Showing posts with label alice in chains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alice in chains. Show all posts
, , , — 0 comments

What Exactly Does "Mainstream" Mean, Anyway?

 

A few weeks ago during one of my many absent-minded late night walks to Wegmans, an odd question popped into my head: what is the least likely album to ever become a mainstream success? The criteria for this is admittedly vague in multiple areas. We could be talking about albums that were dark or avant-garde that broke onto to the radio, or sold a bunch of copies. We could also be talking about music that's just so damn terrible that you wonder how so many people possibly could have bought it. The idea of "mainstream" is pretty damn vague, too. Are we talking about albums that sold a bunch of copies, but had no radio hits (like recent efforts by The Shins and Arcade Fire), or does there need to be consistent airplay to qualify? This, of course, is the problem with these late-night-walk questions; they rarely contain definitive answers.

Still, after digging around in my head for awhile, I found a few potential answers. the first was Alice In Chains' 1992 masterpiece Dirt, which somehow managed to spawn five radio hits despite being an unrelentingly miserable tale of drug addiction and depression. Yes, it came out at  time when that sort of thing had become quite popular, but still, you'd think there would be a limit. But no, ""Down In A Hole," "Angry Chair," "Rooster," "Them Bones," and "Would?" all crashed the airwaves, and are all still played today. The other answer was the self-titled debut by Rage Against the Machine, although their other three albums could qualify as well. It was so angry and so explicitly political and taking aim at the very forces deciding to play it in the first place that it's place as a successful mainstream rock album continues to flummox me. How could the powers that be accept an album that was so explicitly anti-establishment anyway?

To be honest, I still don't know. I wish I had a definitive answer there, but some things are just flukes. That said, considering the success of Rage Against The Machine med me to further consider what an elastic word "mainstream" was. After all, would Zach de la Rocha or Tom Morello ever consider their work mainstream? It seems unlikely. While with RATM, they rarely made any deliberate attempts to get songs on the radio, it just sort of happened. At the same time, there are other bands who have found themselves in the world of "indie" music who wonder why the radio doesn't embrace songs they think should be a fit for major markets. Just ask the folks in Grizzly Bear, who essentially found an audience as an indie band by accident, since mainstream rock radio was too busy blasting Theory Of  Deadman's new album to notice.

So, mainstream isn't something that happens deliberately. Bands who rebel from the radio can be embraced by it, while bands who try for hits can find success in the Pitchfork-controlled universe. And yet, that term has such strong ties to how we view music today. We create a divide between "mainstream" and "hipster" music that may or may not really exist, but  certainly feels like it does. It' strange, though, because when we consider how random musical success is, very few acts can truly be categorized as mainstream."

fun. were known as an indie band until "We Are Young" was used in a Super Bowl commercial, leading to radio play, leading to it becoming a #1 hit. Then, "Some Nights" stormed the charts too, and they were a mainstream band. People who took pride in listening to the finer things shunned them, while folks who listen to Kiss 98.5 seven days a week suddenly became fans. The quality of the music didn't necessarily matter, so much as who was listening to it, and who it was being made available to.

Music becomes mainstream because the people who determine what mainstream music is choose it to be so. Knowing this, making a conscious decision to avoid anything that may be popular among the part of the population that doesn't care about music all that much is a patently foolish choice. Just because the people who like Nickelback like this other band doesn't mean that the new band is guaranteed to suck. Bands aim for the mainstream and end up hitting somewhere else. Meanwhile, bands can aim as far from it as possible, and still wind up on Active Rock radio stations. It's all random, and it shouldn't have any effect on your listening choices.



John Hugar 




, , , — 2 comments

Album Review: Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here


Alice In Chains has this quality about them: all of their songs sound like they are the most important songs of all time.  They aren’t, but that’s what they sound like. To take it further, all of their songs sound like they are the most important thing happening at any given moment. If you are at a bar and an Alice in Chains song comes on the jukebox, it is immediately in control of the situation. As in, don’t try to talk because these guys play loud and they have something very important to say. As in, it’s pretty much a guarantee that someone will ask “Who is this?” if they don’t already know and haven’t already made a comment. Every song sounds like it’s the last song they’ll ever sing. If you like this quality in a band, you probably like Alice In Chains.

In the right mood, there aren’t many bands I’d rather listen to. Their harmonious singing and characteristic, immediately-recognizable, dirty guitar riffs are what make them so special. But sometimes I just think, “Okay, this is enough. Tone it down, fellas. The fact that they forgot to put ketchup on your hamburger does not have to mean you are going to die alone.” When you couple that kind of melodrama with the fact that Layne Staley died over a decade ago, it’s easy to feel lukewarm about a new album by Alice In Chains.

Then they’ll drop an opening like the first half-minute of “Stone,” the third track on their new album The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here and you’ll think, “Oh, yeah. Okay. I remember why these guys are fucking awesome.” You’ll remember that co-founder and lead guitarist Jerry Cantrell – the man who created for our listening pleasure the stubborn, relentless riffs of “Man in the Box” and “Rain When I Die” – is still very much a part of things and still very much has it. They still sound like a huge burden has been placed upon them, as if the entire Western Civilization will crumble if their music fails to set the right kind of mood. Again, whether or not you like the sound of a band playing under that kind of pressure will determine whether or not you’ll like their new album.

With their new album, they’ve established that Jerry Cantrell can still play. Of course he can. But this album is only slightly better than any other late-stage, kind-of-generic release by a legendary band by a slim margin and that’s because they’re missing “it,” “it” being Layne Staley’s voice – which always sounded like his chest was about to catch fire from the inside – working with Cantrell’s backup vocals and lead guitar. That perfect blend of harmony and contrast is now gone, which means that we are left with an album with 8 or 9 songs like the opening track, “Hollow”; songs that feature an angry, angry guitar paired with appropriately passionate, droning lyrics and not much else.

But that should be enough. It’s still heavy and great, and it’s still (technically) Alice In Chains. The best song on the album is the third track “Stone,” although the tenth track “Phantom Limb,” a sneaky-good late-album gem is a close second. Other highlights include the second track “Pretty Done,” and the fourth track “Voices.”

Is The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here anything more than just an extension of their already-impressive catalog? Not really. But I’m happy it exists and it probably talked me into going to see them this summer at Darien Lake on August 11.

 Grade: B



Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)