Pumped Up Diss

The 2010s have been a disastrous decade for America.  It was a decade that began with Citizens United and ending with citizens divided, while the decline of political, social and cultural standards has been unavoidable and unpalatable.  Nowhere is that more evident than in popular music.

Popular music has been a pretty good barometer of our politics and society.  Look at the overwhelmingly white country music fans in the heartland who like Trump and like trucks.  They listen to country to get as far away as possible from hip-hop/R&B, which is favored by an overwhelmingly diverse, non-white-majority group of people who lean Democratic.  Both sides mock each other for their musical tastes as well as their political leanings, yet the fakeness of today's country music and the lack of musical ability in hip-hop and rap only shows how American cultural interests have become shallow and stupid over the past decade. 

Meanwhile, rock and roll is pretty much down to a few indie bands selling a couple of thousand records in a year while Taylor Swift sells that many in a week.  (Taylor Swift was recently given an award at the American Music Awards for Artist of the Decade - which is sort of like saying that Forest Hill is the nicest neighborhood in Newark - what are the alternatives?)  The story is the same - corporate conglomeration of radio stations, record companies not wanting to take chances on something new, rock being the domain of demographically irrelevant white males.  But some of the bands deserve blame for why rock is barely surviving and may get the coup de grâce very soon, simply because they're so lame.  And no band is probably more responsible for rock's trivialization in the 2010s than Foster the People.

You remember Foster the People.  They came out of nowhere with their single "Pimped Up Kicks" in 2010, and its catchy tune caught the ears of rock fans thinking that, at last, here was a rock band that would finally rescue the form at a time when rap and hip-hop were taking over.  Indeed, the song was seen as an affront to everything rock fans hated about hip-hop.

Uh, it wasn't.  "Pumped Up Kicks" must now be viewed in retrospect as the song that all but destroyed rock and roll, because it in fact surrendered to the values of rap, and since it was such a commercial success, it did so in a big way.

Let me ask you.  What do you hate most about rap and hip-hop?  The electronic beats that pass for musical arrangements?  The computerized vocal sounds?  The lyrics glorifying guns, and violence in general?  The trendiness?  Listen to "Pumped Up Kicks" again, and you'll get it - it's a rock and roll song with the same characteristics that distinguish hip-hop!  Which is why the song is a piece of crap - and why its success made it impossible for rock and roll to challenge hip-hop in this now-ending decade.  Because anyone who says they don't like hip-hop for having all of the characteristics of Foster the People's song has yet like "Pumped Up Kicks" is a flaming hypocrite.

Yeah, I used to like "Pumped Up Kicks," and I even featured the promotional video on my Music Video Of the Week page once, but needless to say, I disavow the song now.  And also, suffice to say, repeated listening of the record only made me realize it was the worst thing to happen to rock and roll since Kurt Cobain died.  The song is an artistic failure.  I was wrong.

Forster the People are still around and, to my surprise, are still making and selling records!  But they're hardly the force they were at the beginning of the decade, and the damage they did to rock and roll with "Pumped Up Kicks" will likely outlast them.  Rock and roll may come back, but rockers are not going to defeat the enemy by rapping its own song.    

Grammys 2018 - The Aftermath

Out of this world!

Bruno Mars won six Grammy Awards this past Sunday night, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year (both for "That's What I Like"),  and yes, for Album Of the Year (24K Magic), infuriating rap fans who thought that a rap album should have won the top prize.  Screw 'em.  While rapper Kendrick Lamar did win five Grammys overall, and while rock's increasing irrelevance was highlighted by the failure of rock artists to be even nominated for the big awards (at least it has its own category), Mars' wins prove that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, while misguided in acknowledging rap as music, is not completely insane.  Though I am not a fan of Mars, I will say that he is a musical talent to be reckoned with.  He arranges his songs with real musical instruments, he actually sings the words, and his performances are high-spirited affairs in the tradition of James Brown and Michael Jackson.  Equally as important, his songs can withstand being pared down to a vocal accompanied only by an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.  Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, once said that, as a rock musician who started out in folk, he knew the value of a well-written song; when he got out there on coffeehouse stages with just an acoustic guitar and his own voice, he knew the material had to be good because there was no band or choreography to hide behind.  Bruno Mars' songs, with the electric music and the dance moves taken away, can stand up to a solo acoustic arrangement.  I'd love to hear someone cover "Locked Out of Heaven" with just an acoustic guitar, a harmonica, and a voice - with some good ol' fashioned foot-stomping!

