What I've noticed from writing this blog is the relationship the music industry has with drugs and sex. For this post I wanted to look more into the use of drugs in the music industry and the effects it has had and continues to have. The idea of recreational drug use came from rock music, as I have hopefully expressed in previous posts, but is also present in techno/club music and rap music today.
Members of rock bands were known to be hard drinking, party-all-night characters who experimented with drugs, and as rock music became more popular and band members became more well known, fans of the music became influenced by the lifestyle. Like I said in my post about psychedelic art, some musicians encouraged fans to take drugs during concerts to add to the listening experience. The band Grateful Dead has become a kind of icon for this, being referenced in popular culture. For example, from the show Family Guy: http://youtu.be/dcynsJ8sWLI
Jerry Garcia from Grateful Dead said "For some people, taking LSD and going to Grateful Dead shows functions like a rite of passage..." (http://ehsanatphys.wetpaint.com/page/Music+%26+Pop+Culture). The point was to take hallucinogenic drugs and "trip" while listening to the music; a popular notion is that the best music was written by musicians when they were under the influence and when they got clean, the music wasn't as good. I personally don't understand this from my experience watching the film Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny where "tripping" doesn't get them anywhere. This is a song Jack Black sings while suffering the effects of "magic mushrooms": http://youtu.be/n2WqYidC_0Y and a scene where the two characters get high with a bong fashioned from the devils horn and press record on a voice recorder to record what they play while under the influence: http://youtu.be/CPbSEW-xhdQ
Drugs in music was also seen as a way of rebelling against mainstream music. Marilyn Manson's song 'This is the New Shit" is perfect for explaining a desire to rebel against mainstream music. It's lyrics include "everything has been said before, there's nothing left to say anymore" which talks about the repetitive, shallow nature of mainstream music, it all sounds the same, its meaningless. "Sex sex sex" is rather self explanatory, "and don't forget the violence, blah blah blah got your lovey-dovey sad-and-lonely" talks more about the over-used themes of music. A smart lyric from the song is "stick your stupid slogan in" which talks about the commercial nature of mainstream music, to me the song is about how everything meaningful in music has been done and so music started to become vapid, the only goal was to make money not decent music.
