Hip Hip “Hurray For The Riff Raff”!!
I only discovered “Hurray for the Riff Raff” three days ago, although according to the immediate internet search I conducted they’ve been performing since 2007. But that’s the way of 21st century music discovery: I found it off a random click on a YouTube sidebar while watching some other modern folk bands I already like. No DJ to prepare me (how archaic!) or friend to stoke me up first. Instead I was merely flipping through some things I already know, and some things I didn’t care about, and slowly the search algorithms work out that I might want to see this visage of Alynda Lee Segarra suddenly filling my screen, resolving itself by step into high-definition while she’s singing blues tones about blues topics in a structure of amalgamated countryfied folk – a genre whose official title I don’t know, and shouldn’t be decided yet anyway, and why does it matter?
What I do know is I was immediately struck and paying attention. Here’s a song and emotion I understand. Different and resonant, but familiar and consoling. For a music lover, suddenly to be confronted with a new sound that vibrates throughout all levels of your brain and soul is always an ecstatic experience – and doesn’t happen often. These days, for me anyway, it’s a less than a once a year phenomenon, maybe, hopefully. Meanwhile you find only that one band you kinda like, or that one good song but not a whole album, or that pop sensation which is admirably talented but so clearly rather artificial. You wait – wait and hope for a band to believe in once again.
To become a fan suddenly, and to know it, is a profound experience for the musically affected. Utterly akin to falling in crush with some gorgeous awesome person you just met. You remember it always with that sad-happiness of romantic nostalgia – love at first listen.
I still remember hearing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time, the first week it was being played, on the stereo in my room an hour south of Seattle, when I was barely a teenager. Undoubtedly it was an overcast day, being Washington, and I remember the DJ saying something about a new band – I think I was doing homework. Then this tune came on. Startled, I stopped what I was doing, and here is where my memory really kicks in: because suddenly this song is piercing through me in a way that was impossible to ignore. My attention completely turned to the radio. What is this I’m hearing? So different but making so much sense. A theme instantaneously explaining to me exactly how I feel miraculously with music. To say it’s a mystical experience is not overstating it. And if you’ve had this sort of feeling then keep reading. I’ve only had that experience perhaps a score of times in three decades of life, but I had it again the other night when I heard: “Look Out Mama”.
And once you’re a fan of something you can never be objective about it again. Even if they eventually sour it for you: some band you loved, puts out a few shitty albums and suddenly one day they’re the soundtrack to a Ford commercial. But still you can’t judge them clearly. Once a fan, you’re shaded by that original adoration. Like a past partner, forever emblazoned in your heart by that one-time rush of pure true feeling.
But…. it’s a modern tragedy that I actually fear rooting for a band these days. Because who roots for bands now? Mostly fourteen year old girls, naive to the long history of artificially constructed groups and commercialized fandom within the ancient corruption that is the lingering music industry. Twitter is chock full of them. The popular music scene is so utterly debased that it’s become its own parody now for decades. Boy bands and oversexualized pop idols are a photocopy of a photocopy for so many years that it’s less a ripoff of the originals than some artificial hybrid of emotionally manipulative propaganda. Not unlike advertising in both style and content: sensationalized, vacuous, and constantly selling you something. We accept that fourteen-year-olds don’t know any better and it’s become a perverted generational right of passage to love a fake boyband or a fake metal band or a fake hip hop band and believe that the bullshit style they’re selling you is honest and truthful. This is growing up in pernicious late capitalism.
But harrumph, my gen-x bitterness has gotten me away from the simple fact that “Hurray For The Riff Raff” is fucking amazing. Not because they’re perfectly rootsy, or perfectly country, or perfectly genuinely hipster anything. They straight sending out a beautiful sound and that’s what matters. A sound reminiscent of perhaps Lucinda Williams, Woody Guthrie, Amy Winehouse, Patsi Cline, Jim Croce, John Lennon, Joan Baez, and maybe even some Dolly Parton if I’m not mistaken. There’s touches of Cat Power, or Elliott Smith, and even Erykah Badu in there, along with plenty more I’m sure.
The scary thing is they’re clearly ready for fame. They’re professional, seasoned, and solid. Alynda has stage-presence, tele-presence, and that light jocularity and accessible persona of a performer ready to be an American celebrity. Only they’re not quite yet lost in the swift current of destructive corporate overexposure we all know destroys genuine bands and genuine people. They’re ready for say, an SNL appearance, but is that what they really need? I try not to begrudge any artist access to money, because money makes life easier. But it doesn’t make art better. It’s cliche I know, but I stick with the old notions of what selling out does to a band. So I pray to the ghost of Lester Banks they can resist. Because I’m always amazed at the few acts that can become nationally or internationally famous and maintain some shred of integrity and creative spark — or not be personally destroyed by it. Rare, for sure.
The concept of the “pop star” is only a half century old and yet it has become such an overblown international fiasco that it’s hard to wish it on anyone you respect. Acclaim means popularity, fame, money, and comfort. And you just can’t deny the power of all that. For this is the USA after all, where cash rules everything and fame is a universal goal.
But before I too utterly prognosticate a dire rote future (too late!) let me give up one last honest genuine cheer for a band which is utterly, devastating wonderful right now, and I pray that fire keeps burning a while longer.
