Sarre-Chasm

Hypo-Critics

by Jon Sarre
illustration by Timothy Walker

“For years… Elvis and I were nip and tuck, chasing each other up the charts. People don’t realize this, but we appealed to different instincts in the same people – like yin and yang. A lot of the same people were buying his records and my records.”
– Pat Boone, quoted in Colin Escott’s Tattooed on Their Tongues (Schirmer, 1996)

Pat Boone really gets under the thin skins of those who make their living writing the history of rock’n’roll. Maybe you wouldn’t think so, ‘specially since the guy’s such a straight-laced white bred dork (No More Mr. Nice Guy aside, naturally). It was those Little Richard covers though, they’ve got the power to offend the Dave Marshes of the world to such a degree that you’d think the damn songs were written by the same rock crits who got themselves worked into a self-righteous frenzy that time Reagan dropped a Springsteen reference into a speech back when he was less senile and still President (Reagan, I mean, not the Boss).

Sure, Pat’s “sanitized” versions of “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti-Frutti” were unnecessary, not to mention soulless, but does that make the guy evil? Colin Escott (in the chapter devoted to Boone in Tattooed on Their Tongues) describes the ole white devil’s ’50s output as something along the lines of rock’n’roll for people who didn’t like rock’n’roll, a kinda meeting point between Perry Como’s world and Elvis‘. Pat Boone was schooled in pop music, Escott goes on to explain, but had no understanding of country, R & B or the dirty, sweaty new form mushrooming from the compost of the traditional stuff.

That’s not an apology for the crap Pat Boone sang, the point I’m trying to make here is that people listened to him on the radio and bought the guy’s records. This, naturally, didn’t slip past the business-savvy, art-ignorant industry types who periodically take a page from Pat and foist yer Journeys, Vanilla Ices and New Kids on the Blocks, etc. on the public. It strikes me as weird that whitebread sells and sells and parents don’t really get pissed about it and sometimes it makes as much green as a dolt in makeup who tries real hard to scare those same parents by calling himself “Anti-Christ Superscam,” or whatever. Yin and Yang.

Interestingly enough, critics (being the hypocritical pencil-pushers we are) beat the livin’ shit outta the homogenized pap (like ya wouldn’t mind throwin’ a coupla Jehovah’s Witnesses down a flight of stairs, right?), but lend credence to the shock mockers on the opposite side of the spectrum, usually not by concentrating on the musical content, but by pullin’ out some sociological bullshit instead. Y’know Snoop embodies so and so and Marilyn tells us this about whatever.

So why call one a scam and pay, at the very least, lip service to another? The answer there is a mixture of generation gap politics, misplaced (dead, dated and ’60s) idealism, class warfare, good ole big daddy white liberal guilt and rank hypocrisy. I don’t really have the space here to outline the whole deal (hell, I’d end up havin’ to waste years of my life writin’ a goddamn book, or somethin’), but you probably get the picture: the stock crit reaction being “If Ward and June’d think it swings, it can’t possibly swing, if they scream in pain then the Beav’ digs it.”

The problem here is that good stuff, I’m talkin’ ’bout shit produced by people who sweat and maybe imbibe too many chemicals to create somethin’ with life and energy, more often than not falls between the cracks cos not only would yer mom not want Stiv Bators in the living room, but something as bald-faced as “Ain’t Nothin’ To Do” doesn’t lend itself to analysis cos it’s plainly obvious and therefore it’s not gonna end oppression (or lead to the revolution, man). Real bands lose out when they can’t be a) reduced to a harmless (but lucrative) joke or b) used to justify Rolling Stone or Spin‘s pet socio-cultural slant of the moment.

Between radio, MTV, and angle-humping self-absorbed critics, ya gotta wonder how a new band has a chance in hell. Electronic and print media work symbiotically so if you don’t have one, can you get the other? Options come down to word of mouth or pawning the instruments and doing something constructive with your life. Either way, you’re fucked…

Anyway, here’s three bands that didn’t do either…

DMZ These Bostonians were signed to Sire as a punk band, but their 1978 self-titled debut is more ’60s garage than ’70s punk. They cover the Sonics and the Troggs and the guitar work reminds me of Pussy Galore. Sire dropped ’em quick and they basically became the Lyres. Mono Mann lives!

The Mummies They billed themselves as “the bastard sons of King Tut” and dressed like B-Movie monsters, but that didn’t really help ’em get rich, go figure. They did whip out great garagey surf rock that was witty and abrasive and luckily, their stuff is pretty available. Greatest Shit Vols I & II or the harder to find Never Been Caught will give you a good foul taste. Don’t bother if you don’t own a turntable, nothing’s out on CD.

Death of Samantha 1988’s Where the Women Wear the Glory and the Men Wear the Pants is one of the five greatest rock’n’roll records of all time, no fucking lie! Sonically speaking, DoS was like Cheap Trick meets the Stooges with a nasally Tom Jones fronting the mess, but overdone to the nth degree with weird harmonies, strings, woodwinds, and the occasional sample. They broke up in ’89 or ’90, but then re-formed (minus one member) under the name Cobra Verde. Yeah, they’re still pretty obscure. The more things change…