Beatles For Sale

After enduring a summer of forced nostalgia for the 40th anniv-ersary of Woodstock – a cultural watershed that becomes less relevant each time the baby boomers regurgitate it with an over-inflated sense of self-importance – we’ve come back to a musical moment worth celebrating: Beatlemania.

At least as far as the media is concerned, the release of The Beatles: Rock Band (and new editions of the band’s complete catalog) has generated the most sustained burst of modern Beatlemania since The Beatles Anthology aired on ABC in November 1995. While that documentary was roughly tied to Beatlemania’s 30-year anniversary, the Rock Band frenzy is part of a much bigger and much more American ideal: capitalism.

The reissues and box sets will surely sell briskly – never underestimate the public’s willingness to re-buy a Beatles product they already own – but it’s Rock Band that’s destined to be the larger phenomenon. Despite prices ranging from $50 to $250, depending upon whether you’re buying the bare bones or deluxe edition, the set is destined to be the season’s must-have item and the year’s most un-findable holiday gift.

All of which is to be expected, but it ignores the larger shift that comes with introducing the next generation of Beatles fans to the music in an entirely new way — one that makes the music secondary to the medium.

Like so many others, as a kid discovering the band, if I wanted more Beatles, there was basically only one way to get it: the albums. So you went out and bought them and played them over and over, and everything else you heard seemed a little less special after that, because you knew the Beatles had done it first. (To this day the proper order of Revolver still feels slightly off to me, having fallen in love with the album after purchasing it on cassette with a rearranged tracklist). And if buying an album wasn’t quite scratching that itch then there were tapes of rare recordings, the Anthology set, Live at the BBC, Past Masters and more. But generally you got the music as it was originally meant to be heard.

Not anymore.

For the tweens and teens coming at many of these songs for the first time, Rock Band alters the context of those revelatory encounters, so that rather than actually experiencing the music – poring over it, listening with headphones, marveling at the sonic tricks and innovations – it’s literally a game. The Cavern Club becomes something you’ve got to get through before you play Shea Stadium; “Eight Days A Week” has to be mastered before you get to “I Am the Walrus” and so forth.

In short, interacting with the music becomes more about using than listening.

There’s nothing wrong with approaching a band from the standpoint of its singles and best-known tracks — that’s how popular music has historically been marketed, after all — but when you bought the album you got not only the songs you knew you wanted, but the stuff you didn’t know you wanted – much of which was even better than the tracks you were familiar with.

There’s less surprise with Rock Band; the game comes pre-loaded with 45 songs from across their career, with another 31 available to download at $1.99 a pop. The game may well lead an entirely new generation to purchase Beatles discs and repeat the same experience of previous generations, but I’m not optimistic.

(To be fair, the entirety of Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road make up the bulk of those 31 additional downloads, but buying them that way isn’t really the same as buying the album, is it?)

After all, the Beatles were among the first rock groups to pioneer “the album,” yet as a new brood of music fans wraps their heads around this material for the first time, that format appears to be on its way out, replaced by the ubiquitous 99-cent digital single.

As far as authentic visceral experiences go, making music ranks fairly near the top, but there’s no way a game can truly replicate that, no matter how good the technology is. Even if you get the same hair-raising thrill at moments like the bridge of “Hello Goodbye” or those ringing electric guitar notes at the close of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” it’s not the real thing. Call it the modern musical equivalent of a flight-simulator: sure, you may be “piloting the plane,” but you’re not feeling the G-force.

Playing the songs as a game rather than as music takes away the mystery of “How did they do that?” and replaces it with “How do you do that?” and in turn progress to the next level.

Funnily, now that Beatlemania has risen again, Oasis, the Fab Four’s greatest imitators, appear to have called it a day. Having ascended to fame around the same time as The Beatles Anthology, the Gallagher brothers seem to have finally given up after one fight too many and a career built on pilfering any Beatles idea they could grab..

Oasis make a great case against Rock Band: if Liam and Noel had had access to something similar they might not have been the band they became (whether that’s a good thing or not is up for debate).

If they’d been able to sit in the living room and knock back lagers while piddling around with buttons and plastic guitars, they would’ve merely reproduced exact copies of Beatles songs. Rather, it took using real instruments to work out the mechanics of music – the hows and whys of what makes a great pop song – for the brothers to produce almost exact copies of Beatles songs. Everyone has their own opinion on Oasis, but it’s pretty hard to argue with even their latter-day highlights like “She Is Love,” let alone bona fide classics like “Live Forever” and “Wonderwall.”

Everybody knows the old saw about the Velvet Underground – they didn’t sell many records, but everyone who bought one went out and started a band. Well everybody did – and still does – buy Beatles records and, for better or worse, a hell of a lot of bands were formed because of them. But those kids played real guitars and wrote their own songs and took drugs and over time turned into the Velvets and Bowie and the Ramones and more, which in the end moved rock music to where it is today – something a video game has a scant chance of doing.

