A recent study done at The University of California asserts that people enjoy mystery and suspense stories more if the plot is spoiled . . . and this makes perfect sense to me, because I usually enjoy something more if I have more information about it; it is easier to process and less stressful . . . which is why I am vehemently opposed to surprise parties, which have nothing to do with the victim's enjoyment of the party and are all about the selfish, egotistical party-planners, who think they are so clever, withholding information from the person who is supposed to enjoy the party the most, but, of course, the victim doesn't enjoy the party the most . . . the planners enjoy the party the most, because, as the study illustrates, they are in the know, and the victim doesn't enjoy the party because the victim is either A) genuinely surprised, which as the study shows, is not particularly enjoyable and can be a lot to process-- I was genuinely surprised by a party on my 30th birthday, and it took me an hour to get over the fact that we were no longer (and never had been) going to my favorite mexican restaurant or B) not surprised because the victim sussed out the party, and then has to deal with the stress of acting surprised, which, unless the victim is a professional actor, is not fun and rather stressful . . . and so let this be a lesson to all of you potential surprise party planners: people enjoy knowing what's going to happen next . . . especially if it's something fun like a party, so don't deprive someone of all the happy and enjoyable preparatory thoughts about a party in their honor just because you feel the need to exercise your sinister desires to spread disinformation and skulk about . . . you're not being ingenious, you're being iniquitous.
Fans of my idiotic ramblings know that I hate surprise parties-- I think people should be allowed to prepare in advance for social events (and I still haven't recovered from when Catherine threw me a surprise 30th birthday party-- I thought we were headed out to my favorite Mexican place for a relaxing dinner with my family, and instead I had to talk to a bunch of people that I wasn't prepared to talk to . . . it took me an hour to recover from the "surprise") and while I appreciate the planning and cleverness in order to successfully throw one of these parties, I always wonder about the purpose-- I wonder if the party is more for the planners than the recipient; anyway, I was a participant in a surprise birthday party on Saturday night and I suggested that we really give the recipient a surprise-- and I ran through a number of scenarios, including group nudity, knocking him unconscious and driving him to an undisclosed location and leaving him on the side of the road, and finally an easy one: when the birthday boy entered the house, his wife and I would make out in the living room and when he caught us, I would say "Surprise?" . . . but we executed none of my creative ideas, and just went with the traditional hiding in the kitchen and scaring the crap out of him with a shrill "Surprise!". . . and then I stayed out far too late (it's always traumatic for me when I surprise someone, and I need to assuage my anxiety with alcohol) and I was too tired to attend the big charity bash at my friend's mom's house on Sunday night . . . but Catherine went without me and later that evening I received a picture on my phone of her making out with a friend and he accompanied the picture with a text that said, "This is what happens when you don't come out" . . . surprise!
Some people say everything happens for a reason, and though I don't believe them, it is fun to pretend that this might be true; so the reason I got strep throat and spent Saturday in a delirious fever state and could not attend the big surprise party that night (we were part of the "plan" to execute the surprise, and perhaps one of the reasons I got strep is that I hate surprise parties-- they are stressful and I don't like keeping secrets, and what is the ultimate goal? to give the recipient a heart attack?) is because this was a fitting way to finish reading James Ellroy's trilogy of alternate history that he began with American Tabloid (the JFK assassination) and finished with Blood's A Rover . . . so in my strep-addled state-- which mirrored Dwight Holly and Don Crutchfield's mania, all of us coming in and out of consciousness, I read several hundred pages of document inserts, obtuse diaries, rogue cops, RED agents, cover-ups, cut-outs, torture, black bagging, Haitian voodoo, men with machetes and wings, emerald worship, an undercover cop with the Bent, J. Edgar Hoover's paranoia, homosexuality and racism, Tricky Dick Nixon's abrasiveness, Sonny Liston doing morphine suppositories, Tiger Kab, Klan Kamps, Black militant groups pushing heroin and knife fighting and shooting children, a peeper "detective" biting the head off a rat to break a voodoo curse, Trujillo vs. Papa Doc, fruit squeezes, right wing strong-arming, left wing radicalization, Redd Foxx snorting coke, document heists, betrayal, backstabbing, perversion, hate tracts, money laundering, voodoo porn, and, of course, loads of conspiracy . . . a fitting end to this for both Ellroy and me; it is a good read despite the conceit of the diaries, I give it four "perfect kidney shots" out of five.
