Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio?
an imaginary interview


Lowry Mays, founder and CEO of Clear Channel Entertainment, is one of the most powerful men in music, though his name and face may not be known to you.

He’s a big, rich Texan, a good old boy, but this Texan didn’t get rich off sweetheart oil contracts or self-imposed energy crises--nay, he made his fortune through the deregulation of the radio, and buying up a healthy interest in concert venues and advertising to round out his unparalleled holdings in radio. At last count, he owns over 1,300 radio stations, 700,000 billboard displays, and sold 75 million concert tickets to Clear Channel run or sponsored shows last year. The tide may be a-turning, though. Last week, Clear Channel fired two top executives after a New York state investigation found them to have engaged in the illegal, lucrative practice of payola—labels bribing radio programmers to add their big artists to station playlists. More indictments are expected from the Spitzer investigation, and the big boys are starting to sweat.

I sat down with Mr. Mays in the comfort of my mind, and these were the fictional things we said—

Mr. Mays, Fortune Magazine called Clear Channel “one of the most successful stocks of the ‘90’s”. Might I say—huzzah, sir.
Thank you.

What would you say was the single biggest factor in Clear Channel’s rise to power— strong-arming artists into playing only Clear Channel owned venues, forcing record labels to pay to get their artists played on your stations, or squeezing out your competition with the help of close friends in office?
I mean, why choose one? Ha! Ha ha!

In particular though, is there any one thing that sticks out in your head?
Well, the Telecommunications Act sure tickled my underside! That thing let me go hog wild, buy up a whole buttload of radio stations. I just had myself a field day. Less regulation equals less competition equals more stations for big daddy. It’s just a big game, son.

You’re sure good at it. Who’s better—the car, the thimble, or the battleship?
I prefer the cannon. (thinks) Hey, wait a second--

The FCC recently passed a measure which would allow for single owners even more power within a particular market. Unfortunately, the House reversed the FCC’s decision, keeping ownership regulations in place. Bummer, huh?
Bummer? (thinks) No, I don’t think so. I haven’t done that since prep school.

After 9-11, you provided Clear Channel stations with a list of songs that were not to be played in light of recent events. Why did you include in that list John Lennon’s “Imagine”?
Are you slow, boy? “Imagine no possessions”?

Yes, but don’t you think a song of tolerance and peace could have helped people through a difficult time?
Listen, I don’t have to justify myself to you. It’s like Gandhi said: “What’s right isn’t always popular, and what’s popular isn’t always right”.

What? I don’t know quite what to say. If you’re Gandhi, would that make Lennon the British imperialists?
You figure out the metaphors, college boy.

Fair enough, but following this theme of blacklisting, isn’t it true that after their anti-Bush comments, you banned the Dixie Chicks from all Clear Channel stations?
You bet your skinny ass! You don’t mess with Texas, and you don’t mess with Dubya.
(At this point, Mr. Mays takes an antique six-shooter from the coffee table and fires it repeatedly into the ceiling, raining down dust and plaster on our heads.)

That’s right, I had forgotten that you and the President are friends.
Oh sure! Me and the Blackout Kid, we go way back.

That’s fine, but don’t you think it sets a dangerous precedent to lash out at artists for voicing a contrary opinion?
It’s a free country, son.

Exactly!
Yes, exactly.

That’s what I’m saying.
That’s what I’m saying too.
(There is about a minute and a half of silence, after which Mr. Mays makes 3 phone calls. From what I can infer, he purchases an adult-contemporary station in Jacksonville, a classic rock station in Hartford, and the Beatles back catalogue.)
Sorry about that. I’m back now.

I’m confused, Mr. Mays—are you saying that the Dixie Chicks are free to say what they want?
Sure! And if I don’t like what they say, I’m free to put my boot up their asses.

But to control so many media outlets, and to use those outlets to put forth the specific agenda of a president with whom you have a close, personal friendship?
What’s wrong with that?

Kind of reeks of fascism, doesn’t it?
Why are you so insistent on labels? Can’t we just let it be?

