Alexisonfire and the Music Apocalypse

The music apocalypse came and went. It came in 2001 and went in 2011. It came and went in the life span of a band who was so contrived, so fake, with such a sense of privilege, their band name was the simulacrum of a Twitter handle; comment section username for a girl with an obnoxious website touting herself and her banal daily doings.

The music apocalypse came and went with band called, Alexisonfire.

They are categorized as a hardcore punk band. Yet they employ Joy Divisionish jangly guitars and 80s sop-pop vocals throughout their songs. They are also categorized as “metal,” yet they are no more metal than, say, Future Islands. Their appearance is that of Ivy League grad students who properly outfitted themselves in common metrosexual wear – except the members of AOF are from Canada, so they tend to wear patchwork-appearing flannel shirts stolen from hunters —— or Buffalo Exchange’s Retro-Grunge section.

AOF is today’s girl band music, all emo and full of shit can, look I’m angry and at the same time catalogue clothes perfect, me-centricity. They are so girly that if these words were in the public domain they would be assailed as the words of a music-ignorant heretic; all female and too many virtual panty-sniffing punk boys would “Unfollow” and “Block” me, as if the act would properly banish me to another solar system – to a planet where an essential daily living regimen includes having bad taste in every facet of life, where English food is consumed and regurgitated —— and consumed and regurgitated all over again.

BUT.

Alexisonfire now exists only as a You Tube, bevy of dedication sites, Wikipedia entry, memory. After squeezing every penny, shekel, pence and pound of money and flesh from 12-to-40 year old girls (the women wishing they were of today’s Monster High Doll-hugging, Ghost Whisperer watching, sleep over but not sleep until sunrise because the finale of Ghost Whisperer season three kept them up all night huddling together in blankets, emotional status girl), with their post break up, “special” CDs, outtake one-off compilations, and their final finale of a reunion tour, AOF is, thankfully, no more. The girls and the “girls,” and the metroplex metrosex boys are in the “waning grief” lunar cycle (menstrual to soon begin) over the loss of “their” Beatles. Even while AOF Facebook post, Tweet Favorite and Heart, name-the-syndrome twitch commiserating, their lizard-brain dominant consumer selves are begging for “the next big band” not spawned by a three-letter television talent show, or an MTV disassociated from reality, reality series, or by a supergroup comprised of the deep waters of existing, we gotta do multiple nights at a Vegas casino means making it, pool of almost dead 80s hair band gods turned NA grad, 12-step pusher-pimps.

I’m going to start a band tomorrow called, Boysaregirlstoo, where our members – and our members – will have nom de plume’s like, Lucien Cain and Stone Smith and Peter Pantera and Gerald River (that would be snark for, Geraldo Rivera, if you were still ruminating over a circle jerk of 40-year old women huddled under blankets in tees and panties only, shivering with little girl faux terror).

And I’d watch all the scene girls and their scene girl moms and scene girl singles come running, resplendent in their self-sexed-soiled, sequined panty, splendour.

Yum… and welcome to the dawning of a new musical day.