Standing Up For [High-Art] Stand-Up

I’m not the biggest stand-up comedy fan. I’ve been to a couple shows; I’ve watched a couple Comedy Central specials; I’ve surfed YouTube for old George Carlin clips; and I’ve listened to at least two Dane Cook CDs (who manages the neat trick of being hysterical and unlikeable at the same time). But none of that qualifies me as any kind of comic guru. The most I can expect of myself is the ability to know a good joke from one that falls flat.

That said, I was recently struck by the dichotomy between “high” and “low” dichotomy (if such a dichotomy exists elsewhere other than in my not-so-comically-adapted mind, let me know) in stand-up comedy. Unlike other art forms—in which there are usually pretty well-defined notions of “high” and “low” art (I’ll drop the quotes now), like Transformers and Tree of Life in film—in comedy, there is no clear definition.

What does it mean to be a “high art comedian”? (Sorry for the brief return of the quotes…it seemed like it needed it…) My immediate reaction is to gesture to those comedians who elucidate the humor (and sometime pathos) of the human experience. That sounds like a weighty job here, but not so much when applied to an example. Sticking to Dane Cook (because I know him), I can reference his much-quoted “Friend That Nobody Likes” routine. 

[Sorry for the stick-figures; ignore them?]

~

In this example, Cook discusses the epiphany that he had one day that “there is one person in every group of friends that nobody f—g likes.” That notion, while exaggerated to somewhat of an absurd degree, holds true in my experience. The real kicker is when Cook hears audience members talking amongst themselves how true that idea is and he proclaims, “I know it’s true—that’s why its so funny.” (He says this three times, by the way.)

Truth, in Cook’s view, makes good comedy. But good comedy is not necessarily high comedy. Are the great (high) comedians those who illustrate life’s truths using humor?

~

Hesitantly, I would offer that this is far from the truth.

High comedy, in the vein of George Carlin for instance, plays with notion of language and how the words we perceive shape out reality. Language, in Carlin’s stand-up, becomes a social force; language becomes a process through which we not only understand experience, but through which our experiences are themselves formed.

One of Carlin’s classic bits is a discussion of the so-called “airlines’ perversion of language.” Among his many examples is the notion of the airport “gate.” Carlin, of course, does not offer serious explanations for the terms used by the airlines, but his humor does offer a obvious pathway towards questioning the everyday language that surrounds us. Why is it called a gate? Wikipedia, for one, cannot answer me. The truth probably lies in a simple appropriation a long while back in aviation history…which stuck and now “gate” is what we call the passageway to the plane.

Carlin uses humor—in my estimate, high comedy—to explore the particularities of language and how language is formed, often in seemingly random ways. Like lots of other great works of art, it is enough, I’d argue, for comedy to provide questions without necessarily pointing answers.

~

These thoughts of high comedy spring from a show I saw a few nights ago with stand-up comics Sheng Wang and Dan Ahdoot. Both had their exceptionally funny moments, but neither made any stabs at what I’ve tentatively identified as high comedy. Wang being of Taiwanese descent and Ahdoot being an Iranian Jew, there were more than enough racy racist jokes to go around. However, the one bright spot that stayed with me occurred when Ahdoot was doing a bit about how his favorite show is Mythbusters.

Mythbusters, Ahdoot pointed out, ran out of myths to bust seasons ago…so now they’re making up. The first “myth” Ahdoot suggests is to test if “Mexicans are immune to electricity” (which he quickly displayed) and the second “myth” testing if “puppies are bulletproof.”

While the first part about Mexicans gave rise to laughter and some occasional groans, the second part about puppies gave way to a sustained moan throughout the whole audience. Most of the laughter seemed more nervous. Ahdoot was quick to point out the disparity there: we were more upset about dead puppies than (potentially) dead Mexicans. Why is that? What social forces have shaped us to react in that way?

Again, no answers—only questions—but that should be exactly what high comedy aims to do.

Canciones de Sabado! (In Spanish!)

1. “Camino Y Vereda” – Café Tacuba

Although Café Tacuba has been hailed by some critics as the “Mexican Radiohead,” Tacuba is nothing of the sort. Far more so than Radiohead, they are grounded in native sounds and traditions—something that springs to life especially on their second album Re, which drops allusions to so many different styles of music—both “native” Latin-American styles and otherwise—that Re was correctly compared to the Beatles’ White Album.

“Camino Y Vereda,” which comes off of their fifth album Cuatro Caminos, observes a slightly more experimental Café Tacuba, but certainly nothing to the order of Radiohead. If there is a “headphones” album out there, this is it. There is so much happening on these careful rock songs that you wouldn’t want to miss out by airing if only to the open air. Believe me.

~

2. “Pobre Juan” – Maná

Not only one of my all-time favorite Spanish songs, but one of my all-time favorites—once upon a time, it owned the top spot on the “Most Played” list on my iTunes. The song, which tells the story of a man who tries to cross the border to find a better life, but who dies in the attempt, is a heartbreaker. But not only that, Maná wraps this plaintive tale in colorful classic-rock. Much like Oasis, Maná is a band that sounds like many other bands; but, also like Oasis, they pull it off wonderfully.

