Album Review: The Strange Boys ...and girls club

I almost feel like this has to start with "The First Time I Met The Strange Boys was..."

It doesn't though. I'm going to skip all that, and also basically skip talking about the record.

I have been thinking a lot about rock and roll lately, as I sometimes do, and one thing I have decided for myself is that the bands and the scene that exists now is like a fulfillment of early rock. I think I get to be the first to say it (hopefully, I'd like the distinction...maybe someone else has already) but the band that this Strange Boys record instantly reminds me of is The Monks. The Monks were a fabricated band, much like many other bands of their time period. I'll skip the history lesson, just go rent the documentary, its great. But they were doing it sort of for fun, like, what crazies consider fun, and on some level, it just happened to be art. This Strange Boys record sounds fun, in the same way the way the cover art looks fun, and in the same way as long as you don't whine about it life is really fun, but the art element is all them, completely unfabricated, and because of that, its brings a very organic consistency to the whole record, and I think this is what people refer to as a "timeless" quality. Because people are always interested in other people...the journey outside the self so to speak...something basic to the human experience.


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Some people will tell you there is no progress in music, like since the dawn of time, that it is just different. Some people think there will never be a band better than The Beatles (these people usually make me sick). Some people will say music is only relative to the society at the given time that it is created.

I may be the minority opinion, but I disagree with all of this. I can never seem to prove shit to the nihilists, but I use humanism as my definitional benchmark of what rock and roll ideally stands for, and I think we have come a long way. I also think that music is for the past and future. Its a comment on the past, and meant to be listened to in the future. Even on a microscopic level, how good a song is at any given moment is related to the form of the song aka, the immediate past and future of the song.

I think for the most part, American music is getting better, and that must mean there is something in American society getting better. I think the broad historical circumstances that would lead to this are pretty much a matter of record at this point....meaning, punk--->80s DIY---->rise of indie labels--->cheap recording---->internet/myspace booking etc. etc. etc.. That is not meant to be an exhaustive list. And I don't think that is going to revert, short of the apocalypse. ...I think the DIY community is going to continue to grow and strengthen, and lead to more great bands per capita.

At this point, its almost hard to believe a band used to need luck and/or connections to seriously pursue being a recording artist, and even then they still might not hit. DIY is so easy now. You may never get to the point where you can support yourself financially off what you do, but that is such a false idol of a goal in my opinion, anyways. Why do you want to support yourself financially off your music? So you can get wrapped up in this mental cycle where you think you need to continue to live off your music indefinitely, aka appeal to a market, in order that you can dedicate your whole time to music? It's an easy fallacy to fall into, but I think less common with the current DIY set than with previous incarnations of the national music scene.

This is all to say that the bands are better. The bands can focus on what they do as art, and can function in society that way. Like the name of an old Strange Boys song, it can be "Art For Art's Sake."