You know what I do like? The title of Jack Pendarvis’ new Oxford American column, “I Don’t Hate It!” While the title is a reference to Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, who shouts this defense as he is accused of hating the South, it says even more to me as a statement on modern writing and even music critique.
In one, fairly oblique sense, it could be interpreted as an admonishment of current writing (particularly blogging) trends. In opposition of the snarkiness (and meanness) that is the common currency of online scribes, a writer is instead saying, “I don’t hate it.” Not exactly the legendary “Yes” that Ono scrawled on a ceiling, but perhaps an effort to remain both post-modern and passionate at the same time; to avoid the hipster’s affectation of disinterest just for the sake of disinterest.
In a more exact sense, as drawn from Faulkner, it is a defense against evidence that seems to prove otherwise. And in that light, it applies not only to the mildly conflicted Pendarvis, who writes in his maiden column of being the supposedly improbable combination of both a Southerner and a Woody Allen fan, but it also applies to - oh, maybe, let’s say - me. I don’t hate music. I am mired in music. I bathe in music. Most of my life has been centered on music. I love music. I just happen to hate the shitty parts of the whole scene. Sometimes it may seem like I only pick the easiest prey, and sometimes it may seem like I revel in snark, but even the easiest of targets are still valid targets, and as for the occasional snark, well, I gotta do what I do best.
And on the topic of Southernness and shitty music and easy prey, let me switch to what I don’t like: the irrelevance that is REM, as currently highlighted in this recent interview with the band (mostly Stipe, with a tiny bit of Buck and Mills)
If I walk away from that article feeling even more assured that REM is irrelevant, is it the fault of the writer, the subject, or the reader? To me, REM has long been irrelevant, even before the point they became truly irrelevant (Automatic for the People, imho).
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate REM. I’ve just long grown weary of them. The one thing that really summed them up wasn’t “trailblazingness” or “sonic melding of quasi-poetic mumbling and Byrds-influenced arpeggios.” It was their Southernness. As surely as Billy Bragg captures Britishness, or the Velvet Underground seems innately New York, the truly interesting thing about REM was that they were the musical equivalent of Flannery O’Connor, or at least presented themselves as such. (Personally, I’d argue that the Rock-A-Teens are the true musical version of Southern Lit, but I’m trying to go with a theme here, so work with me)
Take REM out of the historical music equation and what do you truly lose? Toad the Wet Sprocket? Hootie and the Blowfish? Is there a single worthwhile band that wouldn’t exist had REM not formed?
Certainly there were already enough Byrds, Big Star and VU fans forming bands that REM’s blend no longer looks alchemical, but rather inevitable. And anyone who believes that mainstream radio wouldn’t have embraced “alternative” music without REM’s “trailblazing” seems willfully ignorant of any musical history – despite what you’d think, the mainstream was already fairly willing to accept punk and new wave in the late 70s and throughout the 80s.
But what they did do was bring to the mainstream a concept of the South beyond country music and racist tirades. Albums defined by photographs of kudzu or references to the Civil War brought the concept of the quirky Southern outsider to the greater public. Is it wrong to surmise that more people have probably heard Murmur than have read A Good Man is Hard to Find?
Since REM decided to become pop-rock writ large, that sense of place seems long forgotten. And what remains of the Southern eccentricity has grown tiresome. Reading about Stipe being purposely obscure or hostile to interviewers is tres boring. “This line of questioning is very binary. There’s no wiggle room here”? Really? You’re not Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back, being interviewed by “culture” writers who can barely hide their disdain for your work. You’re talking to a guy who made you a goddamn mix CD, for Christ’s sake. You’re willingly participating in the machinery to promote your band’s new live album, which is ultimately just a goddamn collection of golden oldies. You have options Dylan didn’t, or didn’t realize that he had at the time. You don’t have to talk to interviewers. You didn’t have to take the star turn in your life.
And Jesus, what the hell is up with this story about the time a “concerned Stipe contacted [Thom] Yorke” to give him advice on being a rock star? Yeah, I can kind of see how, in Stipe’s post-Cobain world, he might want to reach out to a manic friend, but this just seems ridiculous. “It’s OK. These things have happened to other people and there’s reason why.” I think that’s actually a line of dialogue from The Seventh Sign.
I’ve considered REM behind the curve for quite sometime – at least since 1994’s Monster, which sounded reactive, appearing two years after the “grunge explosion” which brought a rawer form of rock back to radio. They seemed reactive again on 1998’s Up, which again seemed Johnny-come-lately, inspired by mid-90s indie interests, rather than being inspiring itself (I mean, really, a Beach Boys rip-off at least two years after every hipster band had already proclaimed Pet Sounds as a staggering work of genius?) Call me cynical, but reaching out to Yorke seems a tad bit calculated, the old man who longs not just to share his wisdom, but to remain relevant just a little while longer.
Is it the fault of the writer for participating in this, enabling Stipe’s eccentricities (even as he howls, “I’m not eccentric” in his own Quentonian way), all just to promote this “golden oldies” live album? Or mine for reading it and linking to it, increasing their page hits?
Ah, who knows. I’m starting to bore myself here, and this extended rant is itself losing its grounding. Perhaps I’m being unfair. On second read, the Times Online piece isn’t as bad as I first thought, although my reaction still feels valid enough to expound upon in self-satisfyingly great detail. I do like Buck admitting that he was unhappy with their last record – although I wish he could admit that for several of their others as well. But I have to admit that I’ve only listened to REM in spurts since Automatic for the People, which I just considered dreadful. There is little I could tell you about New Adventures in Hi-Fi, for example, because there nothing about it that compelled me to listen to it. In fact, there is little about current REM that makes me think of them any differently than any other commercial, radio-friendly act. They are safe, and if you like that, more power to you. But that personality and sense of place that seemed to define the band is gone, and it really feels like that’s all they ever had going for them.
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