FLANNEL VERSUS SPANDEX

There seem to be two kinds of celebrities. There are artists like Mariah Carey and Sean "Puffy" Combs (or some would say Avalon in the Christian music scene) who, by their own choosing or someone else's, create and flaunt differences between themselves and their audience. And there are artists like Nirvana (or Bebo Norman in the Christian music biz) who downplay those differences, try to fend them off or even fake similarities. This blog is yet another attempt, I think, by me to be the second kind of celebrity...I mean, person just like you.

I knew as a senior in high school, the year Nirvana screamed Poison off my favorite radio station forever, that the boys from Seattle had more money in the bank than David Lee Roth had buttless pants in his closet. Yet the way they showed up at award shows in borderline dorky shredded jeans and flannel shirts, didn't use gallons of hairspray (or any other hair care product for that matter) made me want to believe they were just like me. They were middle class, gangly, unskilled guitar bashers that my dad just might call the cops on for playing too loudly in the garage next door. They were "normal" and that made them likeable, the Rocky and Karate Kid in the early nineties rock n' roll title bout between fake and friend, pretty and pretty ugly, superhuman and just-like-me-only-luckier.

A former A&R guy for a major successful "Christian" label revealed a dirty little secret about some of my peers in this business. In a don't-tell-a-soul-or-I'm-dead kind of almost whisper he explained that his former label made it a much-discussed goal to separate the artist from the audience. The artist was clad in one-of-a-kind designer numbers too good for the malls of mere mortals. She had her hair treated, cut and styled for what a family of four coming to her concerts would spend on a week's groceries, and her dialogue on stage was pre-prepared by a performance coach and memorized to perfection so as to not appear to be only human when "connecting" with the crowd. And it worked. People bought CDs and tickets, it's hypothesized, because we everyday folk like to see somebody pretty than we, hear a song happier than our lives, and dream of being like the beautiful blessed Barbie on stage - always smiling, always on key, always dressed to perfection, always gorgeous, always better than real.

All this was the topic of conversation in Don Donahue's office this afternoon. After a morning spent taking a walk with my kids, explaining to them why trees get cut down to build houses in our neighborhood and what happens to the squirrels who called such a tree their home before its demise, I went to Rocketown Records (my label) to approve the packaging for my third CD (available everywhere good music is sold July 12th). With my Chick-fil-A combo number one in hand I sat across from my label's president ("THE MAN") and took in what was on his mind. Without betraying confidences I can't say much except that Don is a great boss for a singer-songwriter because he likes music, really likes music, especially what he calls "smart" music with "poetic" lyrics. And, well, honestly that doesn't seem to sell too well these days - at least not as much as the modern day equivalent of hairspray and spandex often does.

All this was on Don's mind because of a project Rocketown Records is working on right now. It's a tribute of sorts to Michael W. Smith , a veteran of the Christian music scene and co-founder (with Don) of my label. Basically, a bunch of younger-ish more modern rock flavored artists are remaking hits from Michael's career which spans more than twenty years. Getting reaquainted with so many of Michael's big songs has convinced me that Michael would flop if he were a new artist today -and that's gotten Don thinking as well. I'm covering Rocketown (Michael's classic from the 80's) on the project, for example, and it's one huge allegory that is never fully explained. It breaks all the rules of radio: no drums, all keys, takes over a minute to get to the first chorus, which doesn't contain the title of the song and actually sounds more like a bridge. In addition to those barriers to popularity, the song also talks about unsavory and far from "upbeat and positive" activities like prostitution ("the girls they made their runs out on the boulevard") and drinking adult beverages ("the drinks were two for one inside the crowded bars") in the very first verse. Those two subjects alone would get a record banned today. Truth is, Rocketown (the song), along with much of Michael's early music, wouldn't get played on the radio in 2005 and so he wouldn't sell records.

Instead, much (but not all) of what sells today is largely over-tuned, dumbed-down, metaphor-lacking, fifth-grade-reading-level Sunday school lessons preaching "God loves you and that's all you'll ever need to know". But that's just one guy's opinion. I could be wrong right?. I'm hardly objective.

Don and I pondered whether or not this attraction to the surface in music, theology/preaching, books, film etc is just a fad - Are we riding a pendulum that's bound to cross through the center and over to our side again someday? - or is it just one symptom of a greater change in us or our society that won't be easily gotten over? I don't know. But the idealist in me would like to think Nirvana would have still written and dressed and thought and rocked the way they did even if the leotard remained more popular than the flannel shirt. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the love of fame and fortune would have driven Kurt Cobain to tease his hair and sing falsetto to get on MTV. Or maybe Cobain and Vedder would have traded amps and lights for "would you like fries with that" and given up the rock n' roll ghost.

I don't know. And that's exactly where Don and I left it.

Got thoughts? Discuss this SHLOG on my message-board