The Best of Ziazine!

Volume 13, Issue 15, August 2000

That's why they call it (C)RAP!

My name is Kid! Indeed. Well, the questions I would ask you, Mr. Rock, are--- so what? And why should I care? If your musical performance catches my attention for either its quality, or lack thereof, I will make it my business to learn your name on my own. Which leads me to the first in a series of discussions about the specific characteristics that can make music Crap.
Unfortunately, the inherent ability to discern right from wrong and good from bad has atrophied, leaving the youths vulnerable to any stimuli thrown in their faces. Whether this lack of musical discretion is the consequence of bad parenting, food pesticides, or sitcom-induced plunges in I.Q. scores, I don't know. But as a result, it has become necessary for the survival and propagation of quality music to develop a series of litmus tests for the obtuse to employ in determining what is worthy of listening to, and what should be smashed into pointy shards and jabbed into Will Smith's eyeballs. For those of you nipple-sucking Ecstasy fiends and victims of public education, a litmus test is a definitive test to prove or disprove something--- in this case, the quality of music.
As alluded to above, the first such test I will discuss is the use of the performer's own name, and/or place of origin, anywhere in a song's lyrics. The instant you hear the artist say something like, ``Check it out Yo, this is Gat Totin', Smelly Assface! Brooklyn in the house,'' change the station and head directly for your nearest garden store to purchase a 100-lb. bag of bomb-grade fertilizer. (You'll get further instructions in a warehouse, on a Sunday, while those other fools are in church.)
To be fair, brandishing one's own name or hometown wouldn't be so annoying if it occurred in just one of a performer's songs. But when these dullards repeat their tags ten times on every fucking track, it gets real old in a hurry. And for clarity's sake, naming a region like ``west side'' or ``east coast''--- though not as specific as giving a street, city, or cell-block name--- is still a positive reading on the no-talent chart. Stop slapping that crack-whore and list up Snoop Dogg, I'm talking to you.
So what is the point of brandishing a name so frequently? The performers will say it has something to do with respect and pride. I remember respect; it's what the Chili Peppers [and Fishbone] earned after years of writing quality music. And if you had any pride in yourself, you'd pull up your pants and get some help with that speech impediment you so colorfully refer to as ``street slang.'' Know what I'm sayin', know what I'm sayin', know what I'm sayin' ... shut up!
The truth is, today's artists sound so similar they have to say their names or we wouldn't be able to tell the Jay Zs from the Kid Rocks from the DMXs. And why should we? They're all the same caricature to me. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this egomaniacal epidemic is not the use of the performer's name, but what it portends. You know instantly that the song is about the performer. My god, every sexual exploit, every attempted armed robbery, every damn reach-around in the penitentiary shower, all made into songs! We understand you're proud of your sexual prowess, but do you need every track on three albums to tell us that? If you're going to blab who you are to the world, make sure you've got something unique to say, or at least an interesting way of saying it. Listen to ``Gangsta's Paradise''. Sure, we've heard the tale before, but rarely presented with such eloquence and emotion, not just scripted anger.
Next month we'll talk about more tests you can use to weed out the music from the noise, like the whining and scowling tests.--- Pepe Sandoval

FROM THE ZINE E-MAIL BAG...

An anonymous author mistakenly sent us this letter which was meant for the high priestess of Radio Righteousness, Her Shrillness Dr. Laura Schlessinger. (Of course, our address, dontmesswithme.com, could be confusing.) No matter--- we couldn't resist printing this...
``Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to best follow them.

  1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?

  2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

  3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

  4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify?

  5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

  6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

  7. Lev. 21:18 * states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

Dr. Laura, I know you have studied these things extensively so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.''

Note:   * Lev. 21:18 was given as Lev. 20:20 in the original article.

