Damn there's a lot here. I'll try to respond to a few things. I've also got another response from some your comments yesterday, which may take me a little while longer to get together: Carl Wrote: "I thought it interesting that Jake preceded his piece by saying that he thought Fulks's "Jet" cover was what put the "alt" in his alt-country, as well as Dina's comment about how covers are received from alt-country artists as compared to those of New Country singers. It resonated, of course, but what struck me is that the cheeze-cover syndrome is actually not endemic to alt-country the way it was to post-punk and grunge. What's actually more representative is covering classic folk and country songs, a practice that begins with the 80s roots-punk groups (tho in cowpunk it tended much more to the sarcastic brand of irony rather than the with-a-twist irony of, say, The Pogues, and nineties alt-country) but certainly made its most influential emergence with Uncle Tupelo's version of No Depression and on the March 11-20 album. With the perhaps-exception of Warfare (more a wonky misstep than a deliberately sarcastic cover, in my opinion), the Tupelo covers are definitely tributes, and also attempts to reclaim the material of these old songs as relevant to the post-industrial scene the group grew up and lived in. Likewise with other cases - when Neko Case covers a Loretta Lynn song, or Freakwater does One Big Union, is there anyone who thinks there's any element of mockery there at all? There is irony, but it's irony in this sense: "Ironically, though I'm a young hipster in 1990s America, these defiantly unmodern old songs speak more to my heart and my experience than the glitzy music being produced for the radio in my own time." It's a bittersweet irony at most." Jake: Yes, to me those seem more like pure reverence, although perhaps they come off as ironic because many alt country bands choose to do these tunes even though they don't really have the chops to pull them off<g>, which is sort of what a lot of indy bands did with 70s pop tunes. It is true that there was a moment when classic country was critically disfavored by the rock crit establishment. But I think Gram Parsons, etc, sort turned the tide on this and made this stuff hip or at least showed clearly its central role in the rock canon. In this regard, I find these sorts of covers indistringuishable from the beatles doing a carl perkins cover. Or the stones doing a blues tune. However, a lot of these bands also have done more straight ironic covers. I know UT did. And I saw Son Volt do "Shake Some Action," which may or may not qualify, and WIlco do a Petty Song. Nothing the matter with it. These guys are of that scene. It's why they've been so influential. They brought the ideas and practices of the 80s midwest indy rock scene with then when they started to get more country. To me, that was the alt that they brought. Carl Continues: "Now, I'd say the reason for the contradiction (dare I say irony) that Dina pointed out is fairly simple: while Garth and Robbie Fulks might both love a Paul McCartney song equally well, the context is very different. For Fulks to assert that he's playing "Jet" for the love of it is to make an intervention in the whole alternaworld narrative of irony, not to destroy the irony but to put it behind him, to say, "yes, I know what the cultural war we've been through was, but now I'd like to reclaim something from it." It is, to use an unfortunate term, post-irony. It's to grasp that, as a character in Todd Solonz's Happiness says of New Jersey, we've grown up "living in a state of irony" -- for all the reasons Jake so smartly elucidated in his essay -- and we can only transcend it, not escape." Jake: I sort of buy this about Fulks but not totally. Fulks is clearly coming from the preemptive irony place. But he's also about my age I think (I'm 35 born in 1963), so he may be old enough now to have left the need for such irony behind (i.e., transcending it). That or he's just maintaining his posture as uber-hippster, jumping off of a particular bus once he sees that all the suburban philistines seem to be on now (read Garth, etc.). In some ways, that would be the next flanking hipster manuever. Carl: "On the other hand, the (very country-traditional) emotional positioning of Garth and most New Country artists doesn't acknowledge the ironic moment to begin with -- the act of covering a Billy Joel song has no relationship to the canonical contest that Jake described. I recently read art writer Arthur Danto saying that in the 1990s, "the art criticism is built into the art," since frequently the only way to affect a jaded viewer is to anticipate the series of historicized responses she'll have and then strategically counter or subvert them." Jake: That Danto line is great. That's exactly what I meant with the preemptive irony. " Unlike Garth doing Billy Joel (or everyone and his mom doing the Beatles tribute album), Fulks's "Jet" cover (if it's as good as you folks say) is doing something similar, and that's what puts the alt in his country. Likewise, Tupelo was anticipating that country was not considered cool by their punk peers, and asserting back in their face that it was -- rather than cadging about behind an ironic shield and half-allowing people to think they were kidding. Again there is an irony here, a Mobius-strip half-twist, but it isn't sarcasm. It isn't like Sid Vicious singing My Way." Jake: I guess I can buy that. Although I never thought of UT as punk. Not like Black Flag or the Pistols or Circle Jerks or Ramones or something. That's punk to me. UT was an indy rock band influenced by punk. To me they were one part Soul Asylum (an indy rock band influenced by punk), one part Neil, and one part Carter Family, with a little Working Man's Dead thrown in. I never felt like they had to put it in anyone's face that country was cool. They always had the indy rock cred, at least in my book. The early Jayhawks, on the other hand, were a different story... They were great, but very Gram with very little rock. I know, I've