A few weeks ago New York magazine ran an excellent article comparing the styles of comedy of Larry David of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ fame, and Woody Allen. http://nymag.com/movies/features/56930/ Both Jewish writers and comedians, each man was defined as either a Schlemiel or a Schnook, while incidentally the new breed of Jewish slacker comedians, Judd Apatow being their apotheosis, was described as a Schlump.
I was reminded of this yesterday when a friend sent me a clip from YouTube. It was a track called ‘Broken Leg’ by a band called ‘Blue Juice’ from their soon to be released second album. I’d never heard of them before, but watching the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJAWLfdkapQ I was struck once again by the notion that Indie Pop gets a much softer ride both from the critics and listeners than do mainstream artists.
Listening to the song made me think back to Rick Springfield and his Grammy-winning hit ‘Jessie’s Girl’. Back in the day, Springfield was about as un-hip as it was humanly possible to be. A sub-Cassidy pin-up, he switched careers between that of a top-40 musician and an actor in an American soap. Nevertheless, play the songs side by side, and it seems clear to me that the 1981 US #1, pisses all over the new offering by the Aussie youngsters. Nevertheless like the schnook and coincidentally-monikered Rodney Dangerfield, Rick ‘never got no respect’.
Now this is no life changing observation it has to be said. But it does make me think how two value systems seem to be at work here. David Lee Roth once commented that the reason why so many rock critics loved Elvis Costello, was because most of them looked like him. And this schlump-like approach to music criticism pervades to this day. It seems that one can only obtain true critical acclaim, is if you look like the misfit who is writing about you.
Blue Juice come from a long line of geeks, their ‘witty’ rope-skipping championship-themed video seems pulled directly from the pages of Weezer, another band with a singer who struggled with a disability, Rivers Cuomo born with one leg longer than the other. The band Wheatus, known primarily for their number one hit ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, sported a boss-eyed singer. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then I guess it was only appropriate that his were skewed, the song containing a veiled reference to the Columbine killers.
Any road, my point isn’t that people with some sort of affliction shouldn’t be allowed to make records or have hits, my point is, just because you’re some sort of misfit or suffering from a physical attribute which may have made teenage-life difficult for you, doesn’t automatically mean you can write decent songs. You can be as crazy as you like - cf. Phil Spector - and make fantastic music, but you can also be what-is-known-as traditionally handsome, and still write brilliant songs. What bothers me, is this sense of inverted snobbery, that someone like Rick Springfield can only be enjoyed in a post-modern ironic way. There’s even a term for it; ‘a guilty pleasure’. So all those unfashionable bands whose songs we secretly loved: Boston - More Than a Feeling, ELO - Telephone Man, Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is - can now be enjoyed, usually when drunk in front of a Karaoke machine, even though they were seen as pariahs by the in-crowd at the time their records were actually released.
And of course it goes on. There are a slew of completely average Indie Pop bands who don’t even deserve the term Pop - they simply aren’t skilled or brilliant enough to merit it. ‘Blue Juice’ are the ones getting my goat today, (and I am sure they are lovely boys) but consider; ‘Editors’ - aptly named but a sub New Romantic electro jerk-off, ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ - utterly unmemorable and formulaic jangle, ‘Foals’ - art twaddle (and duller than ‘The Beat’), the same could be said for ‘Vampire Weekend’ and ‘Interpol’, and lets just ignore the irrelevance of ‘The Kooks’, ‘The Pigeon Detectives’ and ‘Maximo Park’. These bands come and go, cluttering up magazines and evening radio schedules, never reaching further than middle-of-the-bill on a Festival listing before disappearing back into day jobs as supply-teachers or computer programmers.
I know in the past the Record Industry needed such fodder in order to give itself something to do while it waited for the next major release, but those days are gone. Much like the Independent Film sector which is now simply waiting for the flushing of excess product to be completed so it can restructure itself and come up with a future-model that might actually work, so Music has to do the same.
“But these bands you listed, they give people pleasure,” I hear you whine. So does Morris Dancing and Death Metal, but I don’t hear any of you complaining that those particular art forms don’t get enough investment or coverage.
No, I say let these Pop Schlumps toil away in the netherworld. Be happy being bar bands. Play for your mates. Have a laugh at the youth club. But don’t foist yourself on the rest of us exhausted souls. Don’t expect a record deal, let alone sales. The Pop world has been awash with mediocrity for too long. I say it’s time for a cull. If you aren’t absolutely brilliant, just do us a favour and please... keep it local.
© Simon Fellowes September 2009