Volume 13, Issue 17, October 2000

"Quality" vs. CRAP, Pt. 2

Many of today's so-called ``artists'' are more actors than musicians, and their music takes a backseat to image. When a performer's scowls are enhanced by Industrial Light and Magic and his growls are run through a room full of computers, his expressions stop being emotive and become posturing--a strong indicator of low-grade imitation music, not fit for human consumption.
Take Creed as an example. The lead singer tries to be deep and dangerous, but comes off sounding like some dirthead who tramples the elderly when he hears a fire alarm. I can just see him arguing with Gavin Rossdale about whose bodyguards are tougher. What in the hell is his name? I'll just call him Eddie Vedder-Osmond. At the other end of the spectrum we have Henry Rollins. You know, that mutation with the mono-brow simian ridge, the bullet-hole cleft in his chin, and a neck like...shit, like only he has? Now that cat has a convincing scowl! I believe him, so his music is real to me.
It's no mystery why performers use posturing: it's a way of becoming exactly who their target audience wants them to be. The trouble begins when the public accepts these charlatans as their characters, leading the artists themselves to buy into their own crooked press. Do you really think it would take a wooden stake to send that punk Marilyn Manson to hell?
In addition to posturing's marketing advantages, many musicians use this pretence to compensate for some deep-seeded cowardice and an acute lack of personality. Watch for it. Have you seen that zany fella Freddie Durst pucker his little face into a snarl and talk about someone giving someone a fat lip? He earned his snarl growing up in that bastion of hardcore rap, Jacksonville, Florida. The same mean streets that produced such pioneers of hip-hop as Molly Hatchet and .38 Special. Mr. Durst's behavior is a combination of posturing and compensating-- no different from the guys who jack their trucks 37 feet into the air, paint them with blood and fill the bed with pit bulls. I'd like to introcude Mr. Biscuit to the boys from Rancid. See that scar on Tim Armstrong's scalp, the one right next to his Mohawk? He got that from a broken bottle, not a costume shop.
Metallica is another group I just don't believe. They play their roles too perfectly to be genuine, like the characters from Spinal Tap. I think the same marketing team that brought us The Backstreet Boys recruited the then-shiny faced lads, and said: ``Okay, the music market is saturated with pop right now, so we want you to act like bikers. I know, I know, it means giving up your mousse and your turtlenecks. Don't worry, we'll have a top fashion designer rip and stain all of your clothes just right. And we'll need a name for your little group. Metal-ica! Oh yes, your fans will eat it up. Here's a case of cigarettes to help with your voice. And remember to gargle every night with fiberglass shavings.''
Speaking of posturing, here comes Eminem, or Slim Shady, or Marshal Mathers, or the Professor and Mary Ann, or whomever the hell he thinks he is. The prick is brilliant. He's a total nobody who decided he was a star whom everyone wanted to immitate. And looky here, his album is number one. That says more about the people who buy his ``music'' than it does about him. We understand you had a tough childhood Marshall, what with no father and a mother who's suing you for repeated verbal attacks. But do you think professing your desire to murder your suicidal wife will conjure fond memories for your baby once she's grown? [That ain't tough, it's sick!] How about all those fights with clerks at stores? Or guys in clubs? I'm sure that's just your public persona; you're not going to take any of that home with you. Hey, it's all about pleasing the posse. Do you know what a vicious circle is? No, it has nothing to do with Mexican food.
Then there's Kid Rock, the self-proclaimed American Bad Ass... My god, this guy is wearing a feathered evening gown and matching cowboy hat! If I go to Flint, Michigan, are all the factory workers dressing like this? At least the Kid plays the scumbag role convincingly. I suspect, however, that despite the Sunday-go-to-meetin' trucks parked in the front lawn, his veings run with suburban-shopping-mall red, white and blue--just like hyis uncle Vanilla Ice.
It's hypocritical, you say? After all, you could contend that David Bowie, Maynard James Keenan, the former Sex Pistols and Led Zeppelin are guilty of their own posturing. However, these people are bona-fide freaks; they're not acting. Besides, they make good music, which overrides all eccentricities.

