Tony's Music Blog

As Amerikkka slinks into facism, our celebrities are there to remind of us of what we've lost. They get to live the life we thought we were living; they get away with things we can only dream about; they even get to say occasionally that the emporer wears no clothes. My shrinking ego is starting to react: Please, God, just let me get through one day without hearing Britney Spear's name!

Celebrities, American Royalty, has mutated beyond the "Bread and Circuses" role they enjoyed beginning in the Gilded Age. No longer content with just being a story, celebrities have magnified their importance, (Gee, I wonder what Brad and Angelina are doing today...) as if their lives are so much more relevant than mine. As if we needed another celebrity magazine, OK!  magazine intends to pay celebrities and give them control over exclusive interviews and photographs. To further empower them, marketing companies are hiring celebrities for focus groups. "This isn't just research," says Lucian James, president of San Francisco-based marketing agency Agenda.  "It's also viral marketing..." A virus alright! It's making me sick to fucking death of celebrities! Even Bono  is getting on my nerves. Sure, he means well, but I could care less if someone stole his clothes! Now I am beginning to wonder about exactly how well-meaning he acually is, especially after reading Firoze Manji's commentary on Live 8.

I am glad that Michael Jackson  got off, though. Not because I think he was innocent (actually I do!) At least in his mind, he is, and his syncophants tell him ad nauseum. But his guilt is beside the point by now. I have said from the start that no matter how his trial would end, the American people lose. Here we sat, day after day, transfixed by the hilarity of his trial, while newsworthy men and women were dying in or scandalizing one of the most atrocious wars in American history, and very little exposure was made in the media. So I figure, why bother sounding like a lunatic? It's over and we all lost a little bit more of what the celebrities are taking from us.

However, the most exhasperating aspect of today's celebrity culture is the music. In this case, MJ  was a prophet: his music heralded tunes by celebrities, for celebrities. I could tell, back with Thriller  that he was full of shit. How could this faggot impregnate "Billy Jean?" (And don't tell me he didn't look like a faggot with the high-waters and one glove.) And then came Bad,  which was a total oxymoron. If Micheal Jackson was bad, then where did that leave Ice Cube  and Eazy E?  Where did that leave Tupac,  the truly baddest mutherfucker of them all?

But Bad  did open the door for other artists to lie their asses off too. Next came Marilyn Manson,  who looked way scarier than he sounded. And then came Vanilla Ice  and Milli Vanilli,  no-talent pretty-boys of the worst kind. The plagiarism wasn't as bad as the fact that their music was an obvious lie, and there's a deep cicle of hell abiding those who lie through music. That is why I urge you to boycott Metallica:  what they did to Napster was a crime, and yet the Supreme Court votes against Grokster! (Oh well, this is the same set of judges who took away personal property rights and sanctioned the Bush Kleptocracy.) But Metallica  would have you believe their music is about something; all it really is to them is a commodity, something they can use to parlay into a fortune.

I mean, who really buys their music anyway? Payola explains a lot, but I suspect that Sony/BMG is only one. I can understand why hordes of rich women make Rob Thomas  famous, but who makes Gwen Stefani  so rich that the hordes of illegal downloaders barely nick her pocketbook? I know that there are a few teenyboopers who might still be buying Busta Rhymes  cds, but who the hell would even want to listen to the Pussycat Dolls  more than once? I guess there's a sucker born every minute, and sometimes I am that sucker. Here are a few artists I did try to take a chance on, and just ended up wasting my hearing and money:

• Black-Eyed Peas Monkey Business I loved the single, "Don't Funk With My Heart." Bought the album and searched for another song to like as much. Nada. I do like their message, and want to enjoy them, but whenever I hear a track, all I can see in my mind is Paris Hilton sweating at a club {shiver}.
  


• ColdPlay X & Y Here was another single that had the trademark sound that I just love—such a Spectoresque wall of sound. Again, I searched the album for another memorable track, and was slightly enamoured with the hidden track. Again, however, this is just music that Gwyneth Paltrow would play at a pool party: forgettable.
  


• Foo Fighters In Your Honor This album had more potential. I found myself tapping my foot pretty steadily, but, again, a muddy mix of songs that sound just like the previous one. At least their last release, One By One had a couple of distinguishing tunes, but still, nothing like the incredible There Is Nothing Left to Lose.
  


• Missy Elliot The Cookbook Normally, Missy can get away with stuff I won't accept from any other artist. Her samples and loops would make me shout if it were anyone else. I'd accuse 'em of having a lack of skill with an instrument, but with Missy, she turns Cubase into a Theramin! But this time, the cutest thing she pulls off is some cool marching-band tricks. It's okay Misdemeanor, I still believe in ya! I'll try spinning The Cookbook a couple more times, but I gawrantee that it ain't a platter like This Is Not A Test or the incredible Under Construction.
  

So everyone knows Pop Music has been about poseurs, ever since Carl Perkins,  but now something much more sinister is sneaking under the stair. There was never a time when I doubted John Lennon  wrote his songs just for me, even while he dozed up in the Chelsea Hotel. When Marvin Gaye  went on stage with those hand-chrochetted hats and the furs, I still felt like he was calling me to march. And even when the Jefferson Airplane  degenerated into that self-involved, burnt-out Starship,  I still thought, Hey, maybe we DID build the city on Rock 'N Roll. Nowadays, I don't know; I just don't know...

I prefer to see a distinction between selling-out and "frontin'." Every artist has to sell out at one point in his or her career—sometimes that moment becomes a career's zenith: witness Bonnie Raitt  doing John Hiatt's  "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" (and I never would've even heard of Me'Shell Ndegéocello  if she hadn't done that ditty "Wild Night" with John Mellencamp  in the Eighties.) Other times, an artist just takes a well-deserved hiatus and does something easy: eventually, he or she returns with a magnum opus. Thankfully, George Benson  came back to the fold last year with Irreplacable.  I am still waiting for Herbie Hancock  to quit fooling around and get that groove back.

Someone once concluded to me that the reason Ben Harper hasn't met with monetary success is because he never took his music to "our people." After cooling off from hearing such a callous assessment, I (or Ben, rather) took the last laugh. His collaboration with The Blind Boys of Alabama, There Will Be A Light, garnered him a Grammy award last year. But I suppose by then, he'd figured out how to take his music to "his people." That's what burns my cookies much more than simple frontin': when an artist claims to be speaking for a fanbase, but is actually cozying up to the "Cigar-chompers" (as the Grateful Dead  used to refer to them.) At least have the integrity of Keanu Reeves  and just play the Viper Room. I won't name names—they don't deserve any more recognition than they have already, and I am sure you know who they are.

Thank God for you Common. You still make me believe I could show up at your studio and you'd play the same high spiritual shit I hear on your disks. Way to Be, Bruh!