roll for critical fumble

When I was stuck at my grandma's house a couple weeks back, I unearthed my well-worn copy of the 4th edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide. It was published in 1991, just before the alternative rock scene went mainstream. In those days before information on obscure indie and punk bands was a mere Google search away, the Guide was an invaluable resource when it came to deciding which albums and artists to keep an eye out for at the local record shops.

There was a time (back when I rode the Christian Herter scholarship gravy train) when my mornings were spent copying out promising leads from the Guide onto index cards and my afternoons were spent wandering from one used vinyl store to another in search of the objects of ephemeral desire. As a result, my copy of the guide is, how you say, "beat to shit," missing its cover, its spine bent into a c-shape, and the pages stuffed with clippings and photos of interest to me at the time.

Eventually I migrated to The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music and a number of microgenre directories as my sourcebooks of choice, as they better matched my specific musical interests and covered artists not included in Trouser Press. The fact that the writing in those other directories was a little more even-handed was also played an important factor, because as handy as Trouser Press was for determining release dates and album titles, the commentary and capsule reviews in the book frequently reached toxic levels of "jaded hipster" and "rockist" attitude.

Certain bands were especially singled out for critical maulings in which informational content took a back seat to self-satisfied rants permeated with the phony idolatry of rockist mythology, where the mythic (and false) aura of authenticity is all that matters. I noticed it back in 1993, but it was even more obnoxious to revisit fifteen years later, as my tastes have shifted and broadened and I've gained a bit more knowledge about the artists, the ideologies, and the music involved.

It's all very silly and pointless. What you may claim to be the pinnacle of pop genius, I might find to be kind of pedestrian, and vice-versa. Our individual tastes are our own, and that's nothing to be ashamed about...unless you are a Katy Perry fan, in which case I hope the Fates are kinder to you in your next incarnation. Savaging INXS for not being Elvis Costello might make for some unintentional laughs, but it's also quite pathetic. (Besides. I'd rather listen to Kick than Armed Forces any day of the week.)

Here are some excerpts from some of the more egregious rockist rants from my copy of the Trouser Press Guide, deliberately chosen with certain readers of this blog in mind.

Orange Juice:

Glasgow's insufferably coy Orange Juice, de facto leaders of the Scottish neo-pop revolution, typified a UK trend towards clean, innocent looks that unfortunately spilled over into the music.

Orange Juice - Falling and Laughing (from You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, 1982) - It's true. MTV and Smash Hits ruined everything. God forbid that someone who knows how to tune a guitar and doesn't look like a refugee from a Bowery methadone clinic becomes a chart success.

Oingo Boingo:

This eight-piece LA outfit (with three-man horn section) started out trying to be a West Coast answer to XTC and Devo, but suffered from studied wackiness/quirkiness and managed to hide solid cleverness behind overproduction and hamminess.

Oingo Boingo - Wild Sex (in the Working Class) (from Nothing to Fear, 1982) - Wow. That's reading an awful lot into what I always thought of as pretty entertaining party music.

Conflict:

In the real/rock world, only the young and the gullible expect their favorite bands to abide by lofty personal standards.

Conflict - The Guilt & The Glory (from It's Time to See Who's Who, 1983) - I don't entirely disagree with the above statement (in an otherwise positive write-up) about the stalwart anarchopunk outfit, except that the "real/rock" part makes me want to punch somebody and for the fact that Minor Threat, the most generic-sounding hardcore band ever, was praised for wearing their hearts on their sleeves in their Guide entry.

Pet Shop Boys:

The in-joke references and self-amused esoterica strewn thoughout songs like "West End Girls" and "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" should have precluded their general popularity, but evidently the laxative-smooth synth backing has utilitarian value for clubgoers. Ghastly, depressing and offensive.

Pet Shop Boys - Suburbia (from Please, 1986) - Pop sensibility and synthesizers are anathema to rockists....until some cherished rock idol appropriates them for his own use, at which point there's only a 50% chance the purists will howl for his blood.

