In 1990, late visionary comedian Bill Hicks stood on the stage at Montreal's Just For Laughs comedy festival and shouted, "I want my rock stars dead!" Hicks was challenging the emerging idea that musicians should serve as role models for children. At the time, Hicks was addressing the exploding popularity of artists like New Kids On the Block and Debbie Gibson, while bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath were under fire for writing "filthy" lyrics by the notorious Parents Music Resource Center. Cofounder Tipper Gore's PMRC was responsible for the parental warning stickers which adorn many albums, as well as advocating the censorship and banning of music that they deemed to be offensive. While the hearings brought on by the PMRC have come and gone, their message lives on in rock musicians today who have given up their characteristic decadency for a newfound wholesome image.
There is an emerging trend for rock musicians to combat social problems and use their fame as a soapbox to spread idealistic messages. For example, several recent albums, such as Rise Against's Appeal To Reason included a flyer for animal rights activists, like PETA. Other musicians instead choose to "Rock the Vote" in order to show support for politicians. While I expect this kind of behaviour from artists from other musical genres, modelling good behaviour and advocating positive morality has no place in rock 'n' roll. I know what you're thinking-what about Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and Cat Stevens? While many may consider them to be rock musicians, I would instead classify them as folk artists who at best straddle the line between folk and rock, and thus are not representative of the genre.
Have musicians today lost a sense of the social deviance that rock music used to stand for? There was a time when rock stars were pompous drug addicts who wouldn't think twice about tearing apart their hotel rooms and downing bottles of Black Death vodka on stage. There was a time when rock stars could get away with unashamedly singing about escapades with groupies. It was a time when songs about the government weren't pop-punk clichés. There was a time when rock musicians weren't Diet Coke-drinking fashion models-they were men and women who played for the sake of the music alone.
If parents don't want their kids listening to "offensive" music, it's up to them to keep their children away from it. Rock musicians should not have to clean up their act because the parents of some children haven't provided them with better models of behaviour.
"When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children?" Hicks asks. If it were up to me, I'd want my kids to see the lead singer encourage the crowd to form a mosh pit and then dive on top of them. I want the guitar player to smoke and the drummer to take swigs of beer between songs. I want my kids to see musicians on the stage who are so out of it that they can barely smash their guitars without collapsing. As Hicks put it, "I want my kids listening to people who fucking rocked."
Spring Break
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posted 5/05/09 @ 2:28 PM EST
I LOVEEEE MYSELFF!!! :) <3
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