Archive for July, 2008

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

A week or so ago I went to see The Dark Knight and subsequently found myself a little bit homesick for Chicago. The opening sequence includes numerous recognizable shots of iconic Loop buildings. Throughout the film, a knowing observer will notice some particularly “Chicago” details. The Berghoff pops up in a few scenes. The Gordons’ “front door” was actually a typical Chicago apartment back porch – it was strange to see callers knocking at the back door and being greeted with a view into a tiny apartment kitchen. I also found it disconcerting to see Marina City clearly through the windows of a Gotham City high rise.

Marina City on the Cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot featuring Marina City

The twin towers of Marina City are so distinctively Chicago-only landmarks that an attempt to fold them into the backdrop of a fictional New-York-styled crime-opolis feels weird. If anything, the Chicago-ness of The Dark Knight’s look and feel detracted a bit from the film. Sure many of the art deco buildings and details seem Gotham-ish, but the bright, clean streets that are hallmarks of Chicago in the second Daley era don’t exactly seem like the sorts of places that could accidentally lead you to “Crime Alley.” And the extras (in the interest of full disclosure, I was one) – being Chicagoans – radiate an affable midwesterness that seems at odds with life in what should rank as one of the worst cities in the world.

Unlike L.A. with its nightly helicopter-illuminated crime sprees or New York with its legendary toughness and occasional eruptions of outsized movie-grade horror and catastrophe, Chicago is – at least as portrayed in the mainstream media – fairly placid under the new Daley regime. Similarly, Chicago avoided sinking into the dank murk of rust belt squalor like its formerly-industrial sibling Detroit. Political corruption is still a major industry, of course. And gang violence and child murder are a source of constant tragedy. However, the face that Chicago currently presents to the world is mostly one of optimism and orderliness. Madness and horror aren’t really Chicago’s bag any longer. I assume things like the Days of Rage and the on-the-floor madness of the ’68 convention can tucker you out something fierce.

Which, of course, explains a lot about Chicago’s own (by way of Belleville, IL) Wilco – a band that is occasionally hailed as “America’s Radiohead.” Wilco more than any other “major” or “important” band of the last 15 years (that I can think of, at least) has gotten ahead by sheer hard work and overall affability. The documentary I am Trying to Break Your Heart, a public rehab stint, and several bandmate firings have gone a little way towards making Wilco main man Jeff Tweedy seem like a bit of a jag, but even these shenanigans are a far cry from typical naughty rockstar behavior. Wilco – like the town they call home – just doesn’t *do* crazy very well. Even their forays into the pop avant garde with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born are pretty much collections of singer-songwriter tunes appropriately screwed up so as to suggest the proper kinds of left-of-the-dial influences. In short, Wilco tries hard and usually puts together a decent record based on that effort.

Of course a lot of Wilco’s public persona has to with the band doing the “right thing” and working to stand up to the record industry – by purchasing their master tapes from Warner’s Reprise imprint, self-promoting the album via the web and touring, and eventually resigning to another Warner Bros. holding for the album’s official release. The impact of this record industry Rube-Golberg-esque album release schedule is that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wound up being officially released in April 2002 instead of the originally planned date of September 11, 2001.

Here’s where Yankee Hotel Foxtrot gets weird for me. Initially, folks considered some song titles and lyrics to be seemingly obvious references to the death-from-above shock of 9/11 – especially the title “Ashes of American Flags” and the following lines from “Jesus, Etc.”

9/11 Portents in “Jesus, Etc.”?

Tall buildings shake
Voices escape singing sad, sad songs
…

Voices whine
Skyscrapers are scraping together
Your voice is smoking
Last cigarettes are all you can get
Turning your orbit around

Obviously, given the album’s original release plan, these “obvious” 9/11 references were coincidences written quite some time before the event. Heck, even “War on War” could be seen as an apt title for our country’s inevitable response to the attacks.

