Can you say 'Microsoft'?

Music's new world order

by Matt Ashare In the battle between art and commerce, it would seem that in 1998 the dark forces of commercialism once again have the upper hand in the world of pop music. The concert business is in the process of rapidly being bought up by one giant conglomerate, SFX, which just took over Don Law's venues here in New England and is on its way to being the closest thing to a national monopoly that the live-performance side of the music industry has ever seen. Independent radio stations like WFNX are scarcer than ever, as are indie labels that aren't tied to the majors. And one of those big labels, Interscope, recently took the bold step of (legally) paying $5000 to KUFO in Portland to secure 50 plays of the song "Counterfeit" (an ironic title, considering) by Limp Bizkit -- a move that may presage the wave of the future.

Meanwhile, hit songs like the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" are making the jump from the radio to television commercials with unprecedented speed (drum 'n' bass may be the first trendy music to be exposed in automobile ads well before it was widely heard on the radio). Even rock criticism hasn't been entirely immune to creeping commercialism: New York Times critic Neil Strauss, the co-author of the best selling rock book in recent memory, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, currently stands accused by some of his peers of having used his position at one of the nation's most influential papers to help hype the book by writing a dozen-and-a-half articles about its subject, Marilyn Manson, in the months preceding its publication.

Of course, pop music has always been about commerce and marketing on some level, and so has our culture in general. That's one of the reasons that music, more than almost any other art form, can and does have such a broad and deep cultural impact. Great rock speaks our cultural language. Fluently. And people sometimes listen. Which is why it was so heartening to have a band as difficult and artistically ambitious as Radiohead inviting an equally difficult and artistically ambitious band like Spiritualized to join them in selling out the Worcester Centrum more than a month ago. And it's equally pleasing to find Radiohead winning two of the big categories in this year's Best Music Poll -- Best National Act and, for their OK Computer (Capitol), Best National Album.

Radiohead, like this year's Best New Act, Third Eye Blind, may have started their career with a big alterna-anthem ("Creep") that had "one-hit wonder" written all over it. But they bounced back with the more complex The Bends (Capitol) in '95, and they have grown so much in the past five years that they don't even perform "Creep" much anymore. And, excuse me if this sounds corny, they've done it the old-fashioned way -- with two strong albums, both of which stand on their own as solid conceptual, artistic, and emotional statements rather than merely provide the foundation for a couple of radio-friendly unit shifters. That OK Computer also appears to address, on some level, the insidious pressures to conform and succeed in a society that paradoxically celebrates maverick celebrity only heightens the disc's relevance, though I'm pretty sure that "Karma Police" is just a revenge fantasy.

It's also worth mentioning, though I almost hate to mention it, the extent to which Radiohead did a much better job than U2 when it came to confronting the new wave of electronic pop. Back when OK Computer was released last summer, Spin writer Barry Walters called it a "DIY electronica album made with guitars" and pointed out that "Radiohead take on techno without switching instruments or employing trendy producers." (U2, on the other hand, got taken by techno and a trendy producer.) All of which helped place Radiohead in a league with an unclassifiable group of artists (here at the Phoenix last year we dubbed their music "Exotic Pop") who successfully applied a little digital logic to organic structures and made some of the year's most interesting and appealing music in the process -- Björk, Stereolab, and Cornershop. And, of course, Beck. But we'll get to him a little later. First, let's look at electronica.

The "British are coming" hype about electronica was so overblown at this time last year that it's no wonder so much of the music associated with it seemed disappointing. Nothing, really, could have lived up to the hyperbole. It didn't help that the ambassadors of electronica -- Prodigy -- had already renounced it and declared their intention to be a rock band before they even arrived in the US. But once the air cleared, there was plenty to be amused by in the punk-vaudeville, industrial-disco freak show that Prodigy had to offer. It wasn't going to change the world any more than it would reshape the face of contemporary music, but it was a fine diversion.

Beck, on the other hand, has had an impact on contemporary music that's gone far beyond what his relatively modest sales figures might suggest. (He is not a multiplatinum artist.) Like Radiohead, he launched his career with a catchy ode to dysfunctional self-loathing. His was called "Loser," theirs "Creep." And then, like Radiohead, he decided he didn't want to be remembered as a one-hit slacker, either. So he hooked up with the Beastie Boys' old buddies the Dust Brothers (who, coincidentally, shared that moniker with the Chemical Brothers for a couple of years) and set a new standard for postmodern techno-retro-hip-hop collage pop with Odelay (DGC). He may not be the world's most technically gifted singer, but he has transformed himself into one of the most exciting and effective frontmen in the business.

In the battle of the sexes (or, more accurately, the battle against sexism) that's as much a part of music as it is a part of our culture, it was women who pulled off the marketing coup of '97, specifically the women of Lilith. I was one of the dissenting voices who felt that last summer's Lilith Fair was much cooler in theory than it turned out to be in practice. But that's because I didn't think it went far enough. Unlike the first couple of Lollapaloozas, which the Lilith Fair was both modeled on and reacting against, Lilith played it too safe by almost exclusively emphasizing sensitive, vaguely folky female singer-songwriters backed by all-male bands. Which was a shame, because the '90s have been the decade in which women have become a force in almost every facet of music, from hip-hop (Missy Elliott, who is on this year's Lilith tour) to country (Shania Twain and LeAnn Rimes). And so many women have subverted the traditional "sensitive" role of women in rock -- from Courtney Love and Liz Phair to Kim Deal and Kim Gordon -- that it was almost shocking to find, with the exception of Juliana Hatfield, no one representing that side of the picture at Lilith. Nevertheless, marketing triumphs can be beautiful thing, and I'd rather listen to Sarah McLachlan's hippie talk than Perry Farrell's New Age babble. And, even if McLachlan's Surfacing (Nettwerk/Arista) wasn't the most exciting, groundbreaking, or otherwise remarkable achievement, it's a solid album, a pretty album, and the album by the woman who invented Lilith.

Elsewhere in the polling, two other unique women did get their due. I'm not sure whether Ani DiFranco really fits everyone's definition of folk, but she's playing the Newport Folk Festival this summer, and the coffeehouse circuit is sort of where she got her start. And I'm not really sure how to characterize Erykah Badu's soulful pop, except to say that she's got talent to burn, a style of her own, and some rather distinctive headgear.

If Lilith is what the girls were up to, then ska was what the boys were doing this past year. After toughing it out for a decade as the Plaid Boys of Boston, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones rose to the occasion to become the Dapper Dons of Skasdale. The Bosstones's "The Impression That I Get" even joined Blur's "Song No. 2" in making the crucial crossover from the charts to background music at sporting events (to get the crowd psyched). Even the Bosstones seemed surprised by all the attention, though they've handled it with the kind of grace and dignity that comes with knowing you've worked hard to get there. Taking the Amazing Royal Crowns, Bim Skala Bim, and the Dropkick Murphys on the road with them for a "Boston on Tour" celebration only proved that the Bosstones have their hearts in the right place.

You might say the same about Rage Against the Machine, who joined this year's hip-hop winners the Wu-Tang Clan (who cares if their double CD was partially an advertisement for Wu Wear? -- it still sounded great) and Atari Teenage Riot on one of last year's most subversive big summer tours.

But I don't know about Third Eye Blind. Sure, singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer-frontguy Stephen Perkins knows his way around a hook and writes a more intelligent lyric than most of today's modern-rock upstarts (Matchbox 20, Days of the New, Our Lady Peace). But with each new chart-topping single from his band's self-titled debut, his Bono-size ego seems to be getting more and more in the way. Plus, you have to wonder whether or not, for all his musical savvy, Perkins has the marketing panache to really last. Beck, DiFranco, McLachlan, Prodigy, hell, even Wynton Marsalis have it, but Third Eye Blind? I'm just not convinced they know, as Beck would say, where it's at. They may want to try a Dust Brothers remix of "Semi-Charmed Life," or better yet, get with the program and sell "Graduate" to Microsoft.