Volume 14, Issue ???, July 2001

Central Theory of the CRAP CYCLE
Mark Zepezauer

Rock music has been through four distinct crap cycles since Elvis cut his first sides in 1954. In each case a messiah figure emerges, consolidating and popularizing what had previously been underground styles. And every time, record company weasels are mostly taken by surprise by the commercial potency of music they had previously disdained or ignored; in a panic, they attempt to sign similar musicians as soon as possible. The result is an explosion of creativity as musicians explore the inspiring new sounds (and freshly opened marketplace) in thousands of different ways. In much the same way, the unexpected success of the low-budget film Easy Rider led to studio moguls granting unprecedented artistic control to then-unknown filmmakers like Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg and Lucas. The moguls were suddenly uncertain of their own ability to predict potential hit films, so they let the whiz kids have their way---for a while.
Of course, before too long the second half of the crap cycle emerges: the crap explosion. The record company weasels (like the studio moguls) come to believe they have it all figured out once again. They distill the most commercial aspects of the new sound, and align their promotional muscle towards marketing those sounds they deem most likely to appeal to the widest possible range of mainstream tastes. The radio is flooded with dozens of sound-alike bands. Those who embody the spirit that made the new music exciting in the first place are relegated to cult status, or remain in the underground. Meanwhile, the original messiah has long since burned out, or shows only sporadic flashes of the original brilliance.
When the Elvis nova first lit up the sky, ``race music’’ was suddenly reborn as rock & roll, the most popular music in the land. People had been making such music for at least a decade before that, but it was an underground phenomenon documented only in the R&B charts. In 1954, the radio was ruled by crap like ``Doggie in the Window’’ and ``Oh Mein Papa’’. When the hillbilly kid swept all that off the charts, he also opened up commercial space for other first-generation rockers. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t still a lot of bland crap on the radio---’twas ever thus. But a window of opportunity had opened up.
By decade’s end, it had slammed shut. Elvis was in the army, Buddy Holly was dead, Chuck Berry was in jail, Jerry Lee Lewis was in disgrace. And the airwaves belonged to Pat Boone and Frankie Avalon and Paul Anka and worse. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t some worthwhile stuff, but there was a lot less of it. That’s the pop landscape the Beatles found when they hit the US in 1964; they discovered they had to sell rock & roll to the Americans all over again. They were inspired by Elvis and the other early rockers, but also by the blues and R&B records that had set the stage for the first cycle. The Beatles also helped to popularize any number of black musicians who were relegated to the underground during the nadir of the crap cycle, and showed knack for synthesizing emerging pop trends throughout their career.
And of course, they let a thousand flowers bloom. Along with those who followed in their wake---Dylan, The Stones, The Who, Kinks, Cream, Hendrix, and the re-energized Motown and Stax musicians---they turned rock & roll into a billion-dollar industry called ``rock.’’ You all know what comes next.
By the time I was graduating from high school, in 1975, American radio was pummeling its listeners with some of the most amazingly crappy music of all time. Like I said before, there’s always been crappy music. But there’s never been a crap explosion of the likes of the mid-70s. Not only mind-numbing singles like ``The Night Chicago Died’’, ``Kung Fu Fighting’’, ``Afternoon Delight’’, and ... please don’t make me go on. I know they’re all humorously nostalgic little oddities now, but it was quite painful at the time, particularly if you could still recall when, just a few years before, the airwaves were ruled by giants. And meanwhile, the weasels were foisting crap like Journey and Foreigner on the masses, and making buttloads of money doing it. That was the pop universe the Sex Pistols invaded in 1977.
Johnny Rotten was quite explicit in his intention to destroy all that crap, which was what made his moment so exhilarating. The implicit critique was that ``rock’’ had not only become bloated dinosaur music cranked out by rich, bored, stoned old farts, but also that it had simply become a cog in the machine of corporate capitalism. Which was true enough in a general sense, but the Pistols and their comrades built on the tradition left to them by their elders in the underground: The Velvets, Stooges, Beefheart, MC5, Dolls, Ramones, as well as cult oddities like Can and Lee ``Scratch’’ Perry.
The next phase of the crap cycle was an odd one. The Pistols burned out much quicker than your average messiah figures (as seen in the fine new documentary The Filth and the Fury, at a video store near you). Like previous revolutionaries, they opened the marketplace for new sounds, and the Clash, Costello, Talking Heads, Devo and others rushed in to fill the vacuum previously occupied by the naked emperor. But much of this music stayed in the underground, and preferred it there. Meanwhile, the industry was much quicker to co-opt and sanitize the revolution.
The energy unleashed by punk continued to reverberate, inspiring countless new bands as well as veterans like Pete Townshend and Neil Young. By the end of the ‘80s, we were swimming in crap again. Rebellious new sounds like metal and rap had been almost instantly repackaged for us into hair bands like Poison, Quiet Riot, take-your-pick on the one hand, and buffoons like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice on the other. MTV had long since taken over radio’s role of defining the mainstream. And then, just like the Hollywood executives who had no idea why Easy Rider was such a hit, the music industry was stunned when an unknown band from Seattle sold ten million copies of its second album, Nevermind.
Once again, Nirvana inspired a tsunami of creativity, and weasels signed unknown bands for buckets of money in an attempt to recreate the platinum. And suddenly radio was fun again, as new ``alternative’’ stations started breaking the rules and playing some of the great neglected underground bands who inspired the ``new sound.’’ And boy, that sure seems like a long time ago doesn’t it?
I don’t have to tell you at what stage of the crap cycle we currently find ourselves. The dizzying and glorious possibilities are now tightly constricted. Alternative was swallowed whole in record time, and formula resumed its reign. Of course there’s plenty of wonderful stuff percolating through the underground aquifer, but the airwaves are mostly ruled by hypermasculine rap/metal or by prepackaged hyperfeminine divas. That, or hyperadolescent prepackaged boy bands. What’s maddening is that we can still remember when the rules were thrown away, and there was room for tough women and vulnerable men and genuinely innovative youngsters.
But that was a decade ago. What we need is a new messiah to rescue us from the crap, and naturally, start the crap cycle in motion all over again. In one sense, the cycle itself has been co-opted, institutionalized, and reborn as a marketing tool for squeezing marketability out of hungry rookies. But in another sense it can never die, since inevitably someone will come along whom the industry will not expect, blasting out rebellious new sounds they had previously dismissed.
That’s the good news. The bad news is, it may still be a while. The first crap cycle lasted ten years, but the second was thirteen, and the third one, fourteen years. Now we’re only ten years into the fourth. Gawd only knows when the fifth crap cycle will emerge, but it won’t be a minute too soon.