Sidebar >> In the post-9/11 madness, many attempts were made to connect everything everywhere to the attacks. Irony was declared dead. Politicians spoke of pre- and post-9/11 mindsets. And rock nerds tried to connect the dots using album art and lyrical references and bandnames – ultimately proving that lots of people were drawn to the idea of making the twin towers of the WTC burn.

The Coup’s Party Music – album art designed in June 2001 for a planned November 2001 release.
The Coup's original Party Music album art. Ka-Boom!

Dream Theater’s Live Scenes From New York – originally released on September 11, 2001.
Dream Theater's Live Scenes From New York. Worse fate -- firery death or prog-metal?

I seem to remember connections made between the events of 9/11/2001 and Dylan’s Love and Theft which came out that same day. A number of my recollections of 9/11 are tied up with trying to find some way to pick up a copy of Love and Theft before everyone headed for the hills. Even in the midst of panic and fear, I had my priorities straight.
<< Sidebar

Because of timing and because of prevailing trends in “smart” rock music, Wilco became kind of the house band for the end times – at least in the experience of this then Chicagoan. In many ways the album strikes the perfect tone – the lyrics are either a bit insincere (“I’m the man who loves you.” “I *sincerely* miss those heavy metal bands…) or imagistic, cut-and-paste doomsaying with a bit of whatever mixed in to lighten the mood. Musically, ambient skitterings and whoosings cut uneasily in and out of the mix – not so much to disorient the listener but to suggest uneasiness. Wilco made the sort of serious pop music that seemed appropriate for seemingly serious times.

Another reason why Wilco is so tied up in my memories of the beginning of this new horror is because the first out-in-public thing I had a chance to do after 9/11 was hitting the Abbey Pub on 9/15 for a show with Wilco acting as Scott McCaughey’s Minus 5. (Remember lots of things were cancelled right after 9/11, and many folks stayed in for days after the happening, watching and rewatching it on the endless cruelty loop of mandatory 24-hour news.) The McCaughey and Wilco showcased material they had recorded earlier that week for the Down with Wilco album.

Following the Minus 5’s set, Wilco came out as themselves to run through a blistering set that included the bulk of YHF. It was the beginning of Wilco’s exile on the road while their album languished without an official release. I think I saw Wilco three or four times between Fall 2001 and Fall 2002. They seemed to play Chicago constantly. During these shows they shed some of their bar room everyband-ness and took on some of the snoozy, arty airs that came to full flower with A Ghost is Born.

In a way, Wilco was the band that was there as I came to terms with the new weirdness that equals America in the aughts. Their Chicago-flavored normalness made sense to me as a normal Chicagoan. The Marina City towers on the cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot provided a sense of place – specifically sense of a place where iconic towers still stood against the new normalcy of a somber beige sky.

The Dark Knight made me miss Chicago just because it beautifully showcased so many of the city’s most recognizable features. Still, given that Nolan’s new Batman films are obviously about fear, madness, vengeance, and escalation in the face of terrorism – even the Wall Street Journal thinks so (har!) – I’m not sure if Chicago is the right “Gotham” for these stories. While Washington strutted about as an imperial capital has to and New York crawled up inside of itself to mourn whilst reassuring itself that it was the center of everything, Chicago just kind of kept on choogling – sad and bemused and stunned. Terrorism made Chicago seem peripheral, not big enough to be a target. Pretty soon, terrorism simply became a convenient excuse for the same old political trickery. No great battles between order and madness played out in the streets – nothing as big as Batman v. Joker that’s for sure.

Chicago during the first days of the long, scary future – I remember it more like “hiding out in the big city blinking.”

Posted in Local (Chicago), Wilco | No Comments »

My Bloody Valentine, Loveless

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Thus far the Record Desk has mostly been splashing about in the shallow end of the pool – I haven’t really taken on an album universally considered to one of the all-time, all-time greats. I suppose that it is often very hard to get inside a “great” record and illuminate it from within. Many times these are albums that come to us second- or even third-hand as recommendations from friends who embraced the record after some critic hyped it based on some other alpha critic’s review. Such has been my experience with Loveless. It’s one of those albums that you hear about more than you actually hear. It’s widely considered a left-of-the-dial classic – one that set the bar for inventive, non-cheesy guitar sounds.