Did you just quote John Lennon?
God bless America!

Steve Miller said in a recent interview, “[Clear Channel’s] lack of a sense of humanity is shocking.” How would you respond to that?
Hyoo-ma-nitee?

There have been allegations that the practice of pay-for-play programming, though illegal, is still alive and well at Clear Channel stations. Is there any truth to the allegations?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Our programmers receive money only from independent record promoters.

Yes, but those promoters get that money from the record companies! It’s still payola, only now there’s a middle man!
Now you’re getting bogged down in semantics. Let’s stop splitting hairs, and get to the real issue here: I really, really love making money! And if I can get money from advertisers and the record companies? Boy, now you’d think I was slow if I said no to that!

But the reason payola was outlawed in the first place was that it made it virtually impossible for new artists to break on the radio. The only acts that could afford the payola would be older, established acts with millions of dollars in record company money behind them.
So?

So the music must suffer then, by definition! If new artists can’t get exposure on the radio, and the same tired acts are endlessly rotated on every Clear Channel station in the fucking union—
Actually, I own stations in 65 countries.

Whatever! The point is that this system promotes homogeneity! Thousands of stations playing the same hundred songs! By its very essence, it must be a static system, because new acts can’t afford to break, and established artists have no competition. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer!
(chuckles) Welcome to Texas, boy.

So you don’t care that Clear Channel is directly contributing to the decline of American music?
Who said the radio had anything to do with music?
(At this point, there is a clap of thunder outside, and Mays’ eyes widen fiendishly)
Mwah-hah-hah-hah!!! Mwah-hah-hah-hah!!!



Fuck Clear Channel. Fuck Lowry Mays, the FCC, payola, King George the Second, deregulation, the Republican party, and the state of Texas. But most of all, fuck Clear Channel. As Conor Oberst recently said, “If there’s anyone who cares about music as an art form, now’s the time to make a change. There will be no more real music anymore if we keep letting people shove it down our fucking throats.” But what can I do, you ask? Well, Clear Channel loves to espouse the virtues of pure capitalism, so why can’t we play their game? They offer us product--radio stations (in New York, Q104.3, Z100, and Power 105), and concerts (they own Irving Plaza, the Beacon, and the Roseland)—and we have the absolute, sovereign fucking right to boycott that product. Starve them. If you don’t want to go that far (you really want to see Echo & the Bunnymen at Irving next month), it’s enough just to fight the deregulation of radio ownership laws. Write your Congressmen. Tell them you support Sen. Russell Feingold’s Competition in Radio and Concert Industries Act. There is hope, and it looks like Clear Channel can be toppled, but you can’t sit by, can’t let them shove this tripe down our throats. Regardless of what they might tell you, we do have significant power. Use it. Fuck Clear Channel.

Good Charlotte and the Order of the Phoenix


Good Charlotte just trashed their drumkit on TRL, and I’m not sure exactly what to say. That they did it a few years ago too, in front of ten million people at the VMA's, amongst the strobe and the glitz and the Hiltons—these things should mean something, but I’m too full of poison to put a thought together. That no matter how stale, and safe, and hopelessly calculated it seemed, it still calls to mind the ghosts of VMA’s past (in particular, a stringy-haired suicide and an ill-fated bass toss)—this pisses me off even more. Still though, I’ve got nothing to say. Good Charlotte just trashed their drumkit in front of Lil' Jon, Vanessa Minillo, and fifty hormonal tweeners, and I’m absolutely fucking speechless.

I was walking down St. Mark’s the other night, in front of that t-shirt place on the corner of 2nd Ave. I passed a bunch of punks going the other way and didn’t take much notice, until I picked out a face at the center of the crowd--the lead singer of Good Charlotte.

“Oh, that’s weird,” I thought. “That dude goes out with Hillary Duff. I’ve seen his videos, I’ve heard his record. He really hangs out with the St. Mark’s punk crowd?”

It seemed so strange, after all. He had the tattoos, the Misfits t-shirt, the wallet chain, but still. I’ve seen his videos, I’ve heard his record—he’s a pop star, nothing more or less. He just looked so much like a punk that I was taken aback.

