in Pencil Music

I’m big on visiting forums, and hearing what people have to say. Recently I was doing my habitual world wide web stumble, when I came across a discussion about yet another pop disco rock whateveryawantocallit band. You know what I mean: flashy lights, head banging, and that disco hipster beat that hasn’t stopped since, well I’d say about 2003, but more realistically – 1975.

In this particular forum that I ended up in, several people were discussing some new, totally different sounding music that they were super psyched about. Everyone was chiming in like they had found the cure to aids. So who were they discussing? Some band called the “Silversun Pickups”.

So I watched a clip of them playing on David Letterman recently. They have a lead singer, keyboard player (although you can’t hear what he’s playing, he’s totally forgettable), female bass player (who is there for looks), and a drummer. So I’ll start with the drummer, but I may not get much further than that – there’s a lot to cover.

As the song began, I noticed that he had a fairly basic kit, which I really appreciate. During the first few measures of the song, he sounded alright to me. But then came the you-know-what. That disco crap during the chorus. Why? Why? Why? are bands still doing the disco chorus. There are so many bands that do the disco chorus beat, they all sound the same. #1 It’s a really boring beat, it doesn’t get your foot tapping (critical to my liking any particular song), #2 None of the drummers that do the disco crap beat can even keep the rhythm going properly, it always sounds like they are losing track of the beat, or it’s dragging. To me it resembles the same feeling of when a really bad DJ transitions into the wrong song, with the wrong beat, etc. You know what I’m talking about. You can hear a pin drop in the place when that happens.

So what else did I not like about this drummer? He had a symbol perched noticeably high in the air, where he could hardly even reach it. It was the only symbol he had on the whole kit – but he kept swinging his arm up to hit the symbol over and over, and you can tell he was struggling to reach the symbol. This was clearly detracting from his ability to play the song properly, and was more for looks and show, than the sake of making good music.

So maybe I wasn’t giving them a fighting chance, so I looked up about 3 more songs by this band. I was confused – I thought maybe they named the youtube videos wrong, because every song I played by them sounded exactly the same. Same beat, same boring vocals, untalented musicians. (**note to guitar player, if you’re not a natural like Jimi, ask your parents for guitar lessons before spewing your bad guitar playing on the world).

Seems like rock has been recycling the same garbage for 30+ years now. This band sounded like REM meets The Killers, except without any of the unique attributes that either of those bands have. I could go on and on about other disco rock / annoying music like the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and TV on the Radio, as well as other hodgepodges of untalented “musicians” making a name for themselves with cool outfits, but that would be sacrilege to this new age of cool we live in.

If you ask me, I think we should’ve had a Disco Demolition Night at Shea before they tore it down to truly put the stupid disco beat to rest. Where is Steve Dahl when you need him? Since when is rock n roll disco?