got the first album on tape and was quite surprised by their sound when my pop band opened for them the first time they played in Madison, Wi in 1986. As for March 16, when it came out, it was a bit of a surprise, but not much of one. Everything on there was pre-figured by the previous two releases (imho). Be that as it may, I do agree that Garth's covers are received differently in hipster circles. But in the culture at large, where the whole irony thing is maybe just finally sinking in, I'm not sure. Those people might think it's kind of cool and funny, which of course just reinforces who unhip and behind the times they are, because they're only just getting the joke now, long after the hipsters have moved on. Carl: "(Incidentally I can't quite buy The Christian Life as having much to do with the kinds of covers Jake was addressing. When I asked what "the first" was, I really meant of the trend he was discussing - I thought it'd be significant to know if there were cheeze-covers that fell squarely into the same position - for instance did Iggy Pop ever sing a Carpenters song? Or what about that Banana Splits cover of the TV cartoon theme?)" Jake: Yes I agree. Besides, Roger M is a christian. Ultimately, though I don't think it matter who was first or when. It's more about context than chronology. I'm working on another post that will address this in more detail. Carl: "Now, the question in the context of Jake's essay is, why? Being a few years younger than Jake (or so I gather), my friends and I don't have the same relationship to 70s music that he describes. Yeah, it was the soundtrack to some of our teenage beer-drinking, but so was punk, ska and new wave. Our older siblings loved Emerson, Lake and Palmer; we listened to it for a couple of months, when we borrowed their years-old vinyl, then dropped it and moved on." Jake: I think you're on to something here. As I said, I'm 35 (b.1963). My brother is 31 (b.1967). Westerberg is 38 I think. Westerberg and I are the tail of the baby boom. If you're 31-32, you're more my brother's age. I see you as more the beginning of gen x. It's odd that a few years would make a difference, but in this discussion it really does. Indeed, It's the difference between Westerberg (b.1960) and Cobain (b.1967). Which I think is the difference between banging your head on Rock's glass ceiling and breaking the thing down and selling huge. This is the contextual shift I'm talking about. And it operated on many different levels. It's also the difference between being 12 (westerberg) or 9 (Jake) in 1972 and being 5 (Cobain or my brother Ben), which is a big difference in terms of the role music plays in your life. It also changes the context in which you first heard punk rock. The first time I heard punk was probably around 1977-78 when they played the Pistols on WPGU in Champaign, Ill. I wsa 13-14. It took me a couple of more years to really get into it. Indeed, I probably really didn't get into until 1979 or so. I listened to a lot of it in High School. But for me it was pretty much completely divorced from fashion and rules of hipness, because unlike my bro's cohort (and probably your's too) I was probably the only kid in my shool who bought "Given Enough Rope by the Clash" when it came out. Or perhaps to give you a better idea, I got called a punk rocker for wearing a Police "Outlandos de Amour" t-shirt in 11th grade (1980), despite the fact that I never really dressed punk and the Police were really pretty far from Punk. Slowly as I read more rock criticism (my only avenue for learning about this stuff, since the didn't play much of it on the radio--although WMMS in cleveland did play some new wave in the early 80s), I learned that butt rock wasn't cool. And I never really liked AC/DC in high school (I only came back to that later). But we still played Bowie, Cars, and Lynard Skynard in my high school band. Never could get those guys to play the Ramones though. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think your experience is necessarily at odds with mine. It's just a part of the process I'm talking about. It's also why the time was right for Nirvana to break through when it did. Not because Nirvana was particularly pathbreaking. They weren't. They were a great punk-pop band that wrote great songs. Better than the Replacements? I don't think so. Right time right place. Definitely. And part of what contributed to that right time right place was all the stuff the Mats did. Carl: "I was not quite ten years old when punk first arrived in the nearest metropolitan centre; I could hear its faint signals by turning my transistor radio at just the right angle toward the window. Although I've experienced my fair share of feeling crowded out by baby boomers -- and still do -- the 70s were just as much a given part of the culture I came of age in as the 60s. They didn't belong to me, and I'm not especially nostalgic for them. I'm nostalgic for the Replacements. Or, to give an instance of a song a band I was in did cover, Nena's 99 Luftballoons. Linklater's 70s movie gets fragments of my experience (and of anyone's who went to high school), but his Happy Dazed nostalgia is a lot less potent for me than the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack. When DOA covered Randy Bachman's "Where Evil Grows," it was the first time I ever heard the song. And when Sonic Youth became Ciccone Youth I knew they weren't making fun of Madonna." Jake: There again, just what I'm saying. Put 80s in place of the 1970s rock, the process is the same. My bro had the first popular 80s cover band up here in Seattle, a few years ago called 80 Proof. They were mining the same ironic territory. Carl: "Eighties culture wasn't something boomers ever had any interest in, and never did much to promote -- much unlike the arena rock of the 70s, when they were still young enough to care. But my nostalgia's pretty limited. The eighties, after all, were something we all just kept wishing would be over, even at the time." Jake: I'm not so sure about the first statement. I will admit