Art and design among other things, such as culture, etc

Relating a type of haircut to music isn’t done a lot with the exception of the ‘80’s.  Most of the time, the artist’s themselves epitomize the era with their own hairstyles.  The artist’s hair is then forever associated with their music.

A “buzzcut”, which traditionally is to simply to take an electric razor on its shortest setting and uniformly trim the entire head, is usually the fastest and probably the easiest way to cut your hair.  There really would be no point to visit a professional hair stylist in order to have this performed because of its overall easiness.  The term “buzzcut” was probably derived from the sound the razor makes when it cuts through hair close to the scalp.  It leaves your hair uniform and at one length all the way around.  Not only is the physical length of your hair short, but also the haircut incidentally is short-lived, as hair has a weird tendency to grow back.

With “buzzcuts” however, the actual quality and properties of the haircut itself lend to the qualifications of the tracks chosen for the recent compilation album entitled, BuzzCuts.  The 2-disc, infomercial offer is produced by Razor & Tie and with artists from the early ‘90’s thru close to now, this mix-tape provides just the right amount of “buzz.”

But one might ask, “What buzz?”  The buzz of this album is generated not by an electric razor; rather it’s the result of growing up as part of the so-called Generation Y.  These songs stimulate specific and sometimes significant moments in our childhood.  I could refer to a specific band entirely but most of the bands, not all, were one hit wonders when they released their first single.  One could argue that most Gen-Y’s could react just the same to any of the past 28 “Now” compilations but the Now mix CD’s culminate the actual pop music without discriminating against genre’s. Now provides the listener with most of the vernacular needed to address the same audio autobiographical references BuzzCuts does.  It’s a much broader compilation, therefore generalizes the popular music scene during that particular year.

In comparison, these “buzzcuts” were more “now” than the Now’s released from 1998 to now ever could be. The post-grunge, pop-punk hits like Sum 41’s Fat Lip, Crazytown’s Butterfly, Alien Ant Farm’s Smooth Criminal (which is a whole other issue in itself being that it’s a Michael Jackson cover, who in essence, was the king of pop which AAF is now a part of) escalated the popular music scene to a higher ground.  It seemed to make us believe that this music was now the Nirvana of our time, that it was different and that it had more integrity than other popular music at the time (which Nirvana did, but really not until Kurt Cobain’s death) therefore separated our musical taste out from the others. It was the now of the now.  This “buzz” was more current than the most current top tracks because they were top tracks but not really, “Top Tracks.”  But in retrospect, BuzzCuts, just like the haircut term, lumps all of this music together and points out that it was uniformly adolescent, premature and extremely short-lived.  It was almost as if the ‘90’s grunge period was fading and our hair was just starting to hang over our ears. Then we took the electric razor and gave ourselves quick haircuts with a dull, rusty razor resulting in BuzzCuts.

It’s odd that even though I can look back on the photo albums and see the terrible haircut my mother gave me with the old trimmer and I still think that it looks good because now (5 years later) I know how bad it was in comparison to now.  I think that’s why this album can have any impact at all.  When you go through and listen to the tracks, you instantly remember where you were in your life when that particular song was shoved down our throats on KISS FM, MTV, etc.  Even more than that, you love it, whether it was a bad memory or not because you notice the (hopeful) evolution in you, and your taste of music.  It almost makes you realize that you in fact were younger than you are now and have gone through changes from the time the song aired to the present.  Granted that happens with any music that you have held onto and loved for a while, but BuzzCuts represents that time in your life when you thought that you were yourself but you were really just acting like every other post-pop-punk-individual that listened.  BuzzCuts in a way forces us to grow up because it knows what we once were and we know that it knows. We then remind ourselves how much we’ve grown, but more importantly how much more we have to go.