Recently, I was reading this piece in The New Yorker about early 20th century Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg. (Yes, this is “Pop Life.” Keep reading.) Schoenberg originated the concept of atonality in music and developed the 12-tone system of composition. I can’t adequately explain either of these things for you, but they aren’t the accomplishments of Schoenberg’s that intrigue me the most anyway. It’s the immense variety of other things he tackled. According to the piece, at The Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, you can also take in his attempts at painting, carpentry, social commentary and creating a symbolic system for transcribing tennis matches. (I wonder if the proper symbols for conveying a McEnroe match are @#!$.)

What I find interesting about all of this is the comparison between this renaissance man of the early 20th century and our state of artistic affairs at the start of the 21st century. In retrospect, Schoenberg’s ambitious and inventive intellect now seems like a harbinger of the century that would produce some of the most dramatic advancements in art and civilization. There was no limit to his scope of interest.

I suppose the reason why this is tugging at my cranium so much is because here we are in the 21st century, and the only thing that seems to characterize it so far is a need to rehash the last one. Looking around, it’s hard to think of any restless visionaries who might fulfill the same role that Schoenberg did 100 years ago.

Lately, I feel as if I’m 10 years old again. TV has been glutted with commercials for E.T. and another Star Wars movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed on for sequels to The Terminator and Conan the Barbarian. The radio is rife with songs imitating ’80s music (e.g., No Doubt). U2 are being all earnest and trying to save the world again. There’s even a TV show called That ’80s Show, which is twice as uninventive, since it’s a copycat of That ’70s Show. And for cryin’ out loud, ABC is trying to bring Fame back as a TV movie.

Marketing nostalgia isn’t anything new. But it just adds to the overall feeling that I’m swimming through an aqueduct of remakes and cover songs. A February article in USA Today on the subject of idea burnout suggested that this is a result of the information overload we experience thanks to the plethora of 24-hour media outlets. It’s hard to come up with something new when you’re constantly surrounded with the familiar, or finding out about someone else’s new idea before you come up with your own.

Earlier this year, Will Smith and Alicia Keys were rumored to be involved in a remake of A Star Is Born. This would be the fourth version of that story. People will probably show up in droves, though. That’s why I think the fault really lies with us, the consumers. We are too often content with familiar formulas; we’re unwilling to give fresh ideas a chance. Thus anything different is consigned to “indie” or “underground” status. And if something unusual or unconventional actually gets a shot in mainstream media, it’s destined not to last long. Just think of the grunge and indie-film explosions of the ’90s: Young audiences got sick of being spoon-fed the same old stuff, creating a groundswell of excitement about music and art that had previously been outside the mainstream. The only problem was, that popularity surge led to a flood of bad art and pale imitations.

I hope the 21st century has some sharp original ideas, and I hope they surface soon. I’d hate for the rest of my life to feel like one long rerun.

Ryan Adams vs. The Strokes

Two musical acts currently being accused of unoriginality are Ryan Adams and The Strokes. Both emerged from a maelstrom of hype last year, and as a result both have evoked extreme admiration and derision. I think you can probably divide modern hipsters into camps of Strokes fans and Adams fans the same way you could divide kids into Beatles fans and Elvis fans in the ’60s. But ironically, the accusations leveled at both acts are pretty much identical.

For comparison purposes, we’ll reduce The Strokes to their lead singer and sole songwriter, Justin Casablancas. Adams and Casablancas are both derided for being privileged kids slumming it for image. Both have also developed a reputation for being sloppy drunks at their live shows. And both are accused of being egotistical, overrated mimics recycling an old act’s sound.

Well for the record, I’m going to stand firmly in The Strokes camp. First, everybody in pop usually cribs an influence to a certain degree. And certainly, The Strokes wear their late-’70s influences proudly on their sleeves. Nevertheless, I still feel that they translate those sounds into something that you can definitively call The Strokes.

Ryan Adams, on the other hand, has just adopted the Lenny Kravitz formula—which is to say that he’s copying a copier. His songs on Gold are little more than a game of “spot the sound”: Ooh, that’s E Street Shuffle-era Springsteen. Ooh, that’s Moondance-era Van Morrison. Ooh, that’s Yellow Brick Road-era Elton. The only thing Adams seems to bring to the table is his ego, which he may well have ripped off from the self-indulgent ’70s singer-songwriters he apparently loves so much.

Some contend that Casablancas’ stage performances are low-rent Jim Morrison. That’s fine with me, as long he doesn’t pull out his dick or read bad poetry. What I like about Casablancas is that he wrote all the band’s songs but doesn’t feel a need to play that up. He seems content being one of the guys. Adams, on the other hand, can’t shut up about how he writes 10 new songs a day and reportedly has five new albums in the can. Is he a songwriter or a petulant showoff?

In the end, though, there are four things that really damn Adams for me: First, he thanks Alanis Morissette not once, not twice, but three times in the liner notes for Gold. Dude, not only is Alanis yesterday’s news, but she was basically a novelty to begin with. Second, he dated Winona Ryder and has written songs about their breakup. Dave Pirner, meet Ryan Adams. Ryan Adams, meet your future. Third, he has supposedly recorded a remake of The Strokes’ entire album. Apparently, he just couldn’t take their hype eclipsing his, so he had to make their songs his own. And fourth, he has a Counting Crow in one of his videos. Seriously, in the 21st century, this is something that should not be tolerated.

Quotidian Challenge

]“What are we going to do now that it’s all been said? No new ideas in the house and every book’s been read.”

Be the first to e-mail the origin of this useless bit of trivia to btpoplife the shame of your name printed as the winner and some free useless crap from the Nashville Scene!

Previous week’s answer: “Funny, how gentle people get with you once you’re dead.”—William Holden as Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard.

Winner: Molly Nagel.