Dubstep: What the 99% Call Music

jakewgoldman13 years ago

The other day I decided to be a little venturesome in my late night booze crawl. Instead of making my usual rounds at the bar scene across from campus, I was lured downtown by a friend of mine based on promises of scantily clad women and some “Drink Free Until Midnight Special.” Normally I’d brush the proposal off and stick to my guns of all you can drink wells, but for some reason I decided to take the leap of faith and stroll over to the other side of night life. For those of you who don’t know, Gainesville’s downtown is a clusterfuck of establishments which call themselves “clubs.” Now, when I think of clubs, the first thing that comes to mind is something a little more sophisticated than the first place I walked into. Instead of your run-of-the-mill loud house music and people sporting black in hopes of looking edgy, I was bombarded with lasers, glowsticks, and something that sounded like a fax machine was dry humping my bottomed out jet-ski. This assortment of ear-raping screeches and womps is apparently a new fad in music called dubstep,

On first listen, I thought that the sound system might have been to blame, as the place seemed more concerned with the 30×30 wall of pulsating lights and lasers than the actual noises coming out of the speakers from overhead. Sadly, I was wrong. Apparently what sounded to me like my computer taking a shit is what the kids are listening to now. By the way, the kids who are really into this stuff are the absolute worst. Ever consider throwing on a pair of ray bans without the lenses, sewing together whatever neon clothing you can find at goodwill and wearing skinny jeans before you go out? Didn’t think so. But the dubstep fanatics seem to think it’s the fucking innest and coolest. I actually looked into one of the “artists” who creates the stuff and goes by the stage name Skrillex. Never before have I seen a person who looked like the spawn of some demented hippy-goth-robot-three-way, until I googled Skrillex.

As I looked on in sheer confusion at what was going on in front of me, I could not help but think of my father’s stories of disco polluting the club scene when he was in college. However, those were just people who liked to dance and do coke. On the slide scale of awful, that doesn’t even touch the things I saw and heard that night.

“I’m rolling my face off bro!!!!”

“Did you hear that bass drop man?”

Instead of some light hearted dance music and a little blow, these kids are getting their thrills from guttural howls and whatever drugs hipsters do these days. To me it seems where disco died and decomposed, some parasitic demon crawled out of its remains and claimed to be music. That claim is fraudulent. In dubstep, there is no meaning, and there certainly is no soul.

I get that clubs need to play music you can dance to, however tweaking out on amphetamines and grind-fucking on the floor isn’t dancing at all. Even the mindless dance pop of the 90s was better than this crap clubs keep peddling. Furthermore, what happened to the great American rockbands that have simply disappeared? Who took the place of CCR and Skynyrd? I guess this generation decided that learning to play an instrument was too archaic and a computer program would suffice. If the direction of our youth is reflected in their musical choices, this country’s downward spiral just got a whole lot faster. Until there is a substantial switch, I’m sticking to the bars where people get drunk to have a good time under normal lighting and “FREEEEEEBIRRRDDDD!” is the only thing requested.