In December, SNL aired a sketch about the band Weezer. Some folks are sitting down to what looks to be a lovely holiday dinner party, but then the music algorithm randomly spits out Weezer's cover of "Africa." The quintessential Weezer debate ensues. Leslie Jones and Matt Damon get into it, vehemently. If you're a Weezer fan of a certain age, then you've tread this ground before. And if you're not, then the debate probably didn't make much sense. The rest of the dinner party can't understand why Damon and Jones are getting so hot and bothered. The best line in the sketch might be when Heidi Gardner asks: “Is this a thing people care about?”
The Atlantic promptly posted an article called "The Saturday Night Live Sketch That Sums Up All Online Discourse." The author, David Sims, completely mischaracterizes the piece. He tries to glean a general, modern lesson from the particulars, and he bungles it. His big takeaway is this:
If you know Weezer’s back catalog intimately, every silly reference made in the sketch lands, but if you don’t, it’s still effective. Because above all, this is a sketch about the way some people discuss almost anything these days—with feigned politeness immediately escalating to personal cruelty. Though part of the joke was that this Weezer disagreement was playing out at a dinner party, I was immediately reminded of so much online discourse, where part of the point is coming up with the most extreme reaction possible.
No offense Mr. Sims, but you can burn in hell. And drink my hot blood. This sketch isn't about how people argue online. It's not about "feigned politeness escalating into personal cruelty." The emotions here are totally valid, because Damon and Jones are arguing about something much more profound than Weezer. Deep stuff. They know it. I know it. And my buddy Kevin knows it. We've been having this identical argument since 2005. Since long before online discourse. Pre-Twitter. The Age of Myspace.
Is This a Thing People Care About? Yes!
Kevin and I have been having this very same debate since Weezer released their fifth album, Make Believe. The one with "Beverly Hills." Yuck. "Beverly Hills," which features on-the-nose lyrics, an awkward faux hip-hop delivery, and a talkbox solo. I pronounced the album terrible. I swore I would never listen to the band again. Kevin kind of liked it. He didn't love it, but he also didn't consider it the end of times for Weezer. He was more forgiving than me, but I had my reasons. I knew better. I had been burned before.
And so the debate began. A debate much bigger than Kevin and me, a debate much bigger than the cheesy crap that Weezer started to produce, a debate much bigger than all of our meager and insignificant lives (whether we have a 90210 zip or not). People will be having this debate far into the future. Kevin and I might download our consciousness into the singularity and continue this debate until the sun burns out (which you will see would be highly appropriate). Intelligent carbon-based life-forms on other planets are having this debate right now. It's a discussion about the permanence of character and identity. It's discussion about the possession of an eternal and everlasting soul. Where lies your essence?
In this debate, I always play the role of Leslie Jones. To infinity and beyond. And Kevin will eternally be Matt Damon. It's a post-modern musical version of Sartre's "No Exit."
Here's a quick synopsis of the two positions. They are, of course, allegorical.
Matt Damon takes the stance that Weezer is "doing some cool things right now." He's looking forward to the release of The Black Album. Leslie Jones does not agree. She believes the band "hasn't had a good album since Pinkerton . . . in '96." She believes that all "real" Weezer fans know this. The two of them get deep into the band's discography. Matt Damon presents himself as open to the band's new music. He listens to all of it. He's "ride or die." Cecily Strong says, "For Weezer?" She doesn't get it. She doesn't know what they're really talking about (but she shouldn't feel bad . . . neither does David Sims, a Senior Editor at The Atlantic)
Damon labels Leslie Jones "a purist" because Jones only truly respects Weezer's first two albums (Blue and Pinkerton). Like me, she will deign to "go all the way up to The Green Album" (which is Weezer's third album). The rest of their material is "corny." I agree.
