“Rock & Roll” is dead. Thank god.
On Jack White, Shame (the band), and the irrelevance of genre
Jack White has never been one for authenticity. Even when he crashed into pop’s consciousness with “Fell in Love With a Girl” and “Seven Nation Army” and was crowned a “Rock & Roll Savior”, it was based on a series of gimmicks. They didn’t have a bassist. They were always color coordinated. They said they were brother and sister, though their divorce certificate suggested otherwise.
But no one really cared because White Blood Cells and Elephant were undeniably great records that reimagined the past in a more modern context. Audiences are usually willing to suspend a healthy amount of disbelief if the product is good enough. Sometimes, like in the case of the White Stripes, the artifice is part of the fun.
It’s strange, then, that White is often seen as the torchbearer for rock purists, who endlessly clamor that the genre has died. In an interview to promote his most recent solo record, Boarding House Reach, White said that “rock & roll needs an injection of some new, young blood to really just knock everybody dead right now.”
Listening to his latest record, though, it’s clear that White wasn’t referring to his own music. Its songs are a confusing hodgepodge of jam-band beats and bloated synths that sound less like a garage band and more like GarageBand. The lyrics, meanwhile, sound somewhere between tossed-off midnight scrawlings and 9th grade creative writing. One song asks, over and over, “Who’s looking to start a corporation?” In another, White does his best impression of Siri in an attempt to make an obvious comment on modern technologies. On “Ezmerelda Steals the Show,” he answers the unasked question: what would happen if the Kinks only wrote in alliterative verse?
For being so concerned with the state of “rock & roll,” one would think that White would either make a back-to-basics record that re-affirms his status as a serious guitarist or something boldly experimental that seeks to re-establish himself, and in turn the genre, as relevant. Boarding House Reach does neither. Older purists will likely think White has lost the magic touch, while younger listeners will hear an aging man struggling to wrap his head around the changes of the past decade. The irony is that this might be White’s most authentic record in that it’s not based on gimmickry. Instead, it sounds like the actual Jack White: someone with an abundance of both time and wealth, aimlessly dicking around.
The thing that White and other aging rock stars (see Bono, Roger Daltrey, et al.) seem to misunderstand is that their prevailing metaphor for the state of the genre renders “rock & roll” a sickly geriatric, longing for just enough medicine to make it through the weekend. I think the real trouble is with the term “rock & roll,” a phrase so steeped in Boomer nostalgia that it’s an inaccurate description for anything relating to the contemporary. Leaning so heavily on such a loaded term dismisses any music that interrogates the realities, attitudes, and aesthetics unique to our internet era. The old guards don’t want to consider what it’s like to grow up today, they just want to know where they can find “the next Dylan.”
Songs of Praise, the debut from Shame, is likely the kind of “injection” that White was suggesting. It’s loud, fast, aggressive, sarcastic, clever, and heartfelt all at once. Shame is indebted to the post-punk of Wire, the Fall, and Gang of Four, but it’s not limited by those influences. Much like White Blood Cells and Elephant reconstructed Delta blues and 60s garage rock to make something that spoke to the new millenium, their songs reflect the grim prospects of the present: post-Brexit England (“Visa Vulture”), the conspicuous consumption of internet culture (“The Lick”), and the solipsism of late-capitalism (“Friction”).
Refreshingly, the band is not interested in nostalgia for a bygone era. “The idea of a rock star is offensive,” Charlie Steen, the band’s lead singer, told The Guardian. “I think the idea of the leather jacket-wearing, womanizing, drug-fueled rock star should be burned.”
It was this spirit that led me searching for a “secret venue” in West Philly to see Shame on a snowy Thursday. When I eventually found the house number, I assumed it was the wrong place. The address we had been emailed that morning matched, but the steps to the door led us to an underground bar filled with smoke and a television playing a M*A*S*H re-run.
A bartender directed me upstairs, where I settled in near the front. Next to me were some oldheads who fistpumped along when some obscure 80s grindcore blared over the speakers between sets. “I don’t collect records anymore, man,” one of them told his friend. “I’m into action figures and collectibles and shit now. Marky Ramone has a tomato sauce company. Did you know that? Yeah, so, I’ve got a jar of that.”
Up front, there were some 15 year olds with Xs on their hands, looking equal parts thrilled and terrified to be next to the microphone and what they imagined might eventually break into a pit. The lights went down and five scrawny kids came to the makeshift stage. Steen, the shortest one of the bunch, grabbed the microphone. “We’re a country-western band from South London called Shame.” And with that, the band broke into the first track from Songs of Praise, “Dust on Trial.” The opening riff alone sent the oldheads and 15 year olds alike into ecstatic head-banging fits.
Steen swayed back and forth, frantically shrugging his shoulders and marching to his band’s propulsive beat. Occasionally, he raised both of his arms in the air like a preacher and called out some inaudible encouragement to the crowd. During “Concrete,” the 15 year olds moved to the side, overwhelmed by the dancing in the pit, but their eyes were still fixed on the band, who seemed to pick up steam with every song. By “Tasteless,” the dingy floor began to buckle under the 80 or so people dancing. “We don’t want this floor to cave in,” Steen said at the song’s conclusion, which the audience playfully booed. “Well, shit, I don’t want to break my leg, Philadelphia.”
Despite his aversion to the rock star archetype, Steen’s control of an audience is in line with the classic front men. He demands your attention, leading you to believe through his intense urgency that this performance is a grave matter. Questions of whether or not “rock & roll” was alive or dead, however, were irrelevant: this was a performance happening in the present tense, he seemed to say, so you’d better pay attention.
“If you don’t like it, it doesn’t matter,” he said at one point, taunting the audience. “This is entertainment!”
