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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 15, 1987)
Thursday, January 15, 1987 Page 6 Daily Nebraskan j.g.'s mm& mm r3 tn c3 m m a c-a cj a 1 o r-i n en n ri PITCHER COUPON PITCHER COUPON D U.95 J1.9S D iW.C's Downtown -exp. 51587 f W.C's Downtown -exP. 51587 acJCJcautjncaarjacJLiLJCjntaac j PITCHER COUPON U PITCHER COUPON I D '198 D W 0 0 W.C's Downtown - exp. 51587 R W.C's Downtown exP. 61587 fl By Charles Lieurance ,-.--jSm Become involved in an organization designed to promote interaction between students, faculty, and alumni. Student Alumni Association application for new members will be available JANUARY 19TH at the Wick Center. Student Alumni Association rn itollif (clsrellec When work and classes conflict . . . . . . UNL independent study can help. Examine course syllabi in room 269, Nebraska Center for Con tinuing Education, 33rd and Holdrege. Take the shuttle bus from city campus. Call 472-1926 for UNL it a nondiscriminatory i t 3 I Q5j ui 6 -f APP LY NOW information. institution Campus M - P I II They're the bands of the "new sincerity." They wear leather fringe jackets, they're growing their hair out, they stretch their guitar straps all the way out so their axes hang to their knees. They say they're new, but they look like Aerosmith or Crazy Horse or Buffalo Springfield. Their music, for the most part, would be perfect for any of those American college commercials for soda pop, Chevrolets and beer you know, old folks playing horse shoes, family reunions, watermelon feeds, farmers slapping their trac tors the way Roy Rogers used to give Trigger an affectionate slap on the flank. Things made the American,?1 way, things like they used to be, old meets new with a small-town howdy doo. Aside from the fact that this America shriveled up into a few condemned old barns and some bot tomland the small farmer uses as a buffer zone from the hydra cf the corporate farm more than two decades ago, the mu?.:ic makes a wonderful bargaining chip for the atavistic public-relations corps of our government Grab a few scenes from Steinbeck, Muir and Thomas Wolfe, find a w hite picket fence that no one has scrawled anarchy's big black "A" on yet, and stage a healthy America. Despite the fact that the bands of the "new sincerity," for the most part, are either critical of these images of Americana or ignore them completely in their lyrics, it is the "sound" that attracts Washington, the sound "of America singing." The PR kings are willing to even incor porate the sort of Americana that "long-haired hippies goin' back to the land" represent, rather than buckle under to punks...,-... those short-haired, unpredictable politi cal vacillatrons, pogo-ing from left to right like out-of-control novelty dentures. Take the bands chosen to repres ent Miller and Budweiser beer X (punks with a beatnik sensibility), the Blasters, the Long Ryders, the Del Feugos bands with "integ rity." None of this trendy bull for Miller and Bud, no siree. No Swans or Sonic Youth hawking for Milwau kee. This is America, and we can spot a scam when we see one. No one's pulling the aluminum over our eyes you ciui bet that on a horse. So who are these pretenders to Woody Guthrie's throne, these would be Leadbellys? When you grapple the music out of the. hands of those demented twits who some how managed to construe Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A" as a statement of America's blossom ing health, as a message of Reagan era positivism, what's left? (or should I say, what's right? Of course the view from the sky is Springsteen's, who fleshed out the ambiguous monicker "American Music" and also emanated vats of "sincerity." Springsteen's sketches of American life, from the rural angst of the "Nebraska" LP to the urban charcoal panoramas of "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle," go beyond rock'n'roll whether one appreciates the man's style or not. It's like reading "Spoon River Anthology" by Edgar Lee Mas- X 1 -,....',15 f. 5'.; "" . .- -ifr'.. Brian MaryDaily Nebraskan ters, a collection of voices so diverse that it is difficult to believe one man is responsible for them. Spring steen took on the voices of the dead, the wounded, the downtrodden, the criminal and the junkie. Like Woody Guthrie, Springsteen pretty much ignored the lives of the upper and even the middle class, except as an easy target for parody. Springsteen's characters all tried to substitute the high the rich managed to get from money with the high of sex, the high of drugs, the high of driving fast and the high of living on your toes. The problems with being not only a musician, but an important v- : i, C'$k y- "SZ r-,,.. voice of the times to boot, are multitudinous. For one, you can't contradict yourself. For another, people start following you around, blindly believing everything you say. For yet another, you might start believing everything you say. And you spawn would-be voices of the times who want to hang onto your Levi beltloops on the ride to stardom. Springsteenism gave a directionless hack from Indiana who had been marketed as everything from the "new David Bowie" to the "new Meat Loaf," a new lease on life, as the Springsteen of the farm belt, champion of the confinement feeder-pig operator and the trac-tored-out farmer. The man was John Cougar. He was born to make American music. And as a move to sincerity, he dropped the feline Bowie-ism of "Cougar" and became "John Mellencamp," the shaggy, diminutive hometown boy who made good on some ancient promise to his pappy to be tha Robin Hood of music. ' 1 . You can almost hear Copclind's "Fanfare for the Common Man" blaring up out of the cornfields. Then someone told everyone it WS easy to write songs about Amer ican, that America is made up of a fairly finite number of icons. Not only that, but these icons have names that rhyme with almost any thing. Bar. Car. Chevy. Levy. Road. Know'd. Sign. County line. Long way to go. Mexico. Mortgage. 12 gauge. Once the word was out, you could hear all America singing. John Caf ferty sang. The Long Ryders sang. Sort of made you want shitkickers like Lynnyrd Skynnyrd and Molly Hatchet back. Bands who empa thized with people too stupid even to farm. But the mainstream wasn't the only stream affected by the "new sincerity," "the new Americana." Nope. Someone discovered that Michel Stipe was "America Sing ing" too, und REM became the voice cf the American haircut. The stam pede that followed made the run into Oklahoma lock like a line at the Kresge's snack bar. Jj Rainmakers. Winter Hours. Con nells. Feelies. Meat Puppets. Come hear American mumbling. Although most of these bands can claim some glory of their own, it is ludicrous to think REM didn't pave the way for their success. And sincere? What could be more sincere than an alternative band? If it's not money they're after, or a place on American Bandstand or SoulTrain, or Rolling Stone cover, it must be a sincere need to com municate. - At least you don't see Reagan quoting REM songs (although some times he sounds like he is). Or the Feelies on national TV, popping a cold Bud while they lean up against a pool table, saying something like, "Our music isn't commercial, it's real."