Matt Damon tells her to grow up. Stop living in the past. Jones calls Damon a "grown ass man" and chastises him that he should know better. He should be able to recognize good art and bad art. Things get pretty heated and both Jones and Damon behave badly, but this is not about online discourse and the lack of civility in conversation. This is about something bigger. Something that excuses bad behavior. Something scary and frustrating and philosophical. Also, I can't begin to explain how accurately this reflects the argument Kevin and I have been having since 2005, since Make Believe. It's almost like the sketch writers have been listening on on us.
A Magical Moment of Consensus
Things don't end well-- Damon storms out-- but there is a magical moment just before Damon leaves when Jones and Damon's sentiments align. Damon yells, "Can we all just agree that Weezer is the best band of all time?"
Everyone else at the dinner party yells "No!" aside from Jones, who says: "Yes!"
Watch and see (go two minutes and 53 seconds in).
This is why they are so passionate. They both truly, sincerely loved Weezer. Damon still does. Jones is conflicted. She qualifies her statement: "And then they became the worst band of all time." Damon still loves Weezer, while Jones loves what Weezer once was.
But aren't they the same thing?
Possibly. But probably not. We're talking about one of the stickiest philosophical dilemmas. A dilemma that involves consciousness, identity, art, and creativity. A dilemma that smacks of the infamous Ship of Theseus, but with something more malleable. You.
Are you your past self? What kind of relationship do you have with your past self? Is your brain the same brain you had in the past? Is your body the same body you had in your past?
This is why you have to excuse all the anger and arguing in the skit. Jones is reckoning with the fact that we have no soul, that we have no essence. There is no true identity. The old Rivers is gone. Damon is hanging on, but some part of him must realize that this is disturbing reality is true. Jones has simultaneously lost her faith in Weezer and in the divinity of the human soul.
Supposedly, most of our cells renew themselves every 7 to 10 years, but not the neurons in our cerebral cortex. We're stuck with them for life (and this is why we can get dementia). Other brain cells regenerate. But-- more importantly-- every time we remember something, that memory changes. Every time we recall something, we revise that thing. So in the biggest sense, our brains are not the same as they once were. Our memories do not accurately connect us to our past, they are creations of our present self. Yikes. The old Rivers Cuomo has been replaced, cell-by-cell, revised memory by revised memory. He's a living version of the Ship of Theseus. We are looking at a Doppelganger, a facsimile. Jones is not fooled. Damon is (or perhaps he doesn't want to grapple with this reality).
Is Weezer still Weezer? They've had a few line-up changes, including the loss of bassist Matt Sharp and the addition of guitarist Scott Shriner. But they are mainly the brainchild of Rivers Cuomo. Leslie Jones claims to know Rivers Cuomo "better than he knows himself." And she knows that he is no longer the Rivers Cuomo that produced Pinkerton and The Blue Album. She truly believes that Make Believe is make-believe. It's not genuine Weezer. I agree with her. Matt Damon is not so sure. He thinks Rivers is still Rivers. He's "into the new stuff." He encourages Jones to grow up and listen to some of it. He tells her that "she doesn't understand what Rivers is going through right now." He believes Rivers will suffer the ordeal, endure the crucible, and emerge hardened, annealed and even better than before.
What happens to our identity and our ideas over time? Do we have any sincere connection to our past selves? My guess is not much. I think we are always in flux. I am nothing like my twenty-two year old self. That guy was an asshole. He was also quite fast. But our athletic ability inevitably declines (except for Tom Brady, who -- according to my sources-- drinks a protein shake each morning laced with the blood and stem-cells of precocious toddlers).
While we physically decay, there's a case to be made that we should be getting better at things like music and drawing and writing and art (until we get dementia). Our artistic and cerebral skills should improve over time. But this doesn't always seem to be the case. Where is the Weezer that Leslie Jones once loved? And why hasn't the band improved with time, like a fine wine? Should she have the childlike faith that Matt Damon has? Faith that the past Weezer will return triumphant? Or is her skepticism more grounded in reality. I side with Jones. For whatever reason, Rivers is no longer (and will never be) his past self.
