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About six or seven years ago rock and roll was a very bleak and dark planet, where there was a constant drizzle and the temperature was always slightly too cold for cut-off jean shorts and a cardigan. Actually, it felt like the whole rock world was a cardigan, and it was walking away, and we were holding this thread, and in so doing, we were literally destroying the sweater.
What do you mean, we?
I mean it was our fault.
But I don’t even listen to rock and roll.
Yes, you do. Or at least, at some point you have.
I really don’t think so.
Well, you’re wrong.
Actually, I have a Queen CD.
I know.
Rock and roll should be cherished because it’s so American and because for long periods of time, it has been good. Sometimes even great, like that time Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne got together and smoked a lot of pot in Dylan’s garage and called themselves the Traveling Wilburys. Occasionally rock has even been really great, like when Journey happened.
But in the late nineties and early two thousands, rock sucked.
If you want to point fingers directly at a culprit, go ahead and finger any executive at a corporate radio conglomerate. They’re the ones that kept feeding us Staind, a band that sang about how miserable our lives were, and Creed, a band that sang about how our lives wouldn’t be so miserable anymore if we believed in Jesus. You can take umbrage with their lyrics if you want, but the real issue was that they always sounded like they were simultaneously pooping and getting their fingernails removed by the terrorist from Syriana.
So yes, corporate radio force-fed (and still force-feeds) us that crap. But we ate it for breakfast. We never stood up and demanded something different, so even though I don’t have a single friend who has ever admitted to liking Creed or Staind, those bands still sold a ridiculous number of records. In high school, my friend Scotty had all of Creed’s CDs just because he didn’t know what else to buy. He was that desperate. It was like going to a convenience store looking for beef jerky, not finding any, and buying a packet of Red Man instead just because it’s the closest thing to jerky, despite knowing that if you eat the Red Man like jerky, you’ll vomit, which is exactly what happened to millions of listeners in 1999 when they tried to listen to a Creed album from beginning to end.
It’s possible that you don’t listen to rock, that you’ve never heard of Creed or Staind, and that the reference to destroying a sweater in the first paragraph passed over your head like a wayward seagull. But chances are that you, for at least three minutes of your life, have loved rock and roll. Maybe, if you’re like me, you break-danced to Talking Heads when you were four, or maybe you wear a Ramones t-shirt because it looks cool, or maybe you got drunk once and sang a B-52s song at Karaoke night (actually, the B-52s don’t even count as rock, and if you’ve ever liked them, we’re not talking anymore).
At some point you’ve sang along in your car to “Freefallin’” by Tom Petty or had sex while listening to a Led Zeppelin album or dressed as a rock lobster for Halloween (in which case, we’re never, ever, talking again). I’ve never met someone who didn’t in some way appreciate rock and roll, if only because it made the Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up album possible.
Rock is the soundtrack to the movies we watch and it’s the soundtrack to our lives, at least when we have our iPods plugged into our heads. Other genres of music are just as important, but rock is what I know, probably because I’m a white male, so I missed it when it went away.*
But now rock is back. For me, anyway. I mean, I like it again.
I count five factors that brought it back:
1. Rock + Pop- I've never liked metal, I’ve never liked rapping while rocking (see Linkin Park), and I’ve never liked screaming instead of singing (Kurt Cobain mastered this, and liked doing it until he got sick of it, so he shot himself. The scream, like Kurt, should be considered dead.) Rock belongs on the fringes of pop, where melody and harmony blend with a little electric guitar and snare drum to make something beautiful.
See, if pop = Maroon 5, a band that attracts a large following of twelve-year-old girls who like malls, bubble gum, and AIM
And metal = Metallica, a band that attracts a large following of pedophiles who like black jeans, long greasy hair, and pretending to be twelve-year-old boys on AIM
Then good rock = Maroon 5 + Metallica = Metaloon 5. But it would probably be a bad idea if fans of Maroon 5 and Metallica attended the same concert, so maybe Metaloon 5 should remain a hypothetical superband.
2. The OC – The show is stupid, but they have succeeded in bringing indie music to the masses, just like they’ve brought actors in their late twenties back to high school and lesbian make-out sessions back to network television. By the way, when I called the show “stupid,” I meant “brilliant.”
3. FNX – Ever since I moved to Boston, I’ve been listening to this station almost exclusively. It plays good rock, and they include a Budweiser “Real Men of Genius” commercial at almost every break in the music. Maybe stations like FNX always existed in Seattle, but they can be hard to find if you live in, say, a remote part of New Hampshire, like I did for four years.
You know what else is hard to find in New Hampshire?
What?
A good burrito.
Hahahahaha. It’s so true!
4. The Internet - Even if you don't have an FNX in your rural New Hampshire town, you can still find music on Napster or iTunes or Pandora. Plus there’s myspace, which allows fledgling bands to get their music to their fans. The internet helps people find the music they like, just like it helps my readers read my column, or just like it allows fans of bestiality to view pictures of a woman stroking a horse’s penis.
5. Hipsters – I hate to admit it, but hipsters do perform a function in our society other than keeping the thick black spectacles industry afloat. Hipsters, at least in their current incarnation, make the esoteric cool, which has created a demand for greater esoterica, which has flooded the market with good bands with even better T-shirts. Maybe it’s a superficial way to get discovered, but it works, I guess.
This will probably be the last rock criticism column I ever write because I hate reading descriptions of music in writing, and it’s even worse trying to come up with those descriptions (how do you write the sound of a bass drum? BOOM, BOOM, BOOM? Or a guitar? Wow-wow-reeeeew? See, that’s awful.) So I think I’ll end my career as a rock journalist with a playlist because it’s probably best if I just shut up and let you listen to the music.
I’m giving you a selection of all the music I’ve been listening to this summer, and if you want you can legally or illegally download all the tracks. I tried to make it start out kind of chill, then rock, then finish kind of chill again. Hopefully you’ll like it better than a Creed album.
Keane – Atlantic
Scritti Politti – The Boom Boom Bap
Muse – Starlight
Angels & Airwaves – Do It for Me Now
The Killers – When You Were Young
As Fast As – Florida Sunshine
Snow Patrol – Hands Open
Boy Kill Boy – Suzie
The Raconteurs – Steady As She Goes
The Futureheads – Area
The Strokes – On the Other Side
Say Anything – Alive with the Glory of Love
Caves – Metaphysical (available here)
Pearl Jam – Come Back
Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye
*It’s possible this entire column could be written about rap, country, jazz, or classical (substituting “the late Middle Ages” anywhere I’ve written “late nineties.”) I’m not saying rock is more significant than other genres, I’m just saying that it is significant (or else why would it have a Hall of Fame?), and that all of us should consider it significant (or else I’m limiting this column to a narrow audience).
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