So for the sake of our discussion, I should probably make a few things clear:
Being tattooed is not punk.
Hanging out with Kelly Osbourne is not punk.
Playing three chords, no matter how fast or sloppy, is not punk.
Trashing the drumkit (especially trashing the drumkit) is not punk.

These things are the trappings of punk, certainly, related to punk, yes, but not necessarily punk themselves. So you ask, “What then is punk, Bedroom-Rock-Critic?” I’m not sure I can articulate it. I’m not sure I should even try.

There was this guy, Jonathan Richman, who played at CBGB’s in the late 70’s. He was a punk. Never mind the fact that he dressed like a dad, or that he sang these goofy little songs about the Ice-Cream Man or the Abominable Snowman. He was a fucking punk. I’d say it’s a lot more punk to sing about ice cream when the crowd expects anarchy, than it is to sing about anarchy when the crowd is waiting for it. At any moment, our boy Jonathan could’ve taken a beer bottle off the forehead, and yet he kept strumming along, smiling goofy into the sweaty, hostile crowd. That is punk. It’s not a definition but it’ll have to suffice.

But that still doesn’t explain why I’d flip out about Good Charlotte, just because they reminded me of something Kurt Cobain did 13 years ago. Who gives a shit? It just seemed right for me to get indignant, to shout at the screen, “You didn’t earn that, you fucking apes!” But why? What Cobain did was brilliant, at times affected and calculated in its own way, but brilliant. He trashed his drumkit and it screamed. He fractured a hand, split his forehead open on the high-hat and somehow it yelped.

After a while though, it became expected of him. After every Nirvana show, the crowd would wait for the guitar to be shoved through the amp, for Cobain to hurtle recklessly into the drumkit. He became an ape himself, performing a task that was expected of him, like some alterna-Wayne Newton doing his signature stage move. It was said that he grew to hate trashing the stage, because it wasn’t punk anymore, because it had become a safe and accepted expression of rebellion. During their final tour of Europe, Cobain used to hand his guitar to a roadie, smile acidly at the crowd, and then walk offstage. That was punk. He knew that it was a constantly moving target, and that the target had shifted away from trashing the drumkit. It wasn’t punk anymore, and so he stopped doing it. And now Good Fucking Charlotte comes along, looking the part of punk but playing the role of patsy. They trash their drumkit, and they have no idea how silly they look doing it.

If I were a more dramatic man, someone apt to make grand, sweeping statements, I’d say, after watching them trash their shit, that punk is dead. That’d be dumb.

It’s been said a million times, and never, never ever ever has it been true. Not once. They said it when Joe Strummer died; they said it when the Sex Pistols broke up; they said it again when the Sex Pistols reunited, for a cynical, opportunistic “Comeback Tour” 20 years later; they said it when Green Day had their first big moment, when Rancid signed with a major label. They even said it when Blondie got big, because New Wave was supposedly this ultra-commercial bastard child of punk, destined to destroy the original artifact.

That’s bullshit of course, not because it hasn’t happened yet, but because it will never happen. It couldn’t. Whenever things seems hopeless or bleak, whenever the Good Charlottes seem to be winning, punk explodes in that very place—the Sex Pistols blew out of recession-wracked London, the Dischord scene began as a response to the frat-pack, paternal mentality of 80’s DC, grunge came out of 8 years of Reaganomics and a completely desolate pop landscape.

Who’s to say what will come out of this time and place, this era of renegade foreign policy and sterile pop posturing? What brilliant nuggets of punk will George Junior be responsible for? Mark my words, it’s already begun. New manifestations of punk, like tentacles, have begun to spring up in unexpected places—Kanye calling out the Administration on live TV, or Bright Eyes denouncing Clear Channel from the Clear Channel stage, or even within the simple apolitical purity of our Exploding Hearts, three of whom died in a tour van accident a few summers back. It’s already begun, believe me. Because punk isn’t a thing, because it’s not a definable entity (like wallet chains or faux-hawks), it can never be destroyed, and instead will always rear its head when it’s needed most. The Phoenix will always rise, the opposition will always spring up most violently. Rest assured.