~

3. “Salvese Quien Pueda” – Juana Molina

Juana Molina is one trippy chick. If you start with her album Tres Cosas, everything seems pretty much in order—sort of weird, but nothing to call home about. The second you dip into the following album, Un Día, you find yourself in a world of precious loops and weird, acoustic/electric soundscapes. My favorite track tends to the more structured end of the Molina spectrum; “Sálvese Quien Pueda” is the third and most melodic track on Tres Cosas.

With bips and bleeps and creeping synths to set up the song, Molina’s voice floats over the mix, joined soon after by picked notes from an acoustic guitar before blossoming to a full strum at 1:34. The song does not so much build after that point as maintain a steady, comforting rhythm.

~

4. “Chino” – La Mancha de Rolando

I discovered La Mancha de Rolando on a three-week visit to Uruguay and I could not get enough of them. Because the music video for “Chino”—their latest single at the time—was on heavy rotation on the local music channel, I ended up sitting through hours of crappy Spanish music videos just to get at four minutes and 21 seconds of wonder.

There’s really nothing so special about the music video; it’s a pretty rote exercise in semi-narrative and shots of the band playing on an abandoned country road. (Also…there’s not Chinese man…“chino,” after all, does mean “Chinese”…the woman is also not a redhead…) The music, however, bursts with the open-ended hope of a band that knows it may never be discovered, but is giving it a shot anyway.

“It is from now on I will live traveling,

far from everything that makes me bad,

far from what I am looking for.”

“Es que de ahora en más viviré viajando,

lejos de todo lo que me hace mal,

lejos está lo que estoy buscando.”

~

5. “Alfonsina Y El Mar” – Mercedes Sosa

Hesitantly, I mention this song to you. This, after all, is one of those songs that will haunt you; it has certainly haunted me. The “Alfonsina” of the song is Alfonsina Storni, who, while not widely-known to the English-speaking world, was one of the foremost modern Latin-American poets. Struggling with both depression and breast cancer, Storni famously committed suicide—according to legend—by walking directly into the sea until she drowned. The previous day, she had sent her final poem to the La Nación newspaper. Here is an excerpt:

“I am going to sleep, my nurse, put me to bed.
Set a lamp at my headboard;
a constellation; whatever you like;
all are good: lower it a bit.”

“Voy a dormir, nodriza mía, acuéstame.
Ponme una lámpara a la cabecera;
una constelación; la que te guste;
todas son buenas; bájala un poquito.”

After her death, Ariel Ramírez and Félix Luna composed “Alfonsina Y El Mar” in her honor. The version above is from the distinctive and distinguished Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, who worked with Ramírez and Luna throughout her career.

I can’t hear the line “Qué poemas nuevos fuiste al buscar? (What new poems have you gone to look for?) without a little gleam in my eye, if you know what I mean.

The Boxer Rebellion Goes The Distance?

I’m not usually much of a rom-com fan (as some readers might already know…), so it came as a pleasant surprise when I sat down to watch the 2010 film Going The Distance with Justin Long and Drew Barrymore and really enjoyed it. But besides the excellently-orchestrated and tremendously awkward situations dreams up by the filmmakers (sex on the dining room table, anyone?), there was also the fantastic cameo appearance of the band The Boxer Rebellion midway through the film—with another rousing appearance towards the end.

It’s always funny to see “real” bands appear in films. So much of the time, music in mainstream films is in the realm of fictional singers or bands. In fact, the bulk of live music seen in films is probably played by fictional bands. That’s not, however, to say that it’s bad; the music in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, for instance, was composed by Beck, Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew (from Broken Social Scene), and Metric.

Another example is the film Crazy Heart, in which Jeff Bridges stars as “Bad” Blake, a faded country star; Blake’s music was written largely by T Bone Burnett, with a key contribution from New Mexico singer-songwriter Ryan Bingham, “The Weary Kind,” which snagged an Oscar for Best Song. Bingham, however, also appears in the film, as “Tony,” lead guitarist of Blake’s backing band during a bowling alley performance towards the beginning of the film. But seeing Bingham up there on the fictional stage as Tony was more like spotting an extra who happens to be a friend of yours—nothing like seeing The Boxer Rebellion onstage in Going The Distance and the band actually being The Boxer Rebellion in the film.

~

Maybe this isn’t so hard to stomach for some of you out there. But the band’s presence in that film raises some interesting questions—firstly, of a highly theoretical nature and, secondly, of a pragmatic one. We’ll tend to the second tack for now.

Pragmatically, I question whether or not this kind of appearance (another notable one would be that of the British band McFly in the 2006 film Just My Luck [another Lohan flop]) helps the band in terms of both selling albums and popularity. Whether or not McFly sold more albums thanks to their appearance in the film is hard to say.

According to Billboard.com, the only real bump in sales that resulted from the film was the sales of the soundtrack itself, which features entirely music by McFly. The soundtrack, however, lingered at #25 on the Heatseekers chart. In fact, while McFly began their career with two #1 albums in their native U.K., since 2006—coincidentally, the same year as the release of Just My Luck—the chart numbers have tipped back downward from #6 (Motion In The Ocean) to #8 (Radio:Active) to #20 (Above The Noise). Might it not seem that the film, at least, did nothing for them?

What about The Boxer Rebellion?

