Nowadays, when people ask me just why I’m such a tenaciously stubborn and pig-headed individual, I lay the blame squarely in the lap of rock music. Given that I spent the majority of my youth defending it from countless unbelievers, those who’d pour scorn on the Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Therapys and Jane’s Addictions of this world, and those who couldn’t understand the grandeur of the nice crunchy bit in Primal Scream’s Rocks, it was the first thing (McDonalds and the A-Team aside) I learned to truly care about.
True, everybody liked REM and U2 back then, but that was more by decree of the Magna Carta than anything else (it also opened up a whole other can of worms as I wearily had to explain to my mates what a rock band was supposed to be, and how this particular vision didn’t, in my opinion, include tank tops or voluntary baldness). Nope, rock was the exclusive preserve of geeks and wedding receptions, and boy did my friends let me know it. And yet, ritualistically, I stuck to the task of defending the music I loved with a rabid, ideological zeal - I remember one particular conversation nearly coming to blows as I challenged a friend’s [demented] assertion that OK Computer was a better album than Alice In Chains’ Dirt. Of course, time, women, and alcohol softened all this righteous indignation (or rather refocused it), but as my shoulders broadened, as I shuffled towards manhood, and as the drink flowed at countless garage sojourns, I always maintained one thing; that rock would, one day, be back.
“Careful what you wish, you just might get it.”
Fast-forward six or seven years. You’ll no doubt notice the absence of flying cars, cities on the moon or monkey butlers and feel, like me, a little cheated. It’s
Look at the charts this past year. We’ve seen Sum 41, Bowling For Soup, Good Charlotte et al, the arse-end of pop punk reduced to its most anaemic self-parody. And then ‘The (Insert Name Here) s’ phenomenon; any number of sub-Stooges garage bands gorging shamelessly on retro chic. Electric 6? “Danger, danger! Talking Heads tribute band!” The turgid neo-grunge of Staind and Puddle of Mudd, not to mention Nickleback and scary Jesus man’s godawful Drivetime compilation fodder. Crazy Town, plastered in the wife-beaters and aggro tattoos. The amphetamine-charged spider monkeys of Busted and Avril Lavigne. And worst of all, the nu-metal epidemic, childish playground psychodramas haemorrhaging irony and set to a backdrop of flatulent, painting-by-numbers riffing.
For the traditionalists amongst us, it’s all rather sad. Forget the day the music died, Fred Durst’s now defrosting vol-au-vonts at the wake. Only in this dearth of genuine, innovative talent could The Darkness - a decent band rooted firmly in cock-rock novelty value - be celebrated like the resurrection of Freddie Mercury. Commodification of the genre has flooded the market with a glut of designer rock bands for people who don’t like rock music, and predictably enough, it’s erupted back into the vanguard of popular fashion: just look at the current preponderance for studded wristbands, painstakingly distressed Motorhead / Misfits T-shirts, billowing crotches, and of course the ubiquitous “just got out of bed, me” haircut - all thoroughly wild and ker-ayzee, all very rawk. Rock has a synonymity with a certain (very marketable) attitude, something every major label worth their ironic mullets are well aware of, and whilst shredding a pair of designer jeans would have been considered the hallmark of unfettered lunacy not so long ago, nowadays it’s de rigueur, a Stokes-style nod to disenchanted suburbanites and fashion victims the world over. And good luck to ‘em. But it’s a little unnerving to see the maligned wardrobe of my teens absorbed into the annals of popular fashion. Not unpleasant, granted, but certainly odd. And whilst we may not have quite nailed irony here in the provincial Midlands, I still can’t seem to get my head round the idea of wearing the merchandise of bands you don’t actually like. Either that, or a nation of attractive twenty-somethings have finally found a voice in the music of Judas Priest. I’m not entirely sure. Answers on a postcard, please.
In truth, the essence of rock is no more about red baseball caps or retro T-shirts than it is Tiffany wigs and spandex, lumberjack shirts, sequined jumpsuits or Mohicans. Thanks to a few obliging pounds of flesh, however, we’ve managed to more or less sidestep the inconvenience of actual talent this time round, with rock more a look and less a discernable sound than ever before. For my money, this latest mutation has a hell of a lot to answer for.
Of course, it’s not all bad. Despite the rogue’s gallery of watery tosh cited above, there’s still Queens Of The Stone Age, NOFX, The White Stripes and The Chilli Peppers, AFI, A Newfound Glory, Feeder, the good ol’ Foo Fighters... And in the yawning vacuum of overdoses and home pornos long since departed, I’m even willing to overlook the fact that James Hetfield has started writing songs about feelings and stuff. But the truly special bands (and there are some, a fair few in fact) seem buried that far beneath rock’s slick, mediated surface that you need a pickaxe and a budgie to find them. Granted, that’s half the fun, but I can never remember it being this hard.
And the reason? Yes, fashion and TV have disseminated it all, but for the first real time we have an incarnation of rock that hasn’t actually evolved out of - or in reaction to - anything. Normally, rock has this restorative sort of quality: it grows out of hollowness, artificiality – even, on occasion downright inequity - as an answer, something a little different for people to run up their flagpoles. Just look at the impact of bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Sex Pistols, NIN, Rage Against The Machine and Nirvana; all innovators, all rooted in discontent, and all touchstones for like-minded people the world over. There was magic in them there hills. And granted, rock doesn’t need to be profound, it shouldn’t pertain to high art or take itself too seriously, but it should at least touch you, surely? Such moments seem few and far between right now. My only hope is that this sterile, anarchic charade of mainstream rock proves its long term value as a jump-off point, and just as I graduated over the years from Motley Crue to the Replacements, so the surly types gathered around the steps of my local chippy might one day download a Faith No More album and discover what it is Linkin Park have been trying to do all along. Here’s hoping, anyhow.
Swigging Strongbow and groping blindly for my own face back in the day, I dreamt of something new, something I could live through and actually be a part of. There’s nothing to say that won’t still happen. But as things stand, rock has hit a brick wall. It can’t get any louder, it can’t get any faster, and it can’t get anymore seditious or unruly. It’s left a string of conceptual taboos in its wake, and lived to tell the tale; it’s articulated episodes of drug abuse, alcoholism, murder, rape, suicide, self-abuse, political maelstrom and social injustice, always with its own candid splendour. But with nothing to feed off or tap into beyond looking good, ours is not a culture suited to the emblematic notion of rock stars or rock bands; it’s just not permissive, unjust, despondent or mutinous enough to warrant that kind of reaction. Whilst there’s always a danger in establishing these elitist parameters of what music – any music - should and shouldn’t be, it’s still hard for me to accept that rock’s grand convalescence, its commercial rebirth, amounted to these under whelming, plagiaristic exercises in turd polishing (a round of applause, please, for nu-metal and cartoon punk). It’s style over substance. It’s trying too hard.
And since when was rock n’ roll about effort?
Phil Juggins.
Previous Say Anything Articles:
Classifying Music
My Name's Richard and I Am An Addict.
Nelly - Work It
British Film Industry "On The Rocks"
Freeview: You Get What You Pay For?
Good DVD, Bad DVD
ITV In The Doghouse
The Lack Of British Sci-fi / Fantasy Tv
Britain's Greatest Screen Actor?
Comic Movies
The Best Films of The Year...So Far
Whatever Happened To Sky One?
Timelash
