Who is Michael Learns To Rock (MLTR)?
When I was younger and used to actually buy music, I would pick up cassettes because, well, CDs didn’t exist (or were too expensive). At some point, the tapes would invariably get stuck and I’d have to slide a ballpoint pen into the two grooves in the centre to fix them. Alas! That was the beginning of the end. The reel would get entangled, start to come apart – and the tape would make weird bloopy sounds, eventually dying a slow, painful death.
I hated tapes and I do not miss them. Michael Learns to Rock is that tape – the one that doesn’t work anymore.
The Danish ‘poppish’ band is the latest in a conveyor belt of artists from the ’90s to tour India – doing a four-city tour that includes a slot in Delhi this weekend. They’re in exalted company, joining the likes of Megadeth, Backstreet Boys, Vengaboyz, Puddle of Mudd, Bryan Adams and a whole host of other bands who’ve visited our beautiful country – long after losing all sense of music (and self-respect, presumably).
Why Are We Glorifying a Music Age Long Dead?
Most of these guys were popular before the internet was, when our access to international music was limited to Nikhil Chinapa hosting a by-request pop music show on MTV and the late night ‘obscure’ music that Channel V played.
This meant that we heard what THEY asked us to. Kids at impressionable ages (at that time in school and college) heard tons of MLTR, Backstreet Boys, VengaBoys... and were – need we say it? – thoroughly influenced. These people are now in their 20s and 30s, with access to disposable incomes and the freedom money brings.
Hence, what’s the outcome? We continue to glorify an age we have grown up in, fetishising an ancient time period – just because we miss it.
It sounds regressive. But strangely, I’m sort of OK with it. It may have started with has-beens and never-weres being the only ones visiting India. But now you have actual relevant contemporary bands – good or otherwise – touring the country, a movement that runs parallel to the nostalgia-minting industry.
So why complain? There’s no point blaming the people who bring them here – they’re only professionals making sound business decisions, and maybe even true fans of these bands (shudder).
And as much fun as music snobs may have had at the expense of the Vengaboyz, their shows were nevertheless packed for the most part. So there’s obviously an audience for even the most rubbish bands out there.
From Bryan Adams to MLTR – India’s Still Game
The thing is: People who go for a Bryan Adams show aren’t there to witness some radical reinvention. They go simply for a short escape; to relive a part of their youth that’s long been lost to Real Life: jobs, spouses, loans, taxes, male pattern baldness, weight gain, dwindling drinking ability... the works.
Make no mistake, we should still laugh at the artists coming down, as well as the people who pay good money to go see them.
It’s like that popular saying – old soldiers never die, they just fade away. Old rock stars too never die (literally, in the case of Keith Richards). Instead, they become jaded self-parodies who tour India to play to a clueless, adoring audience.
But here’s my two cents. I don’t claim to speak for everyone, but I do believe it takes a certain purity of thought to be able to enjoy so-called ‘dated’ music. Let’s cut the crap, shall we? We weren’t all born with superior tastes in music and it’s not like we never enjoyed the simple joys of an MLTR song. The ability to listen to a brand of music you grew up with, sans judgement, might actually be kind of admirable.
Then again – is it just ignorance? Or is it that dreadful thing – the condition exclusive to Indians, where we’d hate ourselves, hate each other – but never ever judge the white man? MLTR coming to India is much larger than what it seems, trust me.
(Akhil Sood is a New Delhi-based freelance music and culture writer with an undiagnosed fear of tomato sauce.)
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