things I’d seen. In the
end, it was the fact that the man it
represented died when he wasn’t
much older than I am now that
made me cry.
Sc hwarting Is a graduate student In broad
cast! ng and a Daily Nebraskan columnist
Stands - .
For
Knowledge
~by.Jamea.Zank_
Name: Television
Age: Estimated to be between 50 to 60 years of age
Aliases Used: "T.V.", "The Idiot Box", 'The Boob
Tube"
Wanted for: Accesseory to murder, the economic
failures of the 1980's, wanton destruction of
numerous Grade Point Averages,
the creation of the MTV generation, the Gulf War,
"The Beverly Hillbillies" (an international crime
against humanity), info-mercials, and the creation of
the Western consumer culture.
Known Accomplices: O.J. Simpson, Ronald
Wilson Reagan, Barney the Dinosaur, Ted Turner.
Suspect is disarming, occasionally crass, loaded with
potential, and is to be considered extremely
dangerous in the wrong hands. If citizens should see
this suspect, they are discouraged from approaching
and encouraged to read books and think for
themselves.
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