Granted, it would be difficult to miss the fish while still hitting the shot glass...
But it's not all that easy to shoot a shot glass in the first place.
I wonder if that means that the only thing you can touch on to "affect" a bunch of "disaffected" teens is depression?
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Before entering a debate on the classifications of certain groups, sounds, or pieces as to whether or not they are "metal", I think it is important to remember that the term has, through almost 40 years of heavy use, come to mean a great number of very different things to a great number of very different people. That's why bands (especially those that don't get major publicity on MTV and Clear-Channel owned radio) have adopted such a colorful variety of adjectives to clarify what they are to prospective listeners. Black Metal, Speed Metal, Hair Metal, Death Metal, Nu-Metal, Christian Metal (funny, but true), Heavy Metal (OK, so that's more a term used
outside of metal culture), and so on...
With all of the "umlauted" forms (never understood that, maybe it's like American kids sticking random Kanji to their notebooks and vehicles, and Japanese kids doing the same thing with random "engrish" words and phrases - a use of a foreign language element in such a manner that it has no meaning but seems to look cool) and titles for hybridized and specialized forms like Industrial, Art Rock, Prog Rock, Grunge, the much overused "Alternative", Thrash, and so on, you can find an enormous list of things that some people will call "Rock" or "Metal" that other people will not. Where there is no Grand Unified Theory of Musical Genre Naming Schemes, the general terms "Rock" and "Metal" might as well be defined as music that in some way conveys a rebellious and/or aggressive/energetic feel and generally involves at least one distorted guitar.
The specific sub-genres, however, do seem to have clear definitions and are probably worth using as standardized references to a specific flavor of music in an open conversation taking place within a non-homogenous social environment (such as this forum).
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I actually don't have much of a problem with Linkin Park myself. A bit of one, but that's just because my former roomate only seemed to own music by Linkin Park, Evanescence, and ACDC - and the shallow but classic ACDC didn't get much play. I will hand to Linkin Park the following points of recognition as a band that doesn't suck:
- You can make out just about all of the lyrics the first time you listen to a song. While unintelligable singing isn't always the hallmark of a band that sucks, it is often used to cover up the fact that the group has not wit, nor purpose, nor inspiration behind their lyrics (or that the singer is just plain underqualified as a singer, no offence intended to Kurt Cobain or Bob Dylan).
- The drummer seems to know what he's doing. Harldy Buddy Rich, but there's a lot more to his percussive style it than flailing away at the kit. For the sort of music Linkin Park plays, I might add that the simple counterpoint of backbeat and breakbeat is more appropriate than a heavy use of fancy snare technique or complex extended patterns on the toms.
- The sound canvas changes to take advantage of the kind of synthesizer technology they have at their disposal. Hardly Alan Parsons or Nine Inch Nails, but I think Linkin Park's use of sound texture is well linked to the nature of the songs to which it is applied so as to make it more than a cheep gimmick used to cover up a lack of musical differentiation.
- While melody is never fully developed or explored as it is in much Classical or traditional "Metal" music, it is present, pleasent, and easy to identify.
- I've only seen one of their videos ("In the End"), but if that represents the direction chosen for presenting their music I think it would be fair to say that they're well above the curve for MTV music video creativity and quality.
- I've never heard them profess to be the greatest thing to ever happen to music or any other such pretentious bullshit. Following music theory, the last major figure to "invent" new forms for melodic construction that are commonly used in either Classical or Pop music was J.S. Bach (I'm ignoring the Impressionists and atonal musicians as creators of forms used almost exclusively by Impressionists and atonl musicians - and Jimi Hendrix, who seems to have been a bit of everything on his musical acid trip). Everything since then has consisted of differentiation through selection of performance equipment and expressive style. Compositional style, as associated with modern popular music genres, is separated mainly by additional restrictions applied to the melodic forms solidified in the Baroque era - things such as using only notes played in perfect fifths on progressions using only the positions I, IIIm, IV, V, and VII - possibly with a modification such as making use of a point in the progression landing on the diminished V rather than the VII for a bit added flavor. A wonderful proof of this concept can be found in the fact that, for any genre, there is a J.S. Bach piece that can be convincingly adapted to it. Some Bach pieces seem to work in a huge number of genres completely on their own, molding through instrumentation and the performer's stylistic interperetation (something that was meant to be up to the performer in the Baroque era) to whatever the performer wants it to be. For instance, I have Air on a G String in perfectly recognizable form as a Baroque Classical song performed on the piano by Glenn Gould, on the cello by Yo-Yo Ma, as a small-ensamble Jazz tune performed by the Jacques Loussier Trio, as an electronic pop-influenced violin performance by someone whose name escapes me as I write this (probably either Bond or Lara St. John, but maybe Vanessa Mae or one of the other many pop/classical crossover female violinists who've emerged lately), and a Rap from the Evangelion VOX CD. And all three of them sound great. Anyone thinking Baroque music isn't an influence on metal, while I'm on the topic, should take another listen to any of the virtuosic metal guitarists and try to get a handle on how Baroque and the Blues have been intertwined. (Okay, so I got a little sidetracked here).
- People are able to like them because they like listening to Linkin Park, rather than listening to it as a statement of how much they think hearing a Backstreet Boys album would melt their minds like a tub of Sulfuric Acid. Let's face it, "boy-bands" are complete mindless filler, but most of them are also talented dancers and singers who provide a large sector of the public with exactly the kind of mindless filler they want. You try hitting those high passages or moving on stage like that, and then judge them on whether they write their own songs or play instruments. It's really just a pity, in my opinion as an art critic, that they aren't sometimes paired up with groups that are good songwriters and instrumentalists, but can't sing worth shit.