that it was a confusing decade. As for the rest, I'm not surprised you'd say that. I think I could have said the same thing about the 1970s when I was younger. Slowly I've change my mind. You may not, but other people in your cohort already are changing theirs about the 1980s. Perhaps you just happened to be old enough in the 1980s to spend most of it off on the fringe being a rock music hipster. Which points to how much bigger that ghetto probably was by the time people in your cohort entered their late teens-twenties. By then, it was viable to spend most of your time there ignoring the mainstream, because there was a large flourishing fringe infra-structure operating parallel to the mainstream culture. At least in high school, I didn't have this luxury. In some other places kids my age already did (probably more on the coasts, but also in Detroit where Touch and Go records started in the early 80s and in College towns). But the further back into the 80s and the mid to late 70s you go, the smaller and smaller this infrastructure was (indeed to even call it infrastructure may be a little ridiculous before about 1978). I'm sure there are people from the 1970s who could speak of having little nostalgia for it (like maybe the Tom Verlaines and Patti Smiths of the world). But not many. Because you'd really have to have stuck your head in the sand during this period to miss it. That's not true of the 1980s, especially from about 1983-84 on. There was a much more fully integrated national (and even international underground rock scene). And there are an increasingly large number of people in your cohort born after 1966-67, who pretty much grew up completely insulated from the Boomer canon, with a rock history that begins with the Clash, Black Flag, and the Specials. To the point where by the early 90s, Alternative Press can publish an issue of it's 100 most important rock albums of all time and not include anything before 1977. In this context, the event I describe aren't important because that Mats were there first. Indeed, the Mats were part of the second or third or maybe even fourth wave of Indy bands. They weren't blazing the trail for the indy club tour circuit. X and Black Flag and the SST bands were in late 70s and early 80s. But they're important, because they may be the last generation of bands that came of age in time when one couldn't grow up completely insulated from the Boomer classic rock. And they hit their prime at time when a certain consensus was shifting and did a great deal to push that process along. Carl: "So what happens if we subtract or at least way demote nostalgia in Jake's equation? We're left with the "up is down, bad is good, stupid is smart" landscape - *in and of itself*. In other words, the cultural hegemony had already collapsed in large part (mainly because we never paid much attention to hippies). Nihilism, irony, David Letterman - these are the things that we grew up with, in the vacuum left by the baby boom - and they're also the things we began to react against. I think country and old-time revivalism is part of that effort. So too is the recent embrace of pop music, with the unlikely but not at all joking elevation of the Beach Boys (and Ennio Morricone) to heroic status for sound-obsessed indie-pop experimentalists." Jake: Something about this doesn't strike me right, but I'm not sure what. Carl: "I don't think this all would have worked except for another accident of history -- the people several years younger than me. There are a hell of a lot of teenagers today. There are in fact more of them than there are baby boomers. And if you turn on your TV or radio, you'll see how much of the culture is turning to address them. This has been altering the culturallandscape, and I think the double-punch of grunge-lounge was the last part of music history configured as a reaction to the baby boom. Punk still matters now, but *not* as a response to 70s arena-rock. Rather, punk is a cultural memory and influence that's spun itself into a million variations and scenes. There is no great villified music like that of Boston (whose songs, speaking of irony, were covered by the horribly pompous pop band that played at my newspaper's awards dinner last night, ugh). And the great gravitational force of those younger people is helping to change things very quickly, to act as a counterweight to boomer power. Disco, hair bands, punk rock, easy-listening, rockabilly, old-school hip-hop - they're all puzzling puzzle pieces, available to be jammed together in new ways with your two turntables and a microphone." Jake: Which is just another way of saying that kids these days may be the first true post-moderists, where it all be done already, they know it, they don't care, and they're just happy to put a bunch of different elements together into a cool collage, juxtaposing all sort of incongrous signifiers into a crazy fusion cuisine. Perhaps the irony I speak of is what ultimately killed rock modernism, but is now in the process of disintegrating itself as it outlives it's usefulness. Carl: "There's a just-slightly-overblown piece today in Salon about "Teen Millennialism" (see Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as the new cultural moment. Here's a relevant passage: "It's a time when ghosts, flung loose from meaning and all its bearings, are commonplace, and when the 1960s have plummeted so far through the glass darkly that lives and deaths like [John] Lennon's... seem innocent and quaint." No reverent nostalgia there. And yet there is something I find optimistic in that chaos. It's a sense that though the past is never past, we need not be burdened by it. We don't need to defend ourselves from it with an ironic shield - we are too concerned with looking forward, in a confusing mix of dread and anticipation. I think that eagerness for the next action is what loving a hook-crazy pop song is all about. Or the anxiety of it might make you crave country authenticity. And either one is reason enough to sing that song again, to make it your own." Jake: Indeed. Jake London