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In other news, there's a new post up at pronounced WOO-BIN on the subject of local geography.

we are the hollow men

There's a PSA that has been running on VH-1 Classic on behalf of autism awareness which features rawk icons like Roger Daltrey, Rob Halford, and Vince Neill speaking out on behalf of the cause. All of the participants came dressed down -- wrinkles, receding hairlines, and all -- for the taping; all except the dudes from Kiss, that is, who appeared in their full facepainted and overaccessorized glory.

Telling? Yes, but not suprising in the least. Kiss and any vestiges of dignity parted ways long, long ago. (See also.)

The Moog Cookbook - Rock & Roll All Night (from Ye Olde Space Band: Plays Classic Rock Hits, 1997) - See, this is a gimmick I can fully appreciate.

we'll help you party it down

Tight-crotched bootcut blue jeans, thick leather belt with huge Schlitz logo buckle, and custom Ford Econoline van conversion not included. Accessorizes well with homemade bongs, bottles of Annie Green Springs, and a handful of Quaaludes swiped from your parents' medicine chest. Impress your friends at the high school parking lot, the pump 'n' munch on the main drag, or the woods behind the rendering plant.

The F.U.'s - We're an American Band (from My America, 1983) - More of a sincere tribute to the Grand Funksters than a punk rock piss take, which makes sense considering the Boston hardcore outfit's (tongue-in-cheek yet controversial) rightward political slant at the time.

entertainment through pain

A glimpse into the state of "rawk" criticism twenty-five years ago, courtesy of the November 1982 issue of Creem (the gift that keeps on giving). It's an excerpt from that issue's "Letter from Britain" column, written by Cynthia Rose (on loan from NME):

Rose's argument is that the New Pop aesthetic, as personified by ABC singer Martin Fry, is representative of British mass culture's emphasis on style over substance, where the then-current media fixation on Prince William's birth obscured Thatcher's circus of petty cruelties. Of course, lamenting the focus on appearance doesn't rule out directing catty barbs at Fry's complexion.

Oh, dear. I'm going to make a point of stating, whenever someone complains about the present state of political/social/cultural affairs, that things were better in the good old days, before the one-two punch of "Stool Pigeon" and "Endicott" shattered our previously idyllic paradise. "We lived happily and simply in those days, unaware that we would soon be overrun by slavering hordes of videogenic back-up singers."

At the risk of sounding reductive for the sake of argument, I'd venture to state that novelty is a core principle of "pop." Pop is ephemeral. Pop exists in the "now." Good pop songs can transcend their moments in time, but that is incidental to their initial purpose. Pop's purpose is not edify, not to uplift, not to bear the weight of the human condition on its shoulders, but simply to entertain. One could argue that a good pop song requires a certain level of substance and I wouldn't disagree; given the choice, I'd rather listen to Carter USM's "The Only Living Boy in New Cross" instead of Gary Lewis and The Playboys' "This Diamond Ring." "Good" is a different concept than "effective," however, and even the most banal pop confections can succeed in their momentary purpose by virtue of a catchy hook, a sublime harmony, or clever turn of phrase.

...and the manias over Elvis and the Beatles and the Stones and the other members of the sacred pantheon didn't involve commercialism or me-too behavior in the least. Nor do the countless photo-features, puff piece interviews, and band merchandise ads featured in every issue of every rock magazine ever published, apparently. The big chested blonde ladies modeling Creem t-shirts in an ad a couple pages after this column? They're making a statement of rebellion, honest.

Rockism is prone to a form of myopia which confuses personal sentiments with universal truths about "the music." It takes the shape of a cranky evangelism (with Calvinist overtones) that stresses the chimera called "authenticity." The problem is that authenticity, when used to separate art from product, is a subjective concept in objective clothing, and is applied unevenly based on pre-existing biases. The closer a performer hews toward those biases, the more authentic he or she is deemed.