- And, in my last statement, my final statement: Whether or not a group's music is "deep", "creative", "meaningful", or "complex", it might as well be well-executed. Linkin Park, like the Backstreet Boys, is an example of good execution within the limits of their chosen genre and fanbase. As is the case for Pink Floyd, Joe Satriani, Miles Davis, Cypress Hill, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While you may not care for all (or any) of these artists, and I certainly favor some over others, all of them found exactly that path within their formula in which they could produce music that took full advantage of the sounds and themes that they chose to work with. Just as there are different standards for what makes a good comedic film vs. what makes a good tragic film vs. what makes a good 30-second commercial, different standards should be applied to bands playing to different crowds. The problem I have with certain genres (such as "Nu-Metal" and the bling-happy flavor of Rap that seems to have taken control of all the Hip-Hop related airwaves) isn't that the genre inherently sucks, but rather that a very small proportion of that genre's ouput does a good job of working with that genre's strengths and limitations. Rock music seems to be having an identity crisis, and is wandering in circles without showing much sign of growth or refinement at this point in time. It has, however, done this many times before - as does any popular art form - and will once again break free from stagnation as the mainstream and the fringe approach that critical point where their places are reversed and the cycle of cultural development returns for a while to innovation and proceeds on to refinement before again growing still and needing once more to be repeated.
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Think of it this way - Rock music is still in its historical infancy, and is bound to throw some tantrums and experience some pains as it develops. At least it's developing quickly.
It took the English centuries to produce Shakespeare, their first prominent writer capable of producing a work that doesn't sound childish today. The earliest known English-language (if you can call it that - pre-rennaisance English might as well be Klingon for all of its resemblance to modern English) novel was Beowulf, which had all of the subtety and depth of a typical Superman comic. Half a millenia later we get the first extended-length English-language writings that would qualify for any kind of recognition in the modern publishing market. Another half of a millenia, and more good books have been written in or translated into the English language than any single person could properly read in a lifetime.
So it will be with rock music, perhaps in another twenty years, perhaps in a few hundred when this time is referred to as the long-gone era when the world was dominated by the Ancient American Empire at the height of its influence and the beginning of its long-term social and economic collapse (another subject and theory, much longer speech...). The beauty of this sort of artistic creation, especially as recording methods have advanced from written musical notation (again, another thing that basically solidified in the Baroque era - including tablature, which actually was developed along with the first recognizable forms of many modern string instruments during the Rennaisance) to digital recording, is that everything from here on is an addition to the catalog, not a displacement. On one hand, a musical performance is an ephemeral thing, a work that is inherently limited to show only one face at any moment in time, and only show any face for one moment in time. On the other it is unlike a building, or a statue, or a frescoe, in that it can be played again and is not tied to a physical object that will inevatably decay or need to be removed to make room for something new. The only reason a piece of music or literature now has for dissapearence after publication is that people choose to ignore it (which, incidentally, appears to be the rather Darwinian criteria for a work becoming a "classic", with the unfortunate side effect of making many thing that the artists of past centuries were all as good as the ones whose names live on - with the implication that our century is especially taletless when it, in fact, may be the most artistically rich era to date thanks to modern distribution channels and an economy that can afford a relatively large share of artists in place of farmers and factory workers).
Listen to what you like, watch what you like, read what you like, buy what you can to keep it "in print" and share the things that have gone out of print to preserve their place in our culture, if you care about their survival. Art now has the potential to be immortal, so long as it has an audience. We guess about the nature of many past cultures by looking at shards of ancient clay bowls and the shape of obsidian spearheads. Our descendents will have quite a bit more to work off of - the scholar of modern culture finds his greatest challenge in sorting through the mass of detail we record rather than trying to fill in gaps between it. As B. F. Skinner remarked in "Walden Two", historical hindsight is 20-20 not because we can see things not visible to us at the time of our actions, but because a sufficient number of details have been forgotten for us to be able to wrap our minds around what is left.
The significance in this potential longevity of culture and information lies not is posterity, but in productivity, in the improvement of the future products of cultural and intellectual innovation. Someone, I think it was Newton, said something about being a "dwarf on the shoulder of giant", referring to the fact that he was building, in his work, on top of the work of many before him. Increasing the degree to which the positive points of our culture survive effectively increases that capability of the society downstream to improve upon what we've done rather than forcing them to do it all again before moving forward.
God knows, humanity has re-invented the wheel enough times already - and it would really suck to go back to solid wooden wheels after spending so many years getting used to the soft ride and light weight of the spoked steel wheel and pnumatic tire. While this example is extreme, the point it illustrates applies to just about anything to which innovation can be applied.
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Long intellectual rants.... you've seen nothing. You should try speaking to me in person, perhaps in the afternoon when I'm actually alert enough to rant at the full capacity of my otherwise liguistically and philisophically starved intellect (yet I decide to be programmer, and enter a degree program that draws most heavily from the weakest points of my cognative abilty - at least I hold my own at the office if not at school....). In any case, I just got this week's pile of opinions out of the way, so I think I'll save the next one of these for that essay on why I think the United States has entered a point of inevitable slow decline and why I think it/we had better go about this decline gracefully for our own sakes as well as those of our brothers on other nations' soil. After that, an examination of whether it is possible to define "self" without a concept of "other".
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