Jones and Damon are arguing over the existence and essence of the human soul. Is it eternal and unchangeable? Unable to be destroyed? And does it still reside within Rivers Cuomo . . . or did it evaporate when he moved to Beverly Hills? Was the soul of Rivers Cuomo make-believe all along?
Miles Davis said, "the key to creativity is a bad memory." I understand what he means. You have to keep changing, you can't get too attached to the past. Otherwise, you'll simply repeat it, in less and less sincere forms. You'll plagiarize yourself. You'll lose your soul. You'll sell your soul. I tried to find that quotation online-- to make sure Miles Davis said it-- and I had some trouble. I've been saying it to my Creative Writing classes for twenty years, but all I could find was this odd web page about painter Paul Solnes. So who said it? Perhaps Miles Davis. Perhaps not. But whether he said it or not, he lived it. Miles Davis constantly reinvented himself. The key to creativity might be to embrace the fact that we have no true essence, and we've got to keep moving on.
In 2012, David Remnick wrote an article about Bruce Springsteen, called "We Are Alive." Bruce had just turned sixty-two and Remnick marveled at his ability to produce new and relevant material. Bruce keeps figuring out how to remake himself. But the best thing in the article was what Remnick said about The Rolling Stones. I love The Rolling Stones. I love entire albums by The Rolling Stones. Some Girls and Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers. So many good songs on those albums. Remnick said that The Rolling Stones are now merely a high-end Rolling Stones tribute act, though they contain the same humans that were in the actual and legendary band. This may be the perfect example of the Ship of Theseus dilemma as an identity conundrum:
But, unlike the Rolling Stones, say, who have not written a great song since the disco era and come together only to pad their fortunes as their own cover band, Springsteen refuses to be a mercenary curator of his past. He continues to evolve as an artist, filling one spiral notebook after another with ideas, quotations, questions, clippings, and, ultimately, new songs. (David Remnick)
Most of The Rolling Stones are still alive, the same guys who wrote "Sway" and "Rocks Off" and "Dead Flowers" and "Gimme Shelter." Brian Jones died in 1969, just after he was booted from the band. Mick Jones didn't play with them for a long while, but other than that, they are intact. And all they can do is perform their old songs. Why? Why can't they occasionally write an amazing song? Why aren't they who they once were? It's frustrating and disturbing.
Remnick does raise the point that perhaps the Stones are mailing it in. They only get together for the money. This makes sense. he's probably right. But you'd think they would still want to write a few great songs when they do get together. Perhaps that is impossible without self-reflection, progress, and process. While Bruce Springsteen keeps evolving, the Stones became "curators" of their past.
Weezer is another story. Rivers Cuomo is working his ass off. He's got plenty of process. He's trying his damnedest to evolve. Listen to Song Exploder 70: Weezer for the details on how he wrote "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dory." Understanding all the work he put in makes me almost like the song. Almost. But it's still not "Surf Wax America." It's still ersatz.
Cuomo has spreadsheets of lyrics broken down by syllables and accents and prosody. Everything's tagged and searchable. He can "search for lyrics with five syllables and an accent." He's got Spotify playlists of cool old songs; he collects these songs and ruminates on them and finally dismantles them, unravels the chords progressions and the melodies so that he can transform the bits and pieces into something Weezer. He sings his guitar solos first. He eavesdrops and writes stream-of-consciousness journals and has been using the methods in Julia Cameron's classic book on creativity: The Artist's Way.
So why can't he knock it out of the park? Why can't he make another BlueAlbum?
I think I have one possible answer.
Jonah Lehrer wrote an article for the New Yorker in 2012 entitled "Groupthink." In it, he skewers the "brainstorming myth," the idea that spewing out a bunch of ideas is a valid path to creativity. There's something wrong with the "no wrong answers" approach. While it's fun to push for quantity over quality, and it feels positive to encourage freewheeling associations and censor all criticism, these methods don't produce good results. There's been plenty of research on this subject, and apparently working in a more critical environment is a better way to produce good ideas. There needs to be some constructive feedback and debate. Dissent is important; Charlan Nemeth discusses this in "Freakonomics Episode 368: Where Do Good Ideas Come From?"
