I keep referring everyone to this article by "Metal" Mike Saunders on Radio Disney and the effects of a shifting pop demographic on the wider music culture. The most interesting revelation, and one that seems fairly obvious at first, is that (gasp!) there was music before the Beatles! I know, you're thinking...Elvis. Maybe Chuck Berry. Early rock n' roll. Jazz. Beethoven.
But something fundamental is changing in American music culture, a development that's become more pronounced in the past five or six years, and Saunders discusses it effectively. Pop music as we know it has been shaped by a style of rock popularized by the Beatles since 1964, and this influence is on its way out. Now that the institutional aspects of supposedly preference-oriented listening (and critical evaluation) of pop music have been not only revealed (rockism, rockism, rockism!) but actually oversold to the point of cliche in some facets of the music commmunity, we can see a definitive movement away from rock as the standard, or even center, of a general discourse on pop music.
But enough about rockism. The pertinent point here is that a discussion of popular music in America is dictated institutionally by a style of music that did not exist (as a culturally significant force, anyway) until 1964. Obvious example: Referring to a music critic as a "hip-hop critic" is still awkward and relatively unpopular (though not unheard of), whereas even critics who don't evaluate any rock music are tagged "rock critics." This is changing, but it's true enough to help belabor the point.
It took me a while to come to grips with this idea theoretically -- in fact, it took Good Charlotte to really illuminate my ingrained prejudices. I briefly mentioned this in a Buzzsaw article, but it's worth noting again: Good Charlotte's most recent single "I Just Wanna Live" conforms to a style of pop at odds with a more traditional guitar-bass-drums rock set-up that they've used (poorly) in the past. On its own merits, the song is somewhat monotonous, but comapared to the band's other material it's sunny, upbeat, and it doesn't make me want to kill myself. I wrote the thing off immediately for sounding too "mechanical" and "polished," and realized slowly that this value judgement had no valid musical basis whatsoever -- I hated an idea, not a song. And this is directed toward a band I didn't care for in the first place.
Well, last Saturday I had another revelation at Johnny D's in Somerville, where Emily and I saw the Beatles cover band Beatle Juice perform. Beatle Juice consists of Brad Delp, the former lead singer of the group Boston, and a few other local session band types. They perform Beatles covers exclusively, and their renditions are absolutely faithful. Guitar solos, instrument timbre, vocal phrasing, samples (in the later material)...all spot on. And they perform with unbridled energy and excitement, somehow avoiding the facelessness that this sort of enterprise might suggest.
I danced. Emily danced. Emily and I danced together, sort of. Other people danced, older people. Other people sat and bobbed their heads, much older people. The mean age was about 45, but damned if every single person (from audience member to bartender to sound guy) wasn't at least half-heartedly mouthing along to every lyric -- mumbling at the same verse in "Come Together"; confusing "I get high" and "I get by" and "I'm gonna try" in "With a Little Help From My Friends" because no one remembers the order (except Delp); screaming "Hey-o!" at the start of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (except Delp -- a rare lapse in the band's doppelganger-effective rigor). Fingers were snapped, bodies shuffled, and always with just the slightest hint of respect for the beat.
I don't really remember the experience very clearly, and the only song I could remember afterward was the closer, "I Saw Her Standing There," which we sang on the walk home. What was disturbing (and kind of exhilirating) was how automatic my reaction to the music was. And I'm not even a Beatles fanatic -- that distinction goes to Emily, who chided me for not knowing the lyrics to some of the earlier songs. (Full disclosure: my Beatles collection starts at Rubber Soul. I'm that guy.) This was pop programming, plain and simple. It was a blast, but I have a feeling that I wouldn't have reacted so intuitively or mechanically even at a Kraftwerk show (which reminds me to mention that Minimum-Maximum is pretty much the best live album of all time).
Is it a bad thing that I react to the Beatles in such a slavish fashion that it requires an awkward rhetorical question to reiterate the point? I dunno, maybe. But it does help support the perception of a stifled (or perhaps tunnel-visioned) music discourse that rockism suggests. Perhaps this is ultimately a moot point; maybe the average age of the Beatle Juice crowd is squarely planted in middle-age for a reason. For what it's worth, I didn't feel out of place for one second. As the foundations of modern pop linked historically to Beatlemania begin to be actively questioned in the critical community (and, indirectly, popularly; how many rock singles have topped the Billboard charts recently?), pop music is, as Saunders and others have suggested, moving past rock as status quo altogether.
It's called progress, I guess, and we should probably give in to it -- in 2005, rock is slowly becoming anachronistic, and Beatle Juice is cult music. Still, as fogyish and conservative as it sounds, it's pretty damn comforting to be a member.
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