The Very Worst Album of 2010 Part II: Reflection (And Maybe Just a Little More Hostility)

Having vented my spleen on Santana’s utterly shitty Guitar Heaven, I would like to turn now to a broader contextual discussion of the record. How does something like this come into existence (and I am not prepared to rule out the possibility that a mad scientist created it in an attempt to destroy the world) and who is it for? And what, if anything, could such a musical abomination mean?

To take the last question first, Guitar Heaven might be the last nail in the coffin that holds the rapidly putrefying remains of Rolling Stone’s credibility. The magazine gave the album three stars (out of five) and called the performances, “mostly faithful to the originals” which suggests to me that Rolling Stone‘s Mark Kemp may not have actually listened to Guitar Heaven. Not that I can blame him. If you think the Joe Cocker-sung abortion that they call “Little Wing” on this album is “faithful” to Jimi Hendrix’s original, I will fight you. I will literally, violently, will all the force of my rage, fight you. With a two-by-four and a sock full of quarters. If anything, Cocktana’s version of “Little Wing” serves as definitive proof that we should pass an international law that forbids people to cover Jimi Hendrix songs.

And how did something like Guitar Heaven come to exist? That’s the easiest question of all to answer: it came about the same way every Santana album has for the last dozen years. Santana decides he wants to buy a boat, some producers come in and write some shitty tracks, arrange the collaborations with some brand-name, talentless vocalists (I know some people think that lasting a few weeks on American Idol means you’re talented, but I submit to you that it means exactly the opposite of that), and behold! a full-length album’s worth of crap is ready to clog up your FM radio for another year. Santana gets his boat, one or more asshole collaborators get Grammys, and everyone wins except, of course, people who believe in things like truth and beauty. Guitar Heaven turns the formula on its head by eliminating the need to actually write songs at all – now, Santana and his partners in crime (let’s just call it what it is, okay?) can mangle songs that people already know and love. And don’t believe for a second that this is a one-time deal; I’ll bet you every one of Carlos Santana’s dollars that there will be a Guitar Heaven II some time in the near future.

So who’s it for? You might be inclined to guess that it’s for the same Baby Boomers who saw Santana, drugged off his ass, at Woodstock forty-one years ago. If so, shouldn’t they be outraged? After all, Guitar Heaven almost certainly represents the co-opting and watering down of some of the great, primal rock ‘n’ roll moments that were the soundtrack to the youth of a many a Baby Boomer. Santana’s guitar tone renders the notes of Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, and Angus Young in a warm, digitally polished shine that is about as vital as a road-killed squid (it happens more often than you think) and only one vocal performance on Guitar Heaven really does justice to the original song; Chester Bennington’s performance on the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”, is every bit as boring as Jim Morrison’s.

Of course, Guitar Heaven isn’t just a cynical attempt to create and cash in on the perfect Baby Boomer nostalgia bait. It also tries to nab those of us on the cusp of Generation X and whatever the fuck the generation after X was. “Photograph” was a song from my childhood and having Chris Daughtry sing it is a clear attempt to get fourteen-year-old girls to buy this album or at least get that one track from I-Tunes. And if we’re talking about cynicism, what other word describes putting “Under the Bridge” on the album at all? The song is clearly not a guitar classic, but it was on the radio twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for about two straight years in the 1990s. That one is aimed squarely at people my age (as is the inclusion of Chris Cornell, although I was not fooled into believing for even a second that Cornell is as great as he was even as late as Superunknown), but literally nobody my age has ever strummed a solitary air-guitar note to “Under the Bridge.” Why? Because it’s the slow, sensitive song you put on when you want to try and slide into second base (I never did that, but I knew guys who did).

If you’re troubled and/or infuriated by Guitar Heaven, allow me to provide you with some comfort: although you’re right to be infuriated by this album (because – and I’m listening to it as I type this – it really fucking sucks), you needn’t worry that it represents some new kind of musical evil. These attempts to cash in on music someone else wrote have always been around. Paul Anka tried it a few years back with an album called Rock Swings which was so transparently hungry for the money of twenty-and-thirty-somethings that Anka even attempted a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” There are, of course, good covers albums but they are the exception that proves the rule (the rule being, “Covers albums are generally cynical attempts to get money quick”). Astute readers will be in a hurry to point out that I loved Bettye LaVette’s Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook, and I say, “That’s very astute of you.” The thing is, LaVette, without any big-name assistance, took songs other people wrote and made them her own. There’s a sense, for instance, of the personal resonance that “Wish You Were Here” has for LaVette. When you listen to Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana choke the life out of “Sunshine of Your Love”, you can hear that the song means dollar signs to them and nothing else. They’re wringing it out like a sponge, waiting for money to fall out.

It might be tempting to try to link Santana’s decade-long mission to sell out as much as possible (which is his right, by the way – if you want to suck for money, that’s up to you, but don’t get all indignant when I call you a whore) to the Baby Boomer Generation as a whole. After all, a lot of these people spent maybe a decade (some more, some less) trying to stick it to the Man before deciding that they can save more for retirement if they just started working for him. Again, that’s their business and I certainly don’t mean that all Baby Boomer are sellouts, but I am willing to bet that those among the Boomers who buy Guitar Heaven are probably the most ashamed of their hippie-dippy past.  And to be honest, I don’t care so much that Carlos Santana is a sellout per se. I care that he’s a sellout who makes shitty music and now he’s making shitty music out of formerly good music.

