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Rock Art Rock
Jay Reatard
October 2008
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By Andres Jauregui "Before I bought my DSLR (a present to myself the day I got axed from a shitty office job), I took pictures on a lowly point-and-shoot..."
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November 2008
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By Andres Jauregui "Eli Moore (no relation) from LAKE turned me on to his mentor, R. Stevie Moore, during an interview for Crawdaddy!, so when LAKE opened for R. Stevie in November of 2008, I had to check him out..."
Say No! To Architecture
June 2009
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By Andres Jauregui "Allen Roizman's one-man-band blew me away at the otherwise sleepy inaugural Northside Festival this past June. Death By Audio is a hub for under-the-radar talent in Brooklyn..."
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We Can Talk About It… Now
The 40th Anniversary of Rolling Stone came out this May. It is an incredible piece of organizational onanism, led by editor Jann Wenner. The central thrust of the issue seemed to be that the ‘60s were great because Rolling Stone was there to cover it. To celebrate their 40th, RS interviewed a host of venerable cultural luminaries from politics, music and the arts. “Arts” here is loosely applied, covering whatever it is that Jane Fonda has done with her abomination of a public life. Dylan was characteristically gnostic, Jimmy Carter revealed that he used to listen to Dylan, while Jack Nicholson said he saw a picture recently of a party where he and Dylan were both guests, but he didn’t remember that night at all. Everyone in the thing had a Dylan story, falling all over themselves in an attempt to connect with the bard.
The other key point that everyone agreed on is that George W. Bush is an antichrist-level downer for the American experiment. Everyone, that is, except for Nicholson, who came off as too sex-addled to really work up any kind of steam about anything except his next piece of ass. What no one could agree on was how the hell the same people who spent the ‘60s in a revolutionary orgy of sexual liberation, drug use and political engagement—an orgy that existed in symbiosis with a soundtrack performed by the Greatest Bands of All Time—could fall so far as to elect (and re-elect!) a cancer like George W. Bush.
Yet still we look back and struggle with the comparison between then and now. No reality can compare favorably to a myth, much less our own. We see major labels corrupted, shaped only by profit motive. Every week they squeeze out some new sonic gruel that is a bland, base, white noise lullaby easily digested by target markets. Even dissent is commodified and sold. Pretty pop-culture golems demean the sexual revolution by aping it, while gangster rap reduces the pride and righteous anger of the Civil Rights movement to a Jim Crow ditty that propagates and celebrates the ghetto. All of it is buttressed by a corrupt payola-backed radio and television celebrity machine run by five or six conglomerates; their leadership so far removed from what it actually means to grow up in this modern life that they might as well be feudal lords. Threats to the label hegemony for file-sharing or more currently, internet radio, are co-opted, attacked, eliminated.
Worse still is the political landscape. In sepia tones we see the marches on Selma, the Pentagon, on Berkeley and Stonewall, the people there so pure in their conviction. In our time, we’re only now waking up from a national fugue brought on by fear, stupidity and greed.
The defining image of our time is not the Twin Towers falling, symbol of America’s martyrdom, but the Abu Ghraib Angel, symbol of our betrayal of our own best nature. The specter of environmental catastrophe looms. Sheryl Crow and Natalie Maines somehow become the voices of protest for our day and age, taking on Karl Rove and his puppet President. Baez and Mitchell, these women are not.
Still, there is the nagging question, what happened? The gap between then and now defies reason, unless you question the assumptions.
Simply put, there is myth and there is reality. The revolution just wasn’t as far-reaching as everyone remembers it to be. There was great music of course, but look back at the Billboard charts for the late ‘60s and you’ll find the Monkees staring back at you, defying the idea that the generation’s only Great Music was played in 1969. So too the enormous lag time between the draft-fueled protests to end the War and the actual ending of the war a decade later. In the meantime, the United States massacred My Lai and poisoned the air, soil and wombs of large swaths of Vietnam with Agent Orange.
There’s no simple comparison between today and yesterday; the past always gaining from nostalgia with the simple human need to remember the good and let the bad evaporate. The ‘60s were great. So are the Oughts. In the candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, we see the natural fulfillment of the best instincts of the ‘60s. In music, backwater bands breach the national conscience every day via media channels that are run by fans for fans. These bands bring their politics with them—not quite as over-the-top as what we remember from the ‘60s, but every bit as influential to their listeners. From Bloc Party to Bright Eyes, from TV on the Radio to A Silver Mt. Zion; this generation’s musicians are finding their own way into the political arena. There has never been a more exciting time to be a music fan.
Anniversaries are the perfect time to look back at the past, but it is not the stories of yesterday that inspire us. It is hope for a better tomorrow.
25 Comments
the dylan interview..fun… the Mcartney and Starr interviews fluff…the Mailer interview great chewing…the rest…a bad waste of a good tree..give it up Jann..and let the DC5 in the HOF willya !!!
sluggo
first time they shoved Hunter out the door was the end…give it up Jann
interesting, and well-written commentary! looking forward to reading more from edward.
Right on. This had to be said! I disowned RS when they ut Brittany Spears on the cover of the Women in Rock issue! I shouldn’t have waited that long!
The 40th issue of Rolling Stone put clear perspective on our country’s most enlightened era gone wrong. The interviews were informative and inspiring. Nothing like Edward Scott’s review, a tunnel-vision synopsis of drek, to answer the question of why we failed.
