LEARN TO ROCK, BE A ROCKSTAR: How novel!
If you haven't seen it on television yet, keep avoiding Rock Star 2: Supernova. Upper middle class doofs portray it as authentic. It is authentic, if your idea of authentic is going onstage with a perfect backing band of hacks, and a perfect sound system, in a crowded southern California theatre with people who would scream and cheer if you threw dogfood at them.
For example, this idiotic cheerleading from Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune:
Of course, "rocking" -- try to say it without gagging -- is subjective. It's a descriptor that comes easy, costing nothing and requiring no credibility to dispense.
Dick Destiny blog, ha-ha, rocks -- on many levels. We know this because we've done journalism on rock 'n' roll bands from garages to dives to the arenas for over twenty years. Dick Destiny knows it when he sees and hears it. And he knows the fakes, the phonies and the pretenders.
Nothing in Maureen Ryan's writing, here, rocks. Does she look like she rocks? C'mon, now, Ryan looks like a Mom. My Mom knew dogcrap about rock.
But it's the script features and entertainment writers like in the big media. "This band really stinks and all the stars and contestants are fundamentally nauseating" isn't something editors like to see in print. Too clipped, too cynical, too upsetting to gentle readers who hate criticism.
It's the truth, though. Tommy Lee, the drummer of Motley Crue, is the biggest star. He's overexposed on reality TV. Everyone knows his face even if they don't know his music. Old news about his problems with rage and drink, kicking the stuffing out of photographers, slapping his ex-wife around, going to jail and phoning into 911 that a kid drowned in his swimming pool -- all worldwide celebrity news and Schadenfreude over his rocker persona as uncontrollable idiot wore Lee out in public. Nincompoops, of which there are no shortage, find him entertaining.
Also on tap is Jason Newsted, ex-bass player for Metallica. On Rock Star 2, Newsted reminds you of a high school phys-ed teacher doing a really poor man's R. Lee Ermey in "Full Metal Jacket."
Newsted scowls and frowns. He shoves Tommy Lee toughly away when the Motley Crue drummer gets too friendly. He's a hard man, stiff in bearing and mien, muscles bulging as he browbeats contestants with criticism and meaningless exhortations, contestants so desperate to preserve their time on primetime, they lack the spine to lunge across the intervening space and connect a fist to his nose.
Newsted used to be a power drunk in the biggest heavy metal band in the world. Now he's a gruff petty scold, incapable of Sgt. Hartman's ugly and sadistic wit. Nope, you'd never catch Newsted saying what he really feels, like "You slimy scumbag!" or, more apropos to the youth of the contestants, "Your days of finger-banging old Mary Jane Rotten-Crotch through her purty pink panties are over!" Since sexuality is flexible in rock 'n' roll, the 50/50 mix of girls and boys among the contestants do not render the observation obsolete.
Rock Star 2 asked me -- and its audience -- to sustain the conceit that the talent being auditioned is uncommon. That might work on a lay audience but it's a no-sale to anyone with experience, eyes, ears and a shred of common sense. Hundreds of classic rock 'n' roll bands make their own CDs. This results in an endless weekly flood spewing into the Internet record store, CD Baby. Guess what? The best of them are better than anything on this TV show. In fact, reading the CD Baby website is more entertaining and less intelligence-insulting than watching CBS's Rock Star 2.
What Rock Star 2 is more in-line with is the phenomenon of Rock Camp. Rock Camp is a child or an adult's chance to start pretending to be a rockstar, the first step in becoming one. Like Rock Star 2, today's Rock Camps usually have down-on-their-luck or former rockstars as counselors. Rock Camp is a middle-class thing for parents to send their kids to. Instead of shipping them off to something quasi-military, like I was for a couple weeks every summer, it's to show a kinder, gentler humor toward your children. Every child has the right to rock and have their parents look on with pride!
Take this recent press release:
Here's Dick Destiny's proposal for a Rock Camp that really rocks -- as in real-life. (Good for kids, even better for adults who need a mental cold shower rather than a middle-aged indulgence.)
When you arrive, you're given an instrument like the one old-timey parents used to get their kids, the cheap kind aimed at putting a damper on your enthusiasm for rocking. That means a slave-labor no-name brand guitar made in China, sold in a cardboard box, with bad electronic internals and fretwork so lousy it hurts your hands. It will also refuse to stay in tune.
When you arrive, you'll be able to pick bandmates from a group with equally bad instruments. You'll also be given a choice of singers who can't sing. Maybe you'll get a drummer, maybe not.
When you play in the garage, because that's where garagebands play, you won't have a nice sound system. Your singer who can't sing will have to put his microphone into your guitar amp. This is a good thing, as no one will be able to hear him or her. However, the singer who can't sing has a fifty percent chance of becoming enraged and quitting before he actually learns to sing. Then you'll have to sing.
