#46 -Thinning the Flock

Thinning the Flock

11/15/04 (#46)

Mainstream rock and roll can easily be reduced to formulas. There are certainly bands who defy categorization, who try to overturn every expectation, but the price they pay for this maverick approach is paltry record sales -- the records that sell are those that fit the adage my friend Craig Wood taught me at age 17: "People don't know what they like, but they like what they know."

Record labels make money understanding these formulas, mapping the pleasure buttons that certain tempos and scale intervals press, using this information to predict a particular demographic's response to the aural stimuli. At times, it's even the artists themselves — let's be honest, how long has it been since Aerosmith has sounded like they mean it? They've had huge hits by creating the soundtrack for a 14-year-old's broken heart (or a shallower 28-year-old), but it's hard to believe that they possess even a fraction of the enthusiasm they felt during the recording of Toys in the Attic.

Personally, I don't feel that formulaic music is necessarily a bad thing. I think "White Trash Heroes" by Archers of Loaf is a masterpiece, a shamefully overlooked blend of majesty and immediacy, an exhibition of emotions run directly through a distortion pedal; yet some of my friends sum it up with a shrug and, "Yeah, pretty good". Others listen with a look that makes me think they'll change the disc the moment I cease defending the CD player.

Such is the case with all music, and I don't think that everyone's choices should be limited to either liking what I deem to be "worthy" music or selling the stereo. Some folks are never going to like Archers of Loaf, so bless their souls for liking the sound of a cheesy top-40 radio song more than the k-chenk of a gun barrel being loaded or the rantings of a bloated radio talk show host (referring to the ego, not the waistline). "Fashion Bleeds" (track one from the aforementioned album) is never going to emit from the tinny speakers of my neighbor's Ford Taurus, so I'm glad Celine Dion speaks to her. I don't have to like it, and much of it, I don't. (Especially Celine Dion, the nation of Canada's least palatable export.)

Besides, sometimes the formula works. Pete Yorn is not forging any new ground with his guitar-based three-minute ditties, but his music is so deeply steeped in enthusiasm that his debut album plays like a greatest hits collection. He sounds familiar, but his touchstones remain just out of listener's reach. His melodies are simple and sincere, and his songs sound so fresh that the craft behind them is obscured by their energy. Is he an influential force on the future of music? Unlikely. But I don't want to spend every day exploring the stretch marks at the edge of rock and roll; sometimes, I just want to bob my head in traffic and sing along with a catchy chorus. Pete Yorn provides that---new and exciting but somehow reassuring. Metaphorically, he is a new meal cooked with my favorite, familiar spices.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Sheryl Crow. She is a hash of classic-rock leftovers served on a freshly painted plate with the pretension that you are getting something new.

I want to emphasize, I have defended Sheryl Crow in the past. She writes good hooks, her music is easily digested, and I admit, I still recall the first moment I heard "There Goes the Neighborhood", driving down SW Vista with the radio loud, hoping that the DJ would hit "repeat" the moment that the song ended. Several times I defended her against my wife's quick dismissals, emphasizing that there was more merit than fluff. It was at least better than Celine Dion.

But a chance viewing of Austin City Limits this week confirms that my wife was right all along. More floozy than bluesy, more harlot than starlet, I feel like a fool who vouched for a co-worker's reputation moments before she ran off with the till.

I should have seen the clues:

My friend Christine pointed out the frustrating anomalies in Crow's lyrics, best demonstrated with the song "Strong Enough." On the surface, it would seem to be the declaration of independence by a woman committed to her own sense of self:

I have a face I cannot show
I make the rules up as I go
Just try and love me if you can
Are you strong enough to be my man?

Admirable, until one gets to the bridge:

Lie to me, I promise to believe
Lie to me, but please don't leave

If this is Crow's idea of feminism, can we please ask Alanis Morrisette to return to the podium? The girls of the world need her insightful complexities.