Although Billboard chart numbers are really no less conclusive than with McFly, there is a helpful article on the Wall Street Journal online that helps illuminate some of the effects felt by the band thanks to their appearance in the film. According to the band, the number of friends they had on Facebook experienced a drastic rise. But other than that, it would seem that the only real benefit of their appearance in the film was a good opportunity for exposure. Has it set them on a track to success? Perhaps…although thanks to digital downloads, it’s hard to say with certainty what kind of success the band has seen with the release of its 2011 album The Cold Still.

Unfortunately, I have to conclude that while this sort of appearance can undoubtedly do a find job of spreading the word about a band, it may not be the best way to shift more units or push for more downloads.

~

And…how about some theory?

The theoretical issue, of course, is that when bands go through this sort of experience, they cast themselves in an interesting way: fictionally. Whether or not they really parse through what’s happening, when The Boxer Rebellion appears on screen in Going The Distance, we cannot help but understand them as fictional. Neither Justin Long nor his fictional counterpart is actually The Boxer Rebellion’s manager. (Their manager is the Embargo Management Company.)

You can play with these ideas as a variation of what has been called “celebrity paradox.” This paradox starts with the notion that, famously (I’m not sure why…), Tom Hanks doesn’t “exist” in Tom Hanks films. Meaning, of course, that in the Forrest Gump film circa 1990, Gump could not meet Hanks… What shifts in the case of musical acts being themselves in films is that once we are faced with McFly in a film we assume it must be the real McFly, right?

In Just My Luck—that unfortunate film—Jake (Chris Pine) is the erstwhile manager for McFly and is doing his best throughout the film to find them a producer…but doesn’t the “real” McFly already have a producer and two #1 albums in the U.K.? It makes sense that the real band isn’t actually looking for a producer. By virtue of this inconsistency, the McFly of the film necessarily pegs itself as a “fake” McFly. All of a sudden the McFly in the film is not the “real” McFly…so then what is it? Is it a rough approximation of the band? Sort of McFly but not really? To a lesser extent, we can ask the same questions of The Boxer Rebellion in Going The Distance.

Adventures Of The Great Zamperini! (Alt. Title?)

Notice:

As my summer winds to an end, I am forced to the ugly necessity of scaling back the blog at least a tiny bit. Slogged down by schoolwork, among other commitments, as I will be, I plan to post “general” blog entries only twice a week instead of three times a week. “Saturday Songs” is set to run on schedule as before (hopefully not so many late-Saturday-night posts, though). Thanks to everyone who has been reading—I’ve had fun getting feedback from readers and I look forward to more interaction in the future; I know that some of my posts must have touched a nerve here and there, which is a good thing…so long as that nerve-pinching leads to some constructive discussions. Comments/emails are always welcome!

~

Yesterday, I finished Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, an astounding work of nonfiction by the same author who penned Seabiscuit: An American Legend—the book that inspired the 2003 feature film, which snagged a slew of Oscar nods. I pointedly mention her previous book and the resulting film not just because it’s some nice background to have on Hillenbrand and her work, but also because I have a hard time not imagining that the same thing will happen to Unbroken.

This piece of nonfiction, which really reads like more of a novel, follows the life story of Louie Zamperini—Olympic runner, World War II bombardier, prisoner of war in Japan, PTSD’d veteran, and, finally, inspirational speaker. What’s so odd about the book is the way the flap largely neglects to inform the prospective reader about the entirety of the crazy life that Zamperini has led (the man, miraculously, is still alive)—making it sound, instead, as if the book were some sort of extended The Open Boat scenario. (Which, honestly, is a great piece of fiction, but would have dragged if it had been doubled in length. Scanning Hillenbrand’s book—which nudged in just under 400 pages—I was worried; that’s a lot of time to spend on a boat in the empty waters of the Pacific.) 

Although, yes, Zamperini, along with two other men, were stuck in a boat after crash landing into the Pacific and, against all odds, survived the ordeal, that is merely one episode in a far greater tale of spirit and steadfastness.

Perhaps my nonfiction-adventure reading habits have been too readily formed by Jon Krakauer’s smirking device of planting the climax of the story as a prologue and then working his way forwards (Into The Wild, Into Thin Air, etc.), but when the first pages of Hillenbrand’s book start on that boat in the middle of the Pacific, I’ll be honest—the spirit of Krakauer seemed humming along behind the text.

That assumption, of course, was all out of line.

After finishing the book and reflecting on that opening, I did feel a little cheated; the preface seemed to frame Zamperini’s life in a way that didn't agree with the whole of his story. The opening tries to set the tone for the rest of the book by zeroing (Ah! Not a pun! I swear!) in on a single important experience in this man’s life, but it fails to do.

The reason for that failure is simple; Zamperini’s life cannot be borne out in a single moment, but several. Those several stories, of course, can (and ought) to be framed into some fun Hollywood flicks. Allow me to have some fun and suggest some summer blockbusters.

~

Taken as a whole, Zamperini's life would, of course, present a cinematic impossibility (or at least cinematic unlikelihood). Though it lacks the wide scope of, say, War And Peace, it nevertheless pulls too much into its orbit to create a single, sensible adaptation. The one constant is Zamperini—funny, hopeful, reckless, and sort of a pain in the ass—but he would not be much of a Forrest Gump figure.

