Apologies for the ominous-sounding title, but I found this quote from an old AV Club post on, of all things, Def Leppard's Hysteria while I was google-scavenging for something completely unrelated, but I think it illustrates what's going on in music now, especially for those of us who grew up with "underground" and "mainstream" music, and never the two shall meet (link via PopMatters ):
In reality, we live in a culture where the terms “mainstream” and “underground” have become virtually meaningless, as practically every song by every band ever is equally accessible, frequently at no cost, to anyone with an Internet connection and the interest to seek it out ... It’s clear that music rarely unites us under the banner of mass-accepted artists anymore; even in a concert audience, we’re all just a bunch of individuals, with little connecting us to one another beyond a shared interest in the artist onstage—one artist among hundreds on our abundantly stocked iPods.I think this poses a challenge for bloggers old enough to remember a sense of "tribalism" among music fans, and I still see this today, but only among people of my generation or older. Yes, I'll periodically bring this up, and someone will invariably correct me that, "No, there still is such a thing as 'underground' rock," but given the myriad avenues an artist has for his music to reach a sizable audience, underground is a pretty meaningless concept. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but for a generation of us raised on an "us vs them" aesthetic, it's a little bittersweet.
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