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Johnny Bravo: Maybe We Shouldn't

["Johnny The '80s I could handle. Losers were losers (Hüsker Dü) and winners were winners (Bon Jovi). The '90s are another story. Since Soul Asylum invaded the White House party tent and Kurt Cobain killed himself, bands now have the bogus capability to occupy both positions simultaneously. Nowadays, the winners are the rock trio Johnny Bravo, and the losers are the rock trio Johnny Bravo -- or so they seem to think. As they sing in "Used To Be Cool," from their new Then Again, Maybe I Won't (Arista): "I used to be cool 'til I met you, I used to be cool 'til I met you."

Initially Johnny Bravo were nothing more than another Rick Ocasek-produced alternative band with Cars keyboards fixed in place. Bravo are unlike Weezer, who share a satiric conceit with John Hughes's The Breakfast Club: both champion naïveté as the means to stumble across all the labels and roles that codify and annihilate personal identity. Kick aside those roles and you face the cold freedom of individuality.

That's small-time contrasted with the implications Arista shoves down our throats with Johnny Bravo's debut CD. The cinematic equivalent to Bravo would be Amy Heckerling's Clueless. In the spirit of Hughes and Weezer, Bravo satirize mainstream social roles and labels but ultimately reinforce them. If you didn't want to be Alicia Silverstone, you wouldn't feel flattered by the satire. Or, as Johnny Bravo sing, "Spent the day watching MTV, until the cable guy came up for me" ("Rodeo").

Bravo resequence Nirvana's best songs on two levels: sonically and socially. All of Nirvana's best parts are present. "Sliver" becomes "Rodeo," "Scentless Apprentice" becomes "Karate Champ," "Serve the Servants" becomes "Grew Up in the '80s," etc. If the make-over ceased there, things would be fine. You get good sounds for your hard-earned dollar -- song after song, the hits just keep spewing forth from the booming Kenwoods. But Bravo say, "Fuck the real Nirvana, we want the media's Nirvana." That's because the "real" Nirvana fought tooth and nail to destroy the media rock-star role -- all roles, in fact.

The media consensus on Nirvana was that they rang in a new movement of superlosers: kids suffering decade-long hangovers from another arbitrary, media-concocted label, the "Reagan Years." "It was a Reagan town, don't want no freaks around, 'cause a Reagan town was a merry old town" ("Grew Up in the '80s"). That's Bravo's shtick, giving one phony movement credence over another ("freaks" and "Reagan"), seemingly turning them against each other. Groveling for the role of movement-elected heroes diminishes Bravo's every move -- unless pre-fab heroism is what they're after. Intentionally or not, they align themselves with their ultimate abhorrence, Ronnie Ray-guns. Both say: "If you don't follow us, you're not cool." Loserdom and alienation are now hip. Or as the Who sang 100 years ago, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Bravo extinguish all the possibilities implicit in "Smells like Teen Spirit." I could hear it about two weeks ago when the radio blasted out their whiny plea for the role of Loser, or Slacker, or whatever you want to call it: "I wish I didn't exist, I wish I didn't exist, I wish I didn't exist, I wish I didn't exist." Yeah, I'm a loser, baby. I don't know which is more oppressive: Johnny Bravo or "Ronald Reagan." Oh well, nevermind. Or: then again, maybe I won't.

-- Justin Farrar

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