*ahem* This entry is the first in a series of what I will henceforth dub “Pontifications.” It will be nothing more than list of things which have occurred to me, ranked in an order either completely random or so cryptic it’s not worth trying to decode. As a person who spends a lot of time mulling over strong, declarative statements that no one feels like listening to, this medium will be rendered to function as a kind of pressure-release valve for me.
I make no apologies. This kind of arrogant, “I see it this way” crap is why all of you love me in the first place. It’s sad, but you know it’s true. Also, at any given time, I’m anywhere from 100 to 30 percent serious. This is intended to be entertaining, you don’t have to take it to the bank all the time.
Let us begin “Pontifications!”
ONE: THERE ARE ONLY TWO GOOD “EMO” BANDS. Emo, as many of you know, is a breed of post-punk rock and roll which is characterized by lyrical fascination with dysfunctional romantic relationships, high-pitched male vocals, and (sometimes) slightly unconventional song structures. Or, put a different way, it’s a bunch of squealing whining with no hooks. Now I would *like* to come down on the second version of that statement, but if any one band takes this musical medium and pummels something worthwhile out of it, I am forced to pause. If two bands do it, that is just barely enough interference to force grumbling concession from me. I cannot write off the entire musical style as a whole, I can only report that it tends to fail.
The first of these good bands is the better of the two: Fall Out Boy. On the eve of releasing their fourth major album sometime this fall, this infuriating four-man squadron of teenage angst cannot seem to release an album that doesn’t, as they say, “drop bombs on your moms.” Every time these jerks hit the studio, they come back with a CD full of potential “singles.” They take that feeling you get from the catchiest song on an album and, against all laws of musical physics, spread it out over the entire running time. This is distressing for several reasons: 1) It throws into sharp relief how inconsistent all the other CDs you own are, and destroys your tolerance for this fact, 2) it takes “emo” and creates something actually great with it. Not tolerable, not even above-par, but freaking awesome.
That’s just not right. Emo is not allowed to be “great;” it’s one of the lamest breeds of music ever concocted. The proof of Fall Out Boy’s wonderfulness lies in the fact that emo purists thumb their noses at them, much the same way, they would have you believe, as a Rage Against the Machine fan might do at Limp Bizkit. Don’t be put-off by these people if they tell you, “FOB is not good emo, it’s corporate stuff. I know emo, I’ll find you some good emo.” When someone tells you this, replace the word “emo” with “feces” as they speak, and you will understand why what they’re telling you is ridiculous. These “purists” are in love with a genre of music that is absolute human waste, so of course they don’t like it when someone makes it sound good.
You know who does tend to like Fall Out Boy? Rappers. Jay-Z does the “intro” on their last album, “Infinity on High.” Now we can debate the artistic integrity of a lot of hip-hop today, but there is one thing rappers understand better than anyone: hooks. Commercial hip-hop has to get its audience shaking what their mommas gave them in ten seconds flat or someone else will, so they understand “catchy” better than anyone alive. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that more than a few of them are giant FOB fans, and will confess this fact in interviews with little regret.
Anyway, the point here is simple: Fall Out Boy is a classic band. They are the luminaries of a genre which I hate to admit even has luminaries. And it’s not just their stunning, album-for-album consistency either; their lead singer, Patrick Stump, has a soaring range and nails his notes pitch-perfect. In a live setting, the band throws themselves at the audience with reckless abandon, letting the polish slip on their performance a little but upping the vigor considerably–that’s how it should be. And while the lyrics, courtesy of bassist Pete Wentz, can fall down into standard emo fare quite often, Stump is always there to save the band, finding just the right bittersweet, acidic, brutal musical expression of Wentz’s pent-up immaturity.
Worst of all, for reasons that elude me, the damned thing has shelf-life. You can crack open “Take This to Your Grave” anytime and still get a rush from it, and that’s no less true for “From Under the Cork Tree” and “Infinity on High.” Most hook-y music dies off, but much like Run-DMC back in the 80s, FOB create a weird breed of catchy that keeps you coming back for more.
Yes, Pete Wentz is kind of a tool in real life, but the band is aware of this fact. Did you know Patrick once punched him in the face while they were in the studio? Anyway, I don’t know why people are still clinging to the illusion that people with artistic ability enough to make them world-famous are somehow also balanced, likable people. The math on that just never ads up, but we keep acting surprised when great musicians are alcoholic, self-absorbed attention whores. We need to make peace with this reality, folks.
The other good emo band is The Get Up Kids. A much more friendly choice to the emo elite, they give their woebegone genre a much-needed lift by mixing it with a homespun, “your-best-friend’s-awesome-band” earnestness. They sound like guys who rehearsed in your basement on Saturdays and got really good doing it. If Hootie and the Blowfish were a “bar band,” then these guys are a “basement band.” Yes, the lead singer loves his nasal style of singing ever so much, and he’s not as spot-on with the pitch as Patrick Stump, but he means every last word. I can practically hear his diaphragm spasming with agony at the end of each song, and I respect that.