You'll get one music lesson a day. During the lesson, you'll learn to play music that has nothing to do with rock, like old television or movie themes. But you won't be required to practice this music between lessons, so that's a plus. You can go to the swimming pool.
After you've practiced in the "garage" twice, in the summer heat, always with the door closed, a counselor will flip a coin. If it's heads, he'll check on you, playing the part of a parent. You'll be told you're too loud, or you curse too much, or you're disturbing the neighbors, and you will be forbidden from playing in the "garage." If that happens, you'll be sent home without learning a song.
If the result of the coin flip is tails, you won't be sent home but you'll be told your music is the work of "Satan." If you brought CDs to learn songs off of to Rock Camp, they'll be thrown out. If it's an iPod, the counselor will confiscate it, tell you it's going to be given to a more deserving child, someone without clean clothes or nice things, and then thrown out.
If you cry at this rotten treatment, you're sent home. There's no crying in Rock Camp.
When Rock Camp is over, there is no final concert. You're sent home. You'll have to book your own show, kid. No one wants to hear it. Put your MP3's on MySpace and stop bothering me.
You also won't want to miss: Wet Noodle Hack-Rock & a Grimace.
If you haven't seen it on television yet, keep avoiding Rock Star 2: Supernova. Upper middle class doofs portray it as authentic. It is authentic, if your idea of authentic is going onstage with a perfect backing band of hacks, and a perfect sound system, in a crowded southern California theatre with people who would scream and cheer if you threw dogfood at them.
For example, this idiotic cheerleading from Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune:
Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Bub.
It’ll take weeks before the winner of CBS’ “Rock Star: Supernova” is revealed, but one thing is for sure right now: The house band rocks.
As part of the Television Critics Association press tour here, writers were taken to a “Rock Star” taping on Sunday at CBS’ studio complex in Los Angeles . . . [Wow!]
More impressive than the antics of [so-and-so and so-and-so] was the precision and power of the house band’s playing. Their taut, mesmerizing version of Stone Temple Pilot’s 'Plush' was, to these ears, better than the original.
Finding musicians who could play with both passion and professionalism was the goal of the show’s producers . . . 'They had to be able to play anything any time under any circumstances,' [a director] said after the taping. “We had to be able to wake them up at three in the morning and say, `Play ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ in the key of F’ and they had to be able to do it.”
Still, “the last thing we wanted” was studio musicians or professionals who lacked conviction, Lieberman said.
“I went to music school myself. You meet a lot of people in music school who can play anything but they have no conviction in how they play,” Lieberman said.
Of course, "rocking" -- try to say it without gagging -- is subjective. It's a descriptor that comes easy, costing nothing and requiring no credibility to dispense.
Dick Destiny blog, ha-ha, rocks -- on many levels. We know this because we've done journalism on rock 'n' roll bands from garages to dives to the arenas for over twenty years. Dick Destiny knows it when he sees and hears it. And he knows the fakes, the phonies and the pretenders.
Nothing in Maureen Ryan's writing, here, rocks. Does she look like she rocks? C'mon, now, Ryan looks like a Mom. My Mom knew dogcrap about rock.
But it's the script features and entertainment writers like in the big media. "This band really stinks and all the stars and contestants are fundamentally nauseating" isn't something editors like to see in print. Too clipped, too cynical, too upsetting to gentle readers who hate criticism.
It's the truth, though. Tommy Lee, the drummer of Motley Crue, is the biggest star. He's overexposed on reality TV. Everyone knows his face even if they don't know his music. Old news about his problems with rage and drink, kicking the stuffing out of photographers, slapping his ex-wife around, going to jail and phoning into 911 that a kid drowned in his swimming pool -- all worldwide celebrity news and Schadenfreude over his rocker persona as uncontrollable idiot wore Lee out in public. Nincompoops, of which there are no shortage, find him entertaining.
Also on tap is Jason Newsted, ex-bass player for Metallica. On Rock Star 2, Newsted reminds you of a high school phys-ed teacher doing a really poor man's R. Lee Ermey in "Full Metal Jacket."
Newsted scowls and frowns. He shoves Tommy Lee toughly away when the Motley Crue drummer gets too friendly. He's a hard man, stiff in bearing and mien, muscles bulging as he browbeats contestants with criticism and meaningless exhortations, contestants so desperate to preserve their time on primetime, they lack the spine to lunge across the intervening space and connect a fist to his nose.
Newsted used to be a power drunk in the biggest heavy metal band in the world. Now he's a gruff petty scold, incapable of Sgt. Hartman's ugly and sadistic wit. Nope, you'd never catch Newsted saying what he really feels, like "You slimy scumbag!" or, more apropos to the youth of the contestants, "Your days of finger-banging old Mary Jane Rotten-Crotch through her purty pink panties are over!" Since sexuality is flexible in rock 'n' roll, the 50/50 mix of girls and boys among the contestants do not render the observation obsolete.