Some film ideas below?

1. Zamperini the athlete

Before the war, Zamperini was a rising running star, having raced in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He had been training for the 1940 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (and then Helsinki) before the Games were cancelled altogether and Zamperini ended up in the war. 

Eh…sounds like a film that someone's already made…

2. Zamperini the bombardier

Once in the Army, Zamperini ended up in the Army Air Corps as a bombardier. This would be a fun film—definitely better than that train wreck Pearl Harbor. (Zamperini, however, was in Hawaii at the time.) 

Oh! And there are lots of funny pranks—could all be done in a feel-good-boarding-school-atmosphere-even-though-war-lingers-on-the-horizon sort of way. Well, either boarding school or Old School, anyways...

3. Zamperini the castaway (plus POW!)

On a mission, their bomber crashes into the abyss of the Pacific—everyone drowns but Louie and two others. Highlights? Oh, you know…fending off sharks trying to jump into the boat, shriveling up into desiccated husks of their former bodies, avoiding sprays of bullets from a Japanese plane, catching birds and fish in more and more astounding ways…there is literally a treasure trove of experiences coming out of this part. Also this:

“Within a few days of the crash, Louie began peppering the other two with questions on every conceivable subject. Phil took up the challenge, and soon he and Louie turned the raft into a nonstop quiz show. They shared their histories, from first memories onward, recounted in minute detail.”

Sound like a flick to you? Sure does to me.

But later on, Louie and his buddy Phil end up washing ashore on an island…a Japanese island. They are tossed into the brutal POW system set up by the Japanese: little food, wretched conditions, and humiliating beat-downs on a daily basis. But the showstopper would have to be the prison guard, nicknamed “the Bird” by the POWs, who appears about halfway through the book. A sick, sadistic mess of a human being, the Bird beats mercilessly on Louie. Despite being nonfiction, Hillenbrand paints (rightfully so!) a sneering portrait of him; the man is a superb representation of perverted power—on the same level as Big Nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The Bird has that same psychopathic magnetism.

~

I could go on with the film ideas: Zamperini’s post-war, alcholic hell, his spiritual, evangelist rebirth, his visit to Japan to seek out The Bird (who never ended up going to jail for his war crimes). The main takeaway here should be that, regardless of how Hillenbrand decided to structure this story, there’s no way to mess up this material.

But seriously…that third idea? That needs to be made in a film, Ms. Hillenbrand.

But also seriously, you should go find this book and read it. When I said that I read it yesterday, that's exactly what I mean. YESTERDAY. I read the whole goddamn thing in one day. You will barely put this book down...unless it's to dream up a film script. Yep...did that one repeatedly.

Saturday Songs - Aug. 20

1. “Twenty Miles” – Deer Tick

Finally I got my hands on Deer Tick’s third full-length album. It’s not a great album—it’s a good album—but there are some winners on it. “Twenty Miles” is the personal favorite, especially its swinging bass line and roving guitar arpeggios. Exactly the kind of country stomper that I tend to fall for…

~

2. “Out In The Night” – The Atlas Mountains

[sorry...it's not the whole song below]

It’s so much the body of the song that I like (although I do like it), but the fantastic coda that starts up with a reverb-drenched guitar before folding into some piano licks and then some mad-rush drumming into a stirring finale. As to why we haven’t heard of this band before is a mystery. Hailing from Nashville but based in Perth, Australia, their travels around the world aren’t elucidated in their brief online bio.

They have all the makings of a great indie rock band, but they have not yet hit their step; they have a meager 13,000 total plays on their MySpace page, which—if you’re not familiar with sort of statistic—are pretty darn low (for a band that sounds so darn good). Hopefully the next album will push them to the next level…until then we should all listen to A Splendid Diagnosis! For free!

~

3. “Girl In A War” – Josh Ritter

Josh Ritter is fantastic. I considered featuring his equally impressive song “The Curse”—about a mummy that comes back to life and falls in love with her archaeologist—but I thought I’d share this song instead. Because Ritter is a literary type, his songs are littered with references. Not so cluttered as most, “Girl In A War” namedrops apostles Paul and Peter and comedy duo Laurel and Hardy.

Does the song make sense?

Maybe…? According to an interview with Ritter, the song deals with the way in which religious language was used to incite the war in Iraq in 2003 and how Ritter felt that the language was being inappropriately used. So Ritter went ahead and…oh…I don’t know. Just enjoy the song.

~

4. “Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!” – Corb Lund & the Hurtin’ Albertans

Not many artists are brave enough to write a concept album…and even fewer are clever enough to make a good one. Lund is one of those rare artists; with Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, he has crafted an album about horses (and fighting on horses) that is serious and funny. Some highly recommended tunes on that album, but I offer the title track as the cream of the crop.

~

5. “Fields Of Gold” – Eva Cassidy

This is a Sting song, of course, but upon hearing Cassidy’s rendition, most people are bound to acknowledge that she might have outdone Gordon Sumner on this one. Cassidy, who died about 15 years ago, is considered by some as one of the premier covers artists of all time. With an elastic voice and a versatile style of guitar playing, Cassidy covered everything from rock to pop to blues to gospel to old Robbie Burns tunes. But this adaptation of Sumner’s song may be her crowning achievement.

