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Musicians can be spiteful, temperamental people.


g6120

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Came across this column in my local paper:

 

Hicks: Rock snobs need to just shut up

 

By Tony Hicks

Contra Costa Times

Posted: 01/04/2012 01:00:00 AM PST

 

Musicians can be spiteful, temperamental people. I know; I used to be one.

 

Well, I was a drummer. To some people, that technically counts as being a musician. Not to guitarists or singers, but some people.

 

Anyway, musicians are worse than 10-year-old girls when it comes to being mean to each other, like when someone once saw the ugly girl picking her nose in first grade and decides to tell everyone about it -- all through high school. But in this case, the ugly nose-picker is Nickelback.

 

See? That was pretty mean, and I don't even play anymore.

 

Not everyone's cool

 

I feel mighty strange for defending the perpetually average Nickelback. But here goes: Patrick Carney, the drummer for the hipster-favorite band Black Keys, just came out and savaged poor Nickelback for no good reason in a Rolling Stone interview. He said rock 'n' roll is dying because Nickelback is the biggest band in the world, therefore the biggest band will always be known as a terrible band, which means no good bands (you know, like his) will try to become the biggest band in the world.

 

Yes, rock is dying -- it has been practically since the day it was born. And the people saying so have always been the ones with a bone to pick with what's popular. And in the case of musicians, who can be an angry, jealous lot, the bigger point is often missed:

 

You need Nickelback.

 

I understand Carney's passion for good music

-- like his band makes -- as well as his frustration with the music business, which for decades has emphasized profit over quality. But he can't just be noticing that now, can he?

 

Good vs. big

 

Rarely since the days when the Beatles were making nonsensical cartoons has there been much consensus on the relationship between what's good and what's commercially successful.

 

That said, Nickelback's music is generally safe and full of hooks, just enough guitar, song structure and hair to qualify as "rock." People know what they're getting. So what? But because they sell a lot of records, most other musicians tend to hate them.

 

So I get it. But people were piling on Nickelback a decade ago and it's terribly old. Besides, I think Carney is forgetting something very important about those who fancy themselves judges of good taste: Many, many people love the Black Keys because it doesn't sound like the biggest band in the world.

 

The Nickelbacks of the world make it possible for the Black Keys to exist. Disco was necessary to the emergence of the Sex Pistols. Bon Jovi drove kids to Sonic Youth. If not for Warrant, we may never have heard of Nirvana.

 

Ironically, without Nirvana, we may never have heard of Nickelback, which is considered to be little more than a bad Seattle knockoff. (In 2002, I reviewed Nickelback and compared them to a grunge Spinal Tap and wrote their sound should've died five years earlier. Not only was I a musician, but I also was a music critic -- a double whammy of pretension.)

 

Musicians love to feel superior to other musicians. If a friend's band was better than mine, I wasn't happy for them. I wanted their success. We would all complain about how the other guys got the right breaks, or sold out, or whatever conveniently allowed us to forget that maybe we weren't good enough. I'm still whining. I practically carry around a list of excuses as to why I never made it.

 

Carney doesn't need my excuses. He has thousands of fans -- and they all know that the Black Keys sound a lot better after listening to a couple of songs from the world's "biggest" bands.

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This just in: It has been determined that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

 

I'm teasing. It's a good article and it's true. We see it everywhere including here, where everyone bags on those Top 40 pop songs as being the worst crap ever written, without acknowledging how extremely difficult it is to write a song trendy and catchy enough for the top 40. And Nickelback is everyone's favorite punching bag. I find their music to be terrible, but I'm not their target audience, and that's totally fine.

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Not bad, but I don't think it's always a bad thing when a band slags off another band's music. There desperately needs to be more competition in modern music and people can't deny that they love getting the popcorn out and watching a good barney.

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So some guy writes an article saying how wrong it is to rip on Nickelback, while also ripping on Nickelback. Clever.

