Anything you can do, I can't do better
6/6/04 (#30)
It would be an exaggeration to say that every twenty-or-thirty-something male* in Portland is in a band. Thus, I will dispense with overstatement and aim for accurate figures: With the exception of eleven tone-deaf or disinterested particulars, every twenty-or-thirty-something male in Portland is in a band. And it's not just that I know a lot of musicians---a recent Sunday afternoon running errands allowed me to overhear at every stop that this shaggy man's band was getting ready to mix down their new project, or that neatly coifed man's band was trying to replace their keyboard player, or the generic-indie-rocker pizza maker was looking for rehearsal space for his new "pop noise" project. (While I love genre-bending as much as the next guy---and as my research figures support, the next guy is certainly in a band that claims to be genre-bending---"pop noise" seems like a contradiction in terms on a level with "folk metal".) The point is, everyone and his brother plays music. I live across the street from a drummer; Another drummer lives behind him; A local punk semi-star lives two houses away; Six houses up from him, a band rehearses almost every night.
And I love it! Music is such a creative endeavor, providing an outlet for rage and a canvas for sonic collage, lyrics giving voice to the little demons in our heads that, if they couldn't scream over a distorted guitar, might yell at strangers in traffic or pick fights with acquaintances in bars. None of my musical friends are taggers or vandals or hellions---they all have something more important to do with their energy. 10,000 people making 10,000 variations of sound. Best of all, the vast majority of these musicians use the very same instruments for their sonic expression. Guitar, bass, drums, keyboard are the outlets of choice, and despite the similarities---the guitar has six strings and 20-some-odd frets, that's all you get to work with---the variety of sounds is seemingly endless. It's Socialism in its purest form. 10,000 people who are all complete peers.
Yet despite this myriad of sound that is being created, there are some who think they are "better" than others. This phenomenon never ceases to amaze me. Music is so obviously not a qualitative art form---if it were, how could you explain bands that you love getting no attention and bands that you hate getting lots of it? Frank Zappa spoke a line that I quote often: "It doesn't necessarily mean you are wrong just because a few million people think you are." Frank Zappa was an incredibly influential artist, his followers more devout than the vast majority of fair-weather fans listening to the Goo Goo Dolls or the Foo Fighters.** Yet the majority of the population (including yours truly) would find sitting through a complete Zappa album side to be a challenging, even annoying experience. I love his interviews, loved his autobiography, have complete respect for his ideas---but his music? I just don't "get it".
But that doesn't make him bad. I hate mushrooms, but other people eat them by the bushel, so they obviously aren't bad***. I just don't like mushrooms.
My friends in Note Notas had played a local show with a Swedish band, touring on their record label's dime, and these travelers were arrogant pricks. Now perhaps they are simply arrogant pricks and coincidentally play music, but their air was that of musical saviors, as if the band opening for them was simply filler, live-action muzak that the crowd was required to endure until their champions took the stage and gave them the rock they were all waiting for. No camaraderie, no courtesy, unable to see past their own egos. And they weren't even the headliners.
I was at that show. I walked out.
Music isn't a competition. No band will EVER be better than the other bands on the bill. You can be faster, or louder, or tighter, or even catchier than then other bands---but "better" is simply an impossibility. After all, what is "better"? Appealing to more people? If that is the recipe, then you simply need to make the most vanilla rock you possibly can, aim for the lowest common denominator and start playing. Hootie and the Blowfish did this. Matchbox 20 does this.** But popularity doesn't make you "better". It simply makes you more popular. (When F Scott Fitzgerald tried to explain that "the rich are different than you and me", Hemingway famously replied, "Yes, they have more money." True of these bands as well.)
I once heard Billy idol being interviewed and he was asked how he felt about being a "sex object". He laughed it off, sincerely, indicating that the whole premise was absurd. I paraphrase him here: "Everyone is a sex object. At work, you are a sex object to one or some of your coworkers. When you walk down the street, you are a sex object. I suppose the only way to avoid being a sex object is to walk down the street wearing a burlap bag---but then, there's going to be that guy who gets turned on by burlap bags and you are still a sex object." That encapsulates music to me---no matter what you do, be it write catchy-ass hooks or knock out grooves on a pickle barrel or intentionally create dissonant noise, someone, somewhere is going to think that is the greatest music ever made. Artis the Spoonman hasn't sold 1% of the records that Outkast has, but they both kick ass, they both make me feel more alive when I listen than I did before the record started. What possible criteria could be used to determine whether Artis is "better" than Outkast? It's an absurd concept. It's like trying to determine if pizza is a better food than chicken sandwiches----why would you try? Just be grateful that both exist, and bon appetite.
Yet the "business" end of the music business pretends to have an understanding of "better". Record labels continue to have a stranglehold on the most powerful radio waves, yet their determination of "good" is always based on this simple litmus test: "Is this going to make us money?" (I promise you, if you could guarantee that a recording of a monkey playing drums and a cat walking up and down a piano keyboard would sell 4 million units, they would have the animals signed to a contract in a week.) (By the way, sales are measured in "units", not records. Bands release "new product." The vocabulary says it all.) Music magazines are exactly the same, driven by advertising dollars, and if the feline/monkey duet sold 4 million units, mags would scramble to get a cover photo of the two dressed in fake afros and sunglasses. (I recently heard a great word-of-mouth review of Portland's Mercury: "If they would just once say the phrase 'no one likes this, but I think it's great' or the inverse 'everyone likes this, but I think it's shit', I would give them my respect. But they won't." (A cynical assessment to be sure, yet accurate for many magazines besides The Mercury.) Record labels are notorious for making deals under which an artist must sell thousands, even hundreds of thousands of units in order to make any money for themselves, each $16.00 CD sold providing only pennies toward the artist's recoup, then these labels lash out at file swapping as "taking money from the artists"? Please. Next we'll have tobacco lobbyists claiming that banning indoor smoking is denying the rights of the people who want to breathe second hand smoke.
I have always wondered what would happen if everyone in the United States could hear all of the music that was available. I feel confident that Jay-Z would sell less and The Roots would sell more; Jason Mraz would sell less and Hamell On Trial would sell more. It's not that one is better than the other---it's simply that we all march to the beat of a different proverbial drummer, and there are 100,000 drummers out there whose beats you haven't heard; 100,000 men and women physically manipulating a board strung with six wires, each making music you wouldn't even know to dream of, sounds stuck in a single psyche, eternally searching for an exit.
And not one note of it is "better" than the next.
* Women, too, I know. But I don't hear women openly talking about it in pizza parlors and paper stores like I do with men.
** I chose these bands as examples only. While they are easy targets for their pop sensibilities, I find some aspects of each to be respectable and I won't change the radio when they come on. (Well, except Hootie, because they suck.)
*** yes they are. They're horrible.
©2004 wpreagan
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