Add to that Crow's willingness to display her buff 40-year old body, as if celebrating the rail-thin frame of a twenty-something vixen is playing into the hands of Madison Avenue stereotypes, but admiring the rail-thin frame of a tanned middle-aged woman is striking a blow for the acceptance of diverse body types.

The Austin City Limits show only underscored her refusal to separate her image from her art. ACL is one of the nation's premier venues for the difficult-to-categorize artist, hosting musicians as diverse as Lyle Lovett (country-tinged singer/songwriter), Ozomatli (Latin-influenced hip-hop funk), Joss Stone (talented teen blues singer), and Michael McDonald (ex-Doobie Brother soul crooner.) It is a public television show, so it reaches almost every house that has a TV (no cable subscription required), and it is an ideal vehicle for exhibiting one's music to a national audience: no flashy videos, no sound bytes, just 55 minutes to sing your songs. How did Miss Crow take advantage of this unique opportunity? She dressed in stiletto heels and a skirt so short it appeared that she had to buttress her butt cheeks so that they didn't extend below the hem. While I would normally never make a comment about an artist's choice of clothing, the previously mentioned lyrical oxymorons displayed alongside an improbable amount of bare thigh seemed to make one clear statement: "If I was fat, I'd be the lead singer of the house band at a biker bar in Wichita." But she's not, so I was watching her on national TV. (Perhaps I am being too harsh -- maybe she is simply supplying the product that she knows the customer came to consume. Perhaps I'm talking feminism when the subject is marketing.) Suffice to say, Lyle Lovett has bared no flesh on his many ACL appearances. (Though looking at Lyle, perhaps that was at the request of the producers.)

But ACL is about the music, so let's talk about the music.

First, a pet peeve: the multi-instrument band leader. I have great admiration for people who can play multiple instruments, and such performers are a great benefit to the band in which they play. But watching Crow spend much of the show switching between electric guitar, bass (note: she's not a great bass player), and acoustic guitar was baffling -- why hire a bass player if you aren't going to let him play bass? Hers was not an effort to provide more textures for the sound, but an ego-massaging opportunity to show off her ability to play bland pop songs on a variety of instruments.

To her credit, she really can write a hook: "If It Makes You Happy" is a chorus that clings to your psyche like a barnacle to a porous stone, the 15-second refrain making up for the rather ordinary verses that precede it; and "My Favorite Mistake" is a solid classic-rock song that defies you to name the era in which it was written. But for each of her genuine moments of musical epiphany, there are a handful of disposal fillers like "All I Wanna Do" and "You're an Original". (The album version of the latter features backing vocals by Lenny Kravitz -- damn, Lenny and Sheryl singing "You're an original, baby" should certainly have garnered them a Grammy for "Best Irony on a Pop Record.")

But despite their catchiness, her hooks possess a certain vacuous quality. Guided By Voices writes hooks, but their sing-along songs are full of complexity and grace; her songs are more like campfire songs for the short-term memory deficient, the logical next step for someone afraid to explore the harmonic complexities of the Beach Boys but who has grown tired of The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.

As I watched the show, I couldn't help but note that each of her songs is like the history of classic rock condensed into four minute segments. Worse, each one is compiled from identical source material. In fact, she seemed so unconcerned with originality that I wondered if I was foolish for letting it concern me. This was best evidenced in her greeting to the crowd:

"How y'all doing tonight?" (And as Pavlov predicted, the audience cheered)
"I love playing in Austin, the very best town in America to play in."

This hackneyed onstage banter made me laugh out loud -- as a culture, have we not moved beyond this banal "interaction"? It sounds less like a rapport between artist and audience than between merchant and customer. ("How are you today? Can I show you our latest CD?") Her banter was so cliched that I wouldn't be surprised if one night she took the stage and said, "I love playing in insert city here."

I would have liked to have found a bit of evidence for her defense in the performance of her hits, but she maintained steady, airline-stewardess smiles through most of the show. She didn't bare her soul; she packaged it into retail-ready product units that featured a cover photo of her in a too-tight T-shirt that said "Buy me."

And I'm no longer buying it.

©2004 wpreagan