Rock Star 2 asked me -- and its audience -- to sustain the conceit that the talent being auditioned is uncommon. That might work on a lay audience but it's a no-sale to anyone with experience, eyes, ears and a shred of common sense. Hundreds of classic rock 'n' roll bands make their own CDs. This results in an endless weekly flood spewing into the Internet record store, CD Baby. Guess what? The best of them are better than anything on this TV show. In fact, reading the CD Baby website is more entertaining and less intelligence-insulting than watching CBS's Rock Star 2.
What Rock Star 2 is more in-line with is the phenomenon of Rock Camp. Rock Camp is a child or an adult's chance to start pretending to be a rockstar, the first step in becoming one. Like Rock Star 2, today's Rock Camps usually have down-on-their-luck or former rockstars as counselors. Rock Camp is a middle-class thing for parents to send their kids to. Instead of shipping them off to something quasi-military, like I was for a couple weeks every summer, it's to show a kinder, gentler humor toward your children. Every child has the right to rock and have their parents look on with pride!
Take this recent press release:
Even the Mom's aren't left out! If you are an adult, lame with two left feet, a fat ass and a wart or two on your face, you too can be taught to rock.Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls in NYC!
With last year's band names ranging from "hellish relish" & "coco chanel & the zeppelinettes", we are beyond excited to find out what emerges out of this years starry eyed little campers.
Rock Camp '06 is located @ Brooklyn Friends School.
Session 1 will take place Monday, July 17 - Friday, July 21, 9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.The
Session 1 final concert will be on Saturday, July 22, at NY Society For Ethical Culture
Special Session for adult women, Ladies Rock Camp will take place July 28 - 30
Here's Dick Destiny's proposal for a Rock Camp that really rocks -- as in real-life. (Good for kids, even better for adults who need a mental cold shower rather than a middle-aged indulgence.)
When you arrive, you're given an instrument like the one old-timey parents used to get their kids, the cheap kind aimed at putting a damper on your enthusiasm for rocking. That means a slave-labor no-name brand guitar made in China, sold in a cardboard box, with bad electronic internals and fretwork so lousy it hurts your hands. It will also refuse to stay in tune.
When you arrive, you'll be able to pick bandmates from a group with equally bad instruments. You'll also be given a choice of singers who can't sing. Maybe you'll get a drummer, maybe not.
When you play in the garage, because that's where garagebands play, you won't have a nice sound system. Your singer who can't sing will have to put his microphone into your guitar amp. This is a good thing, as no one will be able to hear him or her. However, the singer who can't sing has a fifty percent chance of becoming enraged and quitting before he actually learns to sing. Then you'll have to sing.
You'll get one music lesson a day. During the lesson, you'll learn to play music that has nothing to do with rock, like old television or movie themes. But you won't be required to practice this music between lessons, so that's a plus. You can go to the swimming pool.
After you've practiced in the "garage" twice, in the summer heat, always with the door closed, a counselor will flip a coin. If it's heads, he'll check on you, playing the part of a parent. You'll be told you're too loud, or you curse too much, or you're disturbing the neighbors, and you will be forbidden from playing in the "garage." If that happens, you'll be sent home without learning a song.
If the result of the coin flip is tails, you won't be sent home but you'll be told your music is the work of "Satan." If you brought CDs to learn songs off of to Rock Camp, they'll be thrown out. If it's an iPod, the counselor will confiscate it, tell you it's going to be given to a more deserving child, someone without clean clothes or nice things, and then thrown out.
If you cry at this rotten treatment, you're sent home. There's no crying in Rock Camp.
When Rock Camp is over, there is no final concert. You're sent home. You'll have to book your own show, kid. No one wants to hear it. Put your MP3's on MySpace and stop bothering me.
You also won't want to miss: Wet Noodle Hack-Rock & a Grimace.
posted by George Smith at 2:08 PM
3 Comments:
And you think YOUR mom's son's "writing" looks like anything other than a puddle of dog diarrhea with such a dumber than dumb non-argument about some Tribune writer???? Plenty of moms know plenty about rock, and many other things-- I challenge you any fucking day (though I can only assume you're losing your brain cells along with your hair) but please don't waste my time sending me any more of your inane drivel. Thanx
Oh great knowing master of all that is rock...maybe if you took your cynical head out of your ass for 5 seconds you'd know your facts. Jason Newstead was hardly "power drunk" in Metallica. The reason he left was BECAUSE of the power drunkeness of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. I'm sure his brow beating as you put it, is nothing more than a little "playing up" to the camera. Its sad that you've resorted to a life of "e-thuggery". Whats wrong...couldn't get a book published?
I didn't say he was power drunk. I said the fellow was a power drunk.
Mixed groups of power drunks/recovering alcoholics often part ways.
-The great knowing master of all that is rock
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