2002

BEER
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota is a memoir by Chuck Klosterman based around eighties pop-metal. Klosterman, a "music, film, and culture critic for Ohio's Akron Beacon Journal," drank a lot of beer and listened to the radio a lot during the nineteen eighties. These entertainments provided him with the material for his book, a fast and crappy read that has many flaws, at least one fatal.

FLAW
The flaw at the core of Klosterman’s book [maybe, also, the thing making it more commercially viable] is his retarded aesthetic theory. Klosterman thinks the best bands are the ones that specifically set out to make music that people "want" to hear.

What music "means" is almost completely dependent on the people who sell it and the people who buy it, not the people who make it. Our greatest artists are the ones who understand how they can be interesting and unique within those limitations.

Yes, of course, a market version of aesthetic theory -- I knew the market could come in and explain every aspect of life. I knew the MBA was qualified to run most of our lives -- to control our employment, to shape social policy, to head the country -- but in my ignorance I didn’t realize the MBA was fully qualified to do art criticism.

Of course those who sell it determine what it means. They are, after all, the ones who decide what material gets recorded in the first place. They are the ones with that massive amount of cash pushing this music along the whole way, from its creation to mass consumption. And art with large amounts of cash supporting it must mean more than art ignored, overlooked, or declined by those who possess the large amounts of cash. There is no way a person working alone, sitting there in a room with a guitar or a piano, could produce anything with meaning or importance nearly as well as a corporation could.

Klosterman is right; Wal Mart determines what a Bob Dylan record means -- not Bob Dylan.

And the “buyers.” How important the consumer is; through magical exercise of his wallet, he can either confer great importance and meaning on art, or can doom it to insignificance, irrelevance, to the trash bin. To Klosterman, a piece of recorded music is no different than a coffee cup or a hamburger.

I admit Klosterman has opened my eyes however; seeing things through his aesthetic theory, I can understand why so many find “great artists” in individuals who seem complete hacks from any other perspective. Klosterman disagrees that good artists create for primarily personal reasons, that they may not consider their audience during the creative process.

"The only important thing about art is how it affects people. It only needs to affect one person to be interesting, but it has to affect many to be important."

The many, yes, most of us, the bulk of us-if something fails to conform to what we expect, fails to make us happy, it must not be important.

That popular stuff has more “social and intellectual value”-this is what the admen have always told us too, so it must be right. Klosterman’s bean-counter aesthetic approach is stated literally when he says that with rock music “the consumer is more important than the product itself.” In singling out “rock music,” Klosterman is either saying that rock is not art like other music is, and therefore shouldn’t be treated as such, in which case he should step up and draw the line to show us where art ends and the rock begins -- and in which case the above art theory lesson of his was superfluous -- or, that all music is only product and all the people who take it in do that only as consumers. I wonder which it is.

•

Klosterman on specific bands
Toward the end, the book devolves into mostly rambling opinions of various bands.

AC/DC
Klosterman frequently mentions AC/DC though they were not really involved in the kind of pop he is talking about, aside from being unfortunate enough to have provided the musical template that was ripped off and vulgarized by cheesy bands in the genre, and to be then lumped in with them. Klosterman says AC/DC were “granted street cred” because of their “lack of flair.” (?) Klosterman has a talent for ignoring the music and being able to review records by looking at the pictures on the cover.

Van Halen
Klosterman’s treatment of Van Halen is very good, surprisingly, in light of how off he is when discussing other bands. Critics and art people don’t understand Van Halen (who, once they gained horrible, earnest singer Sammy Hagar, became as utterly horrible as most assumed they always were), which is fine, because it is asking too much to have an art person understand this band.

Rob Zombie
Klosterman states that Rob Zombie has the only “industrial art rock” band that doesn’t suck. This is a perfect example of Klosterman’s getting it all wrong, all upside down, because of his goofy view of art. Rob Zombie’s is not a good “industrial art rock band,” and is, not coincidentally, one of the most popular ones. It's arguable whether you can even put him in that category. Rob Zombie isn’t very industrial, or arty, and represents the more commercial-friendly, watered-down tip of this heavy music form; therefore Klosterman can listen to him without expending much mental energy.

Hellacopters
Klosterman doesn’t even mention the Hellacopters when speaking of new hard rock bands that are pretty good. He is, however, aware of the last RATT cd and of the latest project of that band’s former lead singer. Being able to name the last RATT record -- let alone the project of their ex-singer -- should disqualify one from being allowed to write any music criticism.

Iron Maiden
Martha Stewart could have written more intelligently about Iron Maiden. Klosterman writes like he has never heard of them. Is all of their music bad?-Klosterman doesn’t sift through it and tell us. He doesn’t attempt to explain their music [good or bad], it’s possible influence or its contribution, though this was one of the most popular heavy metal bands of the eighties. Laziness, no attempt at understanding, dull criticism.

Hanoi Rocks
Klosterman, bloody Klosterman. In writing his fluffy book, he would seem to be doing no harm, but in doing so he manages to poop on one of the best rock bands of the eighties. If you were writing a memoir entitled “My Experience with Classical Music,” would you leave Mahler out because you didn’t like his stuff, or because he’s not as popular as Mozart? Klosterman refers to Hanoi Rocks as a “metal band” which makes you wonder if he has even heard their music. Sounds in them that spring to mind include country, Chuck berry, punk, the Ramones, but very little metal. You would think a critic would be ashamed to be unaware of something important going on in his area of expertise, but some are gleeful in their ignorance. Could Andy McCoy be one of the most special rock guitarist/songwriters of the eighties? You won’t find out reading Fargo Rock City.