In the article, Rose singles out Marianne Faithfull and Tom Verlaine (ex-Television) as examples of authenticity in contrast to the New Pop's superficiality. The choice of Faithfull stuck me as interesting as her persona as fallen angel of the 60's Modtopia has generated as much, if not more, ink than her music (which to be honest, I've never seen the appeal of). Though rooted in Faithfull's real experiences, it has become part of the packaged persona of the entertainer -- except the "sex, drugs. and rock and roll" template fits better with the rockist party line than shiny gold sport coats and back-up singers do.

(The Tom Verlaine bit didn't surprise me, since it's standard practice for rock journalists to fawn over anything that ever played CBGB's in the 70's. Expect a gooey retrospective on the importance of the Tuff Darts to appear in the pages of Spin any day now.)

It's not a matter of dismissing the concept of relative quality. There is a world of difference discernable between Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" and Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy" or Anthrax's "Among the Living" and Manowar's "Guyana," even after accounting for differences in individual tastes. It's the imposition of manufactured, mythical standards in place of an empirical personal relationship with "the music" that irks me. I have far more respect for someone who can plain out admit he or she listens to Hoyt Axton because they like his music than for someone who launches into dissertations about historical relevance and "importance" which fairly reek of received wisdom.

If you find pop music too superficial for your liking, then fair fucks to you. Don't, hovever, curse apples for not being more like oranges. Or hold new wave disco-synth bands up to a mythologized standard that doesn't even apply to the purist acts you cite as examples.

When it comes to enjoying music, the only honesty that really matters is in regards to one's own tastes.

Shallow new wave glossiness, uncompromising anarcho-punk convictions -- I adore them all.

ABC - Poison Arrow (from The Lexicon of Love, 1982)

Crass - Don't Tell Me You Care (from the How Does it Feel? 7", 1982; collected on Best Before...1984, 1986)

ridicule is nothing to be scared of

The state of the American rock scene circa November 1981, as recorded in the pages of Hit Parader magazine:

(clicking makes things bigger)
I recently uncovered my small but extremely fascinating stash of early 80's rock magazines while digging around in my attic in search of something. (The something in question, I'm shamed to admit, happened to be a double-bladed lightsaber accessory needed to make my new Darth Revan figure better match the version I play in Knights of the Old Republic. NERD POWER!)

The majority of the mags were gifts from my wife, who found them and a DJ's crate of matching 45's at an estate sale a few years back. They're exclusively American periodicals -- mostly Hit Parader (before it became a heavy metal-specific venue in the mid-80's) and Creem with a few random issues of Us and People tossed into the mix -- and are invaluable artifacts from a retrological standpoint. These assorted periodicals present the era as it was, when it was, warts and all, instead of through the idealized rosy tint of collective mythologizing and nostalgia.

And as that table of contents shows, the reality was depressing indeed. It's heavy on the RAWK, with a couple new wave acts (Split Enz coming off the success of "I Got You" and Squeeze, who were only "New Wave" by historical accident), and a then-popular country crossover artist. It may not jibe with the memories of the Anglophile set, but it accurately reflects both the US top 40 charts from the period and Us magazine's 1981 year in review, which officially pronounced the new wave dead in the water. It really wasn't until MTV (launched in the summer of 1981) began to take off in earnest that the video-ready (and more importantly, video-friendly) descendents of the punk revolution cracked the North American market in earnest. (Check the top 100 charts for the years 1980 through 1983 for an excellent look at the radical taste shift in action.)

It's not just the choice of featured bands, but the overall tone of the magazine that is striking to behold. My wife described it as "fanzine-like," but that only partially describes it. There's a weird fusion of 70's rockist and Reagan Era attitudes in play, streamed through a starfucker filter. The "At Home With REO Speedwagon" interview with Neal Doughty ("Part Two of a Series") is the best example of this, in which the interviewer attempts to spin, sans irony, Doughty's affection for good room service (it helps if you don't trash the hotel room, Doughty states), home electronics, and Wizard of Oz memorabilia as "rock and roll" behavior. It presents Rotarian as rock star, and the dissonance is staggering. (Not that I fault Doughty, who is straightforward in reconciling his stardom with his interests, unlike the folks who show up on MTV cribs who present a "punk" or "gangsta" persona while showing off their custom made golf clubs or antique Persian carpets.)

