A Musical Rant

I have been working up a kind of round up post, which may or may not appear, when all is said and done. This started life as an item on that post, but has started to grow beyond the bonds of decency, and needs its own post...

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon wonders if Journey is due for a revival - thanks to the Sopranos, and - she implies - because hipsters have jumped the shark. Well - I don't want to get into what the hipsters think: trying to parse out those questions will cause the brain to shrink and pull away from the cave of the skull. But I have too many opinions on music not to take a few shots at Journey, and maybe poke around the question, Which Bands Should Be Revived?. I don't know from hipsters, but I do know that my neighbors - most assuredly not hipsters, judging from their musical tastes - love their Journey. I could hear one of them yesterday declaring (outside over beer and burgers) that "Don't Stop Believing" was the best Journey song ever. God knows they've played the goddamned thing enough. Now the question strikes me as being a bit like arguing about the best item on the Taco Bell menu. But it is also wrong on the merits. Nice enough schlock-rock it may be (and perhaps ideally suited for its pride of place at the end of the Sopranos' run), but it hardly matches up to "Wheel in the Sky" or "Lights" - both halfway decent pop songs, with a decidedly less schlocky sound.

But as a general thing: christ I pray Journey doesn't make more of a comeback than they have already. I would suggest they have never gone away as fodder for the average schmoe - but god forbid this sort of thing spreads and people (who aren't just looking to get drunk and bleat out lyrics they can remember from junior high) start trying to claim they're underrated. I will be calm. I will philosophize: it strikes me there are three types of bands that get revived or re-evaluated.

1) Bands that were unfairly neglected or denigrated in the first place - that on rediscovery, recontextualization, what have you, are seen for what they were - damned good. Some names that come to mind - The Bee Gees; Queen; George Michael - all have suffered periods of abuse; all are superb.

2) Bands that were neglected or denigrated for relatively legitimate reasons - but should be appreciated for other, no less important reasons. The first name to come to mind is The Carpenters: they had great songs; Karen had one hell of a voice. But their sound, production, etc. was hideous (most of the time) - the worst faults of 70s soft-rock. This category contains a number of bands that started well but turned to shit - Chicago comes to mind, or Heart. Or acts who come in and out of focus - Neil Diamond, I'd say.

3) Bands that can be appreciated at a very simple level - or ironically - but should not be taken as more than that. And I will happily put Journey in this category. And a great many others of all kinds.

Meanwhile: there are two other types of bands that sometimes get revived. First - bands that have no excuse needing to be revived. Bands, that is, that anyone with half a clue should like as soon as they hear them. Think Johnny Cash - who may have had a stretch out of the public eye, but anyone hearing Folsom Prison Blues or San Quentin should have immediately wigged to his true value. Marcotte lists Motorhead, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac as being revived (along with Cash) - again - amongst the hipsters? maybe. But that condemns the hipsters, in most instances. (Though with the Zep, and Sabbath, and bands of that ilk - they did require rescuing from themselves: it was easy, in the 70s, to lose the sounds of those bands in the blur of their godawful behavior and clothes, and the general atmosphere of bloat and self-indulgence. I did: it took a belated exposure to punk (and rap) to make me hear them again.)... The second type - bands that nothing can save. I dread with a terrible dread the days coming, 5-10 years from now, when the 90s get revived: when hipsters drag Creed and Limp Bizkit from their moldering graves and declare them cool, after all. I get some inkling of this baneful day in the attempts to prop up the ghastly remains of Def Leppard and many of their fellow 80s hair metals bands. Ugh. And I am so very very glad that I have never come across any signs of an Air Supply revival. The thought appalls....

But going back: the categories are a bit fuzzy. Most of these bands fall into disfavor in the first place because of shifting fashions: so why would the fashions that drop the Bee Gees into disrepute be different from the fashions that bring the Carpenters low? or turned Heart from a fine, if unspectacular, band into schlock? Well - I'd say, because quite frankly - the Bee Gees were still writing great songs as a disco band - and disco itself, seen for what it is, isn't half bad. The Carpenters had great songs - but the sound - there was no excuse for sounding like that. Elton John did soft rock and he never sounded like that. Not mush. And Heart? well - that's a different problem - they not only fell into the putrid pit of 80s production styles, they stopped writing decent songs. Ditto Chicago. Ditto Journey, though they didn't have as far to fall, and, in their defense, didn't fall as far. But 80s pop-rock galls me anyway - bands like Bon Jovi, who did write fine songs in their day, sounded like crap.

And so - I have to stop. I fear, behind all of this, is a pet peeve. The idea that Journey might be making a comeback annoys the bejesus out of me. For one reason - because if you have to bring back middle of the road, mediocre, 70s arena rock mewlers turned 80s superstar overproduced mewlers, at least can't you bring back a band that could write songs? If anyone's gonna get a revival, why can't it be Reo Speedwagon? They did write good songs: even in the 80s, at least on Hi Infidelity - terrible production, but still some very nice material, that holds up - unironically (and ironically, I can't deny it) - better than anything Journey did.