The Lehrer article summarizes a research experiment designed by Brian Uzzi that explains a critical element in the creative environment necessary for achievement. Uzzi uses the idea of a "Q reading"-- which is basically how long and how well members of a team know each other-- to assess success.
Uzzi focused his study on Broadway musicals, which he calls a "model of group creativity." He studied the Q reading of Broadway musical teams from 1945 to 1989 and he discovered something exceptional. Broadway actors, producers, choreographers, lyricists, and stage managers tend to work together over and over. Broadway musicals are expensive. There's less risk if you know the members of your team. What Uzzi found was that teams with very low Q readings-- teams of artists that didn't know each other at all-- those teams were destined to fail. Q readings in the middle, teams comprised of a variety of relationships-- some old, some new, some in between . . . when the team was acquainted, these plays did the best. And when the Q reading was very high, when the team had worked together many times, then the chance of success went down again.
Total strangers don't work well together. People who have known each other so long that they can't criticize each other without taking umbrage and offense, they don't work well together either. In that middle ground, however, when people are professionally acquainted but not overly familiar, those teams succeeded.
The best Broadway shows were produced by networks with an intermediate level of social intimacy. The ideal level of Q—which Uzzi and his colleague Jarrett Spiro called the “bliss point”—emerged as being between 2.4 and 2.6. A show produced by a team whose Q was within this range was three times more likely to be a commercial success than a musical produced by a team with a score below 1.4 or above 3.2. It was also three times more likely to be lauded by the critics. “The best Broadway teams, by far, were those with a mix of relationships,” Uzzi says. “These teams had some old friends, but they also had newbies. This mixture meant that the artists could interact efficiently—they had a familiar structure to fall back on—but they also managed to incorporate some new ideas. They were comfortable with each other, but they weren’t too comfortable.” (John Lehrer)
I think this often holds true for bands. Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life is a comprehensive and vivid depiction of post-punk Q readings. A band's first album is usually made after many months of touring and practice, so the band has gotten to know each other quite well (usually because they've been living in a van). But they're not so well acquainted that they can't surprise each other. First albums are often good because the band is in that sweet spot of the Q reading. They know their band mates well enough to debate and dissent, they can recognize the good ideas and toss out bad ones. As time passes, it's often all downhill. The Rolling Stones are no longer professionals in a working band. They are long-time friends. Once things get too comfortable (unless there's a major change, such as Johnny Cash working with Rick Rubin) then it's just going to be more of the same.
Why Is There No Sequel to The Big Lebowski?
Perhaps this is why the Coen Brothers can't make another Big Lebowski. It's why Pavement couldn't make another "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain." Once in a while, an artist creates something new and unusual and awesome deep in their career. Willie Nelson made Spirit and Teatroin the late '90's. Who knows what got into him? Maybe it was the weed. Radiohead does their best to break new ground with each new album, but most people still prefer The Bends and OK Computer. And these exceptions are the rare counter-examples that prove the norm.
This truism, that artists often peak somewhere in mid-career, seems to hold true for individuals as well, perhaps because every individual artist is ensconced in a nest of relationships and stimuli. Every human is part of a team. And when that network gets old and hackneyed, then things get stale. It's why Liane Moriarty's middle books (Big Little Lies and The Husband's Secret) are so damned good, and why her latest (Truly Madly Guilty) just seems to just be checking the "Liane Moriarity" boxes. It seems derivative. It's why Thomas Pynchon can't do it again.
It's tough to be your past self. It's even tougher to beat your past self, to out-compete that person. Especially when your audience is no longer their past self. They are older and smarter and more experienced. As Heraclitus said, "You never step in the same river twice."
Ride or Die For Strat-O-Matic Hockey?
My buddy Kevin is something of a completist. He reads all the Michael Pollan books. He listens to all of the Weezer and Radiohead albums. He collects things. He still plays Strat-O-matic baseball (and Strat-O-Matic hockey . . . Strat-O-Matic hockey?) He buys the physical cards every year for his Strat-O-Matic sports, even though he doesn't roll dice any longer. Even though the game is now computerized. He's ride or die for Strat-O-Matic.