A Discussion Of Christian Rock In Three Parts (III)

III.

Are there any songs out there that require belief? Are there religious songs that I want to listen to?

Maybe…and yes.

As for songs that require belief to enjoy them, I dislike very much to think that art ever requires something of its audience to the degree of religious conviction. So what can art require of its audience? I don’t think it’s easy to draw clear lines on any of these issues. This is the kind of argument we see when best-selling, serious authors like Jonathan Franzen or Ian McEwan use big, fancy vocabulary words that most people aren’t familiar with. We accuse them of having big heads or elitist mentalities or…well…larger than average vocabularies. Those accusations have some of the same flavor as my complaints about the requirement of a religious song, do they not?

But what the fancy-vocabulary-problem lacks is the necessity to have an entirely different frame of mind. Asking a reader to add a word or two to their head is not quite the same as asking a music fan to…well…believe in a higher power—specifically in Jesus Christ, in the case of Christian rock. At this point I’m surely coming off as a bit of an atheist—which I am (although I prefer “agnostic” because I fancy myself at least a little spiritual)—but being an atheist and not a Christian should not close me off to Christian music. The same goes for how being a Westerner should not close me off to other world views—but does it? Should it?

~

Welcome, my friends, to the thorny fields of postcolonial theory—the romping grounds of famed literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said. I will not hesitate to tell you that I am still terrified of Said after a not-so-pleasant reading experience in the fall of my freshman year—too soon, I assure you, for literary theory.

One of the fantastically difficult questions raised by postcolonial theory is the issue of how colonial and postcolonial peoples and societies are represented in literature and the arts—but, on top of that, the related issue of how people respond to about them. How does a Native American respond to old John Wayne films? Can he or she ever begin to appreciate them? The question is whether or not they are able to see beyond the folly of the racism and the (sometimes) inaccurate history. NOT that I mean to compare religion to racism; the point, however, is the same. Those old John Wayne films presume a certain cultural blinder on the part of the audience, just the same as Sanctus Real presumes that its audience understands Christianity and the impulses behind their music.

~

So what am I left with? Is there any accessible Christian music out there?!

Of course there is! Some of it below.

“Yahweh” – U2

If the song’s title isn’t obvious enough (it’s the Hebrew name for God), this is a gigantically Christian song. Although Bono’s lyrics don’t usually have too heavy of a religious lean, this set of lyrics are more or less clearly religious.

But this song is a pretty mundane find—how about Josh Garrels?

A singer-songwriter hailing from Portland, Oregon, the opening of Garrels’s bio troubles me at first: “Josh Garrels is a lot of things, or has been: son of a hippie commune, skater boy, suburban drug dealer, music/design student, coffee roaster, urban shepherd, and now nation- and globe-trotting minstrel of hope and healing.”

[by Jonathan Scott – from Cdbaby.com]

That’s not exactly a promising start for a critic who’s bent on dismissing Christian rock…lower down in the bio, however, I find something that literally makes me want to fist-pump at Garrels through the computer:

“‘In a media-saturated pop culture society where “stars” are the royalty to be worshipped or fawned over, I believe the true role of artists is to serve others with their creations,’ Garrels says. ‘That means to draw people to fullness of life through revelation, longing, breakthroughs, simple beauty, and unpretentious truths. Artists help people see the obvious, the heart of the matter, and from this regained perspective people become more fully human. So much art these days has people focusing on an unattainable fantasy, lusting over what they'll never have unless they take it by force or by way of money or libido. This is all candy, and candy can't make a man healthy.’”

[ibid]

While I may not be exactly on board with the notion of “[drawing] people to fullness of life through revelation”—I suspect a Christian “revelation”—I sort of like this whole artists serving other with their creations bit…

Anyways, Garrels is the one diamond in the rough I’ve uncovered in my (rather) brief foray into the tangled world of Christian rock and its misplaced emphases. Here’s to Josh Garrels and his uncannily affecting…ahem…Christian rock. Also—he raps. You can get his latest album for FREE here.

Here's a verse sample:

"Tempted and tried, I wondered why

the good man died, the bad man thrives

and Jesus cries because he loves 'em both.

We're all cast-aways in need of rope,

hangin' on by the last threads of our hope

in a house of mirrors full of smoke

confusing illusions I've seen."

"Farther Along" - Josh Garrels

"Ulysses" - Josh Garrels

A Discussion Of Christian Rock In Three Parts (II)

II.

I’ll phrase the question again: Is the mediocre quality of Christian rock thanks to Christianity or to rock?

Er…it’s rock n’ roll’s fault a little more than Christianity’s?

~

Think about it this way: arguably, more than any other genre of music in the modern era, there are certain unshakeable assumptions about rock music. There’s a reason that the Rolling Stones’ manager introduced them as “the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world”—with their often booze-, drug-, and sex-fueled songs, they embodied the radical, rebel spirit of rock ’n’ roll. Ever since Chuck Berry was duck-walking and Elvis was hip-swinging, rock music has been what young people love and old people are scared of.

