“I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it,’ and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you…”

- Abe Simpson, “Homerpalooza”

Truer words have never been spoken by a yellow, saucer-eyed, FOX-owned cartoon character. I think of the above quote every time I see one of those “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Dead” articles in the mainstream press. You know the kind I’m talking about—wherein some legendary geezer takes up too many inches harrumphing about the lack of quality tunes floating around out there in the ether. One of these very articles popped up last week, matter a-fact, on CNN.com, under the panic-stricken headline: “What Will Save Rock ‘n’ Roll?” Apparently rock ‘n’ roll fell down a well and the Green Lantern is out of town.

In this seemingly unnecessary story, E Street Band guitarist “Little” Steven Van Zandt plays the Homer Simpson role, literally citing the sucktitude of today’s rock ‘n’ roll as the reason the record industry is sinking faster than the Lusitania (“Who are we kidding here? Nobody’s buying records? Because they suck!”). Modern rock’s suckiness, the apparently computer-illiterate Van Zandt claims, can be traced to the fact that this generation’s musicians are eschewing the time-honored tradition of playing cover songs in bars (so’s they can focus on original material, the bastards!) and ignoring the importance of ripping off the popular rockers who came before them. Seriously. Quoteth Steve:

“[Rock ‘n’ roll] is a craft that has to be learned. There are things you learn by listening to great records, copying heroes.”

Is this a sly admission that the riff from Springsteen’s “Badlands” was indeed stolen from the Who’s “Baba O’Riley?” Wow. I appreciate you finally owning up to that one, Steve, but I’m still not accepting an apology from anyone but the Boss himself.

It should be noted that this entire CNN piece, penned by Todd Leopold, was borne out of a speech Van Zandt gave at South By Southwest this past March. Entitled “A Crisis of Craft,” the Austin tirade found Little Steven targeting today’s crop of guitar-slingers for putting artistic integrity above rock ‘n’ roll’s ultimate purpose (to make the working class dance) while simultaneously making the process of writing and recording an album sound about as much fun as working on a turbine engine assembly line. Again, to wit:

“… Once upon a time, it took an army of very talented people to make great records. Writers, singers, musicians, producers, arrangers, engineers, and now, you have to do it yourself? No wonder everything sucks!”

Methinks he forgot to mention the coke dealer (and the fluffer).

Hey, Little Steven, do you think perhaps the reason you think all these new bands and young people and the MTV suck “major moose cock” is because you’ve been playing guitar for BRUCE FUCKING SPRINGSTEEN for over 30 years? Aside from being the absolute epitome of the blue-collar bar musician you rhapsodized about in your little speech there, Bruce is only one of the greatest songwriters/singers who ever lived. How often does anybody get a chance to even sneeze on someone as smart or profound as that guy, let alone put a band together with him and attempt to carve out a career? How can you be objective about any other musician in the entire universe when you’ve been the right-hand man to “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Thunder Road” for four fucking decades?

Seriously bro, your band played the Super Bowl this year. The goddamn Super Bowl! I don’t see how you could accurately judge anything going on in music outside the Jonas Brothers right now. And don’t gimmie no baloney about your “underground” radio show. Playing records by the Woggles and the New York Dolls doesn’t make you Steve Albini.

Alas, Van Zandt is not the only grumpy, delusional codger in this irritating article. S-Curve Records founder Steve Greenberg casts a wicked finger at technology for allowing shitty musicians to succeed. Says the other Steve: “Today, relatively untalented and uncreative people can actually make rock ‘n’ roll music that sounds kind of decent. And I think that kind of fools people and causes people to be lazy.”

I hate to shit in your soup here, Steve, but relatively untalented and uncreative people have been fooling record buyers with rock ‘n’ roll music that sounds kind of decent for decades. Where were you when Neil Sedaka, Styx, Poison, Dokken, Vixen, Asia, Bad English, Ronnie & the Daytonas, Veruca Salt, Jesus Jones, Creed, Staind, Everclear, Hot Tuna, Pat Boone, the Spin Doctors, the Gin Blossoms, the Association, Dramarama, Silverchair, Bow Wow Wow, Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, the Romantics, Nickelback, and Herman’s Hermits were tearing up the charts? I mean, the M.O. of popular music on the whole is pretty much to fool people into buying uncreative crap that sounds decent.

By the by, some of the acts on Greenberg’s S-Curve label include Tom Jones (yes, that Tom Jones), Baha Men (yes, those Baha Men), and Tinted Windows, the rock “super” group fronted by Taylor Hanson. Take that for what it’s worth.

Look guys, I get it. I’m 30. I don’t understand half the “new” bands out there today. Emo still seems pretty fresh to me, despite the fact I’m 99 percent sure it died the moment those photos of Pete Wentz’s junk hit the internet a few years ago. I secretly fear any young band that catches my fancy are the poseurs of their scene. Ultra-pierced dudes with Nostradamus beards and Cuban-style revolution hats alienate me, as do spunky female aggro-rap acts featuring distorted Speak ‘n’ Spells. American Idol is bullshit, no one I talk to these days has any idea who Mojo Nixon is, and the timeline of my record collection abruptly ends around 2003.

Yet, I can admit I’m turning into a conservative, set-in-his-ways fogey. I can also recognize that just because I dislike or can’t identify with a specific piece of art doesn’t necessarily make it sucky or bad (the Mona Lisa fails to give me the squirts, but I can’t think of anyone on the planet—myself included—who’d call Da Vinci a “hack” who “didn’t do his homework”). I’d rather have someone come at me with something (relatively) new and hate it than have a thousand watered-down Ramones/Nirvana/Beatles/Who/Elvis/Dylan/Sabbath/Hendrix imitators begging for the attention of my cobweb-laden teenage memories.

Whatever happened to respecting something for its ability not to sound like everything that came before it? You know, uh, originality? If certain people didn’t skip out on years of playing Journey and Zep covers to drunks in Sac City on Tuesday Double Shot Night at CC McFarty’s, we probably wouldn’t have bands like Radiohead or the Flaming Lips or Melt-Banana or TV on the Radio or Bob Log III or Primus or [INSERT HIP NEW BAND I’M TOO OLD TO KNOW ABOUT]. I like to dance, but way more often I like to have my recessed plebian mind blown to the outer rings of Saturn by frontier-exploring genre benders.

C’mon guys. Stop being all crotchety just because the White Stripes haven’t released anything in two years. Jack and Meg are still alive. It’ll happen. Just give it time.

Tags: Steven Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen, CNN

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