This entry may be past its relevance for most of you in the City, but sadly, living upstate has its inconveniences, including receiving my magazine subscriptions quite later than the pack. But timeliness is secondary in this complaint.
Simply put, I’m in a rage due to one man: Dave Itzkoff. Yes, you, Mr. SPIN Editor and author of a tell-all about Maxim titled “Lads: A Memoir of Manhood”. I am foaming at the mouth. You, sir, are just unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. And here’s why:
NEW YORK, ISSUE MARCH 28, 2005:
BEHIND THE BRAVERY, NEW YORK’S NEXT REALLY BIG THING: A MAN, A BAND, A PLAN
Really now, Mr. Itzkoff. I would expect a writer of your obvious caliber and musical expertise to know better. Or at least be savvy to the hoodwinking that is going on surrounding this band. I mean, I know that I’m not the only one here whose ears bleed whenever that Godforsaken “An Honest Mistake” comes on the airwaves, whose blood curdles when Sam Endicott moans his way through that excruciating chorus. But apparently there are still people out there in the world of music who are eager to lap up more ‘80s synth-pop pilfering. And though I’m not saying my taste is in any way superior to these minions, I’ll be damned if my refusal to like this band is in any way shape or form shuffled away under the note “hipster scorn”. Is this what music fans are going to be called now? A fan with any semblance of taste or (God forbid) courage to stand up the adulatory masses and say, “You know what people? I heard this on my Smiths anthology five years ago, and it was ten times better” is now relegated to the category of “hipster”? Excuse me?!
stellastarr* conquered this territory a year ago, and yet there weren’t any Itzkoff’s toting them as the destroyer of those untalented City brats, The Strokes. I happen to be a big fan of stellastarr* (particularly having worked for their awesome PR group), and trust me Bravery, you are NO stellastarr*, let alone the next big thing.
If you’ve read this firebomb this far, you are now probably under the suspicion that I, keeper of all things L.A.R.S., hate The Bravery. Hate ‘em with a passion reserved for a seldom few. And if this is your supposition, you’d be…wrong. I don’t hate The Bravery (and trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are when I say that). They’re slightly likable, particularly if you’re a fan of any of the many bands from whom they liberally steal. “An Honest Mistake” is a fairly decent single if you liked Dead Or Alive’s hit “You Spin Me ‘Round (Like A Record), for which it’s a dead-on imitation. It’s catchy in an ‘80s disco sort of way.
But in NO way SHAPE or FORM is that single the future of “rock”. Because first off, Itzkoff is getting his genres confused. I’ll give him this “honest mistake” being that rock genres nowadays have become slurred beyond comprehension, particularly since Franz and the Futureheads stepped in to rev up our motors. The Bravery are hardly rockers. They’re dance-popsters with rock influences, exactly like Franz Ferdinand, stellastarr*, Futureheads, The Go! Team, etc etc etc. And here’s where their claim to rock stardom sputters and dies: in that vein of accomplishment, The Bravery aren’t even that good at what they do. Period.
I took the time to download the band’s new album (thus damning Sam Endicott’s kids to a life of community college and busing tables) in order to not judge them discriminatorily. And the album is lukewarm shit. Not a steaming hot pile, mind you, just bleh. In critical terms, mediocre. Which, we all know, is ten times worse than provoking either “good” or “bad” criticisms. I couldn’t care less about the Bravery’s music. It’s poorly appropriated droning, and I take particular offense to the claim of Endicott’s vocal prowess; the man stabs my eardrums with his moaning, groaning, and yelling (particularly on that hallowed chorus of “An Honest Mistake”). Particularly ugly moments include “Hot Pursuit” and “Tyrant” (a shameless mockery of New Order). The band even tries to Jet off a little bit with “Swollen Summer”…and guess what, they fail at that too.
