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Sound of conflict
Noah Greene
Last Thursday I broke down and spent my last
twenty bucks to see the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at Detroit's
Majestic Theater. Right now, five days and no dollars later,
I'm one hundred percent satisfied. What made the experience
particularly fulfilling? Well, conversation and travel predicaments
aside, the concept is hard to nail down; there is something
about this band that is so bleedin' cool and exciting. I think
I'd be safe to call it conflict; call it honest animosity.
Wading through the insistently mediocre Starlight
Desperados, the pitiful glam/punk band that opened the show
was a near painful experience. This continual problem with defining
what makes a rock 'n' roll band worthwhile, what makes them
cool, is a bit puzzling, and I've pondered the issue over the
weekend. I'm pretty sure the reason the Desperados were so fervently
uncool and uninteresting stemmed directly from the obvious effort
they put into being cool. It's just not something you can try
to do. You are or you aren't. Sparks either fly or they don't.
The thing, to me, that makes a rock 'n' roll band something
is the tension and conflict-just the same as any other art medium.
B.R.M.C. holds that coveted conflict in a
loose and careless grip. Perfect. Let me explain:
The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club played last. After a solid half-hour
of build-up and sound checks the house lights went down, a string
of blue lights went up, the fog machines burst into action and
an enormous black banner unfurled on the back wall.
Maybe I'm just biased, being as infatuated
with their records as I am, but when Peter Hayes, Robert Turner
and Nick Jago took the stage swaggering, the true beauty of
genuine rock 'n' roll rebellion just hit me in the gut. And
it's not just their get-up, their hair, the big-body guitars
or their heartthrob saunter. It's not even their record-quality
cohesion as a live band. It's something bigger than that. It's
this emotion, this vibe, if you will, that simply bleeds conflict
and the true spirit that birthed this racket in the very first
place.
B.R.M.C. play a breed of noise not so very
unique. Bass heavy and simply thick with raw, dirty guitar drones,
their songwriting is quite often tinged with a not-so-subtle
blues element. The drumming is typically a standard 4/4 rock
beat and Hayes and Turner switch off vocal duties almost indistinguishably,
both voices low and sulky. The all too common comparisons to
the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Stone Roses and Starflyer 59 seem
apt enough to my ear. No, the appeal of the Black Rebel Motorcycle
Club is not the music alone.
The bottom line is that these boys know what
they're opposing, what they've turned their backs on. It shows.
It's ever so clear in their lyrics, some tracks more obvious
than others with cuts like "White Palms" and "Salvation"
from their self-titled debut (Virgin 2001) or the infamous "Generation"
on their latest Virgin release, Take Them On, On Your Own
(2003). Any listener with a half a brain can hear the bitterness.
And it's first generation. These guys have a background in fundamentalism
and an animosity that's as plain as day.
What is so appealing about this band, unlike
the vast majority of modern rock acts, is their obvious understanding
of what they rebel against. The reason bands from the "big
bad" 60s were so hot, at least in part, was their close
proximity to the values they devalued; the authority on which
they'd turned their backs. Now, 40 years and over a generation
later, most of us have lost all conscious sight of that. We've
resorted to clichés, to rehash meaningless slogans promoting
freedom from dictates that are no longer relevant.
B.R.M.C. doesn't make that mistake. B.R.M.C.
bears an honest reckoning. "The whole f**king point of
art," said Hayes in a recent interview, "is to question
what's going on." You hear it in their words, you see it
in their swagger: this is a band that defines cool. This is
a band that knows how to hate.
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Editorial
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