Tomorrow’s Beatles – or at least tomorrow’s Oasis – may be sitting in a basement somewhere thrashing out “Helter Skelter” on their plastic guitars, but if the game fails to move them beyond that then it will have wasted in its greatest opportunity.

Dear Weezer, Please Break Up

Having once been declared Kansas City's biggest Weezer fan (no bullshit!), it gives me great pain to write the following: Weezer, please break up. I know, it hurts to hear it from someone you love, but I mean it this time. I used to hate those people that said "I only like old Weezer" the way some people say "I prefer old Modest Mouse" or "The Cure haven't done anything good since the '80s." But I can only be an apologist for so long.

It's been widely reported by now that your next album will be released on October 27th, and the first single is slated to be released within the next week or so. How about pulling a Grandaddy on this one and breaking up in advance of the release; just let the album quietly come out and speak for itself, with no tour or promotion to back it up. It'd be a more dignified way to go. I mean for fuck's sake, you've spent the summer sharing a bill with Blink-182. It's not like you can sink much lower, so quit while you're still (somewhat) ahead.

Let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we? I was there at those first shows in 2000 when you started playing live again after nearly a half-decade hiatus. It was great. Mind-blowing, even. Like taking a cast off a broken leg and realizing not only can you still walk, but you're actually a pretty fucking good runner, too. And so, on that wave of goodwill, you made an album—2001's self-titled offering, or The Green Album, as it's known. It was good. Not great, but good. Nothing on there to the level of "Buddy Holly" or "Only in Dreams," of course, but I don't hear anybody turning off the radio when "Island in the Sun" or "Hash Pipe" comes on, either. There's a dud or two, but all in all it's pretty solid stuff—basic, four-chord pop-rockers with strong hooks and melodies that go down easy. Granted, if it was some other band or somebody's debut it probably wouldn't have been worth noting, but because it was Weezer people paid attention. Hell, they came out in droves for it.

And then a year later Maladroit came out-a step up from The Green Album, for sure. It showed the kind of band you always seemed to want to be but hadn't found an outlet for yet. It was bigger and louder and more hard rockin' than anything you'd ever done and even had flares of your old self, particularly on tracks like "Slob," which—gasp!—actually felt like a real, honest-to-God Weezer song. Again, even if it wasn't perfect, it still felt familiar and right.

And then there was the Make Believe fiasco of 2005. There's really nothing positive to say about the record and I'll mostly skip over it. Suffice to say that, aside from "Perfect Situation"—which once again teasingly glimpsed how good you can be when you actually put some heart into it—there's nary a positive moment to be found.

So I came to the conclusion—long since reached by so many others—that you should break up. And, with Make Believe as justification, I basically did my best to forget that you were a still an active band.

But then last year's Red Album was like a revelation in some ways. Granted, "Pork & Beans" was your best song in a decade, even if the whole point of the song was venting frustration at people wanting you to be something you're not anymore. Even "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived"—despite unfortunately revisiting the mock-white-boy rap of "Beverly Hills"—had its moments, if only for the sheer scope of the song, something you hadn't really explored since "Only in Dreams" 14 years earlier.

As for the rest of the album, well, there are some strong moments, but it peters out midway through. And as for sharing some of the vocal duties, you of all people, Rivers, should have learned from the KISS solo albums how much that lowers your batting average. But, oh, "Pork & Beans"—finally something more than just the rock-by-numbers that made up so much of the rest of the record and its predecessor.

I heard the new single and, while it's not the worst thing you've ever done, it's not exactly first-rate, either. Ten years ago this might have been acceptable from somebody else, but not anymore.

In a box somewhere I've still got (some of) my old Weezer t-shirts and the flag from your early tours that used to hang above my bed. I've got piles of CDs and tapes compiling demo tracks posted on line and bootlegged live shows. Somewhere I've probably even got the Weezer sheets my mom made for me when I was in college, festooned with flying Ws. And I might even pull some of that stuff out of retirement if you gave me good enough reason to. But I'm not terribly optimistic, and come October 27, I expect I'll be proven right again.

Look at Stephen Malkmus or Jarvis Cocker. Those dudes know how to do it—break up the old band and just be yourself. It's not like those dudes aren't selling out shows, and they get away with doing entire tours without "Range Life" or "Common People." Hell, people even go to see them wanting to hear the new songs. How many times has that happened to you in recent years, Weezer?

Let's just admit it, fellas: we've both grown up and moved on. If you wanna put out a record and call it "The Rivers Cuomo Project" or something of that sort, that's fine. Be my guest. I'll probably buy it—I won't even steal it off the Internet, I promise—and maybe there might be a couple noteworthy songs on there. But the idea of more and more "Weezer" albums...I just don't think I can take that kind of disappointment anymore.

(originally posted 8/28/09 at Under The Radar)