Rock Out With Your Cock Out

The Strokes are mincy and inoffensive and delicate. They are pleasant enough to listen to, non-intrusive background music, if you want that sort of thing. I truly don't understand the adulation surrounding them. I mean, they're okay. Is it possible their popularity is based on publicity as much as, say, Britney or American Idol? Are they just counter-programming? The cynics would say yes, of course, moron. All music today is a product of the corporate hive mind! Resist! These same people would also say, most likely, that the only "honest", "true" music is coming from people making CDs in their basement or at least signing with labels that have a market of 1,000 or so. But what I must ask is this: how is that music any better than anything else? How much influence and power do these people think music execs have over musicians?The Strokes, I think, can't help what they are. They are mediocre musicians with a funky way of dressing that many people wanted to emulate. And one of them is dating Drew Barrymore. The huge third-world-refugee-murdering-corporate-giant-label which releases their music is very very good at marketing and presenting their image and throwing their considerable public presence behind a band filled with the progeny of a few very rich and very influential men in the world of business. So you know who The Strokes are. And you buy their album. And you forget it the minute after the stereo is off, left with a passingly-pleasant buzz from the aforementioned inoffensive music. Three years from now, maybe two, they'll release another album, promising they've gone in new directions, and that they're eager to get away from the expectations people have of them. The quality and variety of this next album will tell you what kind of musicians they are, but my guess is that they're just okay. They will always be just okay. Not innovative, not influential (at least not to people with an appreciation for variety and newness in all things), just there to influence lower east side fashion and employ Roman Coppola to make a video every now and then. But the Execs didn't make them like that. That's who they are. That's what they can do, and their label is simply presenting it more and better than any other band out there.It is people, record buyers, who really make a band big or not. Record stores will buy lots and lots of copies because they're told to by the labels that they deal with; they're almost guaranteed a return for their investment. But if people stop buying the records from the record stores and record store owners discover stacks and stacks and stacks of Strokes CDs and nothing to show for it, you better believe they're not going to buy as many copies of their next CD. People dont' HAVE to buy what MTV tells them to.But they have to like something about a band besides the look, I hear you say. Well, you'd probably be surprised just how many people would buy CDs based on what the band looks like. You yourself are not that shallow or crass--you cannot concieve of what goes on in a mallrat's mind. Their priorities are skewed. They believe vehemently in the power of hair gel and Timberlands. I know someone that believed a serial rapist/murderer should not be treated too harshly because he was cute. These people exist, folks. They're out there, and they shape the world we live in through commerce. Not that The Shallows make up ALL of the Music Industry's business (or the Movie Industry or TV or Politics, etc., etc.), just most of it. I wish the reverse were true, obviously, but there you are. Anyway, I digress. My bad. I really think the only way "execs" control the actual output of music from their artists is in the overproduction--the layering of the different strands of music into one safe public-friendly macrame basket for your listening pleasure. To whit: Britney Spears cannot sing. At least no better than your average overbearing eleven year old in your school's talent contest who grows up to be the girl who sings in bars and at gatherings because she sounds, well, okay, and everyone is too afraid to tell her she can't sing because they may one day make the move to sleep with her. But you'd never really notice that she can't sing. Her voice is buried beneath the beats and the guitars and the whateverthehell the semi-talented musicians in the studio happen to be playing that day. That is overproduction. But only one example. Most of today's "Rock" bands also suffer from overproduction in that everything is blended together so seamlessly you can barely tell the bass line from the drumbeat, the singer's voice from the guitar warbles. So, folks, it is down to you, and it is down to me. If we want music to be better, we must make it better. Complaining about it will only point to the symptoms. You don't like the way music is? Go out and make some of your own. Start your own label. Become huge. Or, if you don't like The Strokes, don't buy it. I happen to like The Strokes, in that inoffensive this is cool to listen to when I'm not really listening way. But mine is a burned CD. Mwoohoohahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!Dashes are annoying to insert. If you miss the lack of them in the previous paragraph, put them in yourself. Use a magic marker on your computer screen.