Rock and Roll is Dead!

June 30, 2016January 31, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“Rock and Roll is dead!” is a line most of us have heard for most of our lives. From the anthemic screams of punk rockers to the classic rockers suggesting, “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul,” everyone has enjoyed repeating a version of this line. For most of our lives, however, this has been little more than snarky criticism of the current status quo. For some of us, this has been based on the idea that our favorite strain of rock is no longer prominent, that we don’t appreciate the new direction rock was headed in, or that we have simply aged out of it. Looking at it from a rational perspective, rock and roll has always been able to survive based on young individuals crafting creative derivatives of what came before, and those derivatives develop movements that lead to greater sales and continued power, for rock in the music industry. On both planes, it does appear that either rock music is in a severe and prolonged downtrend, or that it may, in fact, be dead in terms of it being a powerful force in the music industry.

“For generations, rock music was always there, and it always felt like it would come back, no matter what the current trend happened to be,” Eddie Van Halen told Chuck Klosterman in a 2015 interview. “For whatever reason, it doesn’t feel like it’s coming back this time.”

As Klosterman writes, in his book But What if We’re Wrong, Eddie Van Halen said this at sixty-years-old:

“So some might discount (Eddie Van Halen’s) sentiments as the pessimistic opinion of someone who’s given up on music. His view, however, is shared by rock musicians who were still chewing on pacifiers when Van Halen was already famous.”

Thirty-seven-year-old singer of the band Muse, Matt Bellamy, echoed Eddie’s statement saying:

“We live in a time where intelligent people –or creative, clever people– have actually chosen computers to make (sic) music. They’ve chosen (sic) to work in tech. There’s an exhaustion of intelligence which has moved out of the music industry and into other industries.”

Chuck Klosterman then adds:

“We’ve run out of teenagers with the desire (and potential) to become (the next) Eddie Van Halen. As far as the mass culture is concerned that time is over.”

If the reader is as shocked as I was to read a high profile, classic hard rock performer, coupled with a more modern artist, and a rock enthusiast on par with Chuck Klosterman, discuss the end of an era in such a rational, and persuasive manner, you’re not alone. It does not appear to me that these individuals were intending to be provocative. They were suggesting that it now appears that those of us who proclaimed, “Rock and Roll will never die!” were wrong, and that historians may view rock and roll as nothing more than a “prolonged, influential, and cultural trend”. That trend involved rock artists often coming out with a new album every two years, and there were so many rock artists that we usually had about one new rock album a week, at its peak, and a rock album a month at various other times. When a new rock album comes out now, it’s often followed by “Keeping Rock and Roll alive!” There will always be some musicians who make rock music and albums, but the powerful force that once helped form the backbone of America might be over. That trend may have been such a prolonged staple, but it’s been around longer than most of us have been alive. Yet, if we are able to remove the emotion we have vested in the art form and examine it from the perspective of creativity and album sales, it is more than likely that hundreds of years from now historians will view rock and roll as a trend that began in the mid-to-late fifties and ended somewhere around 2010.

The Creative Power

The one aspect of Bob Dylan’s memoir Chronicles that an interested reader will learn about the man, more than any other aspect of his life, is how much depth went into Bob Dylan’s artistic creations. Dylan writes about the more obvious, influential artists that affected him, such as Woody Guthrie, but he also writes about the obscure musicians he encountered on his path, that affected him in ways large and small. He also writes about the manner in which reading literature informed his artistic persona, reading everyone from prominent poets and fiction writers, to the Ancient Greek philosophers, and he finally informs us of how other experiences in his life informed him. The reader will close the book with the idea that the young Dylan wasn’t seeking a road map to stardom so much as he was learning the art of craftsmanship.

On this subject of craft, as it pertains to the death of rock and roll, the bassist from KISS, Gene Simmons, informed Esquire:

“The craft is gone, and that is what technology, in part, has brought us. What is the next Dark Side of the Moon? Now that the record industry barely exists, they wouldn’t have a chance to make something like that. There is a reason that, along with the usual top-40 juggernauts, some of the biggest touring bands are half old people, like me.”