If you throw a rock at bunch of shaggy kids in American Apparel gear, you’ll likely hit someone whose band *totally* has an ambient My Bloody Valentine thing going on. Of course, this claim is likely complete bullshit – this kid’s band probably sounds like U2 or the Cure. However, My Bloody Valentine is a much more acceptable band to talk about as an influence. They signify a certain kind of cool – cool that is decadent and European and detached from issues of pop and commerce. In short, invoking My Bloody Valentine means that you have the *right* idea of what is cool. Your sensibilities are in order. You are not some kind of “rawk” obsessed meathead. Basically, name dropping My Bloody Valentine proves that you are the sort of person who should be forming a band.

Some bands (like My Bloody Valentine, Television, the Fall, and even the Velvet Underground) provide a shorthand for musicians who want to discuss aesthetics and rule out the wrong kind of collaborators, but who don’t wish to appear snooty or discriminatory. And because fans of and dabblers in popular music are pack animals, pretty soon everyone learns the new codes and starts prattling on about how Loveless and Marquee Moon changed their lives – giving rise to a process of I’m calling inflation of influence.

For instance, a 13-year-old kid in 1993 might have bought a guitar because he was really into Siamese Dream. However, by 2002 this kid is out in the great wide hip world telling everyone how he wants to form a band that sounds just like Loveless. He doesn’t want to fess up that it was the wholly cornball Smashing Pumpkins who rocked his world. Instead, he uses his influences’ influence as a cover. Our imaginary kid doesn’t want folks to know that he once got his kicks from the corporate FM radio monster – an admission that might peg him as some kind of possible Nickleback sympathizer. So, our imaginary kid bites his lip and pretends to worship Kevin Shields instead of uncool Billy Corgan.

I’m not saying that no one loves Loveless or Hex Induction Hour based on first-hand experience. I’m just saying that most people lie about how much they love these sorts of records. I know because *I’ve* lied about loving these sorts of records. I mean, I like Loveless and I actually really do love Marquee Moon, but not in that crazy, bloodied teenage way that you *really* love your favorite albums. These smartipance albums are a fine diversion after you’ve memorized every blip of “Baba O’Riley” and every squawk of “Heart Shaped Box,” but they aren’t the sort of things that you love deep down in the your adolescent gut-pit. Loveless and other “important” records like it present interesting ideas and new twists on the possibilities lurking about the fringes rock and roll.

Of course, I too am using Loveless as shorthand – in this case for a certain kind of album that everyone has decided to treat as a classic despite the fact that it was never super popular or embraced on a massive scale. I’m not saying that it isn’t an interesting or, hell, even an enjoyable album. I’m simply admitting that I almost never listen to it, and I almost never hear anyone else listening to it either. Loveless strikes me as a piece of “required listening,” not too different from so-called “classics” that you are expected to read in literature class.

Which brings us to our thrilling conclusion – I’m not sure if high school literature class is the best model for pop music appreciation. The wrong teacher or the wrong syllabus can ruin reading for many people. By extension, the wrong tastes or the wrong standards being forced on pop listeners and pop participants can kind of make pop music less fun and more like a never-ending struggle to keep up with what sorts of things make for proper listening.

One of the reasons that the Record Desk exists is to honestly assess my relationship with my big, stupid collection of tapes, CDs, and LPs – to come to terms with what pop music means to me and how I might mean in relation to it. I figured that my plan to write about EVERYTHING I own would force me to acknowledge the “uncool” corners of my listening habits. Under this premise, I wouldn’t be able to hide behind the internet and pretend that my life plays out to a continuous soundtrack of Zen Arcade and Here Come the Warm Jets. In time, I must come to terms with that Bryan Adams’ greatest hits record and my old copy of They Might Be Giants’ Flood.

