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Shock rocks
By Kimberly Chun
TWO THOUSAND AND
three was the year that I lost my hearing. That's probably obvious,
judging from my last couple of record reviews. Actually I can still
hear, though that wack John Mayer is making me wish I could swear
off listening. –OK, that was a cheap, tawdry ploy for attention.
Yet I think I lost something vital associated with the inner ear.
Call it a sense of balance, perspective, or an ability to focus.
That much is clear as I scan the piles of CDs teetering on and around
my desk, the innumerable stories about the death throes of the music
industry, and more reductionist glossy evidence of pop boiled down
to the latest boff. Is the biggest music story of the year the Kiss,
the Grope, or the Stabbing Pain in the Heart?
I feel like I'm searching
for meaning in the tea leaves of Snoop Dogg's reality-comedy show.
I'm testing the depth in the Photoshopped-into-oblivion pores of
Britney Spears's come-hither shoulder. I'm looking for authenticity
in Michael Jackson's dimple. What does it matter? What's to love?
And furthermore, where's the love – except maybe on this year's
Forever Changes Concert CD?
Stuck on endless shuffle
and repeat, you have to wonder what's been forgotten. It's easy
to forget about the rest of the country when you're living in what
I've heard more than one touring musician refer to as the "free
state" of San Francisco. While we're flirting with Matt Gonzalez
– and the notion of giving the Green Party its biggest victory
– the rest of the country seems to be retreating into armored
shells of cultural conservatism and religious fundamentalism, poking
out occasionally to whittle away at various freedoms, protections,
and rights such as Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, and the
First Amendment, all in the name of freedom. I'm starting to zone
out just thinking about that abstract yet extremely anxiety-making
paradigm, as a sort of defensive, end-time mechanism.
Losing and winning, remembering
and forgetting seem to be on everyone's reptilian backbrain. Country
vocalist Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten?" comes to
mind when I happen to catch his DreamWorks labelmate Toby Keith
on TV singing "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry
American)" during the halftime show of the Thanksgiving Day
Dallas Cowboys-Miami Dolphins game. There's Keith standing tall
and firm, clad in buckskin like Custer. The former semipro Oklahoma
Driller is now playing defensive tackle against the swarthy anti-American
hordes – here buried beneath the overblown absurdity of a massively
overcompensating halftime spectacle outfitted with frantic, grinning
legions of precision-gyrating Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Little-girl
counterparts in bared-midriff replica costumes bring up the rear
– and you wonder why pedophilia is all over the news?
The CBS cameras keep
keying in on the black horn player in Keith's band. Maybe that move
is a balm to all those people of color out there who might not be
able to get down with Keith's embrace of his "flag-waving redneck"
reputation, or perhaps it's just a reaction to the overdose of yee-haw
on-screen. As Keith sings, "Oh, justice will be served and
the battle will rage / This big dog will fight when you rattle his
cage / You'll be sorry that you messed with the US of A / 'Cause
we'll put a boot in your ass / It's the American way" (is it
really possible for these lyrics to have a life outside of some
comedy skit or a Mono Pause or Negativland album?), a montage flashes
across the screen of U.S. Army troops, the Salvation Army serving
food to the needy, and men in Dallas Cowboy T-shirts high-fiving
possibly less-fortunate swarthy types.
Roll over the opposition
and conflate these three kings, these three "armies,"
into one big "I'm just here to help!" force for good,
not bad. For real. Dude. It's kind of like breaking down those explosions
in the cover art of Keith's new album, Shock'n Y'all –
you can read those as either fireworks or rocket fire. Entertainment
Weekly's recent rhapsodic feature on Keith (ready for his close-up
and styled to look tough and outlaw like a young, beefed-up James
Hetfield) isn't the only revisionist history going on.
Keith – now the
biggest star in country music and said to have five gold or platinum
albums and 13 Top 10 singles to his name – is lost amid the
billowing smoke on the field, a victim of the big-game bulldozer
mentality of buzz, sensation, and blockbuster shock and awe. The
title of Shock'n Y'all should prove he's having fun with
his status as the musical figurehead for American jingoism. In the
words of the man himself, on live performance and audience reaction,
"You just keep feeding the monster, you know." Turkey,
anyone?
With Thanksgiving going
on all around me, I can't argue with that just-keep-feeding attitude.
Feed – don't fail me now. But studying Keith's opening words
to Shock'n Y'all's "Taliban," "I'm just a
middle-aged Middle-Eastern camel-heardin' man / I got a little two-bedroom
cave here in North Afghanistan," I've found that words have.
Waylon, Willie, and the boys – like Merle and "Okie from
Muskogee" – never wrote it so lame and clunky. So, struck
dumb, and being sort of deaf, I decided to resort to "Real
Roxanne" tactics as my only recourse. Maybe this'll be a hit.
Or get me hit.
"I can't believe
this song exists / Those first lines are hella ludicrous / Now I'm
all for real folks telling it like it is / But this music's real
bad – I can't buy this / If this kind of junk moves units by
the boatload / I'll wish I was left for deaf, at the end of a dirt
road / Hey, that's just the thing for the end of my piece / Lemme
spit a rhyme making fun of Toby Keith."
In the words of Keith,
y'all like me now?
A poppy top 10 (as
of press time and in sorta alphabetical order)
• Cat Power, You
Are Free (Matador)
• Deerhoof, Apple
O' (Kill Rock Stars)
• Dynasty, Dynasty
(Tigerbeat6)
• Moving objects:
Gossip, Movement (Kill Rock Stars), or My Morning Jacket,
It Still Moves (ATO/RCA)
• OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The
Love Below (LaFace/Arista)
• Pernice Brothers,
Yours, Mine and Ours (Ashmont)
• M. Ward, Transfiguration
of Vincent (Merge)
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
Fever to Tell (Interscope)
• A toss-up; they
can duke it out: Cass McCombs, A (Monitor), or 50 Cent, Get
Rich or Die Tryin' (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope)
• Speaking of,
and sneaking in, some ancient, admirable history: Free Design, Kites
Are Fun (Light in the Attic); Java: Court Gamelan, Volume
III (Nonesuch Explorer Series); Neil Young, On the Beach
(Reprise); Horace Andy, Best of Horace Andy (2BI
II/Liberty/United Artists); Michael Yonkers Band, Microminiature
Love (Sub Pop)
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last month's noise.
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