So what exactly does Itzkoff see here that I’m so shamefully missing? I’ll be damned if I know. But here’s the point of this lambasting: You, as a music fan and writer, have every right under the sun to love a band that others crucify. I know more Jet fans than I’d like to, and Avril Lavigne continues to sell more units than Afghani opium. No problem there, we can agree to disagree there. But it doesn’t stop there. The music press is so starved for golden children that they perpetually make mountains out of molehills. Lavigne is no longer just a fun pop/rocker, she’s now the new face of punk. And Jet aren’t just AC/DC revivalists, they’re now one of the best rock bands of the year. I don’t give a damn about curiosity killing the cat; hyperbole fucking nukes our music community. It just about killed The Strokes, suddenly christened The White Stripes (when we all know they’d been rocking long before the spotlight was turned in their direction), and imported more “next big things” from the UK than beer.
Are we all guilty of it? Of course. I too am a starved music fan who hinges herself on those “next big things”. However, there is an ocean of difference between me calling The Sexy Magazines the future of rock n’ roll on this puny little blog and Dave Itzkoff hyping The Bravery in New York until he bleeds from his eyes. The man supposedly has journalistic ethics, and yet he fails at every attempt to back up his canonization of the band. Dave Itzkoff pontificates more than half of the Roman Catholic Church in his article, and more than damages his credibility as a great SPIN associate editor. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m furious at the man. Not for his opinions, but for his hyperbolic recklessness.
I’ve listed some of the more odious snippets of the article below (with yet more whining and fact-correcting in parentheses). Thesis statement? The Bravery don’t suck balls, they just aren’t good by any means or in any form. But what makes me boil at the band is when irresponsible and wildly misinformed journalists try to elevate them to a mantle that they don’t deserve. There’s too much of that in music journalism today, and it offends me much more than “An Honest Mistake”, “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”, or “Complicated”.
“A Man, A Band, A Plan”.
“…the lead singer of the New York band the Bravery is reduced to wiping crumbs from his Sgt. Pepper-style military coat with a flash of jet-black fingernails and knuckles across which he’s written LIONIZED. ‘It’s just a word I like,’ he says, without looking up from his crust, ‘and sort of apropos of what’s been going on lately.’“
[Offensive not only for Endicott’s mammoth ego, but for the mistake of amping the allure of the singer’s ‘drobe. We all do it as writers to set up some “ambience”, but it’s tacky and unnecessary. Are we supposed to dig the band now that we know Endicott favors nail polish?].
“Only two years ago, the city seemed poised for a rock renaissance, as backward-looking bands like those jean-jacketed pinup boys the Strokes and their gloomy-Gus contemporaries in Interpol came out with wildly hyped records. Yet neither band became a national phenomenon: After redundant sophomore albums, their spotlights dimmed.”
[Itzy, do you want to know why their spotlights dimmed? It’s because of writers like you, so eager to move on to the next big thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Room On Fire received **** from Rolling Stone, an 8.0 from Pitchfork, and your own magazine featured them on the cover for that dreadful second album. Oh, and by the by, if by spotlights dimming, you mean Room On Fire going gold, then yes, by God those boys are washed up. And don’t even get me started on Interpol. Get your facts straight, Dave].
[And his misconstructions continue]: “The dirty little secret about New York’s heralded postmillennium [sic] rock acts is that they never really sold records: Four years after its release, the Strokes’ debut, Is This It, still hasn’t moved its millionth unit, and its 2003 sequel, Room On Fire, has sold only a little more than half that; to date, neither of Interpol’s albums have even gone gold.”
[The day that gold records are shit is a sad day indeed. I mean, why even bother wasting all of that coinage metal if the sales are that shitty? Man, 500,00 units moved is just utter crap nowadays. I mean, not that factoring into the equation the amount of evil downloaders like myself that take away from those statistics would make any difference at all. Jesus Fucking Christ. This is what I love about statistics like this in the first place: for someone like me, I can construe The Strokes as massively successful based on gold records, while grumpy older men like Itzkoff can claim they’re washed up when they don’t move 1 million. Besides all of this nonsense, no one has kept in mind that gold records DON’T include sales in the UK, where both of these sucky bands are worshipped].
“The members of the Bravery are clearly very talented, very lucky guys, but they’re also the beneficiaries of one of the most carefully managed launch campaigns in recent history.”
[No comment, that speaks for itself].
[Bassist Mike Hindert on the gullibility of girls]:
“ ‘When you e-mail cute girls, they want to hear good music, and they want to see cute guys doing it,' explains Hindert."
[I’m breaking out in hives here].
