Rock & Roll Part 3: not dead yet

Last evening, as the world of popular music set it's sights on Cleveland and the induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, one could almost be forgiven for the nostalgia and the tone of a memorial such an event can cast on the music. It's a grand thing, no doubt, to recognize the achievements of so many original artists, but there lies a danger to view the medium through the rosy haze of days gone by. We say “remember when” and toss around words like “classic” which should never have been associated with a music made of immediacy and rebellion, as we pour the bronze and build the pedestals and reduce our heroes and bad influences to pigeon roosts on a mall. As I say, it’s a great thing to behold and recognize our artists, and very cool for a bruised and bloodied city as ours to have this event, but it begs the question, if Rock & Roll is being stuffed into a museum, is it dead yet?

The answer last night, at a grungy little music club just a few miles east of the hard glass memorial to Rock, is an unequivocal “no”! At the same time the once young and relevant Metallica was receiving their plaque of gratitude, four ass kicking chicks were tearing it up on the tiny stage like the music had never died; indeed, like it was invented all over again as it has been for each generation.

HotChaCha is a band born of the city which fancies itself the Rock and Roll Capital, yet often forgets why that still matters. Jovana, the unforgettable singer with the dark eyes and sardonic smile, commands the stage and sings for the crowd, not her shoes, while the rest of the band propels her forward to the edge of the stage and into the audience. The music still matters to them, and it’s a joy to watch, like it’s being invented right before your eyes. And the crowd matters too, twenty somethings who don’t care what you listened to when you were their age, and some of us, even old enough to be their parents, who want to hear something new and vibrant, not just sing along to the oldies. When HotChaCha demands crowd participation, shouting the refrain “Bob” in the song of the same name, the interaction is immediate and genuine, as the musical experience should be. Never mind what their “influences” are, everyone is always influenced by what comes before, but nobody cares in this moment. This band creates a sound all their own with Mandy’s ringing, siren guitar, Heather’s staccato bass, Lisa’s urgent drums, and the throaty, midwest clip of Jovana’s vocals; and that’s all you need to know.

So leave those old records on the shelf, and get your ass out to hear the music now, and remember why you loved it all over again. HotChaCha is on a trajectory which may take them on to bigger and better things--because they are relevant, because they are fun, because they are even earnest in their enthusiasm and drive, and mostly--because they rock.

photo courtesy of John Scully

Rock & Roll Comes On A Thursday

(see this entry)
...but this time it's the Bellrays, who kick ass over and over, taking no prisoners with their head rattling, soul stretching rock & roll. Another band which renews your faith in why the music matters, Lisa and the band can make you believe nothing else matters when they are on stage, no mean feat in this age of over saturation and over commercialization in the music business. A time when some would have us believe that the price of your ticket or the size of the stage show should make you feel guilty for being less than impressed, here is the real deal.

Rock & Roll Comes On A Tuesday

...or whenever or wherever you might not expect it. After a half century, or really a whole damn century, of electrified, hip-shaking, brain rattling music from the American gut, and a complete commodification of said rattling, it's heartening to STILL find rock rolling.

Singing, screaming, thrashing and bashing out the rhythm, a melody as direct as a "hey, baby" a continuo that shakes your balls, and skull splitting drums in a room where you can feel, smell, and even taste it--that's rock & roll the way the lord meant it.

And that is what came, unexpectedly, on a Tuesday night in May at The Beachland Tavern, when Pela played on the second night of their tour. Warming up themselves as well as the small crowd of early-in-the-week music lovers, they fairly blew the few away. With insistent riffs and urgent singing, both catchy and pushy, Pela reminds you of why you love the music.

Going on a whim and a blurb, it's the unexpected, sometimes obscure, or otherwise just hard working shows like this which renew my faith in the music.

Love (over Virtue or Fortune)

The struggle of the gods is played out by the earth-bound emperor Nero, his lover Poppea, her spurned fiancé Ottone, and the Empress Ottavia, in one of Monteverdi's final operas. In a haunting production by the Oberlin Conservatory's Opera Theater this past week, the wishful notion of the triumph of love turns startling and brutal.
Brutal in the reality of spurned lovers turning murderous, startling as the virtue of loyalty ending in self destruction. And sad in the joy taken in so much pain.

This dark and twisted comedy premiered in 1642, but it's theme is strikingly contemporary--or so we may think, as the gauzy scrim of nostalgia might suggest (wrongly) that times were ever "better", that art was ever more "uplifting". In reality, Monteverdi, the godfather of opera, plumbed the depths of emotion and human frailties in this masterwork, leaving no heroes and no one unscathed.

I've got a pocket full of pretty green

...I'm going to give it to the man behind the counter
he's gonna give me food and water

I recently heard this song, do you remember it? I heard it on the recent release by Mark Ronson, and my ears pricked up--I knew it but couldn't quite place it. It was a catchy, bouncy rendition evocative of a children's rope skipping rhyme, replete with high, cheery voices. This particular production is what threw me off--it was originally performed by the Jam, and the version as sung by the gruff, nasally Paul Weller, with the spare, percussive, jerky arrangement feels like a different world altogether. The song is a simple, stark assessment of the world of commerce:

And they didn't teach me that in school -
It's something that I learnt on my own -
That power is measured by the pound or the fist -
It's as clear as this oh -

But in the new version by Mark Ronson, the song becomes a nursery rhyme whose origins and meaning are shrouded and sometimes dark, like Ring Around the Rosey, Rock-a-Bye-Baby, or maybe even Pop Goes the Weasel.

Is there safety in the familiarity of a tune? Or was it ever really that dark? Sometimes the incomprehensible chords and strange rhythm of a new song make your ears bristle and wince, or an annoying refrain overshadows a song's deeper meaning. Did you ever notice someone from afar, and think to yourself, "gosh, he looks mean." But when you eventually meet him and get to know him as the good person he inevitably was, you can no longer seem to find that "meanness" in his face you swear you saw in the past?
Is the most beautiful person you know the most beautiful person in the world?