Underdog Rock

In a brilliant article on Pitchfork, Nitsuh Abebe compares the release of the Rock of Ages soundtrack with blog favorite Japandroids' Celebration Rock. The article poses the idea that Rock of Ages represents an era when rock and roll and pop music were symbiotic. Rock music was so epic and was the dominant sound of that period. It was important to the mainstream culture. People's voices were filtered through the distorted, rebellious sound. Unfortunately, the Rock of Ages soundtrack features those songs being butchered by the likes of Tom Cruise, Malin Akerman and Alec Baldwin. The Rock of Ages soundtrack acts as a piece of nostalgia to a period that has (let's face it) vanished.

Cut to Celebration Rock. The article points out that many of the same themes and postures are featured in both albums. Its drunk and dumb and laughingly shooting you a bird. It feels young and reckless. The weirdest thing of all: It feels foreign now. This is a rock and roll that almost seems too much, some sort of maximalism. A Frankenstein made up of pieces of Keith Moon, Richard Hell and the parts that Axl Rose had left over after plastic surgery. It also gives Japandroids credit in creating the feeling that rock and roll really means something.

Where did this change happen? When did the king lose its crown, presumably to hip-hop?

It's easy to look to the 80's. Most of the heavyweights of the blues rock blowout were either dead, too deep into new age or rocking synths. Rock had turned into Styx, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner. Power ballads became the craze of the decade, and that even creeped its head into metal, only to breed the true nadir of mainstream rock and roll: hair metal. With most of the memorable rock from that decade brewing in the underground no-wave and punk scenes or in leather clad metal bars, the mainstream was left with few choices that could break out of their niche. For every Guns and Roses, there were 5 Wingers.

In the 60s and 70s, rock and roll had an important social position. By the 80s, there wasn't much left for mainstream music to fight. Ages of excess normally produce art that follows. Sure Bruce Springsteen and the Clash are some of the exceptions to the rule, but their record sales were dwarfed by Poison and Motley Crue. Hip Hop was hungry, and rock and roll had grown fat and lame.

With one listen to any 80s Public Enemy album, the fire is apparent. This music was fighting back. The spirit that had been smoked away during the seventies had somehow found its way to the streets of New York's inner city. For the next decade, hip hop would continue to exponentially grow in popularity thanks to the feeling of danger and rebellion it gave to mainstream (ahem, white) America. That same feeling freaked parents the fuck out when it came in the form of tye dye, pot brownies and peace symbols.

Rock and roll's next stage, Grunge, didnt care about anything. That was kinda the point. While it sold many albums and created a blueprint for mainstream rock to come, the genre really stripped rock and roll of any social consciousness. It's an introverted style of music that shruggs off any notion that rock and roll could change anything. I guess there's no better way to strip a genre of its importance than to deny its existence.

You know the story now. Rock and Roll has continued to flounder throughout the late 90s into the 2000's. Occasionally a White Stripes or a Black Keys comes along and bucks the trend, but mainstream rock is now a shell off what it once was. Radio stations formatted for it are quickly turning to adding classic rock to buffer the shittiness. Nickleback is perhaps the most successful progeny of the current state of rock, but they are considered the butt of a national joke.

Of course rock music continued to mutate during this time, but all of those mutations strayed away from the bombastic flair that had come to define the rock and roll sound. Some went electronic. Some went abstract. Few wrote songs about the next girl you have sex with saving your life. Now we float in a sea of a million genres and subgenres of rock. To pin down, however, the most basic definition of rock and roll as we've known it for decades, we dont find it in the strip club of mainstream rock nor in the libraries of art rock. So when Japandroids makes me and Nitsuh feel like rock and roll, loud, screaming, drunken in the middle of the night, rock and roll is still alive, it feels foreign, but strangely innate. It feels like a passed down memory of a guitar burning past. If you concentrate, you can feel your blood alcohol rise just a bit. It's a cocktail of old emotions.

Face it. Rock and Roll is an underdog now. It claws for relevance. It craves attention. When bands like Japandroids can spark a little bit of belief in a jaded listener, a fire is sure to follow. Thanks for helping me believe that rock and roll can feel imporant and authentic again. Thanks for believing in the underdog.