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Re: the scene described in the above "quote"
It is at times like those, when the new and the creative are squeezed out of our minds in reaction to the fucking tired bullshit.
as far as "genuine" or not goes, it is impossible to ascertain. You cannot and will never know what is in people's heads. the guy doing tai Chi may be very genuine, doing Tai Chi to get focused before gigs, and for all you know he does this every time, and has for years. No way to know. he could have been just fucking around, no wayto know.
the beauty of art, any art, is that there is alway a flux. There are always a few people who are just now catching on, just nopw discovering tasty shit like Picasso or Sonic Youth, or Fugazi if fugazi is yr cup o tea. There are always a few people who know so much, have heard/seen/experienced so much that they come off like smug assholes proclaiming that all the others are stupid and disingenious. The majority of everyone, fans of all the arts, are in themiddle.
they know a lot, but nowhere near enough to be "expert."
where do you falll?
the whole act of punk rock was that it was "genuine". but that is a relative term. even such a freak as GG Allin, or the Dwarves, who seemed reckless, breathtakingly of-the-moment performers were just going through the motions most of tyhe time. once you ahve played more than a few gigs, or are on tour, you end up playing nearly the same set of tunes every night for weeks, or months. yet it has to "seem" genuine and spontaneous to each new audience.
when I was 17 or so I saw dinosaur jr in austin TX and the the next day in Houston. They played the same set but for two songs. It made me a bit upset, but then I thought to myself, if I had to play many consecutive gis in front of what is essentialy a wholly new and different crowd every week, why would you change it up all that much?
It made me more appreciative of a band like Phish, who have never played the same set twice, who almost never play the same song the same w3ay twice, and who actively seek to engage a fanbase with constantly shifting and changing setlists.
this is hard to do for regular rock, or punk rock. the setlist is the setlist. No one wants to hear sonic youth do Hoarfrost in a bossanova style, (well, I would, and I know lots of opeople here would, but I am talking about the MEAT of the crowd who want to hear the songs they love like they always sound.)
if you become disappointed at the lack of genuineness (that's not a word rght?) maybe it is because you expected it where there should not be any to begin with.
rambling rant over
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