TDR's Rock-'N-Roll Primer

By Stefan Beck | Wednesday, May 22, 2002

It's Friday night (or Wednesday night, as the case may be), and I'm fully prepared to drown my sorrows in Milwaukee's Best. Yes, it's a beer so inimitably bad that it's usually stale before you open it. But I cherish that beer. I anticipate the accidental spill that my professors, classmates and I will be able to smell the entire following week. In fact, whenever I hear a mob of untutored freshmen complaining about beast, whether in earnest (what, were they nursed on Heineken?) or because it's 'cute' to say beast, it's all I can do not to force-feed those little tossers with a fire hose.

That's not the real problem, though.

The real problem is this: when I want to perforate my liver with beer that tastes like it was brewed in an old Vision Street Wear sneaker, I want to do it while listening to rock music. Real rock music. I mean songs so loud and vicious that I don't even notice what I'm drinking. That's what I want when I waltz into a frat.

What I get, on a good night, is Crazy Town.

You know those guys, right? According to allmusicguide.com, 'Crazy Town combines hip-hop's lyrical attitude and rhythmic sass with the sonic muscle of live rock instrumentation.' Attitude and sass, indeed. It doesn't mention that after being taunted by Connecticut hardcore band Hatebreed, Crazy Town's sassy lead vocalist hid in his trailer like a frightened beagle for the rest of Ozzfest.

Come on now. That's not rock and roll. Do the men of Dartmouth really want to advocate the sad-sack bowdlerization of a proud musical tradition? Of course not. With this in mind, I would like to present ten musical acts (some old, some brand new) that, played in the proper social spaces, with the right equipment, just might save our music scene. Get your dancing shoes on, douse yourself with Old Overholt, and purchase every album you can by...

1. The Murder City Devils. The Devils are from Seattle, which I suppose is a Murder City if you count all the hippies who got stomped to death in the WTO riots. But the real Murder City is a special place in the mind and heart of Spencer Moody, the Devils' bespectacled and perpetually hoarse lead singer. What says party time like song after song about sailors, truckers, dancing, whiskey, murder, and unrequited love? When Spencer barks lines like 'I like the sound of you / rolling in that broken glass' or 'I like the taste of your sweat / bet I'd like to smell your blood,' over Leslie Hardy's ghoulish Farfisa organ riffs, you can't help smiling. Spencer's notorious obsession with Neil Diamond makes this gory aesthetic even creepier (you can catch a drunk Spencer doing great Diamond karaoke in the Devils documentary Rock and Roll Won't Wait). Rumbling bass, train-wreck guitars, and periodic werewolf-howls make songs like 'Get Off The Floor,' 'Left Hand Right Hand,' 'Press Gang,' and 'In This Town' surefire dance party faves.

2. Pretty Girls Make Graves. When the Murder City Devils broke up, bassist Derek Fudesco moved on to Pretty Girls Make Graves. But the band's real asset is vocalist Andrea Zollo, who sounds like a pair of rabid alley cats fighting to the death in a Hefty bag. No female artist since Kim Deal has torn it up quite like Ms. Zollo does. Pretty Girls also boasts the ultra-precise guitar stylings of Sharks Keep Moving's Jason Clark. The band's first full-length, Good Health, came out this April. Of particular interest is the track-one wonder 'Speakers Push The Air,' a throbbing anthem to the power of rock. On 'Head South' (from the band's self-titled EP), she plays the jilted lover, screaming, 'It seems like I know the back of your head / better than the front / you don't see me stopping you / I got better things to do today.' Any sorority sister who calls herself a strong woman ought to absolutely love this stuff.

3. The Strokes. You've heard them, or you know somebody who has. But their songs have yet to edge out Weezer's anemic, half-assed 'Island In The Sun' on most fraternity playlists. The Strokes are a symptom of pop culture's uphill struggle to recapture the Holy Land of True Rock. The band's members are mostly prep school boys from the Dwight School in Manhattan; they must have received one hell of an education there, because they certainly learned to appreciate booze, girls, and the rock sound pioneered by Mick and Keith. Their debut, Is This It, shook the critics to their knees, with songs like 'The Modern Age,' 'Barely Legal,' and 'Last Night'—with good reason. It's pop, to be sure — pop of a caliber that people once expected, and that most bands, sadly, are unwilling or unable to achieve these days.

