Woodstock '99 and Weezer's Pinkerton

HBO's "Woodstock '99: Peace, Love, and Rage" is half-information half-activism. The film does a decent job guiding the viewer through the management failures of the three-day event. I would have preferred if the film provided a more thorough postmortem on the festival's management.

The film focuses on the culture of the latter '90s, declaring nu-metal as racist, misogynistic, and, as Moby says, troglodytic. The film could have done a better job clarifying these assertions and demonstrating an objective trend.

Nevertheless the ideas it presents are interesting enough. Aggression is always in demand regardless of the decade - punk, hardcore, metal, dubstep, all these are participants in an ongoing "bro" culture. Funnily enough I was remarking to a friend recently how The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" is incredibly testicular - it is emo elevating itself to unseen heights of self-loathing.

The irony is that people who hate themselves also need to affirm they hate themselves; that is how the ergo sum works. Every personality desires to loudly declare itself, and every personality wants to dance. The film describes Nirvana as ushering an era of gender sensitivity; such a claim seems extremely naive to me, in hindsight, as there will always be tides of such sentiment, and the tide will always turn back. Nirvana embodied self-hatred and irony - that negative energy has to go somewhere. But it does not simply end at the individual, because self-hatred is suicidal for the ego; the audience very clearly being alive, in order to give money, the self-hatred extends away from the individual and back onto their friends and neighbors. If a person is capable of hating themself they are capable of hating other people, perhaps to an even greater magnitude. This will always be the case.

The truth is, Nirvana enabled post-grunge and nu-metal by encouraging a different lyrical approach. There is no way "Rape Me" did not allow artists a broader diction. But obviously Nirvana cannot be held morally responsible. Not even corporations can be held responsible, as they simply cater to audience's tastes by navigating through social moors. Some aspects of human nature are fixed, only changing their outward manifestations.

So we arrive at Weezer's "Pinkerton".

Pinkerton

"Pinkerton" is acclaimed. It is fast and loud. It is despicable. But Rivers Cuomo is not as hated as Kid Rock - or, King Shithead - is. Why is that?

This amuses me quite a bit because, as I was listening to "Pinkerton", I thought back on that boorish Nirvana comment and Moby's remark and wondered why this album, Dismemberment Plan's "Emergency & I", Nine Inch Nail's "The Downward Spiral" and other alternative albums get a pass, while Limp Bizkit does not. Isn't "Pinkerton" misogynistic? Isn't "Pinkerton" hyper-masculine? Isn't "Pinkerton", well, white?

Shall we admit there must be artistry to the album's worldview, however insular, however self-unaware it is? Shall we admit that when Cuomo screams "Thursday night I'm making Denise / Friday night I'm making Sharise / Saturday night I'm making Louise", we scream along with him, being accessories to his one-night stands, and yet sharing in his frustrations of a greater scope? Shall we admit we indulge in his pathetic ideation in "No Other One"? Shall we admit our own vanity as we rock out to "The Good Life"? Shall we admit that "Pinkerton" is so darn good because even our contempt for ourselves is human?

And that it is necessary that that contempt is not examined whatsoever? Perhaps I'm overexaggerating if I say I can't imagine an album like this being made now. There must be something about the frustration and chaos of the '90s that enabled this type of honesty. I would say if music like this were being made now, one sees the artist self-censoring themself, such that they say something like "Oh I know the way I think is wrong, but I'm doing it anyway."

Such a statement would be a total cop-out and against the aims of art. The artist cannot self-censor - if the artist intends a message, then they should simply say the message clearly. Using art to tempt a viewer into some message is making pornography out of art, as then the art's only use is to achieve some kind of climax. Art demonstrates; the audience is free to analyze it any way they want out of the art's form. Even if the art impresses to us as misogynistic.

I don't think "Pinkerton" is beautiful, nor is it intellectual. Yet I sing and dance to it. I don't quite understand why, since, going by this blog's musical tastes, I enjoy wit and irony heartily. But "Pinkerton" demonstrates I like it, and that demonstration is a fact that can't be taken away.

All of its qualities can be summarized by "Across the Sea", which, if I understand correctly, is Weezer's fans' number one song. It's a song of incredible psychological insight, not by intention, but by Cuomo's sheer honesty; it also helps that he has an excellent grasp of verse-chorus-verse. The fact that the narrator is obsessed is underscored by his detachment from that same obsession, such that the song progresses in fits of mania. The sadness within the song is only alluded to in the intro, through the piano; the rest of the song is very energetic. That contradiction, of a loud rock song about loneliness, longing and self-loathing, that madness, is what makes the song so incredible, especially in an album where every song is toeing that very narrow line. There is nothing that beats the refrain: "I've got your letter, you've got my song." There is something somehow redemptive about that line, as if Cuomo at that moment is able to feel something like empathy for another person.

I find myself listening through "The Good Life" and stopping somewhere at "El Scorcho". I think "Pink Triangle" and "Falling in Love" are unnecessary. "Butterfly" is great. As a concept album it could be more cohesive, but the allusions to Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" makes the album unique, very unique indeed, especially for its genre. In fact, one wished Weezer connected the theatrics of Van Halen and Queen more with opera.

So I don't think we've ever progressed from Woodstock '99, as much as we'd like to believe, and I don't think the Woodstock of '69 was ever that great to begin with. I think if Moby is calling nu-metal a troglodytic strain of metal, then I think it's fair to say all modern music is troglodytic, and the only thing sacred is choral music; and I bet during his time, people thought Palestrina's mass was overly sensuous or something like that. I suppose there is no accounting for taste, but what can we infer if we begin to distrust the tongue?