Cliff Notes.

When the words meant more than the notes they arrived on,
and the bands were both servants and masters of their fans,
we began to listen.

They shook the earth, summoned up the storm and heralded the tides,
we were alive when we heard them, windows down, volume up,
we began to feel the message.

Who we were, what we wore, how we thought,
where were you when the music stopped?
We were now thinking with our hearts.

Children of torn denim and disenfranchisement,
forced to revel in an oxymoronic life of consuming and condemning consumption.
What happens when the gods die?

Cobain wrote his goodbye in lead and unintelligible Morse code,
like others before, he was lost in his own mythos,
a champion of the hopeless to the very end.

Late 90's, platform shoes, music was now ironic,
used to sell clothing and Spice Girl-theme Kleenex.
Music became the ice cream truck of commerce.

Like Anne Frank, true music now hides from the powers that be,
marginalized into obscurity, true marvels as scarce as water on Mars.
For now locked in stasis, hoping to hold on long enough for a revival.

March on, you King Street marvels! Let music once again be,
and when it is, let it thrive for it is precious and rare.
Music once maintained the unique blessing of being art, and having mass appeal.

Let it bless us once again.