Tell it brother, sounds like you were there!
The 40th issue of Rolling Stone put clear perspective on our country’s most enlightened era gone wrong. The interviews were informative and inspiring. Nothing like Edward Scott’s review, a tunnel-vision synopsis of drek, to answer the question of why we failed.
The 40th issue of Rolling Stone put clear perspective on our country’s most enlightened era gone wrong. The interviews were informative and inspiring. Nothing like Edward Scott’s review, a tunnel-vision synopsis of drek, to answer the question of why we failed.
The 40th issue of Rolling Stone put clear perspective on our country’s most enlightened era gone wrong. The interviews were informative and inspiring. Nothing like Edward Scott’s review, a tunnel-vision synopsis of drek, to answer the question of why we failed.
The 40th issue of Rolling Stone put a clear perspective on our country’s most enlightened era gone wrong. The interviews were informative and inspiring. Nothing like Edward Scott’s review, a tunnel-visioned ill conceived synopsis of drek, to answer the question to why we failed.
The 40th issue of Rolling Stone put a clear perspective on our country’s most enlightened era gone wrong. The interviews were informative and inspiring. Nothing like Edward Scott’s review, a tunnel-visioned ill conceived synopsis of drek, to answer the question: why we failed.
Sorry my comments came up so many times. A computer runtime error…
I dunno, that 40th Anniversary cover was laaaaaame. Almost as bad as when Time Mag declared “you” as person of the year with the mirror on the front that made us all look like we were in a funhouse.
Like every other critic out there, you eviscerate pop culture and in a lame apologetic attempt not to seem “old”, you end your article by picking out a few lame bands and saying they’re great and that we’re living in exciting times. What a bunch of self-serving crap. You and other disingenuous critics, are an even bigger problem than the conglomerates you purport to despise, because you shape your real sentiments, in order to not seem out of touch and to keep your jobs.
Like every other critic out there, you eviscerate pop culture and in a lame apologetic attempt not to seem “old”, you end your article by picking out a few lame bands and saying they’re great and that we’re living in exciting times. What a bunch of self-serving crap. You and other disingenuous critics, are an even bigger problem than the conglomerates you purport to despise, because you shape your real sentiments, in order to not seem out of touch and to keep your jobs.
For posterity, this article was written by a person under the age of 30. Not exactly “old”…
Rolling Stone stopped being relevant a long time ago (And I’m 45, use Mojo or Uncut or Goldmine or local magazines or the internet to get a read on music, and not to be cool). It’s only fitting they do a review of the sixties that is as self-serving and lame, as they themselves have been for so long now. Even for articles and interviews about bands from that era and the the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and recent, the above sources are the ones to use.
Rolling Stone lost their credibility when the moved from SF to NYC decades ago. That said, I enjoyed some of the anniversary issue, like the interviews with Patti Smith and Neil Young. “Bloc Party and Bright Eyes” – they’re okay bands, but compared to the Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Beach Boys, Hendrix, Janis, Doors, and all the rest, they hardly compare. And what’s with slagging Jane Fonda – “abomination of a career” – she has always stood up for what she thought was right – unlike so many of us. When a disgruntled vet stood in line to spit in her face at a book signing, she just wiped it off and continued. That’s class.
Rolling Stone lost their credibility when the moved from SF to NYC decades ago. That said, I enjoyed some of the anniversary issue, like the interviews with Patti Smith and Neil Young. “Bloc Party and Bright Eyes” – they’re okay bands, but compared to the Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Beach Boys, Hendrix, Janis, Doors, and all the rest, they hardly compare. And what’s with slagging Jane Fonda – “abomination of a career” – she has always stood up for what she thought was right – unlike so many of us. When a disgruntled vet stood in line to spit in her face at a book signing, she just wiped it off and continued. That’s class.
amem.
Rolling Stone just mirrors the Pop culture. It has some good things to say but in no way is it like it used to be. Is anything? Yes it is a shame that Bush has been elected twice? But this has always been a conservative country. However as a “country” it appears that our IQ is dropping.
Rolling Stone just mirrors the Pop culture. It has some good things to say but in no way is it like it used to be. Is anything? Yes it is a shame that Bush has been elected twice? But this has always been a conservative country. However as a “country” it appears that our IQ is dropping.
It seems to me that this article is deeply and problematically vague. Besides the dangerously uninformed assertions about entire genres of music (ahem, “ganster rap,” really?), there is nothing to suggest that “there has never been a better time to be a music fan.” I think the 90s were a pretty good time, and for that matter I bet the 1940s were pretty cool, too. Ironically, few publications have championed Bright Eyes more than Rolling Stone.
Rollng Stone has always sucked, basically. It merely reflected the popular culture as it was at a specific time and it has changed along with society and its readers. The 40th anniv issue was insipid, the celebrity interviews vapid, and like the 60;’s were for most ppl, just a big letdown.
Jane Fonda can never adequately apologize to Viet-era veterans for her insi[uid and vapid pic sitting at the North Viet anti-aircraft battery. See how she tosses her hair for the camera! See her bright eyes sighting down the barrel of the gun! See Jane still (still!)descrbing herself in the silliest of Hollywood/New Age terms as a person still discovering herself. Yeah, right.