Other highlights include a "sports challenge" where the magazine's staff members try to beat Rick "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" Derringer's score on a Phoenix pinball machine, a pin up of Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, and the letters page -- which proves that Kiss fans have always been a little touched in the head. "Kiss is the best damn group today that's worth a shit," says Phillip Box of Picayune, Mississippi, leading to me to wonder what is the best damn group of that era that wasn't worth a shit. Sukiyaki? The Dixie Dregs?

One of the trademark features of Hit Parader back in the day was that it included lyrics to the the popular songs of the day in each issue. For November 1981, we have "(The Theme to) Endless Love," "Slow Hand," and "We Can Work It Out" (as recorded by Chaka Khan). Also, "It's Now or Never" (as recorded by John "Bo Duke" Schneider) and "Too Drunk to Fuck" (as recorded by Mitch Miller and the Gang).*

The types of ads a publication runs is usually the best indicator of its intended target demographic, so what do the dozens of ads offering quick stardom via mail order to aspiring singers, songwriter/poets, and musicians (for a nominal fee, of course) tell us about Hit Parader's readership at the time? Before you answer, be sure to take into account the numerous ads for bodybuilding and weight loss plans, "magical" charms and formulae, and, yes, the glory that is DISCO TV. There are also plenty of ads hawking these dubious passkeys to glory for the under legal age crowd...


Seriously. I counted eight before I got bored and gave up halfway though the issue. It certainly explains the spike in Boone's Farm and peppermint schnapps consumption during that bygone era. The crackdown on fake ID's dealt a near fatal blow to the low grade pop alcoholic beverage industry.

To be fair, the issue isn't all dodgy product ads and rockist wankery. There were a few things that did manage slip past my retro-sarcasm catch nets, such as:

- a short blurb about Rick Ocasek of The Cars handling production duties on the New Models' "Permanent Vacation" single, a quite excellent bit of forgotten Beantown new wave which can be nabbed here.

- a piece about "new wave rock band" The Clash filming footage in New York City for a planned "modern western" where gunfights are replaced with "rap fights." I'm assuming, since the dates coincide, that the end product ended up being the video for "This Is Radio Clash."

- a mention of a Birmingham new wave outfit named after a Barbarella character whose single, "Planet Earth," had been getting major club play stateside. Also mentioned was Cold Chisel, an Aussie rock outfit deemed "likely" to follow in the footsteps of AC/DC and Air Supply.

And so we conclude our rambling retro-broadcast day with a Mr. John Lydon's after-the-fact take on that glorious year..

Public Image limited - 1981 (from This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get, 1984)

...as well as two tracks from 1981 that did not appear on the U.S. top 40 charts:

Adam and the Ants - Prince Charming (from Prince Charming, 1981) - Before she was a punk, my wife was an Antperson. I occasionally tease her about it, but then she brings up my heavy metal past and it stops being fun.

Red Rockers - Peer Pressure (from Condition Red, 1981) - Before they had a modest new wave hit with "China," the Red Rockers were a straightforward, Clash-inspired political punk outfit and just one of several excellent bands in the early New Orleans punk scene.

* I'm joking about one of those.

the stock market for your hi-fi

Rockism is dead. Long live rawkism.

Sure, it dwells in pockets here and there, like Japanese army holdouts in the Philippine jungle, but when the more hardcore elements among the performing set speak of “authenticity” there’s the distinct tang of sour grapes in the air. Someone once said that inside every revolutionary beats the heart of a frustrated civil servant. Given access to a high tech studio and a massive production budget, even the most committed brick tossing rockist ideologue will start making heretical inquiries about overdubs, session musicians, and canned orchestral effects. Even The Clash, “the only band that mattered” (a profoundly rockist description, if ever I’ve hear one) fucked off to L.A. to record their sophomore album, where they conspired alongside Sandy Pearlman to panelbeat their raw sound into a smooth surface lacking anything for a listener to grab hold of (apart from the first three tracks on the LP, which echoed the band’s early fire in a bait-and-switch kind of way).

