Ask An Alternative High School Teacher

Today we’ll speak with someone who has seen the future that is our children. The future sez “Start buying krugerrands now!”

So…the kids these days. What are they listening to? How bad is it?

I think teenagers’ taste in music are as all over the place as they always have been, only they’re typically listening to the derivatives of derivatives. Very few of the students would be able to tell me who M.I.A. is, but they all have about 13 different songs that sampled her second album liberally.  Then you have some students who genuinely confuse me because they like groups that are just so…odd. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony? Really? Or like if a student tells me they LOVE Nine Inch Nails; I really have a tough time understanding how anyone under the age of say, 21, might even know who Trent Reznor is.

Health – Get Color

Someone took Coil and Duran Duran and smushed them up into one package. I never cared for anything from Health before this album, but there’s a depth and fractured 80s weirdness here that’s lovely. And lovely like Gold is the Metal…, not the totally shit return of New Wave DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP routine that’s current pummeling us from coast to coast.

I am somewhat prescient when it comes to musical trends, and like I’ve told many a person popular music will be dominated by a disco/hip hop fusion (the beginnings of which can be seen with the rise – and fall – of vocoding and are manifested most succinctly in Lady Gaga aka Peaches 3.0). But for the rest of the landscape, much of it will be seeing the 80s experimental current come alive again, and not just at Throbbing Gristle shows. Hell, just look at the cover!