I have to admit, I’m a pop culture idiot at this point.
When I was a kid, I always swore that I would not be one of those fuddy-duddy adults who didn’t know who made every song on the radio. Quite a few years ago, I realized I was falling completely out of touch with everything. Someone tried telling me that there was this great metal band called Staind and that I should check them out; that Godsmack and Static-X and a plethora of other “nu-metal” bands were going to come and kick the long-since-dead grunge garbage out of the pop mainstream and save us from the up and coming boy bands that were garbaging up my fond memories of the New Kids. Folks, I bought those albums. Let me tell you that while I somewhat enjoyed them in a sense, I was rather disappointed with how not metal they were. Back in my day, sure, I started with the hair band crap and graduated my way into Morbid Angel and Carcass; I wasn’t born into them. While Static-X was closer to what I enjoyed, and Godsmack wasn’t altogether awful, I felt really double-crossed by Staind. They brought the heavy at times, but then killed it with the same kind of whining that turned me long since from the underground indie stuff that my sister was starting to dig. The emotion seemed so juvenile and forced that I couldn’t help but plant a giant exclamation point over my head and worry that this would be what I was force-fed for the next few years.
Enter today, where Staind’s Dysfunction is nearly a dead-on template for every washed-up-sounding generic hard rock band on the radio today. Some brought in the Godsmack heavier side while others snagged the Static-X weirdness. Somewhere in there, Creed polluted the whole mess for the worse, and in the end, I still have yet to like almost any rock song I hear on the radio today. Not only do I not like them, but I can’t tell them apart. Me, little miss haughty in the ’80s that I was a musical pop culture queen, is now completely lost. And boy, every time I hear some crap from Breaking Benjamin or Papa Roach, I don’t regret my loss of musical street smarts in the least. Oh, maybe I have a bit of a weakness for Trapt, and I can’t completely rip on everyone. But tolerance does not equal love in the least. I must hand it to bands like Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage, and Lamb of God for not sucking among this chunk of American tripe. So sad that we all have to look overseas to find decent influences these days, but most metal legends stem from England anyway.
With my distaste for a lot of latter-day popular music in the US has grown, I also noticed that other aspects of popular culture have fallen to the wayside. For one, I have almost completely stopped watching television. Today, I picked up the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Vol. 3 DVDs and put a pre-order on Oz Season 4 and The Shield Season 3. What else do I watch? I’ll occasionally catch other shows on Adult Swim. Sometimes I will catch WWE if I’m bored. That’s it. And as for movies? I think I only know what’s in the theater because my friends discuss it. I have no clue who Jude Law is or what movies he’s been in. I’ll go see anything starring Edward Norton and I’ll buzz into a theater if I’m particularly captivated by the supposed subject matter at hand. Oh, who am I kidding: I only first saw the original Star Wars trilogy last year, and I have been shamed for never having seen any of the Indiana Jones flicks. Simply put, I have never been a very good movie geek. I keep up on current events with multiple daily trips to online news sites. I can almost see my future as a typical backwards midwestern woman, dressed with an apron in a flower-patterned-wallpaper kitchen, talking about how great Jay Leno was last night and wondering when that nice Kirk Cameron will be putting out another movie.
Okay, yeah, that’s more than an exaggeration, but it’s a fear here in Iowa. If I’m already this far out of the loop of modern existence, isn’t it just a matter of time before I retire myself to a life of bake sales and under-the-radar alcoholism? It’s enough to make me go pick up that new Gwen Stefani album. And trust me, if you’ve heard that abomination of all that is aural, you understand how desperate I am at this point.
Enough of this.
Alice In Musicland
Terry Melcher is the RIP of this past weekend. My best friend should be particularly distraught over this, as he co-wrote the Beach Boys’ abomination, “Kokomo,” a song to which she owes a million free drinks from all of the drunken males with whom she’s sung karaoke. Oh, sure, he did a lot of great reputable things working on Pet Sounds and producing some legendary songs from The Byrds. Hell, Charles Manson supposedly intended to kill him but got Sharon Tate instead; pity, because Melcher probably would have been more widely respected and grieved back in those days, and we would all have been saved from that Full House Beach Boys episode.
Destiny Fulfilled hit the shelves last week, although not necessarily doing as well as expected. I’m sorry; I tried really hard to listen to Survivor all the way through and absolutely couldn’t do it. There’s something to be said about “oversinging,” and how it somehow became the ideal in R&B and pop is artistically revolting. Destiny’s Child really has no point to exist after both Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland proved they could be hitmakers on their own. Actually, they could probably make more money if they would just make a silent DVD of Beyoncé shaking her ass. The key, of course, is silent.
