Let's Rock for a Multilateral Foreign Policy!
And unlike many of their peers, !!! have politics.
That's a line from Allmusic's review of !!!'s most recent album. I liked this album; what bothers me is the idea that the band's politics somehow add to its value. When a band or artist has a political opinion, it becomes a point of awe for music writers.
This kind of fawning also encourages musicians to confuse their shows with MoveOn rallies. I remember Ted Leo saying, before playing "I'm a Ghost" at a show at U of C last year: "This song is about this haunted house...no. It's actually about alienation from the political process." Luckily, the song isn't as stunted with self-righteousness as that intro would suggest. A lot of the artists I like will wank on and on about their politics in interviews, but what really matters is that, thank fuck, they're better at writing their songs than at rattling off New Left screeds.
Sure, you can claim that politics fuel a band's energy, but if the music is good, the politics are incidental. When Ted Leo plays "I'm a Ghost," I don't experience his pacifist vegan fury. I experience something that I can apply to whatever I want, because it's abstract enough to let me do that. He doesn't cram in a bunch of clunky allusions to the butterfly ballot or whatever--just enough hints that you could guess that maybe that's what it's about (and maybe even that's wrong). Ted Leo's political opinions, if you crunch them down, probably are not all that original. So the only things that really matter is that he writes good songs and plays them well, whether he's driven by political conviction or a voracious love of cupcakes.
Not that audiences aren't buying into this stuff. During his set at Lollapalooza last year, Les Claypool said, "I'm scared of this administration" and got a fucking roar of applause. That's right. Those people gave a fuck what Les Claypool--a guy who looks like a child molester with a six-string bass--thought about poltiics. Knocking Bush is an easy crowd-stinger, like screaming out "Good to be in (insert tour stop here)!" or "I love you all!"
Or this Pitchfork headline: "Radiohead Announce Euro Tour, Yorke Disses Blair"--who gives a shit (about the second part)? Why treat is as news? What's really stupid, though, is apparently the AP put it on the wire after reading about it in NME. From Britain's batshit music press to Ye Olde backbone of world news.
That's a line from Allmusic's review of !!!'s most recent album. I liked this album; what bothers me is the idea that the band's politics somehow add to its value. When a band or artist has a political opinion, it becomes a point of awe for music writers.
This kind of fawning also encourages musicians to confuse their shows with MoveOn rallies. I remember Ted Leo saying, before playing "I'm a Ghost" at a show at U of C last year: "This song is about this haunted house...no. It's actually about alienation from the political process." Luckily, the song isn't as stunted with self-righteousness as that intro would suggest. A lot of the artists I like will wank on and on about their politics in interviews, but what really matters is that, thank fuck, they're better at writing their songs than at rattling off New Left screeds.
Sure, you can claim that politics fuel a band's energy, but if the music is good, the politics are incidental. When Ted Leo plays "I'm a Ghost," I don't experience his pacifist vegan fury. I experience something that I can apply to whatever I want, because it's abstract enough to let me do that. He doesn't cram in a bunch of clunky allusions to the butterfly ballot or whatever--just enough hints that you could guess that maybe that's what it's about (and maybe even that's wrong). Ted Leo's political opinions, if you crunch them down, probably are not all that original. So the only things that really matter is that he writes good songs and plays them well, whether he's driven by political conviction or a voracious love of cupcakes.
Not that audiences aren't buying into this stuff. During his set at Lollapalooza last year, Les Claypool said, "I'm scared of this administration" and got a fucking roar of applause. That's right. Those people gave a fuck what Les Claypool--a guy who looks like a child molester with a six-string bass--thought about poltiics. Knocking Bush is an easy crowd-stinger, like screaming out "Good to be in (insert tour stop here)!" or "I love you all!"
Or this Pitchfork headline: "Radiohead Announce Euro Tour, Yorke Disses Blair"--who gives a shit (about the second part)? Why treat is as news? What's really stupid, though, is apparently the AP put it on the wire after reading about it in NME. From Britain's batshit music press to Ye Olde backbone of world news.
posted by Scott at 11:50 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home