On the subject of craft and being derivative, we could argue that Dark Side of the Moon was derivative. We could also argue that Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin were all derivative. We could argue that rock and roll, itself, derived from rhythm and blues, and that rhythm and blues derived their sound from the blues, jazz, and swing music. There is no sin in being derivative, in other words, as most artists derived something from another influence, but the question of how derivative an artist is has often haunted most artists that derived their craft from other, more obscure artists. The question most artists have had to ask, internally and otherwise, is how much personal innovation did they add to their influences? Perhaps more important to this discussion is a question of how much room was left in the zeitgeist for variation on the theme their influence created? To quote the cliché, a time will arrive in any art form, when a future artist is attempting to squeeze blood out of a turnip, and while the room for derivatives and variations on the broad theme of rock and roll seemed so vast at one time, every art form eventually runs into a wall.

We could say that the first wave of rock and roll that didn’t spend too much time worrying about how derivative it was, was the Heavy Metal era of 80’s hair metal bands. We could also say that they didn’t have to search too deep, at that time, because the field still yielded such a bountiful harvest. All they had to do was provide a decent derivative of a theme some 70’s bands derived from some 60’s band that were derivatives of 50’s bands, and so on and so forth. There was still something so unique at the heart of what they were doing, in that space in time, that they could develop what amounted to a subtle variation of a theme and still be considered somewhat unique.

At some point in this chain of variations and strains, the wellspring dried up for 80’s hair metal bands, and they became a mockery of former artists, until rock and roll was in dire need a new template. At this point, right here, many proclaimed the death of rock and roll. They claimed that rock and roll was now more about hairspray, eyeliner, and MTV than actual music. Into that void, stepped Guns N’ Roses, Faith No More, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and others. They provided unique variations at the tail end of the 80’s and early 90’s. At various points in the timeline, a variation has always stepped up to keep the beast alive, but hindsight informs us that rock and roll was, indeed, on life support at this time. Hindsight also informs us, that when the 90’s Seattle bands, and The Smashing Pumpkins, stepped to the fore, their derived variation on the theme was, in essence, a reset of the template that had been lost somewhere in the late 80’s, and they brought rock back to the early KISS, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Aerosmith records of the 70’s.

This begs the question, would Nirvana have been as huge as they were, if they appeared on the scene around 1983-1984, or would that have been too early for them? Are musical waves little more than a question of timing? Did Nirvana hit the scene at a time when the desire to recapture whatever was lost in the late 80’s was widespread? The Nevermind album may have been so good that it would’ve sold in just about any rock era, but would Nevermind have outsold Quiet Riot’s Mental Health and Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry, or would it have been too derivative of an era we just experienced? Would Nevermind have been the ten million copies shipped phenomenon it was if it hit the scene in 1984, or was it a valiant attempt to recapture what was lost in rock that we needed at the time?

Most of the musicians, in what rock critics called the grunge movement, had varied tastes, and some of their favorite artists were more obscure than the general public’s, but the basic formula for what would critics called grunge could be found in those four groups of musicians, from the 70’s, that had deep and varied influences. The grunge era, we could say, was the last innovative, derivative movement of nuanced rock.

Talk to just about any young person in America today, and they may list off some modern artists and groups that they listen to, but most of rock connoisseurs will provide “classic rock” band as one of their favorite genres. When someone my age hears the term classic rock, they’re more prone to think of one of the 70’s bands mentioned earlier, but these young people are referring to bands that were brand new to me somewhere around yesterday, yesterday being twenty years ago.

I know I run the risk of being dismissed as an old fogy when I declare rock dead, or something along the lines of “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul”, but there is something missing. In fairness to modern artists, and in full recognition of my old codger perspective, I have to ask how the “next big thing” will pop out, right now, in 2016, and offer the world a perspective on rock that no one has ever considered before? Such a statement does undercut the creative brilliance that young minds have to offer, but to those of us who have listened to everyone from top of the line artists to some of the more obscure artists in recording history, it seems to me that every genre, subgenre, experimentation, and variation has been covered to this point.

Gene Simmons asked where the next Dark Side of the Moon is going to come from, I ask where the next Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is, and it may be a question that led those of another era to ask what artist is the modern day equivalent to The Carter Family? I never thought I’d be this guy, but most of the modern rock music sounds uninformed and lacking in the foundation that previous generations had. I know this is largely incorrect, but when I listen to the rock bands of the current era, I don’t hear the long, varied search for influence Bob Dylan sought. I don’t hear artists harkening back to the rich and varied tradition old blues singers, folk musicians, and country artists learned from their family and friends in gospel songs at church, at campfires, and at night before going to bed. It might be there, but I don’t hear an informed artistic persona. Their music lacks some of the organic funk R&B musicians brought to the fold, and the intricate instrumentation that the 50’s and 60’s jazz musicians left for their successors to mine.