In a showing which surprised and shocked no one, Eminem’s Encore debuted at number one on the Billboard charts after only three days of sales. The sales tally? We’re talking 711,000 albums. Interestingly, this last week also marks 761 new lawsuits being filed by the RIAA against piraters with the Eminem album in particular being watched like a hawk, and the targets were primarily college students. What bothers me more than anything, I suppose, is that the kids are supposed to be a part of the higher education system in our country, but they still use highly-targeted peer-to-peer services that have been repeatedly busted for copyright infringement. I guess they really will give a diploma out to anyone who pays tuition these days.
And Young Buck turned himself in after drawing a knife on Jimmy James Johnson who had punched Dr. Dre at the Vibe Awards. You know, I say this kind of thing all the time: if you’re a skateboarder, transcend the stereotype by not vandalizing things and only skating in designated areas; if you’re a stupid Iowan, don’t go to Chicago wearing a fanny pack and sweatpants; and for the love of christ, if you’re a rapper, everyone’s expecting you to be dealing drugs and killing people — try being a smidgen of an exception from the generic Thug Cliché Handbook, alright? Is that so much to ask?
Will I even want to check my email after this column is done?
Band vs. Band
Today’s offering is an oldie, but a goodie: Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera.
Two girls from The New Mickey Mouse Club — yes, once upon a time I watched this show faithfully and actually remember Britney — stumbled onto the scene quite a few years back, all fresh-faced and cutesy but with a scandalous edge. Britney began the hot Halloween trend of the “skanky schoolgirl” (thanks, dear, for the cheap costume) and giggled at the mention that anyone would possibly see her as anything other than totally wholesome. Christina didn’t get completely nasty right away, but at the same time, she never once tried to pretend she was Little Miss Christian Goodness, either. Britney’s popularity soared while Christina’s floundered a little bit — that is, until she got all dirrty.
Enter era two of these girls: Britney began slutting it up to a degree that was getting quite the warning flags from concerned parents, while Christina just went full-on sex bomb. Even while prancing around in flesh-toned garments that left little to the imagination and making music videos featuring simulated fellatio on a microphone, Britney still giggled at the thought that anyone would think she was anything other than a good girl. Sure, she had grown up somewhat and was no longer dangerously underage, but she boasted of being a virgin and tried to pass off her antics as nothing more than mere entertainment. Meanwhile, Christina was humping oily guys in videos while she wore a couple of scraps of clothing; she changed her hair color daily, gained and lost pounds in a whirlwind, pierced up every body part she could find, and was completely unapologetic about any of it. She also began to take more of an interest in her music by working with serious songwriters and pouring out her personality while avoiding as much gloss as possible.
Nowadays, we have Britney married, divorced, and married again; she’s been seen around town looking like dumpy trailer trash, and she has announced a bit of a break for her career, presumably to start popping out some children. Xtina comes and goes; she may be working on an album somewhere if she’s not having lots of sex or changing her look again. Both girls have pushed themselves to the wayside while Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, and a hundred other wannabe idols are prancing themselves all over the radio and television. Britney and Christina are already elder stateswomen of the pop universe, free now to do as they please until they return in some kind of bizarre capacity where they might actually believe that people will still care about them at age 25.
And while it has been long believed that Britney was the bigger star, it’s Christina who has always been the “personality”; while the nice girl breeds, the mouthy girl (with the better voice) might just find the right songwriters and propel herself to the next level. They have run out of things in common. All that’s left now is to see where each girl runs with their fame.
File Under…
The genre of the day: EBM
Primarily a “goth thing,” the term EBM is thrown around loosely. Short for Electronic Body Music, essentially it’s a combination of industrial and synth-pop dance music. Essentially, it gives the unhappy people a reason to get up and dance. Bands like Front 242, Front Line Assembly, and Skinny Puppy are easily recognizable as the venerated granddaddies, while VNV Nation, Covenant, :wumpscut:, and Funker Vogt followed in their footsteps while transforming EBM into separate identifiable subgenres like darkwave and futurepop.
While EBM actually encompasses a lot of musicians who don’t have much in common, it’s sort of like the term “nu-metal” in that it’s less of a distinct definition of a sound as it is an artistic movement of sorts. It’s a way to distinguish the dance-goth folks from the noise-goth folks who are into Nurse With Wound, Winterkälte, and Merzbow or from the romanti-goth folks who cherish Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, and Joy Division. Truly, it’s all grand oversimplification, but it can keep you from going to a goth club on the “wrong night,” if you know what I mean.
My Opinion Matters
Okay, so I’ve been opining all over this column today, making this section quite superfluous; still, as an Iowan, I feel obligated to speak for a bit on Slipknot.
