Dull and Dullards: The death of rock and roll in Britain and America.

It has been said that the USA and the UK are two nations separated by a common language. Whereas the original statement referred to our use of English, it would appear that the same could be true in regard to the current state of popular rock music on either side of the pond. Whilst both nations have thriving and vibrant independent scenes, it’s the decade defining stuff in the charts, the sort of thing that will fill up nostalgia TV shows in ten years that’s utterly dispiriting. We expect pop records to be throwaway pap, but some of the dross that passes for ‘real’ (i.e. ‘rock’) music is equally worthless. What is interesting however is the different ways in which the UK and US have conspired to murder the true spirit of rock and roll.

See here in the UK it’s all about being dull. We like our rock unthreatening, safe and palatable. In fact I’m not even sure we like rock any more, we like the roll part, but rock sounds just a little too abrasive for us. These days it’s more like nod and roll. That’s why Travis have done so well in recent years; truly there has never been a more inoffensive and timid group of nice young men to pick up guitars and take to the stage. Each of their songs is effortlessly singable and yet utterly worthless, from ‘if we turn, turn, turn’ to  ‘if we sing, sing, sing’ (‘Turn’ and ‘Sing’ respectively). They use the most painfully simple metaphors that even eight year olds can understand, such as when they’re singing about being down and out in ‘Why Does it Always Rain on Me?’ Or when considering being lost in life - ‘you’re driftwood, floating on the water’. It is music for people who don’t like music.

Likewise Stereophonics (who even manage to have a thoroughly boring name) are one of those bands that likes to take things as far away from the edge as possible. They tried to rock out on ‘The Bartender and The Thief’, got scared and then resorted to releasing a string of miserable plodders, such as the utterly insipid ‘Have A Nice Day.’ Stereophonics also labour under the misapprehension that having frontman Kelly Jones sing every line as if he’s about to puke will add some kind of dramatic edge to their songs. It doesn’t, it just highlights how utterly pedestrian their records are in the first place. When the music press began to question how such a workmanlike pub rock act ever made it into the charts the band responded with the yawn-inducing sour grape tones of ‘Mr Writer’, almost as if to prove just how much they utterly fail to rock in any shape, form or fashion.

In the US however the trend is generally not so much towards the dull (though there are exceptions, to which I’ll return later) but rather towards the elevation of the dullard to superstar level. By this I mean the utterly undeserved success of such talentless half-wits as Limp Bizkit and their many imitators. It’s like some deliberate attempt to take the worst of metal and the lamest of rap and forge some kind of bastard anti-music. When old-enough-to-know-better frontman Fred Durst intones on ‘Rollin’ that ‘you’d better get some better beats and some better rhymes’ stones and glass houses come to mind. What’s crucial however is that despite their lack of any musical worth whatsoever, Limp Bizkit are at least perceived as ‘dangerous’ to some extent or another. The same cannot be said of the soporific Starsailor for example.

But it’s not enough to be dangerous; if it were then the charts would be fall of spoken word albums by Osama Bin Laden. So why are millions of young Americans (and Brits, to be fair) listening to Marilyn Manson and Kid Rock? The former has the look of Alice Cooper, or an amalgam of all four members of Kiss, combined with none of their song writing ability or talent whatsoever. The latter has the rapping skills of Vanilla Ice and a band that only seems to be anywhere close to rocking when it ‘borrows’ Metallica riffs. I mean at least Manson, to his credit, looks kind of scary; Kid Rock just looks like an idiot. He also talks and acts like one, particularly in his recent video for ‘Forever’, during which the dunderhead tromps around flag waving, wearing a glittery Uncle Sam outfit in a desperate and cynical attempt to cash in on post-September 11^th sentiment. He then announces that he ‘takes punk rock and mixes it with the hip-hop.’ Mr Rock sir, you wouldn’t know punk if it gobbed in your face or hip-hop if it popped a cap in your ass.

So Americans like a dullard, Brits just like it plain dull. There are exceptions for sure; we both have our dull Daves (Mathews and Gray, respectively) and we both have our moronically monikered troupes of dullards (Alien Ant Farm, Raging Speedhorn). For the most part however it’s a case of slow, steady and sensible for the tea drinkers or big, ugly and stupid for the Big Mac munchers.

Fortunately however, for both of our formerly great nations of rock, there is a country in Europe called Sweden, whose capital is Stockholm. From this country are a band called The Hives. All is not lost.

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