Nothing beats the vindication of watching a loud-mouthed, self-righteous band fall apart, or even just go away and no longer have their pathetic songs plague the radio. You know the feeling: You can’t understand why anyone would bother to go out and purchase such a steaming pile of dog crap, let alone how there are enough people behind the band to warrant a line of hit singles and wide-selling albums, not to mention expensive and boring MTV videos. How is it that the worst stations in town seem to play them endlessly, waving a banner of counter-credibility? Are they worried an uninformed listener might turn it on and, for a brief moment, think they found something worth listening to? I gleefully await the day that some of our current bands will disappear, along with those albums that are currently selling better than porn to desperate computer geeks.
Everyone has a band that is the bane of their musical existence; I have a friend who can’t refrain from calling P.O.D. “”pod”” and laughing maniacally at how moronic she finds them. For many people today, that band is Creed. I went and asked several friends who they detested and wanted to see go away, and of course the resounding answer was Creed. Some came up with boy bands; others, pop stars trying to rock out; but always, and I mean always, there was a loathing for Creed.
Who else can symbolize everything that is wrong with pop music today? They started out humbly enough, being written off by critics as just a derivative of grunge with nothing new to offer. But then our little crappy band went and grew up, and slid further and further into mediocrity. Lead singer Scott Stapp started wearing wife-beaters exclusively, guitarist Mark Tremonti must have gone to “”tuff school”” with all the posturing he started doing … and I think there were a couple of other guys who got little-to-no camera time.
Sure singles like “”Arms Wide Open”” (no, not even a song about having your first child is safe from being mocked) and “”My Sacrifice”” were doubly painful because they were not only crappy songs, but videos as well. But the thing that is really lame about Creed is their self-comparisons to Led Zeppelin.
For those of you who don’t know, Led Zeppelin was not well received by critics for a long time. In fact, some of their mystique came from the press’ disdain for the group, which caused Zeppelin to rarely do interviews at all, leaving the fans to connect with the group mainly through music. The group also managed to craft albums that were dynamic, different from each other and rich in musical genius.
While Creed has seen wide sales and popularity, their four albums have been a journey of mainstream acceptability, pandering to whatever meets the widest sales. There has been little musical development or stretching of boundaries; often their albums are said to have the same virtues — or perhaps more accurately, follies — each time around.
Incidentally, being a Christian band with obviously Christian-themed lyrics but not having the gall to come out and admit your stance is seriously weak, too, while we are on the subjects.
Until the day come, when CD resale stores are inundated with once-owned copies of “”Weathered”” or “”Human Clay,”” I will take refuge in the already-defunked and slap-able groups disappearing into the haze of the ’90s.
The most obvious category of music to have the coffin nailed shut would be rapcore, or rap-metal, what with the most notable of the genre going the way of the buffalo. Korn is moving away from their earlier sound, Rage Against The Machine has split, and other groups have fallen off the pop radar scope all together. The second-rate (hed)p.e. (Who could never decide what their name meant — was the PE short for Planet Earth, or just PE? Depends on which week you asked them) have been silent, much to my delight, ever since their lone single, “”Bartender,”” faded away back in 2000.
The group that really makes me happy to have met with internal troubles is Limp Bizkit, who, for my money, stood as a figurehead of stupid bands, thanks in a large part to their lead singer, Fred Durst. I know a lot of kids were into this group, but seriously, I didn’t know how much longer I could take Durst going on like he was something special. In this cynic’s opinion, guitarist Wes Borland deserves an award for leaving the band and moving on to other projects.
Since Borland’s departure, Limp Bizkit held open guitar auditions, found no one, reopened the position, and finally decided to beg and grovel for Borland to return by asking fans to e-mail their desire to see the guitarist reunite with the rest of the band. Humorously enough — and to the glee of “”haters”” and critics everywhere — Borland has turned down the offer to focus on his own project, Eat The Day. In fact, he has gone a step further, threatening Durst that Borland’s riffs can’t work their way onto a talked-about new album for the Limp crew. Yet since they are lacking their most interesting member (in visual terms, if nothing else) and only guitarist, the band will have to rely on bassist Sam Rivers doing double duty with some sort of assistance from Durst as well.
Honestly, I’m excited about this; as an admitted hater, I look forward to the opportunity of seeing a once explosively popular group stumble and fall thanks to a pompous megalomaniac of a vocalist who must think the band can go on no matter what.
In a fitting bout of irony, Durst and Stapp have been known to exchange words on each other’s bands, and whose was worse. So now we have one half of the suck exchange down for the count. And the other? Well, we can all just wait, hope and do our part by refusing to let our friends and family members waste their hard-earned money on bands like Creed (who has been nominated for worst album of the year with “”Weathered””) or any of myriad of worthless, forgettable and down-right boring bands that not even a VH1 “”Behind the Music Special”” could make seem interesting.