4. The White Stripes. You may already have heard 'Hotel Yorba' or 'Fell In Love With A Girl,' thanks to the recent success of 2001's White Blood Cells. But the Detroit super-duo, made up of siblings Meg and Jack White, has two other albums: a self-titled debut, and 2000's brilliant De Stijl. The Stripes are like the Strokes' big brother; they're wiser, tougher, and way raunchier. This is lewd and lascivious blues-rock in the tradition of the Stones' Let It Bleed. Check out (read: steal from the Internet) 'Dead Leaves On The Dirty Ground,' 'I'm Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman,' 'Stop Breaking Down' (a ravaged rendition of the old Robert Johnson number), and the Stripes' scorching cover of Son House's bottleneck masterpiece 'Death Letter.' If you need another reason to get into these guys, let it be known that Meg is a black-haired beauty to be reckoned with, and so, I'm told, is Mr. Jack.

5. The Hives. Most of the Hives' music sounds the way 'You Really Got Me' would have sounded if the Kinks were from Sweden, took tons and tons of methamphetamines, and fuzzed the crap out their guitars. It's said among the cogniscenti that the Hives will be (if they aren't already when this hits press) the next Strokes. Their sophomore effort, 2000's Veni Vidi Vicious, is a collection of twelve speedy, simple, radio-friendly punk songs. 2002's appropriately titled Your New Favourite Band consists of four songs each from the band's first and second albums, and four more from EPs. When, on 'Hate To Say I Told You So,' singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist shrieks, 'Be ignored by the stiff and the bored / because I'm gonna,' it's almost as if he's talking about Dartmouth. Let's prove ol' Pelle wrong. If anybody here wants a revival of the Animal House days, this is the perfect soundtrack for it.

6. The Constantines. Rock and roll breeding grounds: Chicago, Detroit, NYC...Guelph, Ontario. The Constantines burst forth from this Canadian city in 2001, with their jarring 13 Songs. The album is named after Fugazi's famous debut, and the Constantines sound more than a little like DC's Hardest Working Band — but not in a ripoff way. Songs like 'Some Party,' 'Young Offenders' (spot the stolen Rod Stewart lyric!), and the brooding, brutal 'Arizona,' in which the band calls for 'the death of rock and roll,' have a unique flavor. The band returned in April of this year with a tight, disciplined three-song EP, The Modern Sinner Nervous Man, that showcases fine-tuned chops and energy that hasn't waned a bit.

7. And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. It's a long, extravagant name, in the tradition of Godspeed You Black Emperor or The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band. Not surprisingly, the music of AYWKUBTTOD is very similar in scope and grandeur to Godspeed and Mt. Zion. Only thing is, Trail Of Dead's four members aren't weepy, pompous jerks with an agenda. They just want to wow you with a new brand of epic, complex, and breathtaking rock. 2002's critically acclaimed Source Tags & Codes somehow manages to make a standard quartet sound like a white-hot furnace of sound. Okay, well, it manages this with samples, loops, and other tape effects. But it's also an impressively melodic and innovative album, without sounding like it's ever trying (ahem, Amnesiac) to be. Also, the vocals are incredible. Some folks call this an emo band, but you won't find any of the studied melancholy of a Tim or Mike Kinsella here. 'Another Morning Stoner,' 'Baudelaire,' 'Relative Ways,' and the closing title track show off a confidence, and an elegant anger, that you won't find in most music.

