Friday, January 12, 2007
Rock and roll ain't noise pollution
Man, I wish Sir Luy was still here. I hear he's the bassist for Juana now, so good for him, but I miss him. He was the coolest teacher a kid could ever meet: his cubicle was wallpapered with Velvet Revolver artwork, he made schoolwork too much fun to even be considered schoolwork, he had the widest knowledge of rock and roll of anybody I knew, and even though he came to class smelling of cigarettes, you always excused him for it because he had a decent cover-up joke ("It's my new perfume! It's called El Groucho!"). I remember him reading a book entitled "Hammer of the Gods" while his class was working once. He was impressed by the mere fact that I knew it was a Led Zeppelin biography, even though that was only because I remembered Jack Black awesomely lip-synching to "The Immigrant Song" in School of Rock.
If anything, I just wish he was my art teacher now instead of back then, when I was going through my New Age and Broadway phases. The most I knew about rock and roll was a couple of AC/DC songs. I may call myself eclectic, but my musical favorites come in phases: first it was the Mariah Carey phase, then the boy band phase, the Sugar Ray phase, the Boyz II Men phase, the Alicia Keys phase, and then the New Age phase, the Broadway phase, the grunge/light altern phase, and now, the rock and roll phase. I knew zilch about Velvet Revolver, except that my brother kept on playing one of their songs to the point of me wanting to point a shotgun at the fucking speakers. Now, I worship Scott Weiland and "Come On, Come In" is practically my life anthem. I would've talked to him about who he thought was better, Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth; what his favorite kind of rock was (Prog? Glam? Grunge? Altern?), though I suspect it's heavy metal; the legacy of Kurt Cobain, Patron Saint of Gen X-ers everywhere; and things like that. Because he's one of the very few I know who's that into classic rock and roll. These days, you go around asking what "classic" is, and seven times out of ten, the answer you'll get is High School Musical.
Before you start thinking that this is an effing eulogy, it's not. Okay, it sort of is, but not for Sir Luy, vecause he's alive and rocking. If you read between the lines, you'll get that I'm talking about the (likely?) death of rock and roll. Late last year, rock lost one of its biggest radio stations when Howard Stern moved to Sirius. Others have closed down, switched to hip-hop, or reported a decrease in listeners over the years. Music's undisputedly iconic magazine, Rolling Stone, is now 75% politics and movie stars, and 25% actual music. In contrast to decades ago when it was a complete honor to make the cover of Rolling Stone, now you've got Christina Applegate, Borat and Jessica Simpson smiling at you from the newsstands.
It's a decade-old question: Is rock dead? You can almost feel the rocker die-hards wading through the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief: denial (an Arquette-esque "ROCK ISN'T DEAAAD!"), anger ("What is WRONG with you people? Hip-hop fucking sucks!"), bargaining ("Well, there are some decent newbie bands..."), depression ("Man, it'll never be that good again"), and...acceptance? Maybe. Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl summed it up nicely -- and rather naughtily -- when asked by Spin magazine if rock is dead:
"Yes, but I believe in necrophilia."
I could go on a ten-page tirade on how rock isn't dead yet (or as Grohl suggests, dead but still doable), how U2 keeps hauling ass on the Grammies year after year, but in fewer words, this is my point: rock is undoubtedly fading. So I pitch to all you rock lovers out there, please get your friends into the scene. Force them to borrow your Led Zeppelin or AC/DC records, whatever. Rock newbies, ask your cool uncle about the heyday of Iron Maiden or Metallica. If you'll ask grunge-holic me, the best album to start with is Nirvana's Nevermind, Stone Temple Pilots' Core, or for a more updated sound, Foo Fighters' In Your Honor. Just try it. Feel it. Rock isn't bad.
Man, why didn't I choose THIS as my term paper topic? Oh well, next year if ever.
