I Want Up

This might be a stretch here, but I think I might be the only person on Earth who doesn't have a MySpace page. I don't know; there's something about a guy my age (I'll be 74 in mid-September, thanks) who ISN'T in a band participating in that community. Sure, there are some valid pluses in having a presence on the social-networking portal (making business contacts, finding disgruntled former employees of AP cover stars, discovering like-minded souls who share my predilection for obscure British bands of the past 25 years). But there are also plenty of downsides (friend requests from street teams competing for a free iPod, constant spam from Creed tribute bands and provocative messages that might as well have been sent by Chris Hansen's interns) that I simply don't have the time to wade through. I do have a Facebook account, but my wife does all the upkeep on that. So if you ever come across it, you won't see one of those statements that act as the daily emotional barometer. (You know, those sentences that say "Today, Jason has covered his naked body with guacamole and will soon run down the street shrieking passages from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead as a three-foot trail of firecrackers coming out of his butt start exploding." Oh, and don't forget the emoticon at the end. :<>)

Don't get me started on the culture initially promulgated by such maverick sites as LiveJournal and Friendster. I will never in a million years understand why everyone wants to share intimate details about their lives with complete strangers. I mean, I can understand telling the 66-year-old grandmother sitting next to me on a four-hour flight all the details of my younger brother screwing up his life, how our mother enables him and I can sure use some advice. And at that age, she'll be more than happy to give it to me, because we both know we'll never see each other again. There's a certain comfort in showing some vulnerability to a benign stranger who briefly enters your sphere without any judgement, in the hopes of ridding yourself of a forest-for-the-trees mindset about something both pressing and personal. But puttin' that shit online? It doesn't take a nation of Lori Drews to hold me back, friends: One's enough.

But let me get to the point of today's entry. When I was young and sexy and could actually see my shoes, I, too, was obsessed with what all my favorite bands were doing. Were they on tour? Were they in the studio? Did they collect records as much as I did? Did they hang out with members of my other faves, like some sort of uber-cool Justice League? What was the next single going to be, and would it have a non-lp b-side (two of them if they were doing a 12-inch single)? Nobody has to worry about that stuff now, because today's culture demands that bands share every little nuance of what they do. There's no mystery anymore.

And that's kinda sad. Because we are jonesing all the time for an insatiable info fix, everyone is burning out. We grow weary of bands because they're constantly in our face. In turn, they grow weary of us, because while they are trying to pony up $177 to fill the van to get to the first date of their tour, some posh d-bag living in his parents' McMansion is calling them out for something totally false on his blog. I will admit I almost (I said almost) cried on my computer keyboard when the Blood Brothers announced their breakup. But in hindsight, I appreciated the idea that they purposely stalled on making the announcement public until many months after the fact. These days, withholding information is the only respite a band has left.

I want up from under all this information. Don't you? And if you later comment, "Shut up, you elderly skidmark! Nobody cares about your pathetic life story, your favorite bands or your old-fashioned ruminations on How Things Used To Be. Do us a favor and throw yourself into a woodchipper," I won't mind at all.