 

Nickelback has long been a source of fascination for me. Not because of their music, but just how they do what they do, and their place in popular music. The fact that millions buy their records while so many people claim to hate them (at a time when hardly anyone is still buying records at all) is an amazing feat in itself. But also, just for how shrewd they are as businessmen…and what an unconventional stance they take for a rock ‘n roll band…they have no pretensions to try and make “art”…and that approach has paid off nicely for them. It’s an interesting case study in how far a band or artist can get by sticking to a formula and catering to one’s audience. When they got their first big radio hit, they went into the studio and made another three just like it. Yes, most of their songs are interchangeable, but that’s actually plus for corporate radio playlists…Nickelback figured out the system early on…they knew as long as it had the familiar sound of a well-known band, radio would play it. Funny that Motown used to do the exact same thing, and they are considered representative of a “golden-age” in popular music. Yet Nickelback does it and they’re considered hacks.

 

They do seem to get a lot more hate than other bands doing the same thing (you don’t see so many people hating on Daughtry for instance), and I think it mostly has to do with their lyrics. They could be the nicest guys in the world in real life, but their songs are mostly about drinking, fighting, bragging about sex, and disparaging women...in short, they sound like angry, obnoxious jerks, to the point where it makes it very hard to root for them. But still, I think popular music would be a little less interesting if they didn’t exist.

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Here's my view: Nickelback make hit records. Black Keys want to make hit records but can't. So they call what they do art instead. I think what Nickelback does is more honest.

 

I like the Keys though. They have two good songs. Both of which, as it happens, were near-hits. But the Keys are a monster band. Those two guys can make some noise. Had they come out in the 70s they woulda been huge. But there's a decdent market for bands that come out today that woulda been huge in the 70s. It's cornered by like, two bands at a time. When White STripes quit, the Black Keys gotta chance to win some eyeballs. That's how small and insignificant that audience is. One or two bands at a time, thank you. But if you can win that audience - god bless you, man.

 

Nickelback is happy with, you know, everybody else with a passing interest in rock. But really. {censored} rock. Rock is dead. Both bands are poseurs going through the motions of a style of music that atrophied a decade ago.

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Well one major flaw with that article...

 

 

But because they sell a lot of records, most other musicians tend to hate them.

 

 

I don't know of a single musician, from local bar weekend warrior, to some close friends in platinum-selling acts, who hates or otherwise dislikes Nickleback because they sell a lot of records.

 

Nickleback gets a lot of hate from those people and myself because they are a boringly generic (and/or generically boring), self-derivative, bland, vanilla, uncreative act. They epitomize 'middle of the road'.

 

 

I realize there are many people who do not feel that way about them, and that's fine: I wouldn't aim to change their minds/tastes.

 

But the author of that article got it completely wrong about why people don't like them.

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BWHAHAHAHAHA Oh yes they can!!! Not to mention childish, flakey, delsuional, immature, selfish, egotisitical, conniving, cowardly, completly unable to engage in any kind of confrontation WHATSOEVER (i.e. talk {censored} behind someone's back but nebver to their face) and completely feminine. I hate to come off like Captain Bringdown and the Buzzkills but the whole reason I gave up the whole band thing and playing with other musos at all was because with the exception of ONE, EVERY SINGLE MUSO I EVER MET fit the above descriptions I gave to a tee, obviously some were way worse than others, but they all had all of the above traits, and every single one of them were hands down some of if not THE worst excuses for men (or even human {censored}ing beings, at that) that you could even imagine.

 

And the Black Keys talking {censored} about Nickelback is the ULTIMATE example of the old adage "the pot calling the kettle black" LOL

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Musicians can be spiteful, temperamental people. I know; I used to be one.

 

 

lol, I wouldn't judge the veracity of that statement on one lesser known band's drummer's opinion of a commercially bland pop band.

My personal experience with other musicians & ex-bandmates is a far more accurate measuring stick.

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My reaction was exactly the opposite. I cringed every time it was on the radio back in 2001 (and it was on a LOT). I don't know what it was, but some songs just 'bug' me. That was one of them.

 

I had no clue Nickelback would still be making albums 11 years later... :facepalm:

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Well there's the thing with Nickelback, the songs are so well-crafted/recorded for radio and a mass audience, that you kick yourself every time you give in and think "damn, I actually liked this for a second".