For the most part, though, rockism has become a convenient shibboleth to dangle whenever someone raises uncomfortable questions about art versus artifice. Besides, what does “authenticity in music” mean these days? Does it mean authenticity of craftsmanship, where performers are expected to “play their own instruments” and eschew technological wizardry? Or does it refer to authenticity of vision, where music acts as the performer’s position statement vis a vis the world at large? I’d argue that the masturbatory -- though musically skillful -- wank of a heavy metal guitar solo is less sincere and more of an assembly line product than the socially aware dance pop of Pet Shop Boys’ “I’m With Stupid.”

The old notions of authenticity are obsolete. What we have now is “rawkism,” a concept less grounded in musicianship than in marketing, the branding and promotion of acts to present an illusion of a way of life to be lived vicariously by the consumer. I was flipping through one of issues of Spin my wife left lying around and came across a writeup on Amy Winehouse, apparently an indie darling of the moment in some circles. Fully three-quarters of the text was given over to a discussion of her notorious, boozy, bad-girl lifestyle, and even the parts dealing with her music were couched in context of her personal life. I’ve never listened to Winehouse’s stuff (and the article didn’t make me feel any desire to), but I was struck by the way the writer foregrounded the aspects of the musician’s “rock and roll” lifestyle.

It’s a common enough occurrence. Watch any VH-1 special on heavy metal (and there are dozens of them, repeated ad nauseum) and you’ll notice that the most insightful remark about the music one encounters is some pudgy hipster comedian hollering “They RAWKED!” before launching into a bunch of anecdotes about the band members sniffing coke off a stripper’s ass in some club on the Sunset Strip. It’s not just limited to the metalheads, either. When I used to read Raygun (I know. I’m sorry.) back in the 90’s, every interview with an indie or alternative act would feature a leading question or three about the performers’ partying or drug use. It’s what musicians do, after all. They wouldn’t seem authentic if they didn’t indulge, you know?

Getting back to Spin, the magazine now features a section dedicated to the various club scenes around the country, complete with MySpace-style photos of pretty people living the wild life. It’s a prepackaged dream of hedonistic adventure being sold with music operating as a mere vector. In reality it’s just a rehash of eighth-graders’ stories about getting shitfaced in the woods, but gussied up with a liberal dose of stardust.

There’s also the “heart on one’s sleeve” school of marketed authenticity, where a posture – real or feigned – of sincerity or compassion provides an aura of marketable saintliness. Try pointing out to a Springsteen fan that the people who made the record a hit largely ignored the message of “Born in the USA”, and how the song became the score for Reagan Era triumphalism. “Oh, but Bruce cares. He’s better than that.” Maybe so, but the man also made a mint off Americans’ reactionary impulses, even if that was never his intent. There’s no excuse for the “Dancing in the Dark” video, either. U2 and The Clash also fall into this category, where rock stardom and religious-like devotion intersect.

I don’t need the people who create the music I listen to be inspirational figures, any more than I need the person who assembled Super Lumina’s manifold to have been an especially upright individual. It’s the quality of the end product that matters. I respect Crass’s politics, but if there wasn’t something about their music that captured my attention, they’d be in the same category with countless other anarcho-punk acts I sympathize with but can’t bring myself to listen to. If the aesthetics and politics align, so much the better, but “authenticity” or sincerity alone is just not enough.

The rockist versus poptimist struggles are like the ant wars that happen in my driveway every summer. They are fascinating to watch, but of little consequence to anyone outside their tiny little world. Should it threaten to spill over into my personal space, a diluted bleach solution puts an end to the matter right quick.

For the record, anyone who thinks Coldplay’s “Clocks” is a better song than The Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” needs to be shunned.

bis – Action and Drama (from Social Dancing, 1999)

XTC – This Is Pop? (from White Music, 1978)

Carter USM – Do Re Mi So Far So Good (from 1992: The Love Album, 1992)

The Rezillos – Top of the Pops (from Can’t Stand the Rezillos, 1978)