Some consider this entire argument moot, however, and they say that the nature of music and art in general, suggests that there will always be an innovative, up and coming star who develops variations and derivatives of former artists if there is money in it. Naysayers would echo their favorite artists and say it’s not about the money, and true art never should be. While that may be true, it is also true that when the money is removed, as the Gene Simmons quote below states, there may not be people in the upper reaches of the chain (the corporate types) who are willing to spend all of the money necessary to help develop that talent, and soon after the whole model is thrown into chaos the structure of it is destroyed.

It’s About the Money. It’s Always About the Money.

“You’re [now considered] a sucker if you pay for music,” one of my friends informed me at what was, for me, the advent of file sharing.

My friend did not say the words “now considered” but that was the import of his statement. I was no Luddite. I knew about the file sharing sites, such as Napster, but for me, Napster was a place to find obscure throwaways, bootlegged versions of the songs I loved, and cover songs, by my favorite artists. I learned of the Metallica lawsuit against Napster, and some talk of file sharing among the young, but I had no idea that the crossover to file sharing had already begun for music enthusiasts, until my friend dropped this line on me.

The line did not inform me of the new way of attaining music, as I already knew it was out there, but it informed me of the new mindset in regards to accessing music. After scouring these sites for my favorite songs, albums, and artists, (and finding them, waiting to be downloaded for free) one thing became crystal clear, this was going to change everything. I read of the music industry hauling young people into court after illegally downloading music, but my astute, file sharing friend said he believed that the music industry was desperate, and that they were trying to scare people. He correctly predicted that the music industry would stop trying to prosecute them and simply give in. He said that they should’ve done something long before this point (and this point was very early on in the age of file sharing) to cash in on the file sharing wave. He said that there were simply too many people, from his small corner of the world, downloading music for free, for the music industry to prosecute them all.

File sharing, say some, may have spelled the true death of rock and roll as a profitable, cultural force in America today. I write this as a qualifier for those who suggest that the idea that a bunch of kids sitting in a garage to develop a new sound will never die. It may not, but reading through Gene Simmons’ interview in Esquire, a reader learns of the type of support that new musicians need from execs in the upper echelon of the music industry to help them progress from garage rockers to a cultural force in America, and that that part of the structure has been destroyed by file sharing. To belabor this point for just a moment, we would all prefer to believe that our favorite musicians have little regard for money, or corporate influence, but how much of the sound of an album was tweaked, finessed, and completed by industry money? Listen to insiders speak of a final product, and they’ll tell the reader that the album doesn’t sound anything like it might have without a high quality producer, and it doesn’t sound anything like it did before the corporate mixer came in and put in some of the finishing touches that those of us in the audience don’t care to know anything about.

Rock and roll’s appeal has always been a young person’s game, however, and that makes most of the derivative argument moot. Most young people live in the now, and young people have never cared that their favorite artist just happened to be a hybrid between The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, at least not to the point that they wouldn’t buy their favorite artists’ albums. As far as they were concerned, their favorite band’s sound, and look, was fresh, original, and theirs.

“My sense is that file sharing started in predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle-class young people who were native-born, who felt they were entitled to have something for free, because that’s what they were used to,” Gene Simmons also said in the Esquire interview. “If you believe in capitalism — and I’m a firm believer in free-market capitalism — then that other model is chaos. It destroys the structure.”

Death of the Album

Scouring these file sharing sites, and creating personalized playlists, I also sensed a death of the album. As an album-oriented listener, I always thought one could arrive at the artistic persona of a musician in the deeper cuts of an album. My philosophy was fleshed out by Sting, and his, “Anyone can write a hit, but it takes an artist to write an excellent album” quote. I was affected by the new file-sharing mindset almost immediately, as I began to consider it a waste of time to listen to the various Queen Jane Approximately cuts, when I could create a playlist filled with top shelf, Like a Rolling Stone cuts from various artists.

The idea of the self-directed, playlist mindset developed somewhere around the advent of the cassette tape, an era that predated me, but the full album managed to maintain most of its glory throughout that era. For most of my life, the power of a quality single led concertgoers to leap out of their seat and rush the stage. With all these new tools, however, a person no longer has to stand around for an hour waiting for the band to take the stage. They no longer have to sit through mind-numbing guitar solos, and witty banter from the lead singer to get to the one song they enjoy from that artist. They can now go to a site like YouTube to watch their favorite singer sing that quality single.