While rock music has aged well—almost no one takes issue with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as a drug song or “Satisfaction” as a sex song any longer—that does not mean that its spirit has at all been distilled. Since its incarnation as a fusion of blues, country, and gospel more than 60 years ago, rock has always maintained a wild edge.

But that wild edge doesn’t just connote a good time; rock can also be angry and cathartic music. Anyone who’s bothered to listen to Nirvana past “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or heard even a single note of music from Rage Against The Machine knows that much. At least in our culture, rock has been conceived as an outlet for our collective id. If Freud’s ego is represented in these songs as pulling us back from the abyss, the only time we ever see the superego is as “the man” holding us back. Almost Famous—a filmic ode to rock music if there is one (overlooking This Is Spinal Tap)—presents that struggle between superego (Frances McDormand’s superb mother figure Elaine Miller) and the various ragtag army that makes up the id (Kate Hudson’s jubilant groupie).

So this is where rock music brings us. I ask you: what place does Christianity have in any of this? The only conceivable place for me to slot Christianity is in the guise of the superego—the overpowering Elaine Miller, who, let’s be honest, really did need to let it up a little.

~

I don’t think I can adequately make the argument that God never belongs in rock music. After all, He has made some awfully inspired appearances over the years. And, no, I don’t mean in the John Lennon “God” sense, where “God” is a concept that allows Lennon to dissect both social psychology and himself at the same time. But that doesn’t mean God can’t happen in rock music. Another Beatle, George Harrison, more than proves that point:

Despite its appropriation from The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine,” Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” stands as one of the greatest rock songs of the 1970s and, certainly, one of the most spiritual rock songs ever. So why does it work?

One answer is that, well, it’s not straight “Christian rock.” With all the “hare krishnas” and “gurur brahmas” tacked tastefully onto the end of the song, the song becomes less “Christian” and more generally religious and spiritual. The real reason, I suspect, why this song hasn’t been tossed off as shameless praise-God music is because George Harrison wrote it.

That may sound like a silly, obvious hypothesis, but it holds some water once you consider the song in light of what you probably know about Harrison. Even those of us not born in the Beatles’ or Harrison’s heyday probably know about him. Harrison was the silent Beatle…later on the Beatle who introduced religious influences…the philanthropic Beatle…the “spiritual” Beatle. We don’t judge the song as a Christian rock song; we judge it as a song coming from one of the Beatles...specifically George. It was exactly the song we would have expected from him—the same way that “Imagine” is exactly the kind of song we would have expected from John. (As a side note, I doubt that there has ever been another as obviously atheistic song holding the number one spot on the charts [first line? “Imagine there’s no heaven…”]).

Okay…but let’s test the waters with another song—“Shine” by Collective Soul:

How did this happen? Why do I...*gasp*...like this song so much when it deals with such explicit Christian themes? 

I’ve come to a bit of an interesting impasse in trying to explain away this issue. The lead singer of Collective Soul, Ed Roland, is admittedly Christian and has certainly injected a lot of his work with Christian themes and imagery, but Roland himself in no way considers Collective soul a Christian rock group. From a Popmatters article dating from 2005:

“Roland seems especially upset by the Christian label not because it necessarily clashes with his personal beliefs, but because such a tag suggests that the band is united by a particular brand of faith. ‘We’re five individual guys with five individual beliefs. No one person in the band can speak on behalf of the band. We all believe in a higher being, but we’re not out to profess what it is.’

While he may bristle at the Christian tag, Roland doesn’t deny the spiritual nature of the band’s lyrics. ‘Our father was a minister, and he still is. He’s a southern Baptist minister and those are my family’s roots. It’s how I grew up—the way I was taught and how I learned to speak, if that makes sense.’ Hence, the scattered religious references across their albums, from prophecies to salvation.”

[from “A Return to Having Fun: Collective Soul Remembers Why It Makes Music” by Jonathan Garrett]

Not that this quote gets my argument anywhere, but it does reveal an important dichotomy between Roland’s band and other Christian rockers out there. How about returning to my friends Sanctus Real from the first part of this essay? Here’s an excerpt from an interview with the band’s frontman Mark Hamitt with Wrecked.org:

“The song ‘Forgiven’ came out of a time when we were really fighting this and realized that ‘God's strength is perfected in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).’  No matter what we are or what we've done; what we truly are and will always be is ‘a treasure in the arms of Christ.’”

Not quite Roland-speak…but how about looking earlier in the interview when, in explaining the band’s early history, he says:

“When we were teenagers writing songs for other teenagers, we wanted to give our peers a fun and positive alternative to some of the other music out there.”

Hamitt claims that he wanted to give other teenagers an “alternative to some of the other music out there” (my emphasis…duh!). In fact, the word “alternative” is probably the best way to describe Christian rock. Christian rock artists have created one of the most impressive niche markets out there. As one YouTube comment so astutely observed in response to angry comments on one Christian rock compilation video (yes…I’m drawing on YouTube again),

“…if you're not a Christian, don't look up Christian songs, that's all there is to it. The music is amazing and it would really be nice if you kept your insulting comments to your self.”

