#17: 2000

THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 2000, a revealing moment at a Cracker concert on the right way for bands to treat their fans, and Metallica’s bold example of how not to. For earlier installments, go here.

Because I had seen them open for the Spin Doctors, at the young and impressionable age of fifteen, I’ve always been a bigger-than-average fan of the 90s one-hit wonders band, Cracker. Still recording albums almost twenty years after their eponymous debut, Cracker is as good an example as any of a band of hard-workin’ dudes content to play to their small but hardcore following. The hit(s) dried up, but Johnny Hickman’s flamboyant country-blues electric guitar and David Lowery’s biting cynicism remain intact.

In Summer 2000, I got to check out Cracker at the 7th House in Pontiac, MI. It was my fourth or fifth time seeing the band, (like I said, I’ve always been a fan). Plus, tickets were always cheap. Before the show, some people were mistreated by the venue’s management, and word got back to Cracker before they hit the stage.

Come show time, Lowery, Hickman and Co. hit the stage and basically went through the motions: the lows weren’t low, and the highs weren’t high. The notes were all there, but one could tell the group was totally phoning it in. About thirty minutes into the show, Lowery finally broke the silence and said something like, “I was really pissed off when I got up here tonight. It’s got nothing to do with you guys: I heard through the grapevine that some people were mistreated by the management. I’m here to let you know: you don’t have to come to a place that treats you like shit (even if we’re playing).” Cracker then ditched the set list and took requests for the next two hours. What started out as kind of routine ended up being one of the best shows I’d seen to that point.

Lowery’s words and attitude that night have come to strike me as a kind of metaphor for how a band should treat its fans. When fans have a bad experience directly related to trying to see a band, it’s that band’s duty to at least acknowledge the situation. Of course, I’m not expecting a steak dinner, but this kind of, “Hey, sorry the door guy pissed on your shoe. What do you wanna hear?” is in order.

On the other end of the spectrum, on April 12, 2000, metal-giants Metallica showed exactly how not to treat fans, when they filed suit against several American colleges over copyright infringement stemming from illegal downloading on the then-new Napster file-sharing service. Prominent rock groups such as Hole, Garbage and Limp Bizkit had been finger-pointing at the newly-popularized digital mix tape service as the primary scapegoat for the (then) recent downturn in record sales, but Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, the most vocal opponent of file-sharing in the group, took it to the next level and effectively sued the band’s fans for doing what young rock fans had always done—sharing bootlegged mixes of albums—albeit the new technology made the mix tape much quicker and much more impersonal.

The underlying problem, to my eyes, is that BIG rock groups felt their quality of life going in decline as sales of their newest album went down, then punished the very people they expected to buy millions of copies of everything they farted out. Hole’s 1999 swan song “Celebrity Skin” didn’t approach the double-platinum success of 1994’s “Live Through This,” because no one was willing to believe that Courtney Love had sucked TWO albums out of Kurt Cobain before his death. Of Metallica’s last FOUR pre-Napster releases, only 1997’s Reload has sold less than five million copies to date (Load, Garage, Inc., and S+M have all been certified 5x platinum).

And this really burns me up. I was sitting here, giving Metallica the benefit of the doubt, imagining their problem to have been market saturation: to follow up the metalhead-crushing Load with a similar album of alternative-rock leaning power pop, then to release a two-disc collection of covers, followed by a two-disc collection of old songs rearranged with the San Francisco Orchestra seems like enough of a glut to make all but the most die-hard fans run for the hills. But to find out that not only Metallica’s reputed four weakest albums to date were, in fact, wildly successful by any stretch of the imagination, is reprehensible.

That the only vocal opponents of online file-sharing were the biggest stars of the day makes me sad. What gives me a glimmer of hope for the future is that the little guys, the most vocal of which being They Might Be Giants (who’s Long Tall Weekend was the first MP3-only album sold, though it was eventually overshadowed by Aimee Mann’s [superior] Bachelor No. 2), were outspoken proponents of using the internet as a tool for inexpensive promotion. Smaller bands all over claimed to notice an unexplained upturn in popular interest: when your friend saw a group like Aloha, bought their CD and sent you MP3s of their songs, you might be more inclined to go see them when they came through next time. When bloated, stadium rock giants like Metallica smacked you on the wrist for expressing interest in their songs, you might just be inclined to reach for something a little…less judgmental (though it pains me to see that even the abysmal follow-up to the Napster debacle, the piss-poor St. Anger, is certified 2x platinum to date).

But: if you want to see one rock and roll comedy that’s funnier than This is Spinal Tap, I direct you to the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster, which explores the making of St. Anger. You wanna see the guy who sang “Blackened” cry like a little girl? It’s in there.

I’m sitting here, thinking this kind of peacock attitude on the part of the biggest stars in the music industry is what did in the industry more than anything. For the first time in history, the fourth wall was REALLY broken, and the big big stars showed their true faces in this new light. Of course, answering the question of what killed rock n’ roll— the MP3 or the idiot rock star?—is about as easy as the chicken-egg scenario. It doesn’t matter what came first. In the end, what matters is only that it’s over now.

Next post: I’d like to talk about four records that were released on September 11, 2001, and their supposed relevance to the 911 tragedy.

by Brook Pridemore