TRUTH, CDs AND CELIBACY

by Peter Gorman

Nothing ever happens in rock music anymore. One year is like any another, so we might as well get used to it. Even decades are getting hard to tell apart. Some years somebody dies, sometimes there's a musical breakthrough. 1964 had a story, 1977 did too. In fact, back in the mid- to late sixties every year had a story, a theme, something to ponder. At least a couple of years from the seventies call up a certain sound. By the eighties the years start getting hazy; things still happen, but not as fast. Forget the nineties. 1991 is remembered slightly as being the year Nirvana first sold millions, or as the year punk broke. After that, what else? Try and distinguish one year from another. How about the sound of `92? Remember how music was never the same after 1995? You don't? Put a rock music label on a year from the past twenty and most likely it won't fit. Most years do not have a sound or a musical event to make it memorable, not anymore. In such years one is better off looking for stories in other places, stories that distinguish the year from the previous five or fifty, stories that people will recall 20 years hence.

Let's see. Anything happen in the news this year?

In 2018 no one will remember or care what happened in rock music in 1998. Which is not to say that nothing happened, something always happens, but usually it's a murmur, and only in a distant year will it be acknowledged, but maybe not even then. Hindsight's gone nearsighted, and in rock and roll the past tends to get all the good press no matter how much good music is being made in the present day and has been busying being born for 20 years now since rock and roll's last big event. "Everything beautiful is far away" goes one of my favorite songs of the year (see Grandaddy), and so it is. But here are some years for you: 1984, 1987, 1994. Those years mean nothing in the history of rock and roll, but all have something in common in that all were great years for rock and roll records. 1998 was one too. None of those years have sounds distinguishable from the two or three years before or after it, and I'll even go as high as four or five. Those years simply had a bunch of great records released that fall under that broad and ambiguous category called "alternative music, " which is Granted that this collection of great years is of my own making, you won't find it in a book anywhere, and I can barely define it. How many great records need to be released to make a great year? I haven't the slightest. Any other qualities? Diversity would be nice, crossing musical genres so we can all find something to enjoy. Breakthroughs are unnecessary, and these days big events are manipulated (Remember Woodstock Two? Oh yeah? Quick, name the year it happened). Few are the surprises, and some of us are getting older. So 1998 was a great year for records, nothing more. And really, could a fan ask for anything more?

1998 was a great year for records for the same reason that 1984, 1987, and 1994 were great years, and the reason is/was pure chance. It just so happened that a number of rockers who had been around for a few years all decided to release a record that year. In 1998, Lucinda Williams, Beastie Boys, Hole, Pearl Jam, Madonna, Sonic Youth, Liz Phair, Tricky, Beck, Public Enemy, P.J. Harvey, Massive Attack,Wilco, and R.E.M. all released new records. It was bound to be a great year if just some of those records by these artists were as good as so many critics claimed some of their past ones were. And those are just the critical faves. The cult favorites - less celebrated, but celebrated all the same - also returned to the scene, including Bob Mould, the McGarrigle Sisters, Pulp, Saint Etienne, Afghan Wigs, Archers of Loaf, and Amy Rigby, who happen to favorites of the staff (insert your own favorite cult rockers here).The tried and true returned this year, and if they didn't all succeed there were enough of them to go around. 1998 was a numbers game that a contemporary fan couldn't lose, which means that 1999 will likely be the year of the hangover.

The once and future trend of rock stars - and even rock nobodies - is to keep at least two years between the release of new records. It's impossible to say exactly when this trend started (O.K., it was 1988), but when even the independent label recording acts are holding back their product it's time to note that this regrettable trend is here to stay. Beck is supposed to put another record out next year but he's an anomaly, and anyway it was two years between his last three releases. Two years is a minimum, so don't expect much from the veterans in 1999 and instead hope for some new faces. Sure there are exceptions to the rule, but right now I can't name a single one except for the artist formerly known as Mr. Nelson. This is a setback for two reasons, one of which is that there are more acts now but fewer good records, most rock music being forgettable and the good stuff taking longer to come around. The other reason is that rockers are only at their peak for a short while. Yer poets, yer mathematicians, and yer rock stars all blossom in their youth and then wither. There are isolated incidents of temporary returns to glory, and these are welcome, but unfortunately rock music will always be wasted on the young.

The young will also always be buying most of the rock music, and allegedly these youths are buying hip hop more than any other style, so much so that this year several hip hoppers managed to outsell the latest Garth Brooks record, who in a few years will be the most successful artist (industry term) in the history of recorded music. I don't know what this means, other than that hip hop is huge and that the record industry will be on the look out for something new to sell to the disposable income crowd, and you can bet they will find it even if it's not there. Expect the radio to sound as bad as ever in the coming year, with alternative radio continuing its slow march into oblivion. Hip hop will remain popular, especially if it continues to branch out with records that include melodies, ballads, and choruses sung by Broadway orphans. As it happened one of the year's most popular records, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by the ex-Fugee, was probably also the most critically acclaimed. Hip hop by definition but in its own diversity making hip hop harder to define, the record has already won Spin's year end poll and is a shoo-in to take the Village Voice poll next month (but it won't win the Rolling Stone poll - see demographics).

It's anyone's guess and foresight has always been blind, but I expect that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill will be one of two records released this year that will make an occasional appearance on all-time top 100 lists in years to come. The other is Car Wheels on a Gravel Road by Lucinda Williams, a fortyish straddler of blues and country, where aging is forgiven much more easily. The record is her first in six years, her third in seventeen, and to put that in perspective I know of at least eight records released by the late Jimi Hendrix over the same time period. The scarcity increased the desire and critics fell hard for Lucinda's latest, so much so that there would probably have been more of a backlash if she had sold more records. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road adds nothing new, but three chords and the truth is apparently still a potent mix.

Beyond those records the pickings are many but the consensus disappears. The Beastie Boys got great reviews and sold millions, but if you didn't care for the Beastie Boys before, the new one won't convert you. Michael Stipe said that if the new R.E.M. album had dropped anonymously from the sky then people would be running naked through the streets praising it, but I got my copy at Tower and kept my clothes on. Some praised Sonic Youth, some danced to Madonna, but as good a record as any eighties icon may have put out this year, if you've been in the game for over a decade you're not going to surprise anybody, and they didn't. Nobody did. Even Beck, he of the weird noises, put out his most conventional - and possibly his best - major label release. It was that kind of year. It was a year of musicians waking up in their own beds, a year in which they stopped fooling around and got their CDs to market. It was a year of great records but no new trends, no great new bands, nothing happened and now its gone, busy being forgotten. I998 had no sound of its own, but it sounded so good all the same.