The thing is, frankly, that I can’t say punk is dead after Good Charlotte’s bullshit, simply because no matter how horrifying it seemed at the time, in the end it’s harmless. Good Charlotte could never kill punk because Good Charlotte were never punk in the first place. And punk, real punk, that constantly moving target, will always be, can never be mimicked or diluted or destroyed. Cobain’s ghost will always remain sacred, and a thousand Sex Pistols reunions could never erase their original legacy. So go ahead then, Faux-Hawk, trash the drumkit. Trash the drumkit, and wear the tattoos, and play your three chords, but know that you’re harmless, a patsy, a joke.

Punk’s not dead.

Indie’s not a Place, Dude, It’s a State of Mind
by Chester J. Hornrim

(Brian is currently in hostage negotiations with a deranged handyman at his Bed-Stuy apartment building. His regular column will, God willing, return soon—and if it doesn’t, then the handymen will have already won. In the meantime, here’s some random guy that he met at Alt.Coffee.)

So I’m walking down Delancey the other day, and I hear two guys talking about Yo La Tengo. Of course I’m super-psyched, because you know I love Yo La! (That’s what I call them, because I’m a hard-fucking-core fan)…Anyways, so I turn around and I see that these supposedly “indie” guys are wearing suits! Honest to goodness suits! That just about threw me into a tizzy, let me tell you. Indie rock is not the home of businessmen and squares, and it certainly isn’t the home of suits. We were in the street (so I didn’t do anything), but if we were at Piano’s or a Deerhoof show or something, you better believe I would have said something totally sarcastic under my breath.

“Hey douchebags!” I would have said. “Futures are up on the Asian market, huh? Compucore’s a stinker! Buy, sell! Buy, sell!” And then they would have given me some weird look or something, and I would have gone to the bathroom. But in my head, I’d totally be thinking, “Stick to your Toby Keith records, you work-a-day slaves! Leave Yo La to the real fans!” That would have showed them. People always tell me I’m the most sarcastic person they know, I might add.

I carry a messenger bag! I knew about your favorite band even before the band did! I ironically mourn the death of irony! Doesn’t that mean anything to these people?

It’s like you can’t even trust bad people to like bad music anymore. It’s like, back in the day, I could just look at a kid wearing Vuarnet and Reebok Pumps and just know, “Oooooh, that kid’s all up on the TLC tip.” Or like, when my stepdad Craig was all stoned on the couch after another day of mooching off my Mom, I could just tell he was going to throw on some craptastic Deep Purple album and call me a “fag-boy”, maybe flick my ears until I ran to my room and slammed the door. Now it’s just all gone to shit. I haven’t heard from Craig in four and a half years, but hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if I ran into him at Other Music, picking up some Lightning Bolt seven-inch. Fucking Craig, man.

Anyways, this got me thinking about my boys Yo La…I mean, they’ve been my favorite band since I was in the sixth grade (remember? I knew about them before you did, sucka!), but now I’m starting to wonder—if people in suits know about Yo La, who else does? Donald Rumsfeld? My abusive not-father? Doctor Fucking Phil?!? I mean, Christ! It makes me think that Yo La might not be as indie as I always thought, that they might be swimming in that tepid, piss-stinking swamp also known as the MAINSTREAM!!! If that’s where they’ve been hanging out, then maybe I’d better towel myself off. Maybe I need to find myself a new swimming hole, one with a ropeswing and hot, naked indie chicks who talk about Derrida and then make out with one another. Most importantly, my new swimming hole has to be a secret, one that only I know about (and the naked indie chicks, of course!).

So here, officially, in front of my 16 readers, I renounce my previous favorite band, Yo La Tengo. It a momentous occasion, and you should all feel privileged to play witness. Yo La is officially dead to me. I have no Tengo. And hey, while I'm on a roll, here’s a question for you: what does the La in Yo La Tengo stand for? Give up?

