“These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it. They are trying to buy respectability for a form that is gloriously and righteously dumb. Now, you’re smart enough to know that. And the day it ceases to be dumb is the day that it ceases to be real, right?” [1]
Here’s to big, dumb rock and roll (BDR). Let’s take a moment to appreciate rock bands that don’t take themselves too seriously.
BDR is the essence of rock and roll: Primal beats, loud guitars and simple lyrics (usually about girls, cars or partying or all of the above). Driving around in the summer with the top down and this crap blaring out of your car stereo. It was the best!
I was thinking about this recently driving in my car (iPod surfing, no convertible) listening to “The Best of Humble Pie”. You have to love these guys. We’re not talking “Blonde On Blonde” folks. Songs like “I Don’t Need No Doctor” (live at the Fillmore East) and “30 Days In The Hole” are totally ridiculous and totally infectious.[2]
The 70’s were ground zero for BDR. Examples of this sub-genre include bands like Cheap Trick (“I Want You To Want Me” is classic BDR),ac/dc (“You Shook Me All Night Long”) and T-Rex (“Bang a Gong” with goofy lyrics that include lines like “You’re built like a car you’ve got that hubcap diamond star halo”).
Punk rock in the mid-seventies was a response to the growing pretentiousness of the major rock bands. And talk about BDR (e.g., The Ramones) it didn’t get much dumber which was the point: simple, no frills guitar rock.
And then there is Kiss, the kings of BDR. It doesn’t get any better (read dumber) than this (“I want to rock all night and party every day”). Add the stage war paint and you have BDR perfection. Kiss was so revered that future generations of rock bands regularly gave them shout outs:
“Playing Kiss records beautiful and stoned”
“Heavy Metal Drummer”, Wilco
“…rolling numbers, rock and rolling, got my Kiss records out.”
“Surrender”, Cheap Trick
”Kiss they were the ones…”
“Black”, Pete Yorn
It reminds me of the early days of Saturday Night Live where Dan Aykroyd played Leonard Pinth-Garnell (a recurring character) the host of Bad Playhouse (a takeoff on those stuffy high-brow PBS shows). Clad in a black tuxedo Aykroyd introduces some piece of performance art (e.g., Bad One-Man Theatre). After the brief (and awful) performance they cut back to Aykroyd for his final comment, one of my favorites being “Terrifically bad, utterly pointless”.
Which pretty much sums up what big dumb rock and roll is all about (“utterly pointless”) and why we love it so. For those about to rock (dumbly) we salute you!
[1] Phillip Seymour Hoffman as rock critic Lester Bangs in the movie “Almost Famous”. Another great Lester Bangs quote from the movie: “…Live “American Woman” (by the Guess Who)? The most brilliant piece of gobbled goop ever!” Click here for the complete clip of Hoffman’s Lester Bangs monologue.
[2] Humble Pie might be most famous for launching the career of Peter Frampton who played guitar in the band behind lead singer Steve Marriott.