So, where does this leave us with Loveless? I suppose I just don’t like it that much. It’s okay, but I seem to go years without listening to it. I think I may have bought it just so I’d seem like the sort of person whose band might be inspired by My Bloody Valentine. It’s a pretty record in its way. But I actually enjoy listening to Siamese Dream more. So that’s it – my confession. I don’t really love My Bloody Valentine. I probably only pretended to be into them so that I’d seem cool. I have absolutely no memories or ideas or concerns tied up with Loveless. It’s simply something I know about. It exists merely as rock and roll homework. Having listened to it several times in preparation for this entry, I found neither fresh insight nor newly compelling bit of sound – just that same old wonderful guitar woosh and several washes of sound masquerading as songs.

Posted in My Bloody Valentine | 7 Comments »

Wolcott, Live at the Fireside Bowl – March 31st, 2001

Monday, July 7th, 2008

Once upon a time, I and some of my college classmates went to St. Louis to attend a conference of honors-type English students. For our part of the conference, my fellow students and I hosted a panel discussion about “the canon” and what might or might not belong in it. If you’ve even so much as been within ten feet of a literature class, you know that this topic is one that gets officially-sanctioned nerds like professors and grad students all hot and bothered.

While I was working with my chums to dream up this panel discussion, I scooped up the fun part for myself – the contrarian position. My argument was essentially that anything can be canonical for an individual, that people build their own canon of “essential works” over time and it’s only when something makes it into most everyone’s personal canon that we start to consider it a “classic” or an “essential work.” Mind you, this is a position that I actually hold. I wasn’t merely trying to piss people off. However, this point got a bit “lost” when the discussion got into full swing.

At some point during the discussion, I said the “ess-word” – Shakespeare. I believe I was specifically arguing the Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo and Juliet did more to enhance my understanding of that particular play than the hours of hushed reading and phonograph listening I did back in Mrs. Woodell’s Honors Frosh. English at Marian Catholic High School. My blasphemous utterance soon sent the whole shebang into an orgy of baby-throwing and mouth-foaming. People (many of them teachers of literature) lost their shit. Words were exchanged. I compared what Marilyn Manson was doing at the time (he was a hot topic in the late 1990s) to Poe’s sensationalist romanticism. In short, folks lost their cool because they REALLY, REALLY liked particular pieces of literature and didn’t want it mentioned in the same breath as other, “lesser” works that weren’t part of *their* canon.

Why tell this story to all you fine folks reading from the Record Desk? Because I don’t think that a person can be wholly objective about the cultural products that one likes and dislikes, but I think that people *THINK* they are being objective when they make a case for appreciating one type of art over another – that Born to Run really *IS* measurably better than Blizzard of Ozz or vice versa. My take on this is that people have a lot of their identity wrapped up in what they like and what they purchase and what they prattle on about endlessly via their blogs or their myspace. Such is being and selfhood in a society that relies on consumer spending for its daily bread.

Yes, yes. I know that positing contemporary society as nothing more than a colossal Beatles vs. Stones match is hardly “new thinking.” But I suppose this extended prelude is a way of saying that I firmly believe that sometimes you can like something so much that you quit making rational sense. You may think you’re objectively right about something at the time, although in reality you’ve just fallen for it.

Rock criticism – partly because it really isn’t hard criticism and partly because it flourishes in the hormonal slough of adolescent enthusiasms – is particularly susceptible to non-rational flights of infatuation. Band X becomes “the greatest thing ever” because some bespectacled Elvis Costello lookalike has a crush on the singer or the chorus or the font on the band’s website. And not long after, Band X is the “worst sellout of all time” because they sucked on Letterman or wrote a cola jingle or it turns out the bassist wasn’t really married to his sister after all. Basically, the whole process of falling for a band is non-smart. It’s immature. It really doesn’t suit anyone over the age of 16.

So all hemming and hawing complete, I’m going to make a confession. Back in 2001 I totally fell for this local band called Wolcott.