The answer’s not integrity, I’ll tell you that much! Certainly isn’t indie cred, because they definitely don’t tengo that anymore!

(What did I tell you about my sarcastic wit? Huh? Huh?)

Don’t Think Twice, I’m All Right (I Swear)

To say to someone, “You mean nothing to me,” is one of those things that immediately become untrue as soon as it’s said. The very act of speaking it, with even that minimum of thought and effort and desire to wound, makes the claim null and void. “I care about you enough to tell you that I don’t care about you,” is the truer subtext, regardless of the words or their bluster.

To write a song that says, “You mean nothing to me,” especially one of the most wistful and elegant in the pop canon, is almost laughable in its bullshit (if it weren’t so heartbreaking).

That goddam photo, that timeless soft-lit shot on a snowy street in Soho, it’s more than just an album cover. It’s obviously been carefully framed, even though it tries to pass itself off as a throwaway, a candid snapshot of the skinny poet and his stunning ladyfriend arm-in-arm. It always evoked a nostalgia, a need for that moment in that place to be this moment in this place. It always seemed to be a misty-eyed hope to freeze the early 60’s in time, with its unspoiled Greenwich Village, its communist poets and self-righteous balladeers and postwar optimism.

It’s nothing so universal or ambitious. Now it seems just a plain and simple longing for that girl, Suze Rotolo, the devastating brunette, Dylan’s former love and the raison d’etre of the whole shebang. Freewheelin’ has long been known for its social effect, for its rabblerousing conscience; for me it’s just a breakup album. Forgetting “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Masters of War” and “Oxford Town”, placed carefully to keep the presence of protest and the 60’s zeitgeist, the bulk of the album is, quite simply, about a girl.

And at the dead center of this album, the first song on Side Two, is one of the most glorious breakup songs ever written, a gently-plucked, bravely-sung ballad that bids adieu to an inconsequential love. Don’t think twice, kiddo. You never had the power to break me anyway. You did to me what you could (and that wasn’t a lot), and now I’m headed off down the road. Don’t think twice--it never meant that much.

He never drops the affect, never lets the mask down for an instant. It’s a breathless performance, a mighty attempt to prove his steadied keel, his recovery. The voice doesn’t waver, the guitar glides along never limping, the lyrics don’t whimper about the perceived wrongs, or drop into sniveling self-pity. He never asks that most familiar (and human) of breakup questions—Oh why?! Oh dear, why me?!?—and actually opens the song by telling her not to bother either. We were together and now we’re not. That’s that.

He’s an untouchable, this kid Dylan.

Trouble is, no matter how well he can wear the mask, feign his invincibility, he’s as human as human gets. He freely admits, Now I wish there was something you would do or say / To try and make me change my mind and stay. Whether or not he would isn’t broached, but at the very least, he wants something back from her, some sense of her regret echoed back at him, and it hasn’t come. She remains silent and it kills him. And yet he contradicts himself in the next stanza: And it ain’t no use in a-calling out my name, gal/ I can’t hear you anymore. He’s still treading that line, playing the tough-guy troubadour, trying to bail without his chin quivering, and at the same time trying to keep the door wedged open behind him.

Later he tosses off another chin-scratcher, another deceptively vulnerable dismissal: Goodbye is too good a word, babe / So I’ll just say “Fare thee well.” “Goodbye” isn’t too good a word, babe, it’s commonplace and obvious, the most boring one he could use. “Fare thee well” is Elizabethan fucking poetry, and that’s what he chooses to leave her with. He’s not really casting her aside with disinterest—he’s constructing a palace in his wake, something grander than she to make her truly feel the loss. It’s not all right, and I’m leaving this on your doorstep, to make you think twice, thrice, a million times, every night before you sleep until the lonely day you die. You inspired this, and now that’s done. Feel it.

