Big Brother Muscle

As two or three of you know, I have a column in the record review section called I Don't Know, Ask That Guy. The title is derived from something you might hear a young record store employee say when a potential customer asks him about a band who started 25 years before said clerk was born. It's the column where "that guy" (ie, me) briefly summarizes a band's career in 500 words or less, and said subject is usually some relic from the Seventies that you may have heard brought up for a nanosecond in a conversation or an article in Rolling Stone. And yeah, I usually hate said band.

During their respective tenures at AP, Leslie Simon and Jonah Bayer would frequently wear classic-rock tees to work. If I recall properly, Leslie had a gray Chicago shirt, and Jonah used to rock a Phil Collins tour tee. This always pissed me off because not only were those "artists" the enemy of punk rock, in today's dumber world, the irony factor had blurred significantly. (I think Jonah had a thing for PhilCo's "Sussudio," but I don't think Lessimes used to sing "Saturday In The Park" at the top of her lungs in her office.) So for every Johnny Come Scenely who professes his love for Journey in a public forum, a little piece of me wishes God (or Dick Cheney) would turn the planet into a cold, black marble. See, I'm old enough to remember when bloated "classic rock" was considered "the current norm," and anything that deviated from said norm (ie, punk, new wave, alternative) was denigrated by people whose personal aesthetics could be successfully encapsulated in a Ford truck commercial.

But what really torques my lugnuts today is how all those classic-rock fossils got to operate in an atmosphere that waswaaaaay before the universal "community" of the internet. Could any of us really imagine Jimmy Page lurking on message boards hearing people bitch about his band's third album? Now once you get past that big ol motherin' absurdity, consider: What if Mr. Page actually took heed of what some 20-nothing from the early Seventies (a guy who, today, has logged approximately 7332 reviews on Amazon because, dammit, his voice WILL be heard) said, and thendecided to fashion his creative vision after that? How might Led Zep IV have turned out after a constant barrage of idiocy like "The intro to 'Black Dog' is annoying." "Why are the drums so loud?" "My boyfriend and I are pre-engaged and he's way more talented than Robert Planet [sic]." "Whatever, you suck. Grand Funk Railroad 4-ever."

I don't want to leave you with that depressing thought, so let me leave you with an upshot to that universe. I'm almost positive Zep manager Peter Grant would've had the funds to track down the anonymous posters' phone lines, and sent a bunch of people 'round for a visit to "sort things out."

But I hafta ask myself: Would I have had the willpower not to make fun of Steve Perry's hip replacement on a Journey thread?