And, lest I receive any Red-baiting comments, let me clear up what I mean when I say someone is a sellout. Making money doing what you love is not selling out. Watering down, pussifying, and taming your passions for mass appeal is selling out. Let the great Joseph Campbell sum it up for you: “There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.” Carlos Santana hasn’t just fallen “off the beam”; he’s swan-dived off of it into a swimming pool full of money, exchanging soulless, lifeless “music” (for it can just barely be called that, and mostly only because it consists of known chords and notes) for cold, hard cash. Or, to put it more succinctly:

Ladies and gentlemen, Carlos Santana has “lost his life.”

The Tipping Point, “Translation,” and the Total Pussification of All Your Favorite Music

“If anyone wants to start an epidemic…he or she has to find some person or some means to translate the message of the Innovators into something the rest of us can understand” – Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

“The status quo always sucks” – George Carlin, Braindroppings

I know this is going to come off as elitist, but fuck it. When it comes to music (and beer and movies and books), I’m an elitist. You can like music I hate and I’ll still have a beer with you, though. Let’s not confuse elitist with fascist.

Anyway, I’m reading this book, The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. A lot of you have probably read it or heard of it. I’m not really endorsing it much – a lot of it is pseudo-scientific stuff that celebrates gifted, rich white people (although his sections on context and why anti-smoking campaigns are about as effective as Swiss-cheese condoms are honestly quite good) and oversimplifies… well, pretty much everything.

Gladwell’s idea is that ideas – the ones you hear about, the big ones, the ones that seem to make reams and reams of white people rich – spread in much the same way as epidemics of disease. Not a completely revolutionary idea, but not without its merits. The reason I’m talking about this book on my music blog is because it occurred to me, while reading it today (I’m cruising through this book, too. Had four hours to kill at the mechanic’s this morning), that the quote I’ve cited above explains something that always annoys me about music. Namely, the fact that almost every genre of music that I love has some sort of watered down version of itself that people who think about music a lot less than I do (I’m being charitable here) love, even though it’s reduced to practically a parody of the actual music.

Examples? Oh, I’ve got examples. Just the other night, I was in a situation where I was playing some electric guitar at work and this kid (he’s a nice enough kid, just young) asked me if I knew any songs he would know. I said I probably didn’t. I mentioned that I knew a lot of old punk songs and he got this kinda hopeful look in his eyes and suggested, “Sum-41? Linkin Park?” Now, as I said, the kid is young and a pretty nice dude, so I wasn’t gonna Hulk out on him or anything (I’m really a non-violent guy; I just have really violent thoughts sometimes), but I just realized today that what happened was, by the time punk got “translated” to the mainstream, it was way watered down. And this has only gotten worse. Here are my Big Three for early punk: the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Ramones. Love it or hate it, that shit was undoubtedly punk. Now what’ve you got? Kids who think Sum-41 and Green Day are punk bands.

Same thing for jazz music. “Translate” the amazing art of Mingus, Miles Davis, and Coltrane so that Baby Booming crackers can say they like jazz and it becomes, sadly, Kenny G. So you can see why Gladwell’s quote is juxtaposed with George Carlin’s quote, yeah? By the time the raw, beautiful music you love is fit for consumption by everyone, it fucking sucks. Always.

I used to think I hated country music. Then I heard Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Hank Williams, Sr. But not first. The first “country” music I heard was country-pop shit, so-called “crossover” success stories like Shania Twain and Billy Ray Cyrus. Here’s a hint: if they can make a dance-club remix of your music, it ain’t country. So fuck it.

You might be inclined to point out that hip-hop is still replete with swear words and edginess and stuff. And you’re right. Hip-hop didn’t get watered down so much as it got dumbed down; listen to what Public Enemy was rapping about on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and compare it to the shit that 50 Cent talks about. Hip-hop went from agitating for equality and social change to just a bunch of macho asshole bullshit (to borrow another phrase from Mr. Carlin, who knew the value of never watering down your art. Although great comedy also gets watered/dumbed down for people. Proof: Dane Cook sells out shows around the world).

So what’s to be done? There’s still plenty of great music out there (plenty of hope for punk, as I’ve pointed out many times: look to the Future of the Left, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, and Titus Andronicus), so it’s not like the good stuff is getting watered down before your very eyes. I see a lot of hope in niche markets in the future, especially once the major labels finally bite the fucking dust. Perhaps good ol’ word of mouth (or word of internet) will help people find the real shit. In the meantime, don’t be afraid to dig deeper when someone tells you about a great new artist. Maybe that “great new artist” is ripping off someone who was a really great artist (looking at you, John Mayer) that deserves more of your attention.

Gladwell contends that having a great message isn’t enough if you want your message to “stick” (the book is full of bullshit capitalized phrases that smack of self-help jargon and pop science), but when it comes to music, he is absolutely wrong. Fuck the masses – make great music first, water it down for no one, and there is bound to be someone who likes it. In a world where Nickelback sells millions of albums, your band can generate a large enough audience to sustain you, no matter how shitty you are. If you’re in a rock band, please, for the love all that is awesome, make it your mission to unwater-down the music and fuck that translation right up – I want some Tower of Babel shit happening in here. And if you’re a music fan, don’t be part of “the rest of us.” Don’t let anyone translate anything for you. If you genuinely love smooth jazz, so be it (you fucking pervert)! Gladwell implies that most of us are complacent morons, waiting around for someone (who he, tellingly, labels a “Salesman”) to tell us what’s cool. So please, whoever you are and whatever you love, don’t take for granted that something is cool just because some other jackhole (even me; hell, especially me) tells you it is. Dig into it, see for yourself. Because if Malcolm Gladwell is right about you (and me and “the rest of us”), we’re fucked.