“Endicott doesn’t look like the next Joey Ramone.”
[That’s because he isn’t. Asshole. Do you really need to go so far as to defile the name of a dead punk superstar to get your point across?].
[An Itzkoff take on Island Records’ senior vice-president of A&R, Rob Stevenson]:
“Or perhaps he wants listeners to believe that the Bravery is blazing an entirely new retro trail, and not just encroaching on territory that competing groups like the Killers were quicker to claim, (‘I don’t want them brought up in this article,’ Stevenson says of the Killers, even though he’s their A&R rep as well).'"
[Now, here is where I started to change courses on Dave Itzkoff. It seems as though he’s finally bringing an opposing view into the article, making it known that the publicity behind the band is obviously skewed. Why would that be? The Bravery are so original and obviously the future of New York City rock music. So why would their A&R rep be flaking out like that? I WONDER…].
[But then Itzkoff damaged any semblance of respect I had going for him after the Island Records quote. He spews this ejaculate all over the next page]:
“[Endicott’s] given a lot of thought to the case study of the Strokes, who went from rock and roll’s Leonardo DiCaprios to the genre’s Ben Afflecks in about eighteen months. ‘That’s why the hipster music community sucks,’ says Endicott. A 14-year-old girl who’s really into Nelly knows more about music than one of these music snobs, who one minute say they love it and the next minute, when everybody’s heard of the band, say they hate it.”
[Oh. My. God. I don’t know where to begin, people. FIRST off: Are you saying, Mr. Itzkoff, that Is This It was the Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape to Room On Fire’s Gigli? Are you? So “Automatic Stop”, “I Can’t Win”, “Reptilia”, “12:51”, and “Under Control” just couldn’t kiss the coattails of “Hard To Explain”, “NYC Cops”, “Take It Or Leave It”, or any other classic? Interesting. More than anything else, it’s interesting because it’s now becoming obvious that you wanted a facsimile of Is This It in 2003, and instead spent the next month weeping in your bunk bed when you received a
Now, SECOND of all: Faux-hawk boy. I find your logic interesting. So, my 14-year-old sister’s friends who listen to Z100 and cry over 50 Cent’s murder charges are clearly so much more informed than I am? Really? I’m just such a hipster when I reject your pap of a record. Again, Jesus H. Christ.
Endicott, you are so wrong it hurts like Mexican food heartburn. I too hate hipsters. Most of New York hates hipsters. And I feel even more inclined towards mass genocide when I frequent the Lower East Side. Hipsters are nothing more than teenyboppers in white belts. They are fickle, uninformed, and unforgivably snobbish. And unfortunately they number large enough to affect the staying power of music acts. This is infuriating, I agree.
But. There is a HUGE difference between a hipster and a music snob. Huge. A hipster disregards music for no valuable reason. Music snobs disregard music because it doesn’t live up to certain standards they’ve set. And Mr. Endicott, I’m happy to say that your music doesn’t live up to my standards. Not by a mile. The fact that we music snobs HAVE standards is rare in this Itzkoff-dominated world. But they’re not invaluable. Rather, they’re built upon a history of music adoration. If a music snob lives and breathes off of The Clash’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope, they’re not going to rush out and buy Blink 182’s latest simply because the music press lauds them as the next big Clash. No, because we have these strange hipster-y things called standards. And the day that we don’t is a day that we drown in musical cyanide like The Bravery’s latest record].
[And lastly, for your reading pleasure, The Bravery’s manager Pete Galli expounds on the founder of grunge]:
“ ‘ These bands [The Killers, Franz Ferdinand] are selling because they’re bringing booty-shaking back to rock,’ says Galli. ‘God bless him, but Kurt Cobain killed rock as a danceable music.’ “
[I rest my case].
For more info on our hero of the day, Dave Itzkoff, see Gawker’s take on him here. And for the full text of the article, go here.
Rock Photos:
The man behind The Bravery photographs in New York is the crazy-talented Michael Schmelling. He’s up there in my book with Terry Richardson in terms of current rock photography.
The Bravery by Michael Schmelling. [For New York magazine].
A.R.E. Weapons and Julian Casablancas of
Hot flashes burning my brain/Your tongue lashing drive me insane-S.