A lot of folks weren't happy with the injection of politics into this year's Grammy ceremonies, I'm led to understand.  Several recording artists spoke out against sexual harassment and for the child-immigrants currently under the DACA program.  But the political segment that got everyone's attention was a filmed skit in which Grammy ceremony host James Corden auditions celebrities to read from Michael Wolff's Trump book "Fire and Fury" for the audio version that would qualify for the 2019 Grammy for the best spoken-word album . . . and Hillary Clinton makes a surprise appearance as one of the auditioners.  Corden tells her she has the gig.  Responding to the skit, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote on Twitter, "I have always loved the Grammys but to have artists read the' Fire and Fury' book killed it. Don’t ruin great music with trash. Some of us love music without the politics thrown in it."

So, I assume that Nikki Haley doesn't like Crosby, Stills and Nash?  Solo John Lennon?  Early Bob Dylan?   Peter, Paul and Mary?  Every other folk singer that's ever been?  Good grief, how far back do you want to go?  Pete Seeger was singing political songs in the 1940s. 

And, Ambassador Haley, apart from Bruno Mars, there was no great music to "ruin."  What's so great about hip-hop?  Heck, I would argue that there was more trash at the Grammys than great music. 

Be that as it may, Hillary Clinton's cameo was wildly cheered by the live Grammy audience, confirming her status as the most beloved and respected person in the Democratic Party.  Which beings me to the subject of Martin O'Malley, perhaps the least beloved and respected person in the Democratic Party.  O'Malley wasn't invited to the Grammys - indeed, he's the kind of guy that the bouncer would have tossed out head first - and he demonstrated the reason why the week before, when he made his own surprise appearance at Ryan's Daughter, an Irish pub in his hometown of Baltimore.  He stopped by with his guitar and played and sang a set of Irish folk songs and American folk-rock tunes.  In other words, the very sort of music that  - like O'Malley with Democratic primary voters in 2016 - fell out of favor with record buyers decades ago.  (A picture of O'Malley in the bar is below, taken from a smartphone video;  I apologize for the poor quality of the image.)  As if symbolizing the plight of white guys in the twenty-first century - they're not wanted in either pop music or the Democratic Party these days - weren't enough, O'Malley (below) performed songs that could symbolize his own political career, like Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" and Don McLean's "American Pie."  "The Boxer" is about a city boy who can't make it on his own, and "American Pie" chronicles a rise and fall.  Now if he had only included Steve Goodman's "City Of New Orleans" - the song about the decline of passenger rail in America that was covered by Arlo Guthrie in 1972 - the symbolism would have been perfect.  To add insult to injury, Ryan's Daughter is no longer in business; O'Malley dropped by to be a part of its last weekend of operation.  Again, how symbolic.

Except that O'Malley's fellow barflies happily sang along to every song he performed, and at the end,  someone yelled out, "O'Malley 2020!"  So, there is an audience for good music and a constituency for good presidential candidates.  They can't get good music from the record business so much these days, but O'Malley - who could probably play and sing "Locked Out of Heaven" or "Just the Way You Are" (the Bruno Mars song, not the Billy Joel song) with aplomb - can give them a good presidential campaign, one that can lead him right to the White House.  The Democratic Party might try to stop him like it did in 2016 - mainly because Democrats fear that, if he's elected President, he'll offend the hip-hop generation by inviting the Chieftains to play at his inaugural gala ("No, not that corny Irish crap!"), or worse, being his own headliner - but this time we ain't gonna let them.  Some people might call those of us who like folk and folk-rock music nerds.  I call us Martin O'Malley's base.  We're there, and we're square.  Get used to us.

Oh yeah, someone at the Grammys suggested that Carter run for President in 2020.  Not Jimmy - Shawn.  You know, Beyoncé's husband?  Can anyone explain to me how Shawn Carter and Kanye West are taken more seriously as presidential candidates - and as musicians - than Martin O'Malley?  This country needs an enema.

You can find the video of O'Malley's appearance at Ryan's Daughter here. 

