Rock and roll is all about professionalism , which is to say that some one
of the alienated and consequently alienating species trying to make their way
in the world subsisting on the seeming authenticity of their anger, ire and
anxiety has to make sure that they take care of their talent, respect their
audiences expectations even as they try to make the curdled masses learn
something new, and to makes sure that what they are writing about /singing
about/yammering about is framed in choice riffs and frenzied backbeat. It is
always about professionalism; the MC5 used to have manager John Sinclair, story
goes, turn off the power in middle of one of their teen club gigs in Detroit to
make it seem that the Man was trying to shut down their revolutionary oomph.
The 5 would get the crowd into frenzy, making noise on the dark stage until the
crowd was in a sufficient ranting lather. At that point Sinclair would switch
the power back on and the band would continue, praising the crowd for sticking
it to the Pigs.
This was pure show business, not actual revolutionary fervor inspired by
acne scars and blue balls; I would dare say that it had its own bizarre integrity,
and was legitimate on terms we are too embarrassed to discuss. In a way, one
needs to admire bands like the Stones or Aerosmith for remembering what it was
that excited them when they were younger, and what kept their fan base loyal. All I
would say is that it's not a matter of rock and roll ceasing to be an authentic
trumpet of the troubled young soul once it became a brand; rather, rock and
roll has always been a brand once white producers, record company owners and
music publishers got a hold of it early on and geared a greatly tamed version
of it to a wide and profitable audience of white teenagers. In any event,
whether most of the music being made by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and others was a
weaker version of what was done originally by Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters et al
is beside the point. It coalesced, all the same, into a style that perfectly
framed an attitude of restlessness among mostly middle class white teenagers
who were excited by the sheer exotica, daring and the sense of the verboten the
music radiated. It got named, it got classified, the conventions of its style
were defined, and over time, through both record company hype and the endless
stream of Consciousness that most white rock critics produced, rock and roll
became a brand. It was always a brand once it was removed from the black
communities and poor Southern white districts from which it originated. I have
no doubt that the artist's intention , in the intervening years, was to produce
a revolution in the conscious of their time with the music they wrote and
performed, but the decision to be a musician was a career choice at the most
rudimentary level, a means to make a living or, better yet , to get rich. It is
that rare to non-existent musician who prefers to remain true to whatever
vaporous sense of integrity and poor.
Even Chuck
Berry, in my opinion the most important singer-songwriter musician to work in
rock and roll--Berry, I believe , created the template with which all other
rock and rollers made their careers in music--has described his songwriting
style as geared for young white audiences. Berry was a man raised on the music
of Ellington and Louie Jardin, strictly old school stuff, and who considered
himself a contemporary of Muddy Waters, but he was also an An entrepreneur as
well as an artist. He was a working artist who rethought his brand and created
a new one; he created something wholly new, a combination of rhythm and blues,
country guitar phrasing and narratives that wittily, cleverly, indelibly spoke
to a collective experience that had not been previously served.
Critics and historians have been correct in
callings this music Revolutionary, in that it changed the course of music, but
it was also a Career changes. All this, though, does not make what the power of
Berry's music--or the music of Dylan, Beatles , Stones, MC5, Bruce or The High
Fiving White Guys --false , dishonest, sans value altogether. What I concern
myself with is how well the musicians are writing, playing, singing on their
albums, with whether they are inspired, being fair to middling', or seem out of
ideas, out of breath; it is a useless and vain activity to judge musicians, or
whole genres of music by how well they/it align themselves with a metaphysical
standard of genuine, real, vital art making. That standard is unknowable and
those putting themselves of pretending they know what it is are improvising at
best. This is not a coherent way to enjoy music. One is assuming that one does,
or at one time did, enjoy music. . What matters are the products--sorry,
even art pieces, visual, musical, dramatic, poetic, are "product" in
the strictest sense of the word--from the artists successful in what they set
out to do. The results are subjective, of course, but art is nothing else than
means to provoke a response, gentle or strongly and all grades in between, and
critics are useful in that they can make the discussion of artistic efforts
interesting. The only criticism that interests are responses from reviewers
that are more than consumer guides--criticism , on its own terms in within its
limits, can be as brilliant and enthralling as the art itself. And like the art
itself, it can also be dull, boring, stupid, and pedestrian. The quality of
critics varies; their function in relation to art, however, is valid. It is a
legitimate enterprise. Otherwise we'd be treating artists like they were
priests. God forbid.
