Message From an Ivory Tower

Rip It Up, Issue 217, 1 September 1995, Page 11

Message From an Ivory Tower

I hate to do it, but I am writing to beat a dead horse, in defence of all the Pearl Jam ‘slaggers’ (nice word by the way) being slagged. Through the decades past, we have started to evolve into indefinable cliques or groups. For example, things like punk culture are not minorities anymore. In fact, they are quite the opposite. You see 12 year olds stalking the streets wearing Offspring T-shirts. Offspring is labelled as a punk group nowadays. You can be called a punk and not even experiment with chemicals, or break laws, or wear leather. We are called Generation X. In this wondrous age, we have all started to learn to stand on our own feet and not rely on others

for direction. Hence, the amnesty of not having to live up to ideals linked to appealing past times.

I can now lead to where all this hatred for Pearl Jam (and their contemporaries) comes from. With this newfound freedom, we look down with repulsion upon the advertisements that tell us to look out for the next ‘hit sensation’ or ‘grunge album of the year’. If you listen to the advertisements, you are falling to an opressor or dictator. You are being told what to do. Frankly, there is not a teenager on this planet who wants to be told what to do. Anyone who listens to these groups (Pearl Jam etc.) is viewed as not thinking for themselves. You could have quite innocently started listening to a band unaware of all the hype they were getting. Just because you are listening to it automatically qualifies you as falling to the enticement of advertisement.

If you listen to Pearl Jam, you will be pulling against the rest of the donkeys, or threatening the very concept that teenagers don’t need people to tell them what to do — which we don’t. So, if you cop shit over listening to music, it is your own fault. We teenagers are in ivory towers, bitter and self centred. Live with it. FILTH, aka Bevan Kay.