On a Lighter Note: Distinguished Columnist Series

Trillions of years ago, there burst from the earth’s molten core a man, a monolith, an ideal. A beast hewn of granite. Muscles envied by mighty Hercules, teeth sharper than laser razors, gaping maw spitting forth a sonorous roar that could turn your parents’ bones to dust. He did what he pleased and frickin stomped on anything that got in his way, and his name, hallowed be it forever and ever, was ROCK AND ROLL.

Rock And Roll was of course frickin huge from the start, but all he did was get bigger, hairier and more hardcore. Through the heartbreaking hymns of Buddy Holly, the twisted tropical tones of Bo Diddley and the throat-slitting shreds of Chuck Berry, Rock And Roll became a frickin two-million foot monster. By the slick sophistication of the Beatles, the bluesy onslaught of Led Zeppelin, and the mind-annihilating masterhood of guitar messiahs like Clapton, Hendrix and Allman, Rock And Roll was made flesh and blood. He was a frickin megalodon of raw emotion.

As the years rolled by, we saw Rock And Roll take many forms and wear many outfits: we saw him all dressed up for prog, all torn up for punk, all decked out for metal and all stripped down for grunge. But drive, his strength and his frickin desire for destruction were constant.

Picture frightened parents being driven insane by the awful racket; Cadillacs running into brick walls at a hundred miles an hour; totalitarian dictators being violently deposed as the lead axe of Rock And Roll wails in the background. This is his handiwork. Throughout the 20th century, Rock And Roll frickin upheaved society a bunch of times over, and generally just bit the heads off little bitches everywhere.

But then, right after the 20th century ended, Rock And Roll came down with testicular cancer or something, cuz the collective balls of popular musicians just withered right off and they all turned into complete fruity wusses. Guttural distortion was replaced by soothing acoustic fingerstyle. Ass-scorching power chords gave way to flighty major sevenths. Stampeding blast beats were somehow dethroned by an unobtrusive wood-slapping clave. Pain-laced roars and grunts were silenced by whine sessions straight out of the frickin Breakfast Club.

Listen up Death Cab, Guster, Jack’s Mannequin, Sufjan Stevens—all you musicians who could never quite shake Dave Matthews’s sucktard influence—and all you poor brainwashed souls who keep throwing money at these human yeast infections: I don’t care what kind of quirky poetry a guy can write, or how many different instruments he can play, or how cute he looks with a relaxed half-smile of inner contentment on his face or that the songs he craps out make you feel all warm and fuzzy. I just want to know when popular music stopped EVOKING fiery passion and started EXAMINING it instead.

All real rockers were at least a little angry. A band was like a military unit: members held each other up and cooperated, but the ultimate goal was to get out there and kill everybody. It was an art defined by a shared beef with the Man, a desire to get a some miscreants together and show that a little collaboration can breed beautiful, all-consuming disorder. You had to haul your junk up on stage every night knowing, for dead sure, that you could destroy the universe with nothing but a strung-up hunk of wood and metal.

Nowadays music is all about preppy twentysomethings pulling their nylon-strung guitar from under a pile of laundry and getting the brosephs together for a Jack Johnson singalong after the Ultimate game. I swear one day I’ll round up a bunch of these gum-snapping crybabies, throw them in my trunk and dump them off in an AC/DC concert to fend for themselves. I got a lot of dollars says not one of them survives.

I pray to Morrison, Cobain and Dimebag every night to change the hearts of our rock stars, but their will cannot be done in this candy-ass social climate. I don’t know why I even bother going after you kids with this one, but some new firebrand has got to make a stand. Pop music needs to man up or shut up.