Kevin feels the same way about Weezer and Michael Pollan. He's a fan of the artist. I'm a fan of the art. Once I don't like the art, I defect. I love Life's Rich Pageant and Murmur, not the band R.E.M. It's because I learned my lesson early on. More on this later. I hate R.E.M.'s Out of Time, even though it was made by the same humans that made Reckoning. "Losing My Religion" is the worst. The fact that Michael Stipe wrote "Talk About the Passion" and also wrote "Losing My Religion" has made me lose my religion, made me lose my belief in an eternal soul.
Strat-O-Matic Hockey?
I'm the opposite of a completist. I only want to listen to the best things. I read Omnivore's Dilemma, but I might never read another Michael Pollan book again. That was his high point. I'd rather listen to first-rate jazz than second rate Weezer. I'm a grown-ass man! I'm logical about it. Old R.E.M. is slightly better than old Weezer, and new R.E.M. is slightly better than new Weezer, but I'm not going to spend my time listening to new R.E.M. because it's slightly better than new Weezer. Instead I'll listen to first rate something else. I'll move on. In this case the newer stuff-- whether it's Weezer or R.E.M.-- is ersatz.
Kevin is loyal and faithful and believes that his favorite artists are still his favorite artists. They can do it again. I'm not so sure. I think we're a constantly changing-- our cells, our memories, our routines, our thought patterns-- and we are surrounded by a constantly changing collection of people. It's really hard to replicate a particular time and place. This may also point to the impossibility of loving a Weezer album again. I am a different person. I'm not in my twenties. I'm not childless and open to the infinite possibilities of the universe and both overly-confident and slightly scared of what that means. Pinkerton really nailed that feeling. But now I'm a grown-ass man. Perhaps that kind of music could never speak to me the way it did back then.
When my wife and I lived and taught in Syria, I played a lot of music with my friend Matt. We both loved Pinkerton and so we learned a bunch of those songs. They were hard to play and sing. Weird chord progressions and some high notes. Weezer was still rolling along. The Green Album had just come out and it was short but good. Catchy and driving. We were young and without children, living in a foreign country, and when we played "The Sweater Song," everybody sang along. It's a time in my life that's impossible to replicate, and it would be silly to think that it's even possible to do so. Matt and I were on exactly the same page, musically. We were in a "strange and distant land," a weird holiday of sorts. Weezer was our common ground.
When Weezer's time was over, I had no problem abandoning them. I may have learned to defect so readily because of what happened when I was a teenager. I had a comically traumatic experience with my favorite band: The Cult. The Cult were the masters of creative transformation. The real version of Spinal Tap. They began as The Southern Death Cult, a goth/post-punk band in the spirit of Bauhaus. Then lead singer Ian Astbury teamed up with his artistic soulmate, Theater of Hate guitarist Billy Duffy and they stripped their name down to The Cult. In 1984, they put out the Dreamtime, a weirdly awesome brew of apocalyptic Wild West riffs, Native American chants, and tribal rhythms. A year later they released the cerebral-sounding college rock classicLove: an impeccably produced collection of droning, ethereal guitars and wailing reverb-laden vocals. The album with '80's anthem "She Sells Sanctuary." I totally dug that album, but the The Cult's next move separated them from the other alternative post-punk bands of the time. They hired Zodiac Mindwarp's Kid Chaos on bass, teamed up with producer Rick Rubin, and made Electric, a raw, stripped down freight train of a record. It was 1987. I was 17 years old, and the album spoke to me and my friends. We felt wild and violent and unhinged, and so did this album. We loved it.
I was ride or die for The Cult
This was one of the reasons I couldn't talk to girls. I really wanted to ask them whether they preferred the celestial sound of Love or the crisp overdriven guitars of Electric. The production values of Steve Brown or Rick Rubin. I wanted to know their opinion. It was a litmus test. Kind of like The Weezer debate. But this was not a thing most people cared about. Certainly not most girls. The only people that cared were my high school buddies, who liked The Cult as much as me. And we loved Electric. We loved moshing at the shows, we loved when Ian Astbury-- drunk-- clambered to the top of the speaker cabinet at the Felt Forum and couldn't get down. It was Spinal Tap embodied. Billy Duffy kept on soloing on his giant White Falcon Gretsch hollow-body guitar, hanging it over the crowd so you could touch it while he played, soloing and soloing until the roadies got Astbury down.
