ON DEF LEPPARD

I am working hard today (as always), but the difference is that without students present, I can wheel a TV into my office. And today I have chosen to watch a DVD of Def Leppard music videos. And while I enjoy the songs, some of the videos...eek.

For example, the video for "Let's Get Rocked" consists of footage of the band combined with a CGI teenager - created with 1992 CGI technology. Compared to current computer animation, it looks more than a little ridiculous. Okay, okay, I know how advanced it was for its time, but still...And I still don't understand the narrative for the video of "Photograph." Who or what is the Passion Killer? And don't even get me started on the video for "Rock of Ages."

Those faults aside, I still enjoy the songs. My parents didn't listen to "current" radio while we were growing up, as my dad preferred oldies and my mom listened to the news. Thanks to my older brother, Def Leppard was one of the first rock bands I really got into. I have fond memories of jamming to "Pour Some Sugar On Me," even going so far as to write a parody, imaginatively titled "Pour Some Boogers On Me." (I was in fifth grade!) "Armageddon It" was the first video I saw on MTV in our house. The aforementioned "Let's Get Rocked" was the anthem of my best friend and I on our class trip to Washington, DC, as he bought the cassette single while we were there.

It's kind of amazing the power music has; It effortlessly pulls up these memories from my youth and forces me to re-examine them in a whole new light. But then, in the early nineties, popular culture dictated that Def Leppard was no longer cool. And I don't hate on grunge (not with Pearl Jam involved!), because that music was and is powerful for a whole different generation, a whole different group of people. But I feel like a lot of current pop culture treats Def Leppard as a joke, as a holdover from the eighties that only people in trailer parks enjoy. But that's ridiculous, as I enjoy the music without irony and I have never lived in a trailer park. If not for delivering pizzas, I probably would never have even been IN a trailer park.

The music industry frustrates me, in general, as I feel there are a lot of bands that are very talented that won't get the exposure they deserve because of location and timing; conversely, there are a lot of lousy acts that end up being far more popular than they deserve. Music is this amazing force, this powerful method of connecting with one another. And the distribution and promotion of music is controlled by people not interested in creating art, but who are interested in making money. And the intersection of art and money...that's like finding the place where love and hate collide.