Even the song’s kiss-off, its closing stanza, one of the best Dylan ever wrote, betrays itself—Now I’m not saying you treated me unkind / You could’ve done better, but I don’t mind / You just kind of wasted all of my precious time / So don’t think twice, it’s all right. A waste of time does not merit this song! A waste of time is something that annoys briefly, a housefly or a detour, an old crank at the checkout line with a bundle of triple-coupons. A waste of time wouldn’t have made a deep-enough dent, given him the emotional capital to conquer this song, this pageant of mournful harp, wounded bluster, and a stiff upper lip.

He’s drowning in affect to try and prove himself unaffected. He’s running circles around himself just to contradict himself by his very running. Is he trying to shoot himself in the foot? Is he aware of his posture’s failure, of the vulnerability that seeps through? It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. As with everything else, the only thing that remains is the artifact, the record, and without the posture we’d be without the song.

The only real weapon, the only way for him to truly prove his disinterest, would have been to follow her lead, to throw up a great wall of inscrutable silence. And for the artist, for a hyper-verbal sadsack, that’s easier said than done.

With a Little Stank on It


People have been making a whole lot of noise about Joss Stone lately, and I’m just struggling to get a handle on it. She’s 18, British, white, and she sings with some heavy soul; these things added up make for a solid gimmick, if you ask me. “A pretty British girl who can sing like Sam Cooke? Sign her up!” It’s the kind of thing that even the most butter-fingered rock writer could get a handle on (e.g. a brother and sister who aren’t actually brother and sister, oh my!), and turn into decent copy. The thing is, though, the girl really can sing. She’s got all the vibrato, the pipes, the note-bending virtuosity that you could want, and it’s pretty damn impressive.

Something about it, though. Something about it just leaves me cold.

She reminds me of a high-school kid trying to pull off King Lear. Most high-school kids would butcher Lear, leave it on the stage in tatters for the acid-victim janitor to sweep up. Even the most brilliant high-school kid wouldn’t do much better. The best you could hope for would be a talented parrot, a mimic to sound off all the inflections of a Derek Jacoby or an Olivier. They could sound like the real thing, but after all the studied monologues and pregnant pauses, the only thing left would be wax-paper facsimile. They just don’t have the blistered palms that Lear requires--they’re little kids playing dress-up.

Did Billie Holiday have to be a junkie? Or Syd Barrett a synapse-fried burnout? Did Tina need Ike to blacken her eye?

You know who I like? That little tramp Aguilera. Now don’t get me wrong here--I’m not out to provoke angry letters from rightfully-indignant women. I call her a tramp because that’s her game in “Dirrty”, to push the right of women to do what they like, for tramps to be tramps unapologetically. I don’t deny her that right, or the terms she wants to play with. If she wants to get dirty, to exist as X-Tina, then I won’t pretend otherwise. It’s the people who insist on denying it that imply a shame there, not me. Roll in the dirt, snort it off Linda Perry’s ass if it makes you happy.

No, I really really do like her. Those ballads? Hot damn! And I hate ballads! When she lays it down, aside from all of the vocal hysterics, I believe her. There’s something just beneath the surface that makes it echo, some unresolved shriek that won’t sit quiet.

Because she’s got two of the qualities most crucial to an artist—fearlessness and pinpoint sensitivity to criticism—she makes a whole lot of heartbreak for herself. She puts herself out there as an intensely sexual being, says there’s nothing wrong with that, lives a personal life that lends credibility to what she sings about, and then seems absolutely destroyed when douchebag writers call her a tramp. I don’t even doubt that she’s genuine in her devastation.

I hear that same devastation in those ballads, and that’s what makes them work. It’s like she’s done this terrifying thing, got naked in a room full of cameras and lights, and then needed these ballads to convince herself that she’s not wrong, even when she’s being attacked by soccer moms and Billy O’Reilly.

“Beautiful” is self-affirmation, and so it can be seen as some cheesy Dr. Marvin Monroe shit, but at the same time it’s also an enormous, resounding “Fuck you”. I feel this way, I will act this way, I will sing about acting this way, and fuck you, because that is true. Fuck you, because I know I’m not wrong, I know I shouldn’t be ashamed. That’s pretty badass, I think.