I still think that the lack of depth in most products current artists put out is a factor in the demise of rock as a force in the industry. I am persuaded that that is not the case by the idea that young people know as little about the history of their music as their favorite artists do, however, and what little they do know is superseded by how little they care about it.

I am also convinced that file sharing has had an effect, if not a devastating effect, on the structure from top to bottom. Another writer had an interesting take on this matter, stating that the file sharing mindset may have something to do with young people growing up watching their favorite artists display their wares on shows like MTV’s Cribs. Shows like these may have led young people to think that their favorite artist has enough money as it is, and the shows may have led the young people to download the music for free without guilt. Which, in turn, led them to believe anyone who plops down money for music is an absolute sucker for supporting the artist’s hedonistic lifestyle.

“They’re not going to miss any meals if I deprive them of my $9.99,” they might say. That may be true in the case of this one individual, but what happens when millions begin sharing this mindset? What happens is that when we begin removing the $9.99 bricks that formed the foundation of the industry, we destroy an industry, as we knew it. They will sign fewer rock artists, they will no longer hire all those little guys who helped finish the product, and they will no longer provide support or promotion to an album that would’ve garnered it before, because there’s little-to-no money in it for any of the players, on any level.

“You might be right. Rock and Roll might be dead in terms of a business enterprise that brings in new artists and fosters their career, but fans can always go back and listen to the music of your era,” young people might argue. “What the idea of Rock and Roll never dying means to me is that once an artist puts their music out, we can, and will, listen to that music forever.” This is obviously true. If we read the reports from the companies that list download sales, the dinosaur rockers are almost as popular as they’ve ever been, and in some cases more. If we look at concert receipts, they’re doing as well, and in some cases better, than ever.

The spirit of rock and roll will never die, but it does appear that the starving artist walking around with nothing more than a guitar strapped to his back will have a much tougher time receiving institutional support, financially and otherwise from the corporations that brought all of the cultural icons to the mainstream, and the consequences for that could run deep for a culture that has subsisted on the philosophical foundation of rock music for as long as most of us have been alive.

Rilalities IV: The Rilalities

February 28, 2014March 30, 2020 RilalyLeave a comment

The Rilality for Album of the year goes to… Sufjan Stevens Illinois. I know it came out in 2005, but with every critic going bonkers over it back then, I decided I would hate it circa 2005-2006. In 2013, I realized I was wrong.

Runner up: Secret Chiefs Book of Souls Folio A. The most original album of the year by a mile. Folio A, like all Secret Chiefs’ albums, has very few lyrics. So, if you’re a lyrics guy, this album isn’t for you. It does have some of the most complex arrangements I’ve heard on an album since… the last time Trey Spruance decided to put out a Chiefs’ album in 2004.

(For a longer review of this album, go here.

In the age of iTunes, it appears that either it’s difficult for some artists to make complete albums, or it’s become increasingly difficult for me to listen to them, because iTunes has spoiled me into making my own shuffle albums out of the artists’ best individual tunes. ITunes has also opened my eyes to the filler that an artist loads his albums with, and I don’t listen to those individual tunes as often as I once did, just because they’re from “my guys”.

2013 was also a year where I moved past some of my guys, and once you’ve made the move past some of your guys, it’s difficult to go back. I used to hate it when people told me that they’ve just moved past Led Zeppelin. “They’re great and all, and I spent years listening to them, but I’m just done with them.” How can one move past Led Zeppelin I wondered. Then I did, and then I moved past Radiohead, Alice in Chains, Verve, and Soundgarden. The latter three groups regrouped, and I tried to get back into them, but I realized that in some manner that’s hard to describe, I’ve moved on. I moved on in a manner that if they came out with the most brilliant album they, or anyone else, could produce, I wouldn’t think it wasn’t as good as the body of work they produced back when they were my guys. The groups I listen to now may not be better, in the truest sense of the word, but they’re different, and when you move past a group you need something different.

The Rilality for Book of the Year goes to… You are Not so Smart by David McRaney. Again, it came out in 2011, but I’m not a professional critic, and as such I’m not held to time constraints.

Runner Up: I Wear the Black, by Chuck Klosterman. I disagreed with Klosterman as often as I agreed with him, and that’s exactly what everyone should want in a book. Klosterman is not meek when offering his opinions, unless he is criticizing staples in our society… like Bruce Springsteen.

