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It’s Alive! The Frankenstein Of Rock: A Response To Last Week's Flagpole "Liner Notes"

by Casey DeHoedt
04/14/2008

In the “Liner Notes” section of last week’s Flagpole, Edward Cowan oh-so-poignantly asks the world the question polluting record stores everywhere since 1981: is rock dead? I remember being 15 while relatives and co-workers of the older generation lamented this very issue...

That was a decade ago.

And I saw their gripe - things had changed. I was well enough versed in their legends: AC/DC, Credence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Hendrix... Or to reference specifically: Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain. These artists represent significant music in rock’s history. But Morrison and Cobain are dead – drug overdoses, how “rock star.” Axl Rose’s stringy ‘totally metal’ hair has been plaited into cornrows, and “Sweet Child of Mine” can be heard as a ring tone at nearly any Wal-Mart. And even though we’d rather cry than admit it, we all know we’re mere moments away from seeing Mick Jagger performing “Satisfaction” on Metamucil commercials.

And polish, as we insist, our vinyl LPs, they still gather dust. Deal with it already. No, my beef with Cowan’s writing has nothing to do with anyone’s reaction to the fossilization and/or osteoporosis of rock-n-roll’s “Museum of Fame.”

My problem is with the writer’s notion of what rock ought to be and his anger over what is usurping it. What would Mr. Cowan prefer? He doesn’t tell us, and I wonder if he knows. Scratch that, I wonder if he’s really examined his own view and position. This is my alarm.

At times he proposes a return toward the aggressive hedonistic times: a time of brazen white male identities and their display of violent, intimidating and exclusionary anger. But Cowan states he doesn’t care about things such as “destroyed hotel rooms, the overdoses, or the arrests for fighting with security at the airport.”

So, is he upset that rock has sold out? That our rock legends have become screened and printed and sold in the “Misses” department at J.C. Penny? No, Cowan seems upset by obscure “anti-market” indie culture...

So what?

It seems it is because disciples of Jim Morrison are invisible in rock media. But are they invisible? Or overshadowed? Or replaced? Or is it simply because they are not receiving the prominent pedestal they’ve been receiving for some forty years.

Cowan seems to care a great deal about hip-hop’s increased visibility in music industry media. He cares that some artist’s – the ones on the radio – have traded their distorted electric guitars and furiously pounding riffs for smoother more mellow acoustics. He cares that rock is “dickless:” castrated, weakened and effeminized.

Whether or not you choose to call rap or hip-hop a facet of rock music, or think of emo as ‘rockin,’ I can’t help but celebrate the fact that races, genders and identities other than middle-class heterosexual white boys have gained pop culture recognition; that we can see and hear them, not as alien or exotic “trends,” but as an established, non-erasable, non-marginalized existence.

Whenever the memorial tears are shed for one’s beloved rock, I have to ask the widower what they’re mourning the most: is it a genre preference? Or is it an ideology? Do they miss psychedelic music, or the psychedelic times and culture that the music expressed? Now I’m asking Cowan to clarify this for me – do you miss your preferred music? Or do you miss your preferred ideology?

If Cowan’s observations are merited, if Kayne West has indeed stolen Zack de la Rocha’s “imperative duty” for speaking to our youths about political consciousness and involvement... Does West’s underhanded usurpation make his message any less valuable to our culture? It shouldn’t. Who assigned who these duties, these rights, for political activism anyway? And so what. The message is the same, but the voice and body are different... is that really so terrible?

My purpose here is to make readers aware of the privileged ideology that has dominated rock music, its industry and media since its formation – but more pertinently, how these things have seeped into our own preferences. My agenda is to caution against agreeing with similar viewpoints without examining their ideological origins, or the potential harm they carry.

I understand that it may be jarring to bring up anti-isms when discussing rock or any type of music. No one wants to see their collections indicted for society's crimes. We just want to listen with a lighthearted pleasure; why does society matter anyway?

Well, as Cowan himself wrote, “the world still clings to the rock band as a cultural force.” And he’s absolutely right. Who’s on stage, who’s in Rolling Stone, what they play, and the lyrics they sing... All these reflect our society and form our social perceptions. And whether or not we wish to, and even if we feel it’s too uncomfortable to, we need to recognize and grapple with these isms eventually.

So again, I don’t want to be writing “against” Cowan, but rather I wish to use his statements as an invitation to a discussion of the ideas he expresses. Because like rock bands, Cowan’s writing also acts a cultural force that observes and influences our perceptions.

Personally, I don’t see the current state of music as weakened, but as more flexible. I don’t find it diluted but enriched with narratives and perspectives other than the one previously given face and voice to. If rock is “dickless,” is it such a terrible terrible thing?

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