His only statement about them is of course in relation to a band he likes-Motley Crue. Referring to a car crash in which Motley Crue’s drunk singer killed HR drummer Razzle, Klosterman makes a brilliant deduction: “I’m sure the untimely death of their drummer was the greatest thing that ever happened to their commercial viability.” Commercial viability -- yes it’s all about that; that’s something Klosterman knows all about.

Klosterman spends a lot of time on Guns and Roses, but never once mentions the influence of Hanoi Rocks on them, which is total. From the titles of songs, to the band name, to the look, to the singer’s tattoos for Chrissake, the influence….the way G & R copied, mimicked HR was total. G & R was the cheesy, not- nearly-as-good-as-the-original, hard rock version rip-off of HR. Axle Rose acknowledges this, more or less, in interviews -- that HR is such a complete influence. But this is lost on Klosterman; he never mentions it.

Rush
Klosterman doesn’t understand Rush at all, and why waste time trying to make sense of this idiosyncratic band that no one gives a shit about when you are writing a book that needs to be popular?

Morrissey/The Smiths
The thorough music critic is consistent -- several sophomoric statements on Morrissey and gayness are what we get here, and that’s it.

Judas Priest
What do we get to learn about the band Judas Priest? Well, there were two teenagers who committed suicide after listening to their music, and also that Klosterman never had the desire while listening to it to do that himself (fortunately…). And, that their singer is gay. How about that -- a gay singer in a rock band; that’s fascinating.

•

THE TELEVISION
Klosterman spends a lot of time talking about MTV…which says a lot…talking about video “directors,” those massively talented artists. He devotes ten pages to a “trilogy” of Guns and Roses songs made into videos, apparently some production of Wagnerian proportions that us barbarians out in the sticks somehow missed. Ten pages…it’s easy to critique videos, to review them -- its like seriously reviewing TV commercials.

MAYBE HE SHOULD SWITCH TO NEWAGE?
We start to get an idea of what might be causing Klosterman’s aesthetic retardation when he begins to detail his substance abuse. The tell-all, confession of alcoholism -- blamed on heavy metal -- another book deal attraction. He tells of drinking at home alone, getting “wasted” in his living room:

“…I should probably hate glam rock for what it does to my body. It’s clearly helping me drink myself to death.”

DOPE
And where there’s dullness, there's pot of course… “My girlfriend and I used to smoke pot every day we were together.” That would help to explain getting into Bon Jovi. But do we really need to hear all the substance details? They fall on unsympathetic ears because there are no great life-events in the book to act as counterweights to them. There doesn't seem to be a point. It’s not like Klosterman became distinguished in one field, while beating back addiction, or spiraled into it during a time he was staying up late nights working on a cure for cancer.

SEX
The book gets lost in talking about rock and sexism, sexual content, and having sex to music-tired topics that have been done more thoroughly elsewhere.

TANGENTS
Things are padded out with personal experiences; the book is full of tangents that offer no insight. But, the “F” word is in every other paragraph which is, I assume, some prerequisite to getting a book deal as one hip with the youngsters.

WEIRD
One weird thing I notice about Klosterman is that he likes only a band’s music that was popular. A band’s older records -- he doesn’t listen to. For most with any taste who have followed a group from its beginning, the opposite is true. Also weird: Klosterman seems unwilling -- even after college, and working as a rock “journalist” -- to let go of this music from the past. Why, after such an [I assume, since he is after all by profession a music critic] immersion in pop music, isn’t he enjoying other varieties of it instead of being stuck on pop-metal of the time period of high school.

YOU WIN, KLOSTERMAN
In a way Klosterman has won here, as I'm seriously writing in the pagesof the zine about bands like RATT and Motley Crue...wading through the landfill of popular culture behind Klosterman, a clueless tour guide misinforming the tourists...dammit.

NOT MUCH OF A TRIP
Klosterman's argument for giving metal legitimacy as an art form is poor. This is a shame because there is room for such a defense, even a semi-scholarly examination, in light of most rock critics' limp-wristed inability to deal with metal.

Klosterman claims to write from “a fan’s perspective,” but his perspective is too narrow -- a disservice to the music and to readers who don’t know anything about it. You would think one person's "odyssey" as a fan -- deep into one kind of music -- would take you way into the music as well, exposing groups of which you were not aware, opening up new worlds and yielding wonderful insights along the way. But there are few bands here, and not many insights. If you needed to find out what was going on in heavy metal in the eighties -- or at any other time -- there are a number of things you could do. Reading Fargo Rock City however would not be much help.

 

 

9/2003
Klosterman has apparently put out another book -- Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: a Low Culture Manifesto -- an excellent review of which exists in the New York Press [by Mark Ames]: NYpress skewers bad rock writer. I admit I couldn't have done better.

And in my ramblings on the Worldwide Internet Web I came across a review of sorts that is maybe more revealing than the reviews of mine and Mark Ames put together. It is from the blog of a guy named Kneel, on the website Killoggs.com:

[all, sic] "never, never read. I just don't. Up until this point in my life I've probably only read a handful of books. And when I say handful, I'm talking like 4 or 5. But, when my now ex-girlfriend (we'll get into that later), J*** read me the first essay from Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa-Puffs, the whole time I was like 'I could have fuckin Written this book!' Chuck Klosterman is increadible!!! Really. I absolutely love this book. And this is from a guy who admits that he never reads."

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