TWO: JAIL TIME FOR THOSE CAUGHT SMOKING WEED NEEDS A DOWNGRADE
Come on. Weed? Don’t get me wrong, it shouldn’t be legal, and the practice of “getting high” is for the weak and/or stupid, but there is no way on God’s green earth that the punishment fits the crime here. Marijuana is ridiculous, but it’s not exactly 8-ball heroin, people. Its danger as a gateway drug can be effectively neutralized by better parenting and tougher regulations on harder drugs, but people are always going to smoke it, and we’re going to have to make peace with that on some level, much the same way we make peace with going five to ten over the speed limit. By all means, if you catch someone with weed, let’s fine the crap out of them and stick it on their record, or even better let’s stick them in community service, but I don’t think an orange jumpsuit is quite justified.
Meantime, there are some other things that I think could use an upgrade in/introduction to jail-esque punishment:
1. Sexual assault. Hit ‘em harder. I’m not going to come down on hazy, uncertain stuff where alcohol is involved, but if we’ve got ourselves assault and battery with a side of sexual coercion, I say the jail time and the permanent damage to one’s record need to skyrocket. I don’t see why the jail time for such an act should be anything less than crippling.
2. People who talk in movies. Now this is not a group of people we’ve been putting in the clinker, but I propose we start. How can anyone be so self-absorbed? How can anyone care so little for the basic comfort and enjoyment of their fellow man? Now we’ve all maybe made a little too much ruckus in a theater before, but the difference between a movie-talker and the rest of humanity is that when you tell a decent person they’re being loud, they shut the hell up. Movie-talkers actually get angry at you for pointing out their incredible insensitivity. Why? Because they can’t deal with it. They’re the stars of their own little movies in their heads, and the script doesn’t call for a hard dose of reality. Their crushingly inconsiderate natures don’t compute with the “fiction” filters they affix permanently in front of their senses before they perceive what’s going on around them, so they block them out. I want these people out of the gene pool, post haste.
3. People who hate reading. What? You hate reading? You have active distaste for the foundation of organized society and culture? Do you also dislike music? How about happiness, do you hate that too? No, these people need professional help. Jail is probably not for them, let’s just get some kind of…rehab program or something. Whatever causes this malfunction, I think we can safely assume it needs to be nipped in the bud. You show me a great politician, a timeless artist, or a world-renowned philanthropist that doesn’t effing love to read and I’ll show you a pig that flies. And I’m not picky here, you don’t have to be into Shakespeare or Lord Byron, just some kind of literature. Poetry? Great. Short stories? Bring it. Comic books? Go for it. Hell, get into the Sports section of the newspaper if that’s what you like, but goodness gracious, find something! If you’re reading this, and you hate reading, I have three words for you: go fix it.
4. People who love “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Look, we’ve all been thinking it, I’m just going to be the guy who says it: there’s something really wrong with you all, and I think you need to spend some time in solitary confinement or something. First of all, that movie is awful. Secondly, rabid fans of the thing just behave…wrongly. I mean, we rag on Trekkies a lot, but they’re harmless, and they love the sense of wonder and possibility afforded them by space exploration, even in the abstract. I can respect that. Same thing for comic book geeks; I mean, have you ever read “Watchmen” or “Batman: The Long Halloween”? That is some serious, three-dimensional drama going on there, and rabid obsession with compelling storytelling is fine by me. But “Rocky Horror” is like a convention of wanna-be vampires, it’s just creepy. They congregate in smelly, run-down movie theaters at midnight in outfits that suggest repressed childhood trauma, sing music that is utterly terrible, and participate in the weirdest, most disturbing sexual innuendo ever witnessed in Western culture. Ugh. Again, maybe therapy is the best thing for this group.
THREE: LED ZEPPELIN IS AWESOME. Seriously, they are. It’s just not up for debate.
FOUR: NO MATTER HOW MUCH GEORGE LUCAS HURTS US, WE CAN’T STOP LOVING HIM. Yeah, yeah, I know, we all pretended “Episode III” was pretty good, and it kind of was, but when you sleep off that special giddiness that only “Star Wars” can give…you know it didn’t quite make it. The level of disappointment we all had to go through over the past couple of years was nothing short of massive. Now we gamers had the incredible “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,” whose story rivaled the original trilogy for greatness, but I don’t know how the rest of you have survived. It’s been a hard road.
But we’re going to let it go. Don’t act like you’re pissed off and you’ll never forgive him, you will. You have to, he’s George Lucas. He single-handedly erected the most compelling persistent science fiction universe ever made. And my gosh, were the first three good; even “Return of the Jedi” with its dumb little Ewoks still rocked the casbah. The simple fact is, he’s just given us too much, we’re never going to be able to hold it against him, no matter how many times he kind of lets us down.
And it’s not like Episodes I-III were awful, they just weren’t good enough. By far, the worst was Episode I, even in spite of how bangin’ Darth Maul was, because little Anakin was just that bad, and Jar Jar Binks was…well, he was Jar Jar Binks. Remember the space fight at the end? No? Exactly. It sucked, that’s why you don’t remember it. I almost want to give them an award for finding a way to make dogfighting in outer space mundane. Episode II was actually okay, but the lightsaber stuff didn’t measure up, and then Episode III came the closest to really belonging in the “Star Wars” canon. Maybe it even just made it. But even if all three of them had been as offensive to God as the fanboys were screaming they were, we’d all still forgive him. It’s just not in our power not to.
0 Responses to “Let the Indulgence Begin (Pontifications 1)”