A
band in
Suburban Florida 1995-
98.
An explication:
Dinner With
Hern Burford was born with a drumbeat and a sophomoric chant in a
highschool library in
Osprey,
FL. Some say it ended with the same the same horrible beat and an even sillier
irritating mantra. Some things don't really end though.
The philosophy of the band lay mostly in the mind of
William Maier, a
high-shcool junior at the time, who was quickly growing tired of the deteriation of
reality as he knew it. To retaliate against this seemingly unstoppable process, he attempted to expunge his evil demons in the method most favorable among post-adoloescent people of
mid-last decade of the 20th century: be in a
shitty rock band. With the advent of shitty guitar technique and the popularity of
Nirvana and other seemingly '
indie' things, Will figured
three chords and the truth was the way to go. Music had alway been a powerful medium, and the guitar-drums-bass-vocals set up had been the most effective vehicle for idea transmission in his immediate social strata.
White kids had little else to do than collect plastic music disks and occasionally mow their lawn. And of course drive their
dad's Lexuses to school while complaining about their drug-affected sex-confused lives while wearing
Gap grunge-wear.
Nary a
youth of this time hadn't had mediocre dime store philosophizing indelibly inked to their subconscious by the transmission of sound waves, and the seemingly new (to the mainstream) combination of simple chord progressions coupled with unbridled screaming of true(-ly)
angst(-ridden) lyrics had an amazing grip on
impressionable 14, 15, and 16 year olds. Music of this meaning and magnitude created a heightened emotional response in its listeners. These resultant emotions caused intelligent and deep-thinking youths to meditate and consider the songs'
ideas & lyrics. To many, the only rational conclusion was that feelings of this magnitude must bear heavy, universal meaning. Many took this meaning to be a deep
TRUTH. Many attempted to share these truths with others, who happened to not have heard the music in the same context.
Confusion on the hands of the
youth ensued, and so on and so on.
The part of the problem facing this particular generation of
smart,
deep-thinking,
considerate,
emotional new-people was that those around them who were greater in age had already
had their truths shown to them. Most of them had heard it from Yes or The Who or Blue Oyster Cult or whatever and had been through the experience of attaching
youthful idealism to music/trivial cultural events long ago. Understandably, they were no longer in the
mood for ideas to be tossed around by 'Wow'-ing teenagers, and the youth turned to lots of
drugs and sex with each other for understanding/comfort.
So, understandably, they couldn't understand.
Why a standardized version of this truth has yet to be reached will be discussed later on in this account.
(end of part one).