The Rilality for the book of the year, next year, will probably go to: Going Clear by Lawrence Wright. The award winning writer of the terrorism tome The Looming Tower may have even topped that book with this one. I’m about halfway through this exposé on the religion, called Scientology, and I am obsessed. Wright is a ‘Just the facts ma’am’, Hemingway type of writer. For those that enjoy writing more in the Doris Kearns Goodwin mode, you may not enjoy this style of writing. For those curious about this religion –that were too young when the actual revelations occurred– this book is an account that is proving to be invaluable to this ever-curious reader that enjoys the ‘just the fact ma’am’ Jack Webb approach.

There are very few fiction writers that shocked me with their modus operandi in 2013. The last one to do so was Chuck Palahniuk. He was shockingly good, but something shocking isn’t always good. It may be that Palahniuk, and all other fiction writers have simply tripped my tripwire so often that I cannot be shocked by their prowess anymore, but I couldn’t find any piece of fiction shockingly well written in 2013.

The Rilality for TV show of the year goes to… Breaking Bad. I would love to tell you the line that put the show over the top for me. I refer to it as the line, because the more I digested the subtext of what Walter White just said, the more my jaw continued to drop. Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and TV Guide focus on the moments of TV, but I focus on lines, and this was the best of the year in my humble opinion. It was such an incredible line that I wondered if Vince Gilligan, and his writers, had been sitting on the line for the past few seasons. I also wonder if Gilligan used the line in his pitch to the networks, as a way of summing up the series. I would love to tell you what this line is, but I don’t want to ruin it for all those people just now watching the series on Netflix, or DVD. The line needs to be heard, chewed, and digested individually for maximum effect. The line was so elemental to the series, that it separated Breaking Bad from all the gritty, new age style TV shows I have loved over the years, including, but not limited to, The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Justified.

One interesting nugget from the general reviews of this show was that some of the seasons were filler. My guess is that they probably were, but I have to wonder what the general perception of the show would be if it were but a three season series. “We want more,” might be the general outcry, and the five season arc seems more satisfying. I think The Sopranos followed a similar arc. The first two seasons are action packed, the studio AMC and HBO respectively, cried out for more seasons, and the writers happily complied by introducing filler seasons to complete the previously planned three seasons. It’s just a theory, of course, but I think all parties concerned feel more satisfied with five to six seasons than they would three.

Runner up: Justified. Boyd Crowder may be one of the most original, and finely crafted, bad guys ever created for TV. I know, I know, Crowder was created by Elmore Leonard for the short story Fire in the Hole. I read that story, and I recognized the gestational elements of the Crowder character there, but Justified’s writers Graham Yost, Chris Provenzano, Fred Golan, and actor Walter Goggins have taken the Boyd Crowder character to a level I’m guessing Leonard had to find impressive. (Leonard obviously didn’t see the same possibilities of the Crowder character that the show’s writers did, as Leonard killed the Crowder character off in that short story.)

The other characters—Marshall Raylan Givens, played by actor Timothy Olyphant, and Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Art Mullen, played by Nick Searcy—are also great, and dynamic, and almost as impressive, but the deliniations between great movies and shows is always the bad guy, and there aren’t any better on TV today than Goggins’ Boyd Crowder.

The Rilality for movie of the year goes to… American Hustle. The movie wins based largely on the fact that I didn’t go to a lot of movies in 2013, and I wasn’t overly impressed with those I did. Bradley Cooper turned in a good performance, but Christian Bale did something different. It seems he does in just about every role he accepts, and that makes him the current, best actor in movies today.

Runner up: Blackfish. I may be biased in this area, since I’ve loved killer whales, Orcas, for most of my life, but when I started doing research on the elements in this movie, I knew that the movie makers reached me on a level that most don’t.

I’ve watched too many movies to continue to enjoy the important movies that I’m supposed to like, and I no longer watch actor vehicles that are done to impress Oscar voters. Most dramas seem to be as reductive in their problems as they do in their solutions. Action movies have a way of leaving me with the idea that I’ve already seen this movie so many times before. I see the formula from another action movie that influenced this movie, while I’m watching it. I spend the entire ninety minutes trying to shake off the idea that the original was better. This may give the reader insight into my age. It may also give readers some insight into what my fellow movie watchers, and TV show watchers, go through with me, but I have a problem shutting it off for just a little bit to enjoy most modern movies. Comedy, in general, is so derivative, and subjective that most movies now feel the need to go over the top to make their mark. Over the top can be funny, of course, but it’s difficult to maintain that level for an entire movie, and most of them do not do this well.