I went to a ton of shows between 2001 and 2004. I was super excited about rock and roll at the time. Wolcott caught me in the right spot. They were friends of friends of friends from where I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago. The singer had years before been in a local teen punk band called Winepress that wrote one of my (still) favorite songs of all time. I was writing rock crit for some coworkers’ online arts and culture “zine” and I did a long, slightly ridiculous and certainly pretentious interview with the band. My first lousy band played our first gig opening for Wolcott’s (unplanned) last show together. I’ve played shows with the members’ various new bands. I’ve had dinner with these folks. I think I may have even had fallings out with some of these folks. In short, the members of this band have become part of “the folks I know” – and all because I happened to see them at the best show they probably ever did at one of the greatest, dirtiest rock venues I’ve ever been to.

Live at the Fireside Bowl – March 31st, 2001 documents the band’s first show with lead guitarist Eddie Jones. The band is a bit rough around the edges – either because they went on last and had time lube up before playing or because they hadn’t yet gotten too comfortable or bored with the material. They were great. When I read a week later that they were going to be selling a recorded version of that show, I dragged my wife out to some VFW hall show in the wilds of northwestern Indiana to purchase it. It is the best thing the band ever put on disc – and I know because I have it all somewhere in the mound of crap that threatens to overtake the Record Desk.

Anyway, like most local bands, Wolcott was doomed to get progressively less interesting – failing to write any new songs while letting small successes and personal pettiness get the better of them. They eventually put out a self-released album with all the jewel case trimmings. I thought it was good when it came out, but subsequent listenings have revealed it to be overdone and not nearly as good as the simple no-frills tracks I watched them record at a friend’s project studio. Wolcott never “made it” – though the bass player did go on to compete in some sort of hair cutting reality competition on Bravo!

Still, let us not remember Wolcott in their surly last days wherein they tirelessly and tiresomely covered Journey whilst attempting to set a world record by playing every single tavern in Calumet City in one night. Let’s remember them when they were great – when they were enthusiastically pulling unironic rock star poses, drunkenly making out with my friends in regional airport bars, and sloppily rocking the crumbling, cockroach-infested stage at the Fireside Bowl.

Wolcott, Live at the Fireside Bowl – March 31st, 2001

01. Teardrops
02. Buried in the Suburbs
03. Saw You Through It
04. Fiending
05. Indiana
06. All Aboard for Love
07. Stay Awhile
08. Somewhere in Shanghai
09. All That I Have Learned
10. Halsted Market Days
11. Can’t Stop Body Rock

Posted in Live, Local (Chicago), Wolcott | 2 Comments »

Babyshambles, Albion (CD Single)

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Pete Doherty is one of the only songwriters to emerge during the aughts who regularly writes a song that floors me. (The other is Jack White.) He doesn’t really peddle his own cleverness like some of my other favorite songwriters – E. Costello, B. Dylan, J. White. He can turn a phrase. The “Albion” b-side “Why Did You Break My Heart/Piracy’s” bit about “the jingle-jangle of the jailor’s bangle” is killer. But more than anything, Doherty’s ability to manufacture a world view and sense of (imaginary?) place is what earns him a place at the Record Desk. His sea-going Dickensian drug den England seems like a place one would want to visit and then thoroughly regret visiting.

“Albion” is perhaps Doherty’s clearest vision of his mythical England. Written when he and Carl Barat were still partners in the Libertines, “Albion” was a bit like the Libs’ mission statement. I suppose Doherty’s keeping this song for his own project was a bit of a slight to his former bandmate – a move meant to prove who owned the vision that steered the Libs. All tabloid considerations aside, “Albion” is quite a strong song with a distinct sense of place and history. It feels almost lazy – the simple remembering of long ago idylls: “gin in teacups,” “violence in bus queues,” a “pale, thin girl with eyes forlorn.” It’s all bullshit. It’s an imaginary, romantic England of the never-quite-was. But it works. When Doherty exhorts you to “come away” to every Nowheresford and Crappingham in England, you’re willing to believe him. He’s our disheveled tour guide through a coal dust Victorian dystopia.

