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.

Back from Bonnaroo

The rain had started to fall as Kenny Rogers belched "The Gambler" over the patchouli-scented jam of Trey Anastasio and his merry band of Vermountaineers(?). By the first day, the campgrounds already resemble a combination of post-apocalyptic stronghold circa Escape from New York and an immense trash dump. So on Sunday, the smell and sight of the numerous garbage had started to make itself known to even the highest concertgoer. I know that this introduction reads like its going to be an expose into the nastier side of Bonnaroo, but trust me, it isn't. The most interesting thing about the whole experience is how every single person that I encountered on the last day of Bonnaroo was content or even elated. This was after the music had ended, and persumably, most of the drugs.

Is it possible that Bonnaroo elicits such a happy and complete experience because we create joy in the epitome of grime, sweltering heat and bad trips?

When people tell their stories, they usually don't talk about how they threw up on the person in front of them at Snoop Dogg or how they had to miss Kings of Leon because they freaked out in a crowd. Those stories exist for almost everyone that goes, but they line the cupboard, only to be brought out if a contest of hardcore-ness breaks out. The stories you hear are always the same. It was a religious experience. It's paradise. You should have been there. YOU HAD TO BE THERE.

I want to make a case for the negative aspects of Bonnaroo. The sun that makes a home right over your skull is daunting. When it rains, everyone is happy for about ten minutes, until they realize they camped in a tent. Beers cost more than a six-pack. Using the bathroom is the roughest chore because I've constantly seen the world record broken of how much human waste can be piled up in one place. All of these factors are magnified by the fact that I am voluntarily paying to be there. But we persevere, and we thrive like Romans.

Only in the face of so much negativity can pleasure be so fulfilling and refreshing. Now I'm not saying that some of this pleasure isnt chemically enduced/enhanced, but to the temporary residents of Bonnaroo, that doesn't matter. The rush of endorphins one can get by drinking with friends and watching a great band is only amplified by the fact that only two hours ago, that person was hunched over in a chair running off of a cigarette and 2 hours of sleep. It's this drastic transition that allows for the high to take on a higher meaning. Surviving the inferno of daytime Bonnaroo presents a conflict that pushes our boundaries of comfort, so when we rise to occasion, our victory becomes memorable and in our microcosms, epic.

Most people never let the high stop. Whether they drink it away, let guitars sing it away or blast it to the moon with psychs, the negative only serve as small obstacles to a greater goal. With their power being dampened, the struggles of living outdoors merely serve as catalyst to reaching the summit of life experience.

So when everyone is smiling at the end of Bonnaroo, it's not just because we danced and tripped to the soundtracks of our lives; it's also because we survived the Everest of music festivals.