Destroyer

Last night, Daughtry won "Favorite Duo Or Group, Pop And Rock" category at this year's American Music Awards. Named after their lead singer, former American Idol finalist/manure salesman Chris Daughtry, this band of hackneyed pin-up ginks are worshiped by Clear Channel music directors throughout this great land of ours. Personally, I can't make it through 17 seconds of anything these cod swallowers have put over on the American people in the name of "music" or "art." And since their universe never touches mine, there's a reason to celebrate Thanksgiving.

What I find amazing is that out of all the other bands up for this "award" (which should probably be renamed as Best Band Or Duo Who Can Dress Themselves In The Morning), I noticed there wasn't anyone who would get some play at the Bamboozle or Warped Tour. Sad British mopes Coldplay and dinosaur dust-farters the Eagles were in the mix, but there weren't any swoop-haired, lip-ringed scenester wieners playing $40 guitars and sporting $2000 back pieces. While the scene-police cafeteria likes to bray about those kinds of bands, they might as well start a movement like, I don't know, The War On Irony or some such caca. Because I didn't see Forever The Sickest Kids in the mix. I didn't see Metro Station on the red carpet. I didn't see the Madden brothers carrying Kanye West's wardrobe case into the building. Of course, it's not like I actually watched the seven-hour display of everything mediocre about American culture: I just clicked on the TV set after watching some TiVo'd House M.D. episodes and saw Daughtry and his dough-headed meeps get an award from the similarly boring Motley Crue, a band I loathe so much, I'm not going to waste anymore time to go back to insert the proper html code to put the umlauts in their ass-jacked name.

So while I like to moo on and on about all of the uniform sameness that goes on in the culture that AP covers, the reality is that it's not as prevalent as I like to think (Fuse TV not withstanding). Everybody with a screen name on a message board is ready to type the term "sellout" at a nanosecond's notice. But until Tear-Stained Hanky get enough traction to impress the billowing bags of noxious gas that run commercial radio, they really don't matter too much outside of the current microcosm. (That goes for all you post-hardcore types, as well. Ask Tim Karan to tell you about the time he went into a bar in Western Pennsyltucky wearing a Fear Before The March Of Flames hoodie [pre-name change] and was given dirty looks by townies from the First Church Of Chad Kroeger.) It's not like any of the patently loathsome queen-termite blobs who work at radio know anything about the current contemporary-punk rubric. Because whether you hate those bands or not, they still offer a lot more character than some talent show loser "following his dream" or whatever kind of trite horseshit he's pimping.

Congratulations, Daughtry. I'm sure Scott Stapp is crying somewhere in his Metamucil over your win. But there's plenty of stuff for me to laugh at from where I'm standing that I don't need to import any from you.