[comment from user TheBroken159 on “Top Christian Rock Songs”]

So how can I possibly attack a niche market? There are thousands upon thousands of artists out there tucked away into niche markets; they have no desire to move beyond their tidy, little spread. They’re got their little corner set up and they’re just fine where they are, thank you very much! What’s really so wrong with that? Why can’t I have my little band and my pleasant praising-God-and-Jesus music and just live my life? Why can’t I just please my sheep-like fanbase? Why must all these angry wolves interfere! (It seems as if I’m getting into character…)

The fact is that these so-called wolves of the not-so-fold-like Internet can’t help but interfere. My take on it is that Christian rock artists have their approach—not just to rock ’n’ roll—but to music flat out wrong. I think Christian rock asks the audience to bring a little too much to the table; no one should need to believe in God in order to appreciate a song. Christian rock, in short, disrupts my expectations for a universal artistic experience on the part of listeners.

So are there any songs out there that require belief…if I want to enjoy them?

A Discussion Of Christian Rock In Three Parts

I.

Every South Park fan remembers the “Christian rock” episode in which Cartman—in defiance of Stan, Kenny, and Kyle—claims that he will record a platinum album. For Cartman, the solution is obvious: all he needs to do is take a bunch of love songs and brand them as Christian rock by rewriting them as odes to Jesus. Comic problems, of course, ensue, but I'm more interested in the assumptions about both Christian rock and the role of Christian music in our society that are central to the episode.

The ostensible hilarity of Christian music, according to South Park, is that writing love songs to Jesus is a pretty silly thing. So how different are love songs to God and love songs to people? Do Christian rock songs have an edge on more "mainstream" love songs like…oh, well, I don’t know…how about Big Star’s “Thirteen” or Steve Earle’s “Halo ‘Round The Moon."?

Given as much emphasis as must be placed on lyrics, I think it might be helpful some direct comparisons. How about “Everything About You” by Christian rock band Sanctus Real vs. Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour”?

“Be my light in this darkened room

I'm on my face and I'm calling you.

I can't fathom all you've done for me

every time it finds me on my knees.”

[from “Everything About You”]

“My cherie amour, lovely as a summer day,

my cherie amour, distant as the Milky Way

my cherie amour, pretty little one that I adore,

you're the only girl my heart beats for,

how I wish that you were mine.”

[from “My Cherie Amour”]

As you’ve doubtlessly already guessed, I’m all set to trash the Sanctus Real excerpt: it’s trite, uninspired, artless, and, frankly, sort of unworthy for critical discussion. That last judgment sounds like an awfully lame complaint—do I expect everyone to put on their music critic hats listening to Mercyme and the David Crowder Band? Of course, when you ask people to think critically at something, they’ll more likely back away from me, saying, "I don’t have to “think critically” to just enjoy some song about my spirituality, Taylor! Jeez! Back off of Jesus!"

~

But I think they’d be wrong. Despite our best intentions to not be critics, sometimes we can’t help it. My theory is that all art depends on a principle of interesting-ness (a term I appropriate from Professor Peter Rabinowitz). If it’s interesting—if it intrigues us or engages us as an audience—then the odds are that there’s something to it. Generally, I find that that music or what-have-you out there that…well…bores me is something less than good.

What all that has to do with Christian rock is pretty simple. Love songs are interesting because of the people involved, the feelings expressed, and, most importantly, exactly how those feelings are expressed. Faced with the relationship between a believer and his God, the fact is that Christian rock songwriters usually don’t seem to accomplish all that much with such material.

Those well-versed folk out there will readily point out the legions of songwriters and poets from Shakespeare to more contemporary writers who explicitly deal with the relationship between God and man in their writings. Largely (speaking as if I’ve read gobs of religious poetry—unfortunately, I have not), it’s safe to say that these works of poetry are not even in the same league as Sanctus Real.

For instance, Sanctus Real does not strive for poetry in quite the same way as Johne Donne:

“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me,’ and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”

[from “Holy Sonnet 14”; out of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, shorter 5^th ed., pg. 208]

Can at least that much be agreed upon? Donne has a little something more than “Be my light in this darkened room”…

~

None of this means to say that God or the discussion of one’s love for God is in any way a bad or terrible thing; I only mean to claim that it’s terribly uninteresting in the world of Christian rock song. These artists don’t want to grapple with religious doubt or what it means to be Christian; they want to play music—as so many YouTube comments pointed out—that is “uplifting and praises the God we believe in.”

So is all Christian rock that boring? And, if so, whose fault is that - Christianity or rock 'n roll?


(Part II arriving in the near future)

To "Sell-Out" Or To Stay The Same?

I once had a great conversation about sell-outs. Meaning, of course, an argument. Any discussion of sell-outs is bound to end up in ugly territory. For me, the ugly territory began with Kings of Leon.

The problem begins with the term “sell-out” itself. The negative connotations to the word “sell-out” are impossible to ignore. My handy Mac dictionary is quick to label “sell-out” as “a betrayal of one's principles for reasons of expedience.” Which, you know, doesn’t exactly sound like a good thing. 

But back to Kings of Leon:

From left to right, Matt, Caleb and Nathan Followill (behind drum set) of the band Kings of Leon; via Wikimedia Commons

It doesn’t take a Kings of Leon fan club member to know that somewhere between their third album Because Of The Times and their fourth album Only By The Night something changed. It wouldn’t be easy to spell out that change—for while there are notable shifts in songwriting and mixing, the first-time listener might be more struck by the similarities that carry over between albums.