This may not be the best “best of” list for those seeking the best ofs, and if you want to consider it the cynical “best of” have at it, but I don’t consider most entertainment vehicles “must have, must see, must read, and must hear” anymore, and I find that the marketing departments that promote their vehicles in this manner tedious.

Chuck Klosterman on who wears the black hat in our society

July 15, 2013June 4, 2016 RilalyLeave a comment

Chuck Klosterman’s new book I Wear the Black Hat is mostly a list of villains throughout pop culture and History. The list, at times, is a little kitschy, and at times it’s a little serious, but whether you agree with him or not, Klosterman always has plenty of material to back up his claims.

In one of the passages of his book, Chuck Klosterman informs us that it’s no longer PC (Politically Correct) to call the PC movement PC. He says that the very term PC is now nothing more than a “quaint distraction” that “no one takes too seriously anymore,” and “it feels like something that only matters to Charles Krauthammer.” Klosterman says that the last time it was a “correct term to use to describe the linguistic issue in America was (roughly) between 1986 to 1995.”

It drives some of us “really, really crazy” when an individual tells us that a term, or phrase, that we use to describe a movement no longer properly describes that movement. These people are prone to say, “You should stop using that term,” or something like, “That is so yesterday dude.”

‘Ok,’ I mentally respond, while reading this particular condemnation in the book I Wear the Black Hat (Or should I say African-American Hat). ‘What term, or phrase, would Mr. Klosterman prefer we use to describe the current incarnation of the PC movement?’ The answer, we find by dutifully reading on, is that we don’t replace it, unless you’re Charles Krauthammer. It’s, apparently, just not a phrase that people should use anymore. In other words, the cynical would respond, “it drives certain people (like Klosterman’s wife) really, really crazy” to try and defeat the idea that some people are trying inflict speech codes upon our language, so just drop it, and we can all get along a lot better.

If the import of Klosterman’s message on PC speech codes were that I’m not to be considered hip anymore when I use a term like PC, I’ll take that, because I’m admittedly about as far from hip as one person could possibly be. If he’s telling us that the term PC is no longer an apt description of the attempts to control language, however, he’s going to have to provide us with a substitute. I wouldn’t use that substitute, of course, but it would strengthen his argument to do so.

I was going to argue that the PC movement may not be as overt as it was between 1986 to 1995, but it is, we’re just more assimilated to it now. Those of us that railed against PC speech codes in that era, as Klosterman later points out, simply lost the war. The difference between the culture that existed between 1986 to 1995 and now, is that it’s simply less shocking to us now when someone tries to control how we speak. It’s one of those sad but true facts that we’ve all learned to accept and a code we now have to lived by.

It used to be shocking to some of us when someone, be they a politician, or an obnoxious member of a particular group, would tell us that we weren’t speaking correctly, and it would elicit rebellion back then. That rebellion was put forth by many, but in Klosterman’s opinion no one did it more often, or as loudly, as Andrew Dice Clay and 2 Live Crew. Klosterman states that PC climate of that era provided an historical window in which an Andrew Dice Clay could become a megastar, and that “he would not have been a megastar in any other historical window—if (Dice Clay) had happened at a time when vulgarity somehow felt less important.”

Klosterman declares that that PC era was “painlessly oppressive” and those in that era experienced “low level anxiety” when they argued in public in which “Even casual conversation suddenly had the potential to get someone fired.” He describes how sexism and racism were given birth, or at least re-birth, during this era, and that the “backlash was stupid and adversarial.” In other words, if we are to read Klosterman correctly, we presumably should’ve all acquiesced to the PC crowd a lot sooner, so they could’ve won the war a lot quicker and saved us a whole bunch of adversarial exchanges.

I don’t know much about Klosterman’s life, and if he has experienced the hammer of the PC police personally, but those of us that have know that the PC police don’t just go away. They move onto the next thing, whatever that thing is. To some of us, it is very important, and at the risk of inflating it beyond reason, vital to the the free speech clause that we continue to provide them the “stupid and adversarial” backlash that keeps them somewhat close to being in check.

In the final portion of this chapter, Klosterman does concede that the winners of this war, these advocates of speech-limitation, “Didn’t necessarily make a better argument, they just wore the culture down. Almost everything that these advocates wanted in 1990, have been adopted by the world at large, in that we now err on the side of caution for the potentially offended.” So he basically admits that the PC crowd is still on the march, but that it’s just not PC to call them PC anymore.

