Eels
Rock Despite Frat Boys
by Jacob Kramer-Duffield
I
tend not to do things halfway with my rock n roll music.
Of the over 200 CDs I own, 75 percent or so are by four bands. Until
recently, I had seen three of those four bands, but always managed
to miss the fourth the Eels. I was starting to get nervous.
Especially given the Buddy Holly-Big Bopper-Jimi Hendrix-Lynyrd
Skynyrd-John Lennon-Paul McCartney (okay so hes not dead,
but tell me with a straight face that you would pay real money to
see a concert by the musical catastrophe that Paul has become in
the last 30 years) nature of the medium.
Then I heard that the Eels were going to tour in the U.S. after
several months in Europe. Joy! Then I heard that they were even
coming to Cleveland. Double joy! Then I saw when they were coming:
March 28. When I would be on spring break. At an ultimate frisbee
tournament. In Greenville, North Carolina. Unjoy.
I scrambled, looking at all the other dates and seeing if there
were any that didnt conflict with my previous engagements
hobbling my knees for life, and the only one that came close to
working was the March 25 date in Philadelphia. All I would need
to do to go to that show would be drive all night from Statesboro,
Georgia to my familys house in Maryland, sleep a couple hours,
drive the three hours to Philly, see the show, and drive the three
hours back without passing out. Naturally, I booked the tickets
without thinking twice.
Arriving on South Street in Philadelphia with a couple of hours
to kill, I decided it was imperative I get myself a cheesesteak.
Walking up and down the street most of it designed for tourists,
with Best [Insert Product Here] on South Street signs
in the windows I found the sub shop that looked most like
a hole in a wall and decided they proably had the best cheesesteaks.
One bite told me I was right, and later descriptions of the grease
dripping from steak and cheese alike, drenching my hands, nearly
convinced a vegan friend to give up the game then and there.
Point being: as I was leaving the shop, I noticed a number of familiar
faces in the line. A tall guy with a red mohawk, a scruffy guy with
glasses
could it be? A tenth of a second later, I realized
that yes, the man with the red mohawk was Koool G Murder, and the
scruffy guy with glasses was, indeed, E, the man behind the Eels.
Below is an approximate transcript of my internal monologue in the
ensuing seconds:
Oh my God, its E and the band. Should I ask him for
an autograph
no, no, thats not cool, and I dont
have a pen anyways
shit, I cant just stand here, um,
just keep walking, dont stare, dont smile like an idiot,
oh my God, Es looking at me, just nod your head, JKD! (JKD
nods head, E nods head in return), WHOOO, he nodded back, just keep
walking dont trip or anything okay good (JKD stumbles into
door, exits on second attempt, turns left, walks for 50 feet, turns
back right, walks 60 feet, crosses street, stands dumbstruck, walks
left 50 feet, stares into space for five minutes).
So I was pretty impressed with myself for not being the typical
obsessed fan, or at least not letting on that I own every CD E has
ever been involved in and had driven 14 hours to see the show and
structured a week of my life around the show.
The show itself
well, I couldnt help but be the obviously
most nutso fan in the audience, bouncing and dancing by myself almost
the whole show, and screaming myself to a nearly voice-less hoarseness.
I could go through, song by song, and document the rockingness of
the show, but
language is so limiting in these regards.
Nothing could really take away from the sheer joy of the experience
for me, but some of the audience did their best to do so. Below
are a few excerpts from drummer Butchs on-line diary describing
the problem:
This is the only night this year where something isnt
quite right in the air. Most of the audience is great and with us,
but, unbeknownst to most in the room, there is a gaggle of what
E refers to as dumb ass frat boys right up in front
of Koools side of the stage. They throw things on the stage
and talk loudly in their dumb ass frat boy voices. During one song
E even goes so far as to stand on their hands to shut them up. Eventually
one of the D.A.F.B.s jumps up onto the stage. He is led out the
stage door to the alley and the air immediately clears, but not
enough. E prepares the crowd for me to sing my upcoming hit single
I Am A Sad Clown. He explains that I am a drummer, not
an animal. I am an ARTIST. And I need complete silence when I work.
Its hard to concentrate on emoting when a bunch of dudes are
screaming my name (not that I dont appreciate it).
This leads me to what I think is a generalized problem of D.A.F.B.s
in music, and some D.A.F.B.s at the concert in particular, and that
makes me not joyful.
Let me be more specific: for most of my life, Ive been more
than willing to put up with the hubris of rock bands and even rock
fans because at heart theyre just like me, and are all huge
dorks. Behind the leather jackets, sunglasses and coke-powdered
noses of a lot of rock stars is a kid who was a big-time loser growing
up, and who spent a lot of time alone, playing the guitar and listening
to music. They get really good at it, and boom, theyre rock
stars, and overindulge and act cool like the kids who picked on
them growing up. Sorta same with fans they listen to way
too much music, and wake up one day and are into the right bands
and already wearing all the clothes that everyone wants to wear,
and bang, theyre cool, and its their revenge on the
kids who picked on them and who want to be like them now, and thats
fine if maybe theyre a little pompous now.
But in the last several years the most disturbing trend to my mind
hasnt been the audio diarrhea from the likes of Limp Bizkit,
Drowning Pool, P.O.D., Puddle of Mudd and all those other putzes
its the fact that these bands, the most popular and
successful rock bands, are made up of those D.A.F.B.s,
those guys who pick on skinny Depeche Mode-listening kids in high
school, who do keg stands without even a trace of irony. Theres
just some cosmic imbalance at work here, and now that the D.A.F.B.s
influence of rock fandom has spread like a wheat fungus into the
followers of actually good bands, it pisses me the hell off. Metalheads
and rock fans are supposed to be pathetic loners with stringy, unkempt
hair and too many black concert t-shirts thats my kind
of people. Buzzed hair, cologne (COLOGNE!?! Truly; I smelled CK
One) and Abercrombie have their place, I suppose, but it isnt
anywhere near a real rock n roll show. Id even
take Strokes sycophants over these people.
Thankfully, it seems like maybe the record companies have decided
dork is The Next Big Thing in rock I even heard the White
Stripes on the radio like 10 times over spring break. And as much
as I may complain about kids with self-consciously bad fashion sense
and really pretentious and arbitrary tastes in music that sounds
basically the same, I have to admit that Im basically one
of them at heart.
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