Then I went to college, and my freshman year The Cult released Sonic Temple. It was 1989. They got yet another drummer-- Mickey Curry-- and a new big-time producer: Bob Rock (who has produced acts such as Metallica, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, the Offspring, and David Lee Roth). I heard a couple singles from the new album on the radio and MTV-- "Fire Woman" and "Sun King"-- and while they sounded a bit over-produced, they still rang true, they still passed as genuine Cult songs (if a bit cheesier than the old stuff). I heard Astbury in an interview and he said he wanted to make "sonic landscapes," like the Fleetwood Mac song "The Chain." That sounded fine to me. "Sun King" certainly did that.
I bought the album on CD, though I didn't own a CD player yet. I could see the writing on the wall for cassettes (but I couldn't fathom that vinyl would make a comeback). My buddy Whitney and I went into a friend's room who had a CD player. Whitney knew I was a diehard Cult fan. He listened with me and watched me nearly shit my pants when I heard the corny strings at the start of "Edie (Ciao Baby)" and the goofy organ at the start of "Sweet Soul Sister" and the abominable a capella chorus at the start of "Wake Up Time For Freedom." I was disappointed. But I hadn't yet become a defector. I blamed Bob Rock. I enjoyed what I could from the album-- mainly "Sun King" and "Fire Woman"-- and waited patiently for the next one. I was young and dumb and optimistic.
Before Ceremony came out, in 1991, I made the absurd decision to have the logo from the Electric album tattooed on my ankle. I was ride or die for Electric. I liked it that much. And I had faith that The Cult would return triumphant.
Then I listened to Ceremony, and it broke me. I realized that these were not the same dudes that made Dreamtime, Love, and Electric. Nor was I the same person. I realized that, in fact, people weren't people at all; they were conglomerations of memories and molecules in a particular matrix of time and relationships. There was no continuity to anything. Ceremony was so fucking bad. It was derivative. It consisted of mashed-up versions of every lousy Cult song, squashed together, with cheesy super-slick production. Self-plagiarism of the worst kind. I defected. I learned my lesson. I eventually covered my Cult tattoo with another absurd tattoo (grist for another post).
By 1991, R.E.M. was dead to me as well. While I could tolerate a few songs from their 1987 effort Green, it was the same routine and timeline as Sonic Temple and Ceremony. "Stand" was "Wake Up Time For Freedom" awful, but "Pop Song 89" and "Orange Crush" were fun. But Out of Time, that whole album seemed ersatz to me. Not genuine R.E.M. I heard "Losing My Religion" and "Shiny Happy People" over and over on the radio. I was angry. I realized you couldn't go back to Rockville. What the fuck? What had happened to the artists I loved?
And then I got over it. I moved on. I discovered new stuff: Cake and Wilco and Ween and Beck and Underworld and Crystal Method and Tribe Called Quest. I got into jazz: Wes Montgomery and Grant Green and Charlie Parker and Jimmy Mcgriff and Jimmy Smith. I went back to old familiar stuff and realized I liked it more than I thought: The Rolling Stones and The Talking Heads and The Cure. I got into hip-hop beyond The Beastie Boys. I learned to find new art-- or art that was new to me-- instead of relying on my old favorites. Why bother being loyal when the cards are so stacked against success? Rivers Cuomo sang it on Pinkerton:
Why bother? It's gonna hurt me.
It's gonna kill when you desert me.
This happened to me twice before
Won't happen to me anymore.
Weezer
I'm no longer angry. I learned not to be offended when an artist I liked produced something shitty. That artist is no longer the artist they once were. It's not a betrayal. You're different, they're different, everything is different. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince got it exactly right when he renamed himself. I'm happy that people can come together at all, in any time or place, and create something of significance. It's really hard. And it can't last. Everyone has to be in the right space. There's some real vitriol out there about Rivers Cuomo and Weezer, but I'm just glad they made the Blue Album and Pinkerton (and the Green Album is decent, I just gave it another listen). You can't expect much more.
