Subversive vs. De-fanged...

As I mentioned over on The Fort Worthian, I just returned from a trip to see family in Alabama, and while I was there, I played some Guitar Hero with my nephew, who is 12. My nephew likes to play Guitar Hero and other video games with me for three reasons:

1. He only sees me once or twice a year, so I'm not a common, everyday uncle.
2. I don't let him win, like several other adults in his life, so when he beats me, he knows he's really won.
3. I'm decent at Guitar Hero and some other PS2 games, so I'm a bit of a challenge for him.

When they came out to Texas in April to visit, he lost miserably. I think he won 2 or 3 songs during the whole weekend. And when the weekend was over and he was getting in the car to head back to Bama, he told me he was going to practice and beat me. And what does the kid do? He goes home and practices and practices and practices... ...on "Bark At the Moon" by Ozzy...

So I've just driven 8 hours straight and we arrive at his grandparents house, and what's the first thing he wants to do? Play Guitar Hero. He starts it up with "Bark At the Moon" and whips the pants off me. And then he beats me on other songs too, though I blame the combination of 8 hour drive with not playing GH for a while... (Geez, look at me making excuses). After a good night's sleep, I was able to beat him on some songs again. I'd say it was pretty even over the rest of the weekend, but I never did beat him on "Bark At the Moon."

When my nephew plays GH, he quite often sings along with the songs. Now here's the funny thing -- I would seriously doubt he's ever heard Megadeth's "Symphony of Destruction" outside of the context of the game. Heck, the boy is even singing along with "Caveman Rejoice," one of the GH bonus songs. And I know that if his mom or grandparents ever saw one of the Megadeth album covers, they would be appalled.

Old fart moment: As I've told some of you, I was raised in a very conservative environment, and was not allowed to listen to "secular" rock music for a long time. When my mom found a Jimi Hendrix cassette under my bed, she told me his music was Satanic, though I never really heard that element so much... I found some ways to get around the embargo -- following Kerry Livgren's conversion, I referred to Kansas as a Christian band, and I lied about Genesis being a Christian band (c'mon! It's a book of the Bible!). I also found some pretty good Christian rock at the time, but that's another post.

So I was sitting there listening to my 12 year old, Alabama born and bred, church-going nephew sing along to "Symphony of Destruction" without a care in the world, singing it like he was singing any other song, and it hit me that this is subversive. Video games are amazing in that they can get music into households that would have never bought that music in the first place. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the future of music is intertwined with video game licensing. And here's my nephew listening to and singing along with songs by Megadeth, Ozzy and Queens of the Stone Age, when he's mostly a loyal country music fan, and might not have heard these songs otherwise. That's amazing...

And then a second thought hit me -- what if this music has become so de-fanged and irrelevent that it has lost it's power? Ozzy certainly isn't as scary as he once was. We've seen the doddering and stuttering on The Osbournes. I don't think I'd ever seen a photo of Dave Mustaine until a few years ago and he's not particularly scary looking, but I remember looking at Megadeth album covers and being a bit creeped out by them. What if all the mystery and power behind the music has been stripped and it's just another commodity to be bought and sold?

On the one hand, I'm excited that my nephew is being exposed to some of this music. On the other, I wonder if it really means anything to him beyond pressing the right buttons on the GH controller. Has music lost power?