The Villians

The much ballyhooed (and selling point for the book) chapter on O.J. Simpson doesn’t live up to the hype. The hype that the publishers used to try to move the book, was that Klosterman was going to tell us O.J.’s second biggest mistake. The second biggest mistake O.J. made, in Klosterman’s opinion, is that O.J. didn’t go into hiding after the trial exonerated him of the brutal slaying of his wife and Ron Goldman (yawn). Klosterman advises O.J., as O.J.’s adviser Alan Dershowitz advised O.J., that he should’ve kept a low profile, or move, or do anything but what he did by going out and living the O.J. lifestyle that O.J. knew pre-incarceration. Klosterman, would’ve advised O.J. against writing that book, or going on talk shows to give his side. A much more interesting chapter, as if it hasn’t been covered already, would’ve been to focus on our society’s reaction to O.J. post-verdict. It would’ve been interesting to read Chuck’s analysis of the young kids (who never knew O.J. the running back, announcer, or Naked Gun star) asking for O.J.’s autograph, the manner in which he was fawned over in public, and he could’ve tied this into the culture’s glorification of bad guys dating back to Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Billy the Kid, and those that wore the black hats.

The most interesting chapter, in my opinion, other than the “Eagles” chapter that was covered in one of my previous blogs, is the chapter concerning how Muhammad Ali is a villain. Klosterman takes on this icon’s current, glorified status, stating that Muhammad Ali ruined a man’s life (Joe Frazier) for the expressed purpose of getting in the man’s head to win a fight.

I must painfully admit that I have been on Muhammad Ali’s side for much of the history of the Ali/Frazier story. I was too young to have firsthand knowledge of the fight, or the debate that followed, and much of what I’ve seen, heard, and read has been after the fact analysis. I was also very young when the debate started springing up around me, so I took the star’s side. When I later learned that that put me on the same side of this debate as TV personality Bryant Gumbel, I knew I was on the wrong side. I didn’t yet know the specifics of why I was wrong, but I knew that Gumbel was consistently and obnoxiously, on the wrong side of history. Thanks to Gumbel’s obnoxious takes on the matter, I began to strive for more objectivity on the story. The productions I watched from that point on, including the one put together by HBO, “The Thilla in Manilla”, convinced me that Ali was a bad guy, and a bully, that would stop at nothing to humiliate Frazier, until it reached what some have termed an historical level of betrayal.

The other illuminating fact Chuck unearths, that I must say I didn’t know, is that Ali met with the KKK to discuss their shared belief on the evils of interracial marriage. One has to think that even the obnoxious Bryant Gumbel would not have been eager to agree with Ali on this point, as Gumbel’s mother, and his wife are white. If you have ever watched Gumble interview a subject he sides with, however, you have to think this may have been a possibility. Gumble is, if nothing else, consistently obnoxious. The likely outcome, if Ali brought this up in a Gumble interview, would’ve been a surreptitious edit. It is possible that this obnoxious, succumbent to African-American stars may have found a surreptitious way of agreeing with Ali, and he may have found a way of calling those that opposed an “(effing) idiot” for disagreeing with whatever “the greatest” had to say on the matter. Klosterman concludes this piece by asking how many icons, other than Ali, could’ve survived with their image intact after such a meeting with the KKK, and such a shared belief, as that.

Klosterman also states that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a villain, because he was once mean to a guy from Pearl Jam. Klosterman says that the guys from Pearl Jam are nice guys, and they have a history of being appreciative of their fans, and Jabbar purportedly does not. These facts, when put together, should lead the reader to believe that Jabbar is a villain. Did Jabbar thump an autograph-seeking child in the forehead, did he push an old lady to the ground, or did he set Mother Teresa on fire after a particularly heated debate on the virtues of altruism? No, he was mean to a guy from Pearl Jam. Mean may even be a relative term in Chuck’s description of what happened. I read dismissive more than mean, but apparently no one can be dismissive of guys in Pearl Jam, or they’ll write a song about them, and Klosterman will like that song so much that he’ll feel enough allegiance to call the one that dismissed them a villain on that basis alone.

