The Kids Are All Idiots
I assume most of you will by now have some inkling of the latest Big Thing to come out of the US underground scene, Arizona's finest purveyors of emo (i.e. emotional punk), Jimmy Eat World. It seems that after 8 years spent in complete obscurity and three albums (two absolutely brilliant) that fell pretty much on deaf ears, some corporate bigwig decided that their fourth album, Bleed American, was sufficiently watered down in terms of the angst level of its melodies to be made amenable to the collectively insipid predilections of a mass audience. The JEW hype has been building up inexorably over the last few months or so, recently reaching fever pitch with covers in both Kerrang! and the NME. From the perspective of optimizing product promotion in the European market, the band's appearance at the Mean Fiddler on Friday the 25th of January, coming hot on the heels of this swelling of media attention, had all the makings of a coup de grace. I want to relate my experience of that gig, both as a means of venting my frustrations and so as to illuminate some of the deep-rooted afflictions that plague modern punk rock, especially in its relation to the voracious vulture that is mass culture.
By the time JEW appeared on stage, a little before 9 o'clock of that momentous evening, your loyal reporter had found himself hemmed in on all sides by droves of wide-eyed, baggily attired boys and girls in their early to middle teens. This was an ill omen if there ever was one. Now don't get me wrong - I don't hate young teenagers per se. I only abhor those precocious posers that invariably make a leap onto the punk rock bandwagon when it becomes commonly accepted and cool. This is a direct contradiction of the essence of punk, which is all about anti-conformity rather than heedless obsequiousness to the dictates of the latest fad, and it is a wholly ephemeral commitment, which flies out the window as soon as the fad inevitably begins to fade out. Given all this, I was understandably apprehensive. The ensuing events would confirm my fears in a dismally emphatic manner.
Quite honestly, I do not know where to begin in recounting the horrors that I had the ill fortune to witness. I breathed in the pungent stench of the crowd's arena rock mentality, manifested in such atrocities as football-style rhythmic clapping and screaming hysterics. I cringed at their mindless moshing to songs like "Goodbye Sky Harbour", a slow-moving gem of nostalgic evocation, and their palpable incapacity to relate their actions in the pit to what was happening on stage in general. I was bemused but ultimately unsurprised to find them hopping like well-tuned mechanical monkeys to the 'hits' (ugh!) in the new album, and displaying a blissful ignorance of any of the band's material prior to Bleed American. And on and on...
The kids are not all right, as the celebrated Who ditty would have you believe. They're mostly idiots. Marionettes with manufactured tastes. And when punk bands hit the big time, they do so by appealing to this kind of people. A twofold problem thus emerges: firstly, as regards the bands that do genuinely come from an underground scene, the temptation of selling out - compromising their artistic or political integrity for commercial success - rears its ugly head. On the other hand, the promotion of a punk trend precipitates a proliferation of new bands with the 'right' punk looks and sound, but with no soul. Thus a cancer grows upon the scene, devouring the few remaining islets of authenticity in it and, if we're not careful, the outcome will be a thousand new meaningless products where once there was a community.
JEW were mostly good, although they only played for an hour or so, and the main singer was not quite up to par in some of the more demanding older numbers. Rock stardom now stares them in the face: let us hope that it does not overwhelm them, one way or another.
7th Feb 2002