Doherty’s chemical escapism gets more press in the States than his music. And it’s not like this is some kind of cruel fate. All decent rock stars cultivate a persona that (when done well) embodies the mood and ideas tucked away in the music itself. That Doherty would “groom” himself to be a scuzzy ne’er do well East End urchin is no surprise given his lyrical preoccupations. Doherty’s music is about retreat into the past. It’s sentimental music – shunning a techo-puritanical future in favor of good ol’ fashioned pursuits like debauchery and decadence and slumming. Not unlike the Kinks’ Ray Davies, Doherty posits “England” (or “Albion”) as an alternative to a global modernity that lacks grit and texture.

“Anywhere in Albion” is good enough. He’ll “be waiting in the photo booth at the Underground station.”

Posted in Babyshambles, Singles and EPs | No Comments »

Pearl Jam, Merkinball

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I was unpacking my CD collection last week when I ran across this particular “rarity.” I know that rarities and singles don’t exist anymore because I can now, thanks to the internet, buy wholly obscure albums while wearing my underpants. A non-album single by a major band at the peak of their popularity really doesn’t seem “rare” now. I can still remember the day I bought this disc. Tony Real and I went to Record Swap in Homewood, and this disc was right up front in the “recent arrivals” section of the used CDs. I think I paid $3.49, which seems like highway robbery under today’s free-download-or-at-the-very-most-$0.99-per-track ethos. Nevertheless, I think it was a bargain. I know that “I Got Id” is few folks’ favorite Pearl Jam track (though it comes close for me). But if anything this two song alt-era souvenir is a study in rock and roll dynamics – and I don’t just mean the Pixies-style *LOUD-soft-LOUD* thing.

“I Got Id” begins with a ragged confession before building to a defiant, swaggering declaration of “I got memories/I got shit” before the chorus swoops upward into an unintelligible yarl that splatters into a glorious bit of Neil Young guitar – that sputtering, electric, lumbering search for melody soon swallowed by feedback. Soon were back to the confession into declaration and swagger before another thumping, assured chorus that’s more the sound of transcendence than meaningful words. And Neil’s guitar – stumbling around, grasping for a way out. The song doesn’t so much end as it sails away on a wave of lingering guitar noise.

“Long Road” presages Pearl Jam’s dalliance with “eastern” feeling drums and drones on 1996’s No Code. It’s a relaxed bit of drums and pump organ where slashes of guitar clang occasionally interrupt the placid ruminations. At six minutes, the song never really explodes or changes, rather it swells and crests. Waves of pure sound washing over a scant organ melody. Vedder’s voice becomes another sonic element – a counterpart to the growling guitars.

If anything, this disc shows a good ‘90s style band reaching towards becoming simply a good band by embracing sounds and textures beyond what had become recognizable grunge tropes. Of course Neil Young’s influence has a lot to do with this shift in tone and approach. Regardless, “I Got Id” is almost as great a song as Neil’s best from his 1990’s rebirth, “I’m the Ocean” from the Mirrorball record – recorded with Pearl Jam at the same time as the Merkinball* tracks.

I suppose it could be generational bias or rose-colored goggles, but the 1990s bands with their back-to-vinyl posturing and singles-plus-b-sides releases seem to be the last go around for “traditional” rock and roll methods – not to mention the thoroughly retro sounds most “alternative” bands were chasing. Whether it’s a shame to see such pretense fall by the wayside is another, larger discussion.

Still, I can remember, thirteen years later, where I was when I bought Merkinball. I can’t even remember what the last thing I downloaded sounded like.

