All I'm Asking Is For A Little Respect
by Molly Lambert
To anyone still upset about the whole Dad Rock thing: As an example of how I am trying to erase the negative 'elderly and uncool' connotations of the word 'Dad' with reference to the word 'Rock.' Ditto for Mom Rock. I mean, Bob Dylan's a grandfather and he's pretty goddamn cool.
Look, there are Flaming Lips songs in Dell commercials, and Wilco has some deal where VW is using songs from Sky Blue Sky in all their ads. Wilco and the Flaming Lips are both Dad Rock. By which I mean my ACTUAL DAD listens to and loves them. And he's the coolest, so it's not like I'm saying Dad Rock is uncool.
I'm saying we need to shift the paradigm and stop trying to define coolness in terms of age because there are a lot of young people out there who are super way lame. Dad Rock is a respectable genre, hailing from the crossbreeding of Classic Rock and Indie Rock.
The Stones have been Dad Rock since before Punk was invented, and now Punk is total Dad Rock too, with little Punk babies in Misfits onesies. One day the dudes in Lightning Bolt will be dads, and they will be Dad Rock too.
I mean let's face it Jay-Z is going to be making Dad Rap soon now that he and Beyonce got hitched and are gonna make legitimized babies. Snoop Dogg has a reality show on E! now called Fatherhood about his family life which shows him to be a responsible dad who helps out cleaning the house.
Dad Rock is a million times more respectable and less lame than, for example, iPod Rock. Some of that new shit is really embarrassing. Even the bands I like can be totally embarrassing sometimes. Relative age or youth is no guarantee of wisdom or worth.
If you still doubt me will you just take a look at Win Butler (27 years pale) and Bruce Springsteen (58 years awesome) in this Spin Mag from a few months ago and all agree that Sprinsteen is still ten million percent more hot, even with that ghey little jazz beard, than Powder Oberst on the right there.
Nooooo! No light! Light is poisonous!
In light of Bruce's endorsement of Obama, I figured I'd run this post that's been in the editing bank forever and a half. This interview kinda pissed me off actually, for reasons that will come to be seen. Hopefully Michelle Obama (who murked it on Colbert Report last night) will help undo some of the deep-set wrongness in this U.S. of A.
SPIN: Not only do you have your friends around you, both onstage and on the business side, but your wives are in your bands. And Win's brother Will is in Arcade Fire. Does that extended-family construct make things easier or just raise the potential for tension?
WIN: For us, the closest the band has ever come to not working was when we first made a leap and started to need people on the road in order to function. The first couple guitar techs were total lifers; we didn't know any of these people, and we're spending all this time with them on a bus, and it was like, "Who the fuck are we? This doesn't have anything to do with why we play music." Over the last few years, we've made it so a lot of the people we work with have personal relationships with us; we can really be in our own skin. That's why we have so many women with us on the road -- otherwise, it just turns into this weird, horrible dude party.
BRUCE: We started out as a boys' club, and that lasted until 1984, when Patti [Scialfa, Springsteen's now-wife] joined. She always teases me, because she says on the first night she played with us, she came into my dressing room wearing a frilly blouse and asked, "How's this?" And I said, "Why don't you just pick something out of there?" and pointed to my suitcase on the floor filled with T-shirts. So we made the transition, but it was a slow one. We were trying to move away from the dude party. When we started out, we played to a lot of audiences full of young guys, which I always said was the result of a homoerotic undercurrent, obviously. But as time passed, they brought the girls.
SPIN: Well, you used to kiss Clarence onstage a lot. No homoerotic undercurrent there.
WIN: Not enough artists build it up the right way. You start with the guys, then get their girlfriends to come. That's how you get the loyalty.
GRRRRRRRR!!! C'mon guys, really? It's almost 2008! LOTS OF GIRLS GET INTO MUSIC WITHOUT BEING INTRODUCED TO IT/DRAGGED TO CONCERTS BY THEIR BOYFRIENDS. There are tons of female Music Geeks, now more than ever.
How can people (in bands with women no less, some of whom are their wives!) still be so reductive in this day and age? Maybe because there are so many femalesogynists out there perpetuating myths? Maybe more men could step up to the plate and be better Femennists. Makes a grrrl feel like rioting.
Cheer up Win, you're not even Canadian. You're from Texas and went to (cushy boarding school) Exeter. Hook 'em horns!
Femalesogynist TM Jezebel's Moe Tcazcik
Femennism TM some ridiculous gender studies book my friend Sam is reading for his grad student lit seminar.
Regular Old Misogynist Jack Nicholson recalls the time ex-girlfriend Anjelica Huston beat the shit out of him for knocking up another woman.
Woman-Hater and all around repulsive creep Bill Maher thinks that chick in Florida who was beat up by cheerleaders "had it coming." Hey Bill, D.I.A.F.
GOOOOO GREEN TEAM!
Fuck Marry Kill, Hot Brunette TV Actresses Dramedies Edition: Dr. Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh) on Grey's Anatomy, Number Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) on House, and Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) on Gossip Girl.
Leighton Meester is an unfortunately hard to spell name for an actress. Like one of our favorite sitcom brunettes Cobie Smulders.
Kate Nash video for "Pumpkin Soup"
This story about bird-watching totally reminds me of that George Saunders story about the parents whose daughter was killed by a werewolf zombie dog
Heavy Desert-Rockers Queens Of The Stone Age play underground in a salt mine in Germany.
Amy Adams, Darlin' Don't You Go And Cut Your Hair
Oh Heidi Heidi Heidi, You Ho
Molly Lambert is senior editor of This Recording.
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING:
Meg White Has Anxiety (And So Do I)
It Ain't No Sin To Be Glad You're Alive
Will Hubbard Loves Michael Stipe