 

 

But what's wrong with liking them in the first place? There's always some artist to hate on for whatever reason, but somebody likes them, so we trash the artist and their fans as well. I could go on about the Black Keys and how it must be so difficult to write the same 12 bar blues songs over and over again, but why bother? I like a couple of their songs and I like a couple of Nickelback's songs, in fact some of those Nickelback songs are pretty damn good, if you're into that kind of music.

 

Who cares? Life is short yet we always find the time and energy to destroy each other. Happens all the time.

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Well there's the thing with Nickelback, the songs are so well-crafted/recorded for radio and a mass audience, that you kick yourself every time you give in and think "damn, I actually liked this for a second".

 

 

Hardly a gig goes by where we don't get at least one request for NB..we used to play "Figured You Out", but it's been a couple years since we've done it.

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Nickleback is a solid band. Don't agree, let's hear YOUR music.

 

 

Um... OK, I was sorta sticking up for them a little bit, but... this statement doesn't make any sense. Are you suggesting that it is impossible to not like a band unless you can compose music that is better than them? That would mean that all the non-musicians in the world are not allowed to have an opinion.

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Well there's the thing with Nickelback, the songs are so well-crafted/recorded for radio and a mass audience, that you kick yourself every time you give in and think "damn, I actually liked this for a second".

 

 

I think I can explain this. Because I felt the same way about that Liz Phair CD that came out in 2003. I knew nothing about it - I heard a song and liked it and took a chance and bought the CD. And for a while I liked it. But I seemed to grow tired of it kinda quickly, and there was something about it that bothered me. And then I read about the CD, and I found out that the record company had brought in some successful hit songwriters to "co-write" the tracks on the CD. The whole thing was f*cking product. Calculated, by the numbers, to be hip and cool. And the whole thing was ruined for me.

 

So I wondered... if I liked it at one point, why should it matter who wrote the songs? Why should the motivation and intent matter? I should either like the songs or not. But it DID matter.

 

Suppose you go out with a few buddies for some beers. And they bring this guy along, and he's funnier than hell, and he's got charisma. And he makes you laugh all night. And you're thinking "This guy is cool." And then the next day you find out that the guy had all of his funny lines and jokes memorized and scripted - none of it was "spontaneous." He was totally phony. You'd think he was an ass.

 

That's how I felt about Liz Phair. And I could see why people would think that about Nickelback.

 

We still appreciate honestly. And we hate the lack of it.

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Um... OK, I was sorta sticking up for them a little bit, but... this statement doesn't make any sense. Are you suggesting that it is impossible to not like a band unless you can compose music that is better than them? That would mean that all the non-musicians in the world are not allowed to have an opinion.

 

 

Richard it wasn't pointed at you, apologies.

 

People can like what they want. I'm just done with arm chair experts that can't back it up.

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Richard it wasn't pointed at you, apologies.


People can like what they want. I'm just done with arm chair experts that can't back it up.

 

 

No apologies necessary, as I didn't take it personally. But what I said I believe. I agree, I think, with the sentiment behind what you're trying to get at - musicians like to be judgmental and look down their nose at other musicians for a number of reasons, all of them stupid and shallow. But whether one likes a band or not has nothing to do with how well they can write and/or play.

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What's the difference between the slob that's in the best band and the slob that won the power ball lotto? We made the slob in the best band and member of that band. He didn't do it alone or win that status in a lotto. To do that he needed a majority vote. It certainly did not come from the ranks of musicians, either.

 

Now that that brilliance has been exposed, let's take a closer look at Gil's article. Musicians. I freaking hate musicians and they are quite ready to give the same reciprocally. Keith Richard's has had some things to say about John Lennon's opinion of the Stones. One of them was Lennon's opinion of the Beatles being the only good band in that period. The article isn't saying anything new or otherwise lost in the innuendo of musician-speak. Musicians all suck until non-musicians distinguish which ones suck less.

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It's a highly competitive hothouse... people work hard against impossible odds, hyping themselves to be 'GREAT', but are here today gone tomorrow or never get there. Plus many don't really have that much talent, even the stars don't. Such conditions make for superstition. Also makes for mean spirited-back-biters who are not very rational. Star quality is different from musical skill. My two bits.

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