Talkin' 'Bout Our Generations

Two things happened recently that prompted me to write about something I've been pondering for awhile. The first is that, earlier today, I walked into the kitchen while my mother was watching Follow The Fleet, a 1936 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie with songs by Irving Berlin, on television. Just before I walked into the room I heard Ginger Rogers singing a song I did not recognize, and, in complete ignorance of who was singing and who wrote the song, thought to myself, "Oh, man, what is that corn?"

The second thing is that rapper-entrepreneur Shawn Carter (Jay-Z to you, ofay!) and his lovely wife Beyoncé Knowles (but please call her by her first name only) just sired a baby girl, whom they named Blue Ivy Carter. Right after the birth, Mr. Carter recorded a new rap song, "Glory," about his baby daughter . . . with little Blue Ivy's cries added to the recording. Going beyond Stevie Wonder's addition of his baby daughter's sounds on his 1976 hit "Isn't She Lovely," Mr. Carter gave a credit to Blue Ivy on the record. "Glory" was quickly released, and five days after the baby's birth, it would debut at number seventy-four on the Billboard hip-hop and R&B charts, making Miss Carter the youngest person to debut on the Billboard charts.

So what do these two events have to do with each other? Simply this: A pop record that sounds contemporary when it's first released may seem dated many years from then. A song from a thirties Hollywood musical sounded antiquated just two decades later, when Elvis burst upon the scene, and Jay-Z's own record will likely sound passé by the time Blue Ivy is old enough to make her own records, assuming she goes into the family business.

Look at the popular music that existed before rock and roll - solo singers backed by large bands, as well as bandleaders who were stars in their own right. All of this music was considered rather hokey by young people in the mid-1950s, and when rock and roll burst upon the scene, it became, or should have become, apparent that the old pop establishment was headed for decline. Irving Berlin had been American popular music's greatest songwriter for decades; then, in 1956, with Elvis Presley on top of the charts, Berlin was faced with a new form he had no ability to write for.

This is something we rock and roll fans, as we watch our favorite musical form slip into irrelevance and possibly extinction, fail to understand. Popular music is an expression of its generation, and whatever music a generation produces or consumes usually has a hard time surviving its generation. No, rock and roll is not the cultural force it used to be, but given that most of it was a product of Depression children like Elvis, Baby Boomers, and Generation X elders, it's astonishing that it's lasted as long as it has. But rock and roll is also mainly the province of white guys with guitars, and there are a lot fewer of both today as the American population gets more diverse and as popular music and the methods in which it is made become more fragmented - and many young white males prefer hip-hop these days anyway. So it's not surprising that rock and roll has lost most of its audience and most of its relevance to rap, never to regain either.  We act as if we can prevent it from dying out.

And before you rap fans start chanting, "Hip-hop hurray!", let me put you on notice: Your music has an expiration date as well. Sure, rap is in better shape 33 years after the first big-selling rap record, "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang, than rock was in 1988, 33 years after Bill Haley and the Comets topped the charts with "Rock Around the Clock" - but the clock is ticking down to the day hip-hop will be as irrelevant as rock.

Let me, if I may, explain what I now call the "Blue Ivy Rule." The greatest figures in English-language popular music were all born at a time when the musical forms they would go on to work in didn't exist; the music that existed at the time they were toddlers wouldn't survive their own influence on pop. When Frank Sinatra was born in 1915, no one listening to "Alabama Jubilee" or "The Old Grey Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be" on their Victrolas could have imagined the large, brassy big-band sound that Ol' Blue Eyes would personify. When the big jazz and pop bands of the forties dominated the Hit Parade, no one could have imagined rock and roll - or that four little boys in Liverpool, England would grow up to bring such a music to a global audience. Likewise, in the late sixties and early seventies, when rock and roll seemed destined to rule the earth, the babies that would grow up to create and dominate rap were in their cribs - and had different names from the ones they're known by today. (Jay-Z himself was born in 1969, the year of Woodstock and the release of the Beatles' Abbey Road.)

Right now, even as hip-hop is dominant, there are babies being born that will one day create the music that displaces rap. It's a musical form that has not yet been invented, and which we do not yet recognize. And don't be surprised if Blue Ivy Carter is at the forefront of it.