By: Ben
Johnson
One of the things in the world I would very
much like to avoid doing is to write anything in response to anything that
Grantland music critic Steven Hyden has written. I would really, really love to
not do that. There is no point to it. There is never any point to the original
thing that Steven Hyden wrote, and there is even less point to anything I could
write in response to that thing.
I lose. I am throwing the baby out with the
bathwater. Steven Hyden wasted his time, writing about what American bands have
been the current best American bands since the 1964 “invasion” of British rock
bands. I, along with many many other people, wasted my time reading it. I wasted my
time thinking about it. I wasted my time disagreeing with it. I am now wasting
my time and energy responding to it. I am blowing it. Large. Big time.
Hyden does a good job, for the most part,
with the completely arbitrary self-assigned task of listing the best American
bands in each year since 1964. I’m not mad at Steven Hyden for having done
this, or for the way he did it, or really for any of the decisions he made.
Steven Hyden has a job to do, and it’s to write dumb things about music on the
internet for Grantland, that great repository of the collectivist narratives
and opinions of the thinking man’s bro, dedicated to cataloging the dumb things they think hard about. This American band championship belt thing is just such a dumb thing. On the internet.
For Grantland. I get that. Steven Hyden did his job.
Nonetheless…
Oh boy. I am really, really not handling this
well. I should take a deep breath or something. It’s like take a chill pill,
you know? Take a chill pill, me. Oh God. Oh jeez.
There used to not be such a thing as rock
music critics. There was for a long time no such thing as rock music, so the
lack of critics wasn’t really a problem. Then there became such a thing as rock
n’ roll music, and then very soon that music became subsumed as an emblematic
nugget within a larger economic and cultural shift which focused on the
identification, manipulation, and exploitation of American youth culture.
Teenagers who listened to rock n’ roll grew up and became adults who listened to rock n’ roll. Different kinds of rock n’ roll emerged. There became such a thing as bullshit fake corporate undangerous rock n’ roll, and confusingly, some of it wasn’t all that bad. There became such a thing as “experimental” rock n’ roll, and nobody really liked it all that much except some people really liked it. Rock n’ roll music, itself a very simple thing, you know, “one two three o’clock, four o’clock, rock,” became ensnarled in a weird and nefarious and crowded and complicated landscape of rock n' roll musiclike entrapments and signifiers. It became kind of helpful, not to mention fun and often funny, to have critics around to sort all of this stuff out and say "YES: Black Sabbath; NO: Jethro Tull." And so there became such a thing as rock music critics. Like within ten to fifteen years after the discovery of rock n’ roll music, which is a pretty fast turnaround if you think about it.
Teenagers who listened to rock n’ roll grew up and became adults who listened to rock n’ roll. Different kinds of rock n’ roll emerged. There became such a thing as bullshit fake corporate undangerous rock n’ roll, and confusingly, some of it wasn’t all that bad. There became such a thing as “experimental” rock n’ roll, and nobody really liked it all that much except some people really liked it. Rock n’ roll music, itself a very simple thing, you know, “one two three o’clock, four o’clock, rock,” became ensnarled in a weird and nefarious and crowded and complicated landscape of rock n' roll musiclike entrapments and signifiers. It became kind of helpful, not to mention fun and often funny, to have critics around to sort all of this stuff out and say "YES: Black Sabbath; NO: Jethro Tull." And so there became such a thing as rock music critics. Like within ten to fifteen years after the discovery of rock n’ roll music, which is a pretty fast turnaround if you think about it.
There have been rock music critics ever
since, even as rock music itself has remained a mostly very simple thing ensnarled in a complicated landscape which for all its shifts has maintained just about the same level of weirdness. There
are less songs about rocking now, but it’s still basically 4/4 blues
permutations, and rock acts are still incentivized to abandon the raw wildness of rock n' roll to focus, smartly for them, on making good business decisions. These essential truths have not changed. Do we still need rock music critics now that rock n’ roll has
existed for 60 some odd years? Did we ever “need” them in the first place? Who
cares? Apparently I do.
Apparently I go running for the nearest word
processing software the instant I read Steven Hyden’s assertion, for a very
popular website whose readership I am obviously a part of, that LCD Soundsystem
was the best band in America from 2004 through 2007. Apparently I’m a moron who
has some kind of a deep-seated reaction to that kind of a thing, even though it’s
not a thing at all, even though it’s just random untethered information, and
giving it even a single backwards glance is giving it the power it should not
have, to decide things and destroy things and shape things and mean something.
Apparently I’m too damn dumb to relax and get out of the way. Apparently I’m
starting to sound like that kid from that video.
I mean, here I am, doing all of this, because
I don’t think LCD Soundsystem was the best band in America from 2004 through
2007. That’s what this is really coming down to. That’s my line in the sand. The
85 richest people in the world have as much as the 3.5 BILLION poorest living humans,
and my beef is with what I see as undue critical praise for LCD Soundsystem
from 2004 to 2007. There are quite a few things wrong with me.
To the extent that it was probably a good
idea to have rock music critics within the time and context they emerged in the
late 60’s and early 70’s, it’s probably still a good idea. Because there are 85
rich people standing on our necks, profiting somehow from just about everything
we do, and because people on our social media feeds are circulating research
studies about how public relations people make more money than journalists
without questioning the terrible vice-grip reality of the underlying premise
that because those 85 people have their boots on our throats, money has to be
the reason why people do anything, and because there were other bands in
America between 2004 and 2007 which did not suck, and because, crucially, LCD
Soundsystem, while endemic of its time, sucks, in a manner also endemic of its
time.
LCD Soundsystem sucks.
 |
| sucks. |
I’m overreacting, sure, but I have to react
to something. I choose to react to the fact that Grantland, a website owned by
Disney, which is the 61st
largest corporation in the world and is worth over 140 BILLION DOLLARS,
which is more dollars than there are MILES BETWEEN HERE AND THE SURFACE OF THE
SUN, and which could, with those dollars, end world hunger
for four and a half years, is paying Steven Hyden to tell me that while The
Stooges were the best band in America in 1973, which is an actual fact, LCD
Soundsystem was the best band in America from 2004 to 2007, which depending on
your beliefs is either a completely fabricated lie or else another in a long
list of obligatory market-driven half-truths which our current corporate media’s
critical infrastructure must forever push on the rest of us in order to feed
their families.
I am dumb enough to read it, and I am dumb
enough to disagree with it, all of it, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do
about any of it except go write a thing about how LCD Soundsystem actually
sucks and everything is actually unfair and I lose. I lose all of it. All the
time. Forever.
And so do you.