8. Liars. Late last year, a band from Brooklyn (and Australia) put out an album called They Threw Us in a Trench and Stuck a Monument On Top. That band is called Liars, and it's living, writhing proof that rock and roll never runs out of good ideas. The Liars are lead singer Angus, guitar monster Aaron, bassist Pat, and drummer Ron, and together they create a sound that's totally unclassifiable. No, I don't mean unclassifiable like that band (ahem, Radiohead) you don't want to admit is just tricked-out soft rock for kids who are finally graduating from Counting Crows. Liars sounds like an elementary school music room being dynamited by a fourth-grade genius with ADHD. You feel the basslines with your feet; the guitars saw through concrete; weird noises (on 'The Garden was Crowded and Outside,' the beat is set with typewriter sounds) and loops add a subtle sci-fi dimension to a sound that is pure, joyful excess. Angus, the lanky but explosive Aussie vocalist, sounds like a human megaphone, shouting 'We got our finger on the pulse of America,' or 'Last night you and I / we gathered berries with a flashlight,' or 'No attention span / no attention span / rather be lost than found.' Yeah, the lyrics are confusing, as are song titles like 'Grown Men Don't Fall in the River, Just Like That.' But this is frantic, freaked-out music, and frankly I don't care what it's about. Highlights include 'Mr Your On Fire Mr,' 'We Live NE of Compton,' and, well, the rest of the album.

9. James Brown. On his famous 'It's a Man's Man's Man's World,' the Hardest Working Man In Show Business sang, 'This is a man's world / but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing / without a woman or a girl.' Was Mr. Dynamite himself singing about frats? Of course not, but I bet he'd agree with me that they could use a little helping of soul. Remember when Otter, Boon, D-Day, and Pledgemaster Bluto twisted the night away to Sam Cooke? Yeah, remember how the Deltas used the power of soul to fight Dean Wormer? The Dartmouth of today, I daresay, lacks such soul power. The next time I go out, I want to rectify this situation by wearing dozens of purple capes, filling my hair with pomade, and shaking it out to 'Try Me,' 'Night Train,' 'I'll Go Crazy,' 'I Don't Mind,' and 'Super Bad.' But I need your help — and, of course, if you want to do it right, get up offa that thing and make it a Live at the Apollo night.

10. The Rolling Stones. This should go without saying. Once in a while somebody has the good taste to throw 'Ruby Tuesday' or 'Paint It Black' onto a house mix, but I'm going to stick my neck out and say that that isn't good enough. The menace and swagger of Let It Bleed and Exile On Main Street are what fraternity brothers and their female quarries (or vice versa, of course) really need to hear, whether or not they know it yet. Maybe we need to start distributing WWJD bracelets: What Would Jagger Do? Because I have a pretty damn good idea what Jagger wouldn't do, and that's stand around in a basement, sipping lukewarm beer and pretending, out of sheer laziness and lack of curiousity, that Fred Durst, System of a Frown, and the Linkin Park Guy are innovative musicians. Enough is enough. All I'm asking is that you play 'Rocks Off,' 'Midnight Rambler,' or 'Ventilator Blues,' when I'm down a few cups in Shrub.

Before I sink back into the sofa, with my sleeping bag and comically large headphones (take note: the next time I'm walking across the Green, these headphones will help you identify me, waylay me, and kick my ass), I would like to address two things.

The first is a classic argument that my Greek-affiliated friends use to justify their flavorless music. It goes something like this: 'We have to play that music! That's the music the girls want to hear when they come to the house at night!' I've heard this a million times, fellas, but I still don't buy it. Nevertheless, if what you say is true, then it's your duty to turn the tides. We live in an age when music has nothing to do with writing songs, and everything to do with paying narcissistic tech-school dropouts way too much to prance around in somebody else's clothes and sing (if you can call it that) somebody else's songs (if you can call them songs). If I sound insane or autocratic, it's only because I think music deserves to be taken seriously.

And, like I said before, Crazy Town is not drinking music.

The second, more important point, is this. Yes, I readily admit it, I am an elitist, like Jack Black's character in High Fidelity. But, believe it or not, I'm offering these suggestions in earnest and in good humor. I believe Dartmouth kids would genuinely enjoy this music. Since you're going to associate your memories of college with the music you listen to now, why not make that music something slightly less likely to end up on a TV mail-order compilation (like Monster Ballads, or those '60s soft-rock CDs loaded down with Strawberry Alarm Clock and Jim Croce)? Remember, what seems like good taste now may be a dirty little secret later on—like your mom's collection of Seals and Crofts records, or the copy of Superunknown you keep hidden with your middle school yearbooks. So do the right thing and listen to something that shreds. You don't even have to thank me. If you're dancing and screaming, you've already done that.

TDR's Rock-'N-Roll Primer

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