I was lucky enough to move in lock-step with The Cult and some other bands-- including Weezer-- for a few years, for a few albums. But what are the chances for that to continue? For you and the artist you love to evolve in the same way, so that you enjoy everything they make? Slim to none. It's just not feasible, for a variety of reasons. I was fourteen when The Cult made Dreamtime, and investigating punk-rock and goth and underground music. It was a perfect fit. A year later I had picked up the electric guitar and the droning riffs on Love were intriguing. Every budding guitarist in the '80's who liked alternative music learned the opening to "Rain" and "She Sell Sanctuary." And when I was seventeen and full of testosterone, The Cult put out Electric. Perfectly appropriate for me and my buddies. These albums are touchstones of time as much as they are of sound. They moved in parallel with my aesthetic sensibilities. That was a happy accident.
Our identity depends as much on who surrounds us as it does with what is within us.
There's a fantastic artifact from The Cult discography symbolic of this theme: that our identity depends as much on who surrounds us as it does with what is within us. The Cult recorded an earlier version of the songs that eventually became the hard-driving Electric. These tracks are called The Manor Sessions. They were produced by Steve Brown, the same guy who produced Love. If you like The Cult, then these are fascinating tracks.
It's the songs from Electric but they sound like B-sides from Love. The band decided these recordings didn't reflect their new direction. They enlisted Rick Rubin and made the "real" version of Electric. And it was all about the production. If The Cult had stuck with Steve Brown and made another album that sounded like Love, I would have liked it. I like The Manor Sessions. I would have liked The Cult, the same amount that I liked Jane's Addiction and Guns N' Roses and Soundgarden and The Cure and Danzig. A lot. But I wouldn't have gotten a Cult tattoo. That Electric album that spoke to my me and my friends in a very special way when we were high school seniors, when we were drinking beer, driving around, doing vandalism-- that album almost didn't exist. You can actually hear what it could have been. If this had been the case, we would have driven slower and done less vandalism. Maybe we would have been more cerebral and sensitive. We certainly would have been different. It makes me realize a piece of art is so dependent on the circumstances. It's a product space and time and relationships. It's a miracle that it ever works at all, that a bunch of sounds could mean so much. And it's greedy to think that it can be repeated, especially by the same humans at another time, in another place, when everything is different. Weezer is never going to make another Blue Album, and that's okay.
I'm doing something annoying and pretentious right now, but it fits perfectly with this philosophy. My family is taking a trip to Costa Rica this summer, so I started brushing up on my Spanish. This led me to search for some great Latin American alternative albums. I stumbled on some fantastic stuff. Cafe Tacuba's highly regarded Re. Los Amigos Invisibles' funk album The New Sound of the Venezuelan Gozadera. Soda Stereo's alternative classic Sueño stereo. And Jessico Megamix byBabasónicos (a band regarded as the Argentinian version of Beck).
Listening to this music is like stumbling on buried treasure. These are the best albums by these bands. You can tell they are in the Goldilocks Zone for Q reading and creativity. It's a real treat. And I'm learning some interesting Spanish idioms (such as Cómanse a besos esta noche. . . you can eat kisses tonight?)
So no more ride or die for me. I'd rather listen to some nearly incomprehensible first rate Latin American music than second rate stuff from my favorite bands. I've embraced the Miles Davis philosophy. I have a shitty memory, and it keeps me moving. I'm not going to wait for lightning to strike twice when I can search for a fulgurite.
I'd like to apologize to David Sims for "escalating to personal cruelty." I don't actually want him to burn in hell . . . but I do want him to read this and understand the true significance of the SNL Weezer sketch, and the true significance of the Weezer debate. It's about the continuity of our identity, and the truth might be disturbing. There might not be any continuity of our character. Our soul might be an illusion. There's an up side to this. Change is not only possible, it is inevitable. I'm in a better place now. I've dredged up lots of memories, and my brain has revised them. I've listened to a bunch of old music and it's made me nostalgic. I'm nothing like the guy who started writing this post. That guy was a little disappointed with Weezer. That guy was angry at David Sims. That was my past self. But nearly six thousand words later, this new guy, this new Dave, he knows better.
