I was skeptical of pop-rock's newest creation, Nickelback, when I first heard their hit "How You Remind Me." I was annoyed when I bought the latest issue of "Guitar One" with Nickelback on the cover, and the cashier told me they were "f—-ing sweet."
But when I read that Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger's personal hero is Kirk Hammett, and Nickelback lead guitarist Ryan Peake's personal hero is James Hetfield, my first thought about these wonder boys from Canadaland was confirmed: they really, really suck.
Has the world become so vile we can't distinguish the good guys from the bad guys? Has music become so decrepit that we forgot who to look to as heroes?
Metallica, the throwaway band name given to the aforementioned idols of Nickelback, is a collection of choirboys posing as masculine overlords to hide their gross (mental) inadequacies.
They happened to pioneer a brand of rock that lends itself to high-school football players and generally "cool" people, but their discovery was much less an act of creativity than it was an inevitable occurrence. Musicians have always been able to capitalize on popular trend, from Steely Dan to James Taylor to every post-Nirvana grunge band. And Metallica happened to corner the market in "f—-ing sweet."
What makes music good is the willingness to push beyond even one's own boundaries. So when musicians are so consistent that their music loses any sense of the inventive drive that nearly defines rock music, then music becomes a contest to see who can most accurately assess the tastes of target audiences. We lapse into the "industry of cool" that 70's Rock-critic Lester Bangs warned us of. And Metallica — well, they're cool!
So when the leaders of Nickelback confessed that they beat off to visions of "Unforgiven II," my general cynicism towards life skyrocketed.
As if it is not bad enough that our popular musicians are B-musicians, our B-musicians idols are of the same rotten grade.
There are a number of directions in which I would love to spin this article, from Nickelback's complete ignorance to their musical journey through their own excrement, on which they have quite clearly embarked, to a further critical investigation into why Metallica blows, but for now, I'd like to stick with this theme of "cool."
With this spring's bicker not long gone, we here at Princeton are in tune with "the cool." Many of us model citizens have a clear possession of the cool, and lay down the cool on the heads of the unworthy like a sledgehammer. We's da coolest.
So, as far apart as they may seem on the pompous meter, Metallica and Ivy are both objects of my loathing for the exact same reason: man, they's cool!
Of course, I'm just kidding in a non-kidding kind of way, but if you took my Ivy-bashing personally, then I'm highly doubtful that my point here is getting across anyway.
Rock and roll, in its barest, most ideal form, is the farthest thing away from cool that you can possibly imagine. It's about crude creativity, mental instability and a gentle sensitivity to beauty, in all of its many, and sometimes revolting forms.
It's about the feeling; running with the feeling, groping the feeling, and squeezing the feeling 'til your brains seep out of your tear ducts and your eyes sink so far back into your head that you swallow them. Lookin' to be cool? Fine, it's your life, but stay the hell away from music.
But who am I kidding? Lester Bangs died in 1982, before most of us were even born. The industry of cool was still far off in the distance; it was what he saw in the magic eight-ball if we weren't careful.
Of course, we weren't careful and now our youngest generations are being force-fed moosic by Empty-V (Kurt Cobain's own expression, not mine).
We live in an age of cool, where genius has been tucked into bed so that music can maintain its cult of popularity. I just hope that when the freaks wake up, they don't see a horizon so bleak that they just head back to bed.
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