Thursday, 21 May 2009

• American Idol=American Idiots, Pt. 2

  The defeat of Adam Lambert on American Idol is—while worrisome in regard to the fact that his loss might have had less to do with his talent than his sexuality—a cultural triviality that will almost certainly be forgotten in a few weeks’ time.  Lambert will find mammoth success in spite of his defeat, the man who actually won the contest will end up headlining county fairs, and roughly half the American public will continue living in the 19^th century, praisin’ Jesus, “hatin’ them homos,” and pledging their undying support to the same class of privileged aristocrats who’ve exploited them for generations, never pausing to think that those greedy, militaristic aristocrats might not have the average American’s best interests at heart.

   

  But that’s enough of that:  I don’t want to politicize this post any more than I already have, so I’ll stop short of exploring that avenue any further.  What I really want to talk about is the fact that America has seemingly lost any conception of rock-n-roll, the continued bland, nonthreatening nature of televised pabulum such as American Idol being a prime indicator of the sheer depth of the trough of predigested mediocrity on which American pop music continues to glut itself.  

   

  To be fair, pop music has existed far longer than rock-n-roll:  the Tin Pan Alley standards that dominated American pop from the 1890s to the 1930s were designed for maximum cheer and palatability, and challenged no-one’s sensibilities (and yes, before you ask, I feel that one of rock music’s not-so-solemn duties is to challenge the sensibilities, and I’ll not even debate that assertion).  Rock-n-roll emerged in the late 1940s and early ‘50s from a peculiar synthesis of C&W (Country & Western) and what was then called “colored music:”  the rhythm-and-blues of Black musicians hailing from the American South.  When rock hit the mainstream courtesy of acts like Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and Elvis Presley, it was a revelation…and yet, while it quickly made its presence known on the pop charts, the safe, inoffensive pop of the pre-rock era remained quite popular.  For instance, the syrupy “Teenager in Love” by Dion and the Belmonts was one of the biggest hits of 1959, despite the rock era having entered full swing some years earlier (Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” had hit in 1952).  Even at this early stage of the game, American pop and rock tended to exist in parallel to one another, sometimes occupying the same charts but rarely melding.  However, in the 1960s, rock came to all-but-dominate the pop charts, thanks in part to a couple of bands you might have heard of, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  In the 1970s, though, pop and rock were again clearly separated from one another, the hard-driving genius of Led Zeppelin and their contemporaries having little in common with the vapidity of disco…hence, the rise of album-oriented rock radio (if you remember those glory days of AOR, join me in a celebratory air guitar jam…BWWWOOOWWWWW!), a venue in which rock music could continue to evolve unfettered by the inanity of dance-oriented pop music.

   

  By the time the 1980s rolled around, pop was pop, rock was rock, and more often than not, rock music charted in terms of album sales, but not so regularly in terms of singles sales.  The hair-metal of the late ‘80s put guitars back on the charts for a while, followed by brief (ca. early 1990s) American obsession with all things flannel and tuned-down-to-D, but in the end, we find ourselves right where we are right now:  pop is pop…rock is rock.

   

  This has been an incredibly abbreviated discussion of the histories of pop and rock in America…please don’t take it for anything more than that.  I’m merely setting a stage, here.

   

  What bugs me is that America invented rock-n-roll, yet since that initial explosion of creativity in the 1950s, we have been imitators more than innovators.  Britain has been the dominant force in the development of rock-n-roll since the Beatles landed on American shores, and since that fateful day, America has (with a few notable exceptions) been repeatedly forced into the role of follower rather than leader, at least as rock music is concerned.  Last year, while my pal Garen and I were recording the 13^th episode of our rock-n-roll history podcast, it occurred to us that all the legendary artists we’d covered—artists who had influenced generations of rock musicians—were Brits.  Wait, not all of them:  AC/DC hailed from Australia.  Still, the point was noteworthy and, frankly, a little alarming.

   

  America may have invented rock, but we’re just not that comfortable—maybe not even all that facile—with our occasionally troublesome musical offspring.  And cultural contrivances such as American Idol do little more than drive that fact home.

   

  And once again, I have to leave you hanging…hopefully, I’ll have time to finish this up after teaching class tonight.

   

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