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But...and you knew a but was coming didn't you...in America it's a little different. In America authenticity is still seen as an asset and irony hasn't totally contaminated the culture. This is brutally true in the world of rap (a world I'm completely unfamiliar with); but it also applies to other musical genres (country for example) and now and again you'll get a band that is so vibrant and authentic it reminds you that you rock and roll was originally the music of poor blacks (and then whites) in the south, music that was a vector for feelings of love and despair, of dispossession, fear and other raw emotions. I thought of this on Saturday night as I tuned in to Saturday Night Live to watch Christoph Waltz. I havent watched SNL for years. I'm not of the school that believes SNL isn't as funny as it used to be, I'm of the school that believes SNL was never funny in the first place, but I like Waltz and I wanted to see him do a comedy turn. He was fine but what brought the house down was the musical act: Alabama Shakes. Obviously I'm a little behind the times: Alabama Shakes have been on Letterman and Conan and the Guardian was way ahead of the curve, talking about them in April of last year. They're a group of dirt poor, musically gifted kids from Athens, Alabama who are into roots music and are the opposite of everything that Grammy Award winning Mumford and Sons stand for. What do I mean by that? Well why don't you watch their performance from last Saturday (above right) and judge for yourself. [If Lorne Michaels kills the above youtube or it doesnt work on your browser you can see more of Alabama Shakes, here. ]
42 comments:
What a great band!
I was turned onto Alabama Shakes by a friend who owns an alternative radio station and has been playing and promoting them relentlessly for about a year.
In a world where authenticity matters zero, it's immensely refreshing to see a band like this break through and shake up the stale tarpits of music business.
Love the Alabama Shakes. I bought their first ep and have been hooked ever since.
I'm also blessed to have a great public radio station (WTMD) that plays a great variety of dj curated music (and no commercials).
There's a great band from Baltimore called J Roddy Walston & The Business that is just pure, unadulterated, foot stomping rock. Make you want to get up and dance music.
So let me ask you this. Given your age and that you lived in NYC AND that rap is about 40 years old at this point, how did you wind up so unfamiliar with it?
Pris
From what I've read, I think it really helped that were from northern Alabama just a short drive away from Nashville. Without a scene nearby I guess they could have languished for years or even decades.
Brian
How did I lose interest in rap? Its a good question. Can I blame Rick Rubin?
New York was great in the 90's when I was there but then Biggie got shot and Tupac got shot and who replaced them?
I dont know, as Jay Z mainstreamed I just kind of lost interest.
Super post Adrian. Authenticity is so hard to find. Quite liked this little clip from Alabama Shakes but they arent always as good as this.
Are you watching Nashville? Aimed at girls, yes but its really not bad and the songs in last weeks show [episode two] were most excellent.
This is an interesting book, with some surprises:
http://www.amazon.com/Faking-Quest-Authenticity-Popular-Music/dp/B0044KMSI4/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361288458&sr=1-2&keywords=authenticity+music
Adrian, you're dead wrong about Saturday Night Live. It offered a funny skit in 1978.
You're on sounder ground in the matter of authenticity. In recent months, I have read about the fitness regimen that Mick Jagger (that student of business at the London School of Economics) maintained on the road. I have read the David Bowie was not nearly as sexually promiscuous as he liked to pretend in his early days, and that Bruce Springsteen used to spray some artificial substance on his face before taking the stage, the better to reflect the stage lights and simulate sweat. So it's not so much that rock and roll is just as phony as Hollywood, it's that it's no different and never was, except for maybe about ten minutes back at the beginning. The moment "authenticity" is invoked, it becomes a commodity.
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Adrian,Although Rap is indeed not my cup of tea,the gut feeling authenticity of "Alabama Shakes" is incredible.I feel the same way about the works of Lindley and Manx .Authenticity is a tough creation since it appears to spring from direct experiences often unhappy ones.I guess (dating myself) re: popular music folk and soul connect to me directly as does Jazz.Class might be an impediment to authentic creative expression but talent comes in many guises as does "inauthenticity." Best Alan
One of my favourite books about a band is Iain Banks' "Espedair Street." Three "middle-class" kids and a guy from Ferguslie Park in Paisley. Of course, it's the Paisley kid who writes the songs.
But then he ends up with money in retirement because, as he says, "Middle-class values saved us."
Does he mean that ironically?
I think you're being too kind