Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota by Klosterman Chuck

Author:Klosterman, Chuck [Klosterman, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music, Humour, Biography
ISBN: 9781416589525
Goodreads: 7226939
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2001-04-28T07:00:00+00:00

October 15, 1988

Heavy metal’s finest hour: The three best-selling records on the planet are Bon Jovi’s New Jersey, Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction, and Def Leppard’s Hysteria.

Every time I invite a hipster over to my house (and this happens far more often than I’d like to admit), I put myself in a precarious position.

At some point in the evening, the visiting hipster is going to look at my CD collection—the single quickest way to assert any individual’s coolness quotient. I do the same thing anytime I’m in another person’s home. My problem is that (obviously) I am an ’80s metal fan, and that devastates my indie rock cred. Since I’m not a musician, I’m not sure why this should matter; it certainly seems ridiculous that private citizens should need indie rock cred. But it always seems important, especially if I’m trying to sleep with the aforementioned hipster. And CD collections don’t lie: No matter how many times you mention Matador Records, you cannot consistently explain why Poison is nestled between Pizzicato Five and Polara.

Of course, this situation can be played to one’s advantage. You can out-hip a hipster by taking things to the next level—you can promote yourself as an Ironic Contrarian Hipster, the Jedi Knight among trendy rock fans. Being an Ironic Contrarian Hipster is rather complicated; it forces you to own over a thousand CDs, and you have to hate all of them. In fact, the only things you can openly advocate are artists like the Insane Clown Posse and Britney Spears.

Once you get the reputation as an Ironic Contrarian Hipster, you’ll suddenly have a lot of freedom. You can sit around and watch Roadhouse and Footloose all day, and you can eat at buffet restaurants and wear stupid clothes and smoke pot before work because it’s “wacky” to be a “bad employee.” Most importantly, you can throw away all your cool records by Stereolab and Built to Spill and listen to stuff that’s actually good. This mostly equates to classic rock, new wave groups with female vocalists, Fleetwood Mac, any band from Sweden, and hair metal. If questioned about these choices, you simply scoff and smile condescendingly at your accusers. It also might be a good idea to tell them they need to “think outside the box” (or something like that), but you must say it in a way that indicates you would never actually use that phrase in a real conversation, despite the fact that you always do.

Unfortunately, there will be a point where someone will call your bluff. There will come a day when someone will say, “Hey man, I don’t care how far outside the box you think—there is nothing cool about owning Iron Maiden’s Best of the Beast.” And if they are serious and if you are not stoned, you will be forced to host a serious argument about the musical merits of heavy metal.

Arguing for the aesthetics of hair metal probably seems like an impossible task. There are no respected sources

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