Chevy Chase is also a villain in Klosterman’s view, and this is based on the fact that Chase doesn’t take his role in entertainment seriously enough. Klosterman does lay out the fact that none of Chase’s co-stars in movies or on TV showed up for his roast, and that that pretty much means that those co-stars didn’t care for him. Chuck revisits a fight scene between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, where Bill Murray called Chevy a “medium talent”, to suggest that Chase was overrated and underachieving at the same time. Chuck writes that the book “Live from New York, as oral history of Saturday Night Live” is littered with people taking pot shots at Chevy, and that the creator of the show “Community” called him a bad word, but Klosterman believes the nut of why Chevy is a bad guy exists in the fact that Chevy hates himself. Klosterman writes that one of Chevy’s most famous lines: “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” is not something he’s happy about. Klosterman also writes that Chevy “never opted for the serious roles that so many comedians vie for throughout their careers.”

Now I agree with Marlon Brando that it doesn’t take a lot of talent to act in movies, but perhaps Chevy feared some sort of revelation of his “medium talent” in those roles. From the rare glimpses we’ve seen of Chase’s obnoxiousness, it’s hard to believe he’s a good guy, and as Klosterman writes, we can take some of Chevy’s cohort’s criticism as jealousy, but to suggest that he’s a villain based on the fact that he didn’t take his career serious enough might be a bit of a stretch.

In the “Eagles chapter” that has little to do with the villain premise, except perhaps thematically, Klosterman writes that he doesn’t think certain bands, and singers, are bad guys, he takes a moment to suggest why Mr. Bungle is not as great as some people think.

Mr. Bungle “was way more interesting than it was” writes Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman claims Mr. Bungle was a “self-indulgent side project”. He calls it “my real world introduction to The Problem of Overrated Ideas”. He says that Mike Patton, in particular, was “improvisational and gross. Musically and otherwise: He (Patton) stated that he would eat huge portions of mashed potatoes and chase it with schnapps,” Patton told MTV News, “Then he would sneak into his local laundromat and vomit into washers and dryers.” The fact that Klosterman does not mention Mike Patton by name, only as the singer, suggests that there may be some personal animus that drives his review of the band, but I could be wrong. Klosterman also basically claims that Patton should’ve stuck with the more mainstream Faith No More.

First of all, a decent study of Mike Patton’s history would show Klosterman that not only was Faith No More Patton’s other band, but it was his side project (not the other way around). At one point in his career, Patton did give Faith No More his full concentration, but it was mostly viewed as a promotional vehicle for Mr. Bungle. As evidence of this, Faith No More’s first video “Epic” shows Patton in a Mr. Bungle T-Shirt.

All personal preferences and disagreements aside, it says a lot about Klosterman’s listening habits that they’re, at least in part, dictated by things said in interviews he finds distasteful. Klosterman writes that Patton’s improvisations are “gross musically”, and this leads the informed reader to believe that Klosterman has probably only listened to the first Mr. Bungle album. I’ve listened to this self-titled debut ad nauseum, and I’ve basically reached a point where I’ve deleted all of the silly and gross improvisations from that album on my iPod, and I used to delete the same portions from the audio tapes I recorded the album onto. What you’re left with, when you delete the silliness, is a great piece of work from a bunch of teenagers. (As a side note, Mr. Bungle’s other two albums succeeded without such deletions. Those albums were tight in their musical structure, and all the silliness lay behind them by this point.) Perhaps, Klosterman should do more homework on a subject he apparently knows little to nothing about.

Are you telling me, Chuck, that Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue never did anything silly and gross (like biting the heads off bats), and they’re never been immature in interviews? How old were your peeps when they snorted a line of ants? The guys in Mr. Bungle were teenagers when their self-titled, first album came out, and teenagers love bathroom humor and fart jokes, but the members of the group eventually grew up and produced two of the best, most consistent, and serious albums of music I’ve ever heard.

I’ve always thought that the best reviews were those that dissected a book in a negative manner, as opposed to those glowing, sound bite style reviews (“A Tour de Force”) that the reviewer writes, so that he might get his name on the cover of the book. It may be just me, but I’ve always thought that negative reviews act as an EKG monitor for the heart of a book, and positive reviews usually act as a fawning mechanism for the star status of the author. I also don’t care what a person’s personal review of the book is, if it’s based on the fact that they like Muhammad Ali, I want to know if it was a good book or not, and I think a thorough dissection of a book, can only be done in a negative manner. If you do want my opinion, however, I Wear the Black (African American) Hat is an excellent, fun read that dissects our era (Chuck and I are about two years a part) in a manner, it appears, that only Chuck Klosterman can do this well.