But no one would disagree with the fact that Only By The Night sounds cleaner than Because Of The Times. Prior to Only, the Folowill clan had a deep-fried southern rock sound…but afterwards, their sound somewhat morphed into an arena-rock groove. You can’t listen to “Use Somebody” and tell me that it’s quite the same band that recorded the eight-minute toe-tapper “Knocked Up.”

But the real issue at stake: is that swap necessarily such a bad thing?

~

It’s a thorny issue—inextricably tied, of course, to whether or not you like Kings of Leon—but that doesn’t mean it cannot be parsed out a little.

It helps to imagine that you’re Caleb or Nathan Followill right after the release of Because Of The Times: you’ve now written and released three well-received albums—well-received, that is, by critics. You have a loyal fanbase, but by no means an enormous following the likes of Coldplay or U2.

Where do you go from here? Do you keep making the same bluesy, gritty rock? Or do you change it up? Do you, so to speak, clean out the grit from the engine and wax the hood—even if that means wiping away layers of nostalgia and maybe even the very skin of self-identity?

I don’t think it’s too much to imagine that the Followills contemplated these things. In fact, I think it’s a fair assumption that most artists who “sell-out” go through a similar thought process: I’ve done what I can and it hasn’t totally worked—now what?

But our sympathies in this discussion cannot rely solely on the artist—the audience, after all, has a voice as well. The voices of dissent regarding the Kings of Leon’s “sell-out” have been, at least in my experience, particularly vicious. I’ve even heard someone claim that the band sold-out after Aha Shaka Heartbreaker—claiming that Because was the move into the big leagues.

So what happens to that loyal fanbase? They get angry! They’re pissed! “You sold us out, Caleb!” they yell. “You moron! You’re compromising your sound! For what? For money! For fame! You shallow a***ole!”

~

As bizarre as it might sound, I think it might help to think like Freud.

I think that the Followill’s loyal fanbase has some abandonment issues. Anytime someone you love starts ignoring you, it tends to sting a little (quite a lot actually). While I might be overreaching a little in comparing the relationship between artist and audience to mother and child, I don’t think it’s an entirely inaccurate comparison, especially when you consider the weight and importance that some people place in their favorite musical artists.

After all, everyone has those kinds of musicians to whom we have, in a way, entrusted ourselves. We like them and we like to think they like us. When they release something we dislike, we shrug and maybe feel a little let down. I will freely admit that sometimes I even feel badly for the artist. When Matt & Kim released their not-so-great-sophomore-slump-of-an-album, I felt pretty badly for them.

But something different happens when those artists release something that we not only dislike, but something that violently disagrees with our vision of the artist. It’s one thing when Sufjan Stevens releases Seven Swans and you grumble that it’s no Greetings From Michigan, but it’s entirely another when he releases The Age of Adz—an album that caters to Stevens’s wildest orchestral/electronic fantasies, but seems to largely ignore his folkie back-history. (That’s my take, anyway.)

Sufjan Stevens plays an acoustic concert; via Wikimedia Commons

My point here is that there’s a funny relationship going on. Did Kings of Leon pull some Freudian shit on me with Only By The Night? Yes and no. I answer ambivalently only meaning to point out that the Followills probably didn’t think about it that way. They thought: where do we go from this place? I thought: why would you ever leave?

~

A tendency of this argument is to find the root of the problem in economics. The assumption at work is that musicians, at the end of the day, play music to make money. The truth, obviously, is not so black and white. Musicians play music for a host of interconnected reasons, some of them monetary and others not so much at all. But money, I will grudgingly admit, is not a negligible player in this discussion.

A friend of mine, J.R., quite astutely pointed out that sometimes artists will “compromise” their sound for commercial success in order to achieve greater artistic freedom at a later point in their career. While this sort of path sounds somewhat arrogant (you can just be a success like that?!), I don’t think that we can dismiss the possibility.

Any examples of this path are difficult to find, because usually people are not so frank as to admit that they did things purely out of artistic leverage. One promising lead would be that of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, the glaring issue with that example being the lack of evidence that Nevermind was at all intended as a “sell-out.” But regardless of that, Nevermind ended up being one of the biggest-selling albums of the 1990s and allowed Cobain to follow his muse wherever it took him—one need only listen to the gritty soundscape of In Utero or the peculiar (but brilliant!) live set of Unplugged in New York to know that Cobain had been released into financial security to do whatsoever he pleased.

Another band that I think may be enduring somewhat of a sell-out phase for the same reasons is Modest Mouse. Many longtime fans viewed Good News For People Who Love Bad News and/or We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank as selling-out albums, but I have the suspicion that by this point Isaac Brock has leveraged for the band enough mainstream success that he could score an unlimited amount of financial support for whatever project he feels like. 

Isaac Brock of the band Modest Mouse: Is he selling-out on purpose?? ; via Wikimedia Commons

But sadly, the reality is that these discussions from an economic point of view will overwhelmingly amount to not much more than idle speculation. That, maybe, is the real problem with the sell-out discussion; it’s all based on motives and thoughts that we, as critics and fans, cannot really see—it’s all just speculation.