I hail from the eastern side of Iowa. To those unfamiliar with Iowa politics, the western side of the state is fairly desolate with only three or four major “cities” while the eastern side is populated with decent-sized communities all approximately 90 miles from each other. Des Moines is somewhere in the middle, but technically adopted by the westerners. This would be the capital of the state and the land from which Slipknot hails.
Being a natural skeptic, I was certain that any metal band from Iowa would suck. In addition, they wore masks and jumpsuits; this was a recipe for stupidity. Toss in extra percussionists and other garbage, and it was a joke with its own punchline. I downloaded a number of songs back in the Napster days to see if my suspicions were true; indeed, I couldn’t find anything good about them. The songs were filled with pointless vulgarity, generic kindergarten angst, and devoid of any melodic value whatsoever. I suppose if I had thought about it harder, I would have realized that this is exactly the sort of metal band that only Iowa could breed, yet I simply dismissed them and went back to my European-metal-snob friends.
Considerably later, I remember the album Iowa being released. Something struck a chord within me, as there aren’t exactly a horde of folks running around proclaiming they’re from the land of corn, hogs, and soybeans. While I still wasn’t entirely impressed with their songs (and in fact laughed my ass off at the ridiculously titled “People=Shit”), I felt a strong desire to show them some sort of respect.
It wasn’t actually until after the Stone Sour album hit the market that I began listening to the self-titled album and Iowa in earnest. The discovery of the long-since-removed track “Purity” was probably what snapped me to the other side of the fence; at once, I got it. Sure, there was a silly schtick at work, but when Corey Taylor and the gang were on, they were on. Not everything was a work of brilliance, but man, they could pound out one hell of an angry anthem when they wanted to.
The release of Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses was what solidified it for me. Hardcore fans weren’t too pleased with it, but so what? It was about time that the songwriting took a forefront to blind hatred and anger. Taylor had somewhere gained the ability to convey so much emotion and power in his voice that it almost hurt to hear. The generic anthem had diminished and was replaced with much more complex subject matter. Sure, they lost a lot of what made them Slipknot, but they gained respectability.
And that respectability transfers over to the rest of us, here in Iowa. I saw Slipknot twice live, once in Milwaukee before the last album hit the shelves, and once in Cedar Rapids a few months later. The crowd in their home state was absolutely devastating. What can I say? This little angry band came along to pour out the angst of an entire population and we are eternally grateful for being recognized. They are our guidance counselors, our flagships, and our tour guides, and we’re proud of them for letting our voices be heard. As Mr. Taylor himself said at that last show, “If anyone asks you, ‘What the f*ck is in Iowa?’ you tell them, ‘I am, asshole.'”
The Rad Ones
Liquidcross gets on my personal genre bandwagon, calling out the gaming industry. The madness is everywhere, apparently.
D’Errico talks album covers, which almost saddens me in this world of piracy. Hell, I still miss having a nice sleeve for vinyl where the cover art really mattered.
Rob Blatt is still trying to remind me why I keep up with wrestling; since my town just got a UPN affiliate this past week, all I can say is that my reason is Kurt Angle. I’m still mad that I didn’t buy the Kurt Angle Milk Koozie they had on Shopzone a few years ago.
I’ve already explained that I don’t watch TV, so read the zone and get back to me if you find something cool.
This trickles down to say I don’t know anything about sports either, but hey, I’m in Slayer’s column looking like a skank so it must be good.
And over in movies, Brendan Campbell has this exquisite three part saga on Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. If only it had ended with them both set on fire.
Outro
New stuff I have been spinning (watch for reviews here on Inside Pulse!):
Anthrax: The Greater of Two Evils
Chroma Key: Graveyard Mountain Home
Nirvana: With The Lights Out
Gwen Stefani: Love Angel Music Baby
U2: How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Band who IMed me and was cool, so I figured I would plug them:
Alpha Pi
Newly discovered band that I like:
Kidneythieves. I need to get the back catalog, pronto.
Guilty pleasure of the week:
Vanilla Ice’s “Too Cold.” It never, ever stops being funny.
Song that has been stuck in my head and I have been singing incessantly, much to the chagrin of the entire universe:
Presidents of the USA’s “Lump.” It took a while for me to un-remember the Weird Al version though.
Album I wish I had:
The new Fear Factory EP/DVD. The venerable Melchor put his happy stamp on it. One day, it will be mine.
Plugging a friend:
Hey, look! He interviewed Juliya! (And Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater, with a little help from yours truly.)
Enjoy your turkey, it’s full of L-tryptophan goodness!
–gloomchen