Volume 14, Issue ???, September 2001

Rant & Roll
Mark Zepezauer

Here we go again. Puritanical blowhard Joe Lieberman has introduced the Media Accountability Act of 2001 in the U.S. Senate, which calls for a new ratings system for the music industry. Worse, it would prohibit the ``marketing'' of ``adult-rated'' music to minor children. I'm no fan of the usurper regime currently occupying the White House, but I have to say, this is one reason I'm glad Joltin' Joe and Tipper's husband aren't running the show either.
Given the fact that Joe's bill wouldn't even pass scrutiny from the corrupt mediocrities on the current Supreme Court, you have to know it's just posturing on his part. But it's not exactly empty posturing, either. Let's all remember what happened the last time around, when Mrs. Gore and her allies inspired a season of public hand-wringing and Congressional hearings over the corrupting influence of rock and rap on our nation's impressionable youth. Just like the movie industry in the '30s and the comic book industry in the '50s, the music moguls caved in and came up with a ``voluntary'' system of self-regulation---those ``parental advisory'' stickers which can now be found on t-shirts in the hipper parts of town.
Just as Frank Zappa and other critics warned at the time, this voluntary self-censorship has evolved into a de facto public censorship, governed by Wal-Mart instead of the Federal Trade Commission. The big labels and the national retailers combine to coerce artists into releasing bowdlerized versions of their albums. If they refuse, they don’t get stocked. Meanwhile, parents are lulled into the belief that avoiding any albums with the official Nasty Sticker absolves them of the responsibility of checking out what little Janey and Johnny are listening to.
Except that the ambiguous standards on language and content aren’t being equally applied. Just as the prophet Zappa predicted, the self-interested alliance of capitalists and moralists tends to target black and gay artists more than, say, white and straight ones. In the meantime, there is not one shred of evidence that listening to NWA will make otherwise well-adjusted youngsters acquire an arsenal of semi-automatic firearms and begin dealing crack on street corners. Nor have any studies shown that an otherwise heterosexual teen exposed to Pansy Division will suddenly switch to same-sex affection.
Nobody becomes a Nazi because they heard some catchy little Nazi song. They become Nazis because of an arrested adolescent fixation with conformity, authority figures and scapegoating. And a forced regimen of wholesome musical selections isn’t going to fix that real quick.
I should hasten to add that some studies have shown a link between repeated exposure to violent movies and a subsequent relaxation of inhibitions against violence---but that doesn’t even begin to quantify whether other factors, like a violent home life, may be a factor. That evidence, though, only makes the movie industry’s voluntary ratings system---in which kids are protected more from naked body parts than from violently shredded bodies---that much more of a factor.
When the music industry caves in again to get self-appointed thought police like Lieberman and C. Dolores Tucker off their backs, we can expect similar distortions in what is and isn’t dubbed officially inoffensive. For instance, does Bob Dylan’s ``Ballad of Thin Man’’ contain homosexual imagery? Well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t; it’s a matter of interpretation. Do you want a committee of accountants and politicians doing the interpreting for you?
Folks, if your wee lads are suddenly obsessed with violent music, it might be a clue that something might have bone a bit awry in your parenting choices in the first place. Or it could just b e a normal phase of youthful fascination with morbidity. In either case, other clues should be available. And you will have had at least a decade in which to expose them to a wide variety of music with more palatable moral stances, and many other opportunities to instill the belief that conflict resolution need not involve high-speed projectiles.
Any adolescent worthy of the name will take great delight in finding some form of music you find repugnant or excruciating---just like you did, remember? But if you did your job well in the first place, within a few years your little genetic experiment should be turning you on to interesting new music. In the meantime, you don’t need Joe Lieberman to tell you what your kid will and won’t spend the allowance money on. If you and Joe think those stickers and those ratings are going to keep nasty thoughts out of your baby’s head, you’ve probably blotted out most of your own adolescence through excessive substance abuse. Shame on you.

Now the legal stuff:

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