*Merkinball was the first disc I bought that taught me a useful vocabulary word. A merkin is a pubic wig. Knowing this can slightly enhance viewings of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

Posted in Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Singles and EPs | 1 Comment »

R.E.M., Monster

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I am currently unemployed. Don’t worry – I planned on it. Part of the whole relocating to KC plan factored some time spent out on the asphalt flats stalking a new job. Plus this relatively short bout of joblessness has given me a chance to get back to my roots as a ‘90s-style slacker. It’s been enlightening in a way to soak in my own stasis. I’ve been reminded that I don’t do “nothing” very well. After a week or two of late hour showers, judge shows, and refrigerator pizza, I’ve started to get a bit rammy. I did manage to devote a nice chunk of yesterday to Beavis and Butthead on DVD – so apparently some things can still switch off the Type A for a bit. I’ve also been working at overachieving on some stupid online RPG. Like I said, I’ve been reliving my ‘90s adolescence. I’ve yet to spend six hours shuffling around the mall, and I haven’t eaten any Taco Bell. Obviously, I need to do tweak the nuances of my personal time travel techniques.

Perhaps it’s turning 30 or an ongoing narcissistic obsession with the ephemera of my stupid adolescence, but I’ve noticed that the Record Desk has been particularly ‘90s-centric since we set sail on the seas of sound a couple months ago. I’d like to blame all this crawling-up-my-own-ass-to-spelunk-my-way-back-to-fifteen-years-ago on some kind of critical personal failing, but really I’ve not found anything new that quite pulls my trigger lately. I admit that *maybe* I’ve wusstastically retreated back to the snuggly and secure past where everything makes sense to my sorry old self. But in reality, I think what I’m up against is a world that is less fun and more sucky than the ‘90s.

Like any good Xer-identifying X/Y-cusp kid, I realize that one of the great crimes of the boomers was their wholesale inability to get beyond the warm rose-colored glow of the whole “Spirit of the ‘60s” thing. And it seems that I myself am dancing perilously close to the flame of “You had to be there, dude.”

I suppose that I’ve been dwelling on that dumb, rotten, abominable Weezer record. Yesterday I was perusing the AV Club’s Best Songs of 2008 So Far feature, and they provided an embedded version of the “Pork and Beans” video. Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to see what kind of video shenanigans were in store for Weezer circa 2008. As I’m sure you savvy folks all know, the video features a goodly number of wacky YouTube people doing their shtick as part of some Weezerific po-mo jumble. I had NO first hand experience of these YouTubers, mind you. They were all just things I’d read about or glanced briefly at out on the fell blog-swamp of the internet. And that’s when I realized that Weezer (and by extension the whole ‘90s self-referential, pop-culture-addled sensibility) has outlived its usefulness, morphing into something even more quirk-obsessed and self-congratulatory than even the smuggest *wink-nudge* Mike Myers “Hey, did you get my joke” bit. Rather than mere Happy Days pastiche or even a Muppet Show tribute, the “Pork and Beans” video is a riot of “Hey, you remember this thing from last month’s internet, right?!” It’s all light sabers, dancing bananas, geographically-challenged beauty queens and crying, Britney-defending guys.

“Pork and Beans”

UPDATE — The video is no longer available as embedded content. Click here to link out to the video.

Basically, now that the whole “Royale with Cheese” bit is more than a decade and a half old, comedy by way of smugly mentioning things that people have heard of has mostly worn out its welcome. I can’t so much claim this realization as my own. In fact, I ran a much smarter-sounding but dumber-in-reality hypothesis by my wife who set me straight. Basically her argument about the ‘90s is that once upon a time some meta-flavored, referential-type things were kind of new and funny and charming. Then teenage boys (or perhaps boys in general) glommed onto this style and ran it into the ground by quoting snippets and self-involvedly repeating tales of their own boy-type exploits as if they were just as clever as their beloved movie snippets.

And I was all like, “Well, what about that time Matt kicked Byron square in the ass and we were all like ‘Um, you kicked his ass. Heh, heh.’” My wife rolled her eyes, and admitted that I pretty much “bent my wookie” in this attempt at smartness and insight. In short, I am part of the problem – because I am a boy and because I often mistake my own knowing about and mantra-like repeating of garbage that ANYONE can rent or download for some kind of towering personal achievement.