Because there’s an important distinction to be made here: where Christina’s sexuality is real (and therefore her artistic stance valid), Britney seems a puritan dressed-up as a coquette. She really does have the same middle-American hangups as the soccer moms, and so her artistic sexuality is a farce, something she hates but deals with to stay in the spotlight. It’s her discomfort that makes things dirty, closer to (dare I say?) whoring herself out. Christina owns her sexuality, and her art is an extension of that; it’s stanky, but it’s pure.

Now I’m not saying that young Joss Stone should squeeze into chaps and shake her shit. Actually, I really hope she doesn’t. I just think she needs to get run over by a bus, or have a nervous breakdown and move to a hovel in Harlem, or get left at the altar by the guy from Maroon 5. Even a simple Vioxx addiction might do it.

I’ve got nothing against the girl, of course. She seems really sweet, and it’s for purely selfish reasons that I wish the plague upon her head. Because when she comes out the other side, desperate and bruised, she’ll put out a record that’ll make me cry. Because she does have that pure talent, but the cutesy stuff will be gone, as will that damn glossed-up perfection, and thank God for that.

Because I really can’t wait for that record, that stunning, battered, glorious piece of stank.

Too Cool for School


I know you. You listen to your Cabaret Voltaire and your Beefheart, and you can't wait for your last check to clear so you can pick up the new Wolf Parade, post haste. Your pansexual busboy friend just burned you a copy of Nillson Schmillson, and you were really psyched about that Fela import you bought, even though you still haven't taken it out of the plastic. You are a cool, cool cat.

The Strokes? What about them? They blow, right? Yeah, I know. The Strokes! Ha!

I mean, at first they were cool. Back when nobody knew about them, you were a fan. Back in the days of skinny ties (before trucker caps even!), back during the summer of '01, when you would go and see their shows at the Mercury, or even before, when they were still playing dives like Arlene's.

Yeah, they were pretty good back then, right? But then they blew up, and it all went downhill after that. Their record came out, the teeny-boppers glommed on, you saw them out on Avenue A every other night--they just started to suck. And of course you found out about their silver-spoon backgrounds, about their parents (Jules's dad owns the Elite Modeling Agency, Albert's dad was a minor popstar in the '70s), and that just put it over the top. The Strokes were so over, so 2001. By the time your little sister put the Strokes poster up on her bedroom wall, it didn't even bother you. Am I right or am I right?

You are, as the French say, a douche.

I understand the concept of backlash and its inevitability (especially in the face of such blitzkrieg success), but come on! Aren't we all beyond that? Isn't it obvious that all backlashes are knee-jerk, mindless and dull? That anyone can look at a successful band and yawn dramatically and say, "Oh them? I'm soooo over them"?

Know what? I yawn at you. Yes, sir. I do yawn at you, sir. You are boring, and you are sheepish, and you can't deal with the fact that mainstream success does not have to be avoided. I know you've been brought up with this stupid indie mentality that popularity equals selling out, and that commercial failure equals artistic integrity, but that's crap. Commercial failure occasionally means your album just plain sucked, guy. Sorry, but it's the truth.

And the thing about their upbringing, about their rich parents and their adventures at Swiss boarding schools? Who cares? The debut is still the same thrilling one they put out before the circus began. It doesn't mean that "Someday" isn't one of the tightest, bounciest pieces of twitch-pop I’ve ever heard. It doesn't change the fact that when the chorus hits on "Hard To Explain," my chest swells to near-burst and I want to break a window with my forehead. Still! After four years of obsessive listening!

So the fact that Jules' dad owns a modeling agency really doesn't bother me, because Jules himself made a brilliant record. That's all that matters in the end. You've just got to be able to separate the work from its context. If it was a brilliant record, I don't care, I'd listen to "Uday and Qusay Sing The Hits": As long as it's a brilliant record, the context is meaningless.

Sure, people sell out all the time. They compromise their art for the sake of a record deal, or they gloss up their sound for the great Viacom-Universal-Bertelsmann-Clear Channel behemoth. Of course that happens, and of course it sucks, and when it does, those bands deserve all the righteous backlash we can muster.

