Observations from a recent concert

[gjbassist]

Took My 14 year old son to a concert on Sunday for part of his birthday present. It was an outdoor event at an amphitheater and the weather was great. The bands included Chester French, Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy and Blink 182. He is a big Panic and FOB fan so that is who he really wanted to see. There were several things I noticed while at this show.

First of all Fender P basses seem to be the norm for younger bands right now. All of the bass players we saw played some version of the P bass. I don't own a P bass but now I want one!

Second, why do bands of this generation feel the need to drop the F bomb so many times during a show? It seemed that the lower the band was on the bill the more times they used the F word. I know a rock concert is never a wholesome environment. But it seems unnecessary to use profanity so much during a show. The bands I saw live growing up (Rush, Kiss, AC/DC, etc.) rarely if ever used profanity during a show. My band plays a lot of bars. Some of them are rather rough biker bars but we still don't say things like "How the #@*% are you all doing tonight?"

I also realized that I'm getting old. At 43 I was probably twice the age of the average person at this concert. I saw a few other parents who brought their younger teenagers as well as some adult couples. I still enjoyed the show but felt my son might have had more fun if he could have brought along a friend his own age. Oh well, how many other parents are cool enough to drive their kid three hours each way to a concert!

[Murder_Worship]

I love blink. i wish my father would drive me to go see them. ahaha

I'm thinking blink was prob th eworst wiht that word ahha. half their lyrics are that word alone ahha

i mean, take a listen to family reunion

[tycobb73]

I wouldn't say all younger bands use them. that was one concert that showed a pretty narrow scope of music.

[Godbody]

I've seen three of those bands at different times over the years (I was always there to see another band on the bill, usually real punk bands), and they did swear a great deal. Frankly, it devalues the F-word. It loses its power when it's said so casually.

I think it was Alice Cooper who expressed the sentiment that swearing was a cheap shot; he didn't need to swear to shock his audiences. I take the same approach when I'm on stage. Swearing dilutes the message, whatever it is. It's poor communication skills, which I think is also reflected in those band's crap (IMO) lyrics. They don't even swear creatively, like the British!

I guess my dad was pretty cool; he took me to see Alice three times when I was younger. You sound like you're pretty great too for taking your kid to what he wants to see.

[Din Of Win]

Wow. Awesome parenting!

All musical-taste biases aside, I think it's very cool that you took your son to the concert. As for the points you brought up:

1) P Basses. I play in a power-pop/pop-punk band and yes, a lot of the bands we play with utilize a P bass (Fender or otherwise). In fact, at a show we played this past Saturday, the band The Leftovers’ (who is our label-mate!) bassist got an awesome tone out of a P bass. It really made me want to get a nice P bass. Currently, I tend to revolve my basses around from my MIM Jazz, Ibanez ATK, and my SX P/J (which I think will be retired until I can afford some better components, current ones aren't working).

Anyways, we were a part of a large 3 day fest in June and I wrote about the various basses played by the myriad of punk-affiliated bands. Jazzes topped that list followed by P's and P/J's with oddities like a Ritter, Rics and a couple MM's. But yes, P's are the "standard affair" and most of the P's were played by the bigger name acts as well.


2) The F-bomb. The deal with language in a musical sub-culture is an interesting one and is often much deeper than people that cry "just to get a rise out of people" give it credit for. Often times it is done with a "stick it to the man" sort of candor. However, the use of curse (or taboo) words to emphasize certain points is one found in many areas of society. Conversely, language is an ever-evolving thing, and what was taboo once may not be now, while something that was once relatively benign can evolve into a taboo word.

It is easiest to use the latter as an example. Take the word for the female anatomy that rhymes with "punt". 100 years ago, it was used in medical journals and in a strictly harmless sense. Fast forward to today, and in American culture, it is commonly considered one of THE worst "swear words" that we can speak. Now, take the F-word. You are 43. While that is still a pretty young age, language has evolved a LOT in the last 43 years. No longer do we see the 'F' word as we use to. It has been diluted by pop-culture, television, movies, and literature. Most of the time, the F word is used in similar circumstances to words like 'dude' or 'man' or simply as a phrase modifier, a-la: "That's awesome" vs. "That's 'F-word'-ing awesome". By using the F-word, it denotes that the levels of awesomeness are higher than the root word of 'awesome' can normally convey.

Anyways, what I am trying to get across is that language is an evolving thing. It's better to view it as such. I highly doubt that most of those bands were using it in the, often misinterpreted, way of "just getting a rise" but that they are so numb to the severity of the word that it once had, it simply does not mean the same thing to them as it does to you.

Anyways, I could talk for hours about the intricacies of taboo words... but I am minoring in linguistics; I do enough of that at school as it is

Long story short: The f-'bomb' has been defused and it does not carry with it the same severity as it did when you were 23.

[gjbassist]

Great post Din! I can tell the F word does not have the same impact it did when I was 14. My son laughs at it now like its no big deal. Although I think he feels uncomfortable hearing it when around his parents. When I was his age I just didn't hear it that often because it was still considered such a bad word. It has been diluted by it's overuse.

[Din Of Win]

Originally Posted by gjbassist

Great post Din! I can tell the F word does not have the same impact it did when I was 14. My son laughs at it now like its no big deal. Although I think he feels uncomfortable hearing it when around his parents. When I was his age I just didn't hear it that often because it was still considered such a bad word. It has been diluted by it's overuse.

Thanks

It was actually playing music that got me interested in Linguistics. I was always interested when i would tour and hear how people spoke differently in different areas, be it obvious things like accents, but also slang and diction choices that tend to be geographically specific. I'm glad some of my nerdieness can rear its nerdy head on TB.

What is, IMHO, even more interesting than the devaluing of tabboo words, is the other side. Words that are actually BECOMING increasingly more tabboo. The english language has always held the big three word groups at the top of the tabbo pile: excratory, sacreligeous, and fornicatory. America, however showed it's uniqueness in that we were the first to culturally place severity on words in the order of sexual as the most tabboo, followed by excratory, and finally sacreligious words as the least severe. In most other parts of the world, the inverse is true with words against or blasphemizing religion being the worst and sexual words as the least severe. It says a lot about our culture (and other cultures for that matter!). That paradigm was pretty standard affair from the early 1900's to the last 10 or 15 years. Your younger years would place you firmly within the relms of sexual slag as being the worst things you could say... with the F word being top dog!

Now, we are in a bit of a paradigm shift again thanks to many many reasons (media, internet, entertainment, etc...) and new words are becoming the "F words" of the past. A tabboo word is tabboo because of the negative effect it has on it's recipient, or a listener. So, with every hit summer movie dropping F bombs by the dozens, it just looses it's effect. For the first time, we are at a point where the top tabboo (actual tabboo) words in the American-English language do not fall within the realms of the 3 i spoke of earlier. Now, the most tabboo words are hate words targeted at racial, religious, or sexualy orientated groups of people. I guarantee if those bands playing the show were saying, say, the 'N' word instead of the 'F' word... things would have been MUCH different.

Anyways... i've derailed this thing WAY too much.



Still, awesome dad points for you, sir!.. and solidarity in P Bass GAS!

[Taylor Livingston]

Originally Posted by Godbody

I think it was Alice Cooper who expressed the sentiment that swearing was a cheap shot; he didn't need to swear to shock his audiences.

To be fair, though, it was a lot easier to shock people in 1971. Just calling himself a girl's name offended plenty of squares back then.

Not that I think "shock" as art is particularly useful in any time period.

[FreaqyFrequency]

When I hear about profanity these days, I'm reminded of the Penn & Teller: Bulls**t! episode covering it. Profanity is, to me, a tool, and it is not something that should be abused. I think every word has its place, and there are places where it should not be used. What all profanity has in common is that it can be used for shock value. It will get people's attention if used correctly, and will negatively impact your image if used too often. That isn't to say, however, that it shouldn't be used at all. That, too, is too extreme. A word is nothing more than the power you and others give it. If you choose to give a word a bad connotation, it will be bad.

[TheDarkReaver]

Originally Posted by FreaqyFrequency

A word is nothing more than the power you and others give it. If you choose to give a word a bad connotation, it will be bad.

Indeed, which is why I can say I smoke fags and have a gay time doing it.

[jmattbassplaya]

I left a Skid Row concert because Sebastian Bach would drop the f-bomb (literally) every other word.

I`m by no means some stuck up, conservative, sheltered, etc... guy either, but it was just annoying as hell when after the first song he said, "How the **** are you ******* doing, Los ******* Angeles!! Are you ******* ready to hear some ******* metal!?"

I get it. You`re suppose to be cool and not give a crap. But to me it just comes of as uneducated and in need for an edge they can`t provide musically or with showmanship.

Luckily for me I got the tickets for free.

[Jim Campbell]

Originally Posted by jmattbassplaya

I left a Skid Row concert because Sebastian Bach would drop the f-bomb (literally) every other word.

I`m by no means some stuck up, conservative, sheltered, etc... guy either, but it was just annoying as hell when after the first song he said, "How the **** are you ******* doing, Los ******* Angeles!! Are you ******* ready to hear some ******* metal!?"

I get it. You`re suppose to be cool and not give a crap. But to me it just comes of as uneducated and in need for an edge they can`t provide musically or with showmanship.

Luckily for me I got the tickets for free.

it has now become so common,its the uh,or oh word used while trying to find something to say........even i get tired of hearing it,and i've been known to curse like a sailor......it's used so much that its lost it's power

[funkybass4ever]

Originally Posted by TheDarkReaver

Indeed, which is why I can say I smoke fags and have a gay time doing it.

+1 I knew it would be worth it reading this thread this far!

[Taylor Livingston]

Originally Posted by TheDarkReaver

Indeed, which is why I can say I smoke fags and have a gay time doing it.

Oh yeah? Well at least I can get away with saying I saw my dad give my sister a pat on the fanny.