I suppose that I lazily attribute my tremendous Simpsons-quoting and Star Wars-joke-getting abilities to coming of age in the fat and meaningless Clinton years. I mean, I *am* a product of the ‘90s. I *had* to become this particular kind of terminally adolescent, intellectually-lightweight dillweed. If one buys the overall cultural myth, me and millions of semi-smart guys like me were basically pumped full of the mental/emotional equivalent of Twinkie filling before being pitched into the fearsome sea of dread that is Geo. W. Bush’s Amurrica. Of course, my gut tells me to blame the boomers – to blame them for slathering me in advertising and action figures, to blame them for setting unrealistic expectations of youth culture groundswell, to blame them for accepting a way of life that forces me to park my ass in a little beige cubicle, pretending to work.

Convinced of my own specialness and of my own generational victimhood, I decided to go back to *the* album that most reminds me of my beloved 1990s.

For the record, I absolutely love Monster. It hit me at a time before I was overly concerned about whether or not a given album was “the band’s best” or was “well received.” It’s an album that I love viscerally. I know every fuzzy, feedback-drenched cranny. Each vocal inflection is burned into my brain in orange and black and violent green. I can feel each drum fill and bass whump coming about eight bars away. I can’t even begin to estimate how many times I’ve heard this record. I expected that a really close “reading” of this very ‘90s album would reveal all manner of referential ‘90s-style disingenuousness.

I apparently heard this album so many times that I forgot what it was about. I’d mixed it up with my own teenaged rememberings, my own lousy personal mythology. Obviously, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” references a specific attack on Dan Rather, but not as a winking sort of smartipance thing – more as a springboard for a trip down the rabbit hole to a place where pop culture is a sprawling, confusing canker. The album is obsessed with poses and manufactured identity and sexual politics. It’s an attempt to retain authenticity and self in a world that demands artifice and self-aggrandizement.

“I Took Your Name”

I’ll be your albatross,
devil dog, Jesus Lord
I don’t wanna be Iggy Pop,
but if that’s what it takes

Even “Let Me In” (a.k.a. the song about dead Kurt Cobain) is an honest plaint – not a coy rockstar move. I suppose I forgot that much of what the ‘90s were about was the at times embarrassing expression of raw emotion – the so fucking what/everything matters dichotomy outlined ever so subtly in the 1994 film S.F.W. All that “whatever, nevermind” aloofness was a cover for hurt feelings and unsureness and general existential dread in a world where one wrong decision or flunked test could ruin your chances forever.

In a way R.E.M. was a special band for me because they were older and seemed cooler and their songs were oblique enough that you had to work at figuring them out. They operated according to a different set of rules than regular long-haired rock bands. They seemed smart. And they offered a way out and through. They were non-conformist but not self-destructive. Essentially, they were a model of how you could grow up without dumbing down or ignoring stuff that was grey or troubling. I guess I got that intuitively when I was a stupid teenager. And now that I’m older, I suppose my tendency is to worship my own stupid teenage behavior – a trap that will leave me as lame as “The Red Album” if I don’t watch it.

I guess that my wife’s reminder that boys are stupid and yesterday’s Beavis and Butthead marathon was a swift kick in the pants. I shouldn’t ever get too pleased with my own cleverness. Cleverness is almost always a cover for some kind of gnawing uncertainty or hurt or dissatisfaction – a smart and sensitive version of the macho strutting that “alternative” culture supposedly dismantled forever and ever (or at least until Fred Durst showed up).

If the ‘90s had a central thesis, it was that people mostly kind of suck because they are stupid and hurtful and wounded and pretentious. This kind of misanthropy has fallen out of favor because it requires that folks employ uncool things like political correctness and “awareness,” admitting that we might be assholes ourselves. It’s tempting always to be the clever bastard with a snappy comeback. But deep down, we know that this kind of arrogance leads nowhere good.

Gee Dub Gives the Single Finger Salute

“Irony is the shackles of youth.”

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