But that didn't happen with The Strokes. They're the same band, but now they've sold a million records and they're international superstars. I think the only problem here, mon ami, is you, and your inability to think for yourself. Just because that design student you met at Max Fish tells you The Strokes suck, that doesn't make it so.

Their new record comes out next month; you should get over your hip self already and pick it up. And while you're at it, check out "My Funny Valentine," Uday's duet with Natalie Merchant. It's divine.

(Though of course it goes without saying that the "you" in this column is just a rhetorical device, and not actually you, my beloved reader. Wink, wink!)

The Genius of Calvin Broadus
(or “How to Short-Circuit the Game”)

Be careful what you wish for, like the old folks say. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Count no man lucky until he is dead.

Hip-hop today, now that Jay’s jumped up to the boardroom, has boiled down to a whole bunch of pretenders, Kanye (rightfully) ruling the universe, Em detoxing in Detroit, and a lurid office pool--who’s going to die first, Ja Rule or 50? Lots are thrown, dates argued, and the ground rules are laid. I’ve got 50 going first, sometime in late November, with Ja following on his heels in February.

Yeah, sure, ole Louie Farrakhan stepped in and brokered some kind of truce, and yeah, Murder Inc’s gone all cuddly and now they’re just calling themselves “The Inc”, but come on. Does anyone really think they’re breaking bread and swapping mixtapes with Dre and 50? That there won’t be some run-in at say, The Source Awards, some catastrophic, eight-posse throwdown that won’t start this whole thing up again?

And it’s not even like these guys are mortal enemies. The personal stuff aside, the bigger issue’s just about maintaining an image, one that backs up the rufftuff lyrics. Coming off like the biggest, baddest, alpha-est motherfucker in the game. Because if you turn into an Ashanti-duetting, bandana-rocking teddy bear, the streets’ll make you a punchline faster than you can say “Ladies Love Cool James”.

Except that when you start playing this game, there’s no room for error, not really any way out. No one needs mention the bi-coastal back and forth, the terror that came out of that, and it seems like things are headed there again. It’s either soft and cuddly laughingstock or big-time, badass, post-mortem hitmaker. Either or. Neither nor.

And then there was Snoop.

He was a hardass at the beginning, stone-cold and sneering in the videos, representing the LBC. He was the dude at The Source Awards screaming violence at the East Coast crowd, taunting, “Ya’ll ain’t got no love for Snoop Dogg and Doctor Dre? Ya’ll ain’t got love for Death Row? Fuck ya’ll!” Hell, he was the guy at the VMA’s who got pushed onstage in a wheelchair, who rapped at his own funeral. Murder was the case that they gave him, remember?

That’s the same guy who’s now doing AOL commercials with Jerry Fucking Stiller! He’s invented this godawful lingo that even the most suburban white kids won’t use anymore, was an honorary spokesman for Girls Gone Wild, played a pimp in an Owen Wilson movie, and had a show that was honestly called “Doggy Fizzle Televizzle”.

Dude turned himself into a cartoon character, and I think it’s brilliant.

Of course some might be quick to smirk at Snoop, to look down on him for his AOL shilling or the Izzle debacle. They’d be quick to call him a sell-out, a joke. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but that’s not really the point with Snoop anymore.

Because while poor old Ja lets himself get punchlined by the public, Snoop beat them to the joke. He looked at the game, found it distasteful (at least possibly fatal), and then side-stepped it. He’s still in the spotlight, still making all the money he could want, and yet his safety’s no longer an issue. Neither is his credibility or his alphaness--who can hate a cartoon character? Snoop took the game, hit a blunt, looked back at the game, smirked, exhaled, ordered takeout, and then short-circuited the game like he was Johnny Five. He doesn’t need to strut and preen and bump chests with all of the other cowboys—he just has to maintain the Looney Tunes image and cash his considerable checks.

Bravo, Calvin, bravo, young Snoop. A pasty-faced white kid salutes you.