(Ignite the) Nitro!

Recently, a manager of a popular band dropped some hints that he felt his clients "weren't getting any real coverage" in AP. As I proofread the five-page feature said band were getting, I wondered how much it would actually cost to have the guy's face pushed into a rotary fan. This got me to thinking about current trends in contemporary whining.

Last year, I wrote a four-star review of the last Used album. After the piece ran, I got an e-mail from an indignant reader. She didn't take umbrage with the rating; she just didn't appreciate my comment about how Bert McCracken's vocals were marinating in producer John Feldmann's Pro-Tools consommé. The crowning jewel was when the reader told me to "stick my review up my Hershey Highway." Really.

Now, what am I going to do? Send her a flame mail so vile and pugnacious, I'll end up the next magna cum laude graduate of Lori Drew Friendship Academy? I did nothing. Answering somebody like that is like telling a three-year-old there's no Santa Claus. Pointless.

This reminds me of some allegedly grown-up dudes in bands. You know, the ones who somehow feel defiled, besmirched or trashed over a bad review, as if said missive was issued by one of those creepy polygamous religious sects. Consider Good Charlotte. When longtime GC booster Jonah Bayer savaged their last disc, Good Morning Revival, they were so aghast, some too-cool-for-school whining about the review made it onto to the AIM away message of someone in the Madden camp. In their last AP interview, Joel said something snide about "the bands that your magazine covers," as if his organization had absolutely nothing to do with the massive infiltration of pop music in contemporary punk. I see the ads for their impending tour with Boys Like Girls and Metro Station have them listed in the middle. They've retained the services of paid professionals to spin it as a "co-headlining" tour, but really, I'm sure even Ticketmaster employees are concerned about what their company's take is gonna be at this point. (BTW, my favorite GC song is "Falling Away.")

I recall the time when Mr. Bayer dared to question the veracity of y'alternative darlings Lucero in a review. Bayer, quite the staunch supporter of the band, stated their Nobody's Darlings album simply wasn't up to snuff. This led to the band's indignant drummer to huff and puff all over the band's website, saying how Bayer was full of worm droppings. Bully for you, rubba-nutz! So then in theory, all the positive things JB said about the band in the past had to be discounted as well, right? It wasn't too long afterward when one of their well-scrubbed fans with bifocals, a PBR belt buckle and a Ryan Adams backpiece sent us an email with the subject line "Lucero Drummer Punks Your Reviewer." It should be said that since that review, Bayer and various members of the band have exchanged man-hugs while draining a few glasses together. Hell, they've had big ol' features in the mag since then. Personally, I'll start to care when they write a song as good as the Gun Club's "She's Like Heroin To Me."

My arms are getting tired beating dead horses, so let's switch gears a bit. Let's talk about Fear Before The March Of Flames. An AP reviewer threw their first album, Odd How People Shake, under a bus. You know what they did in retaliation? Not a damn thing. They read the review, considered what was said and carried on doing what they do. They came back with Art Damage, a flamethrower of a disc that mixed screamo sensibilities and genius electronic flourishes. FBTMOF followed that album with The Always Open Mouth, a record that found them redrafting their entire existence with similarly exciting results. When some asshat yelled, "Play the old songs!" during their last gig in Cleveland, I shared some of my best phlegm with the heckler. Dolt.

Time Again's latest, Darker Days, was slagged in these pages, due to its great similarity to American punk icons Rancid. (I've heard them referred to as "Tim Again," a reference to Rancid founder Tim Armstrong's place in their mindset.) I was on the business end of that payback: Singer Daniel Dart sent me over a bottle of Jack Daniels (covered in Time stickers, mind you), wrapped up in some t-shirts and hoodies. He included a note saying although he would've liked to have seen more positive coverage of his band, he was glad that AP decided to pay any attention to them at all. I've decided not to crack the fifth open until Time Again come back to Cleveland and I have an opportunity to share it with them.

Moral: Enjoy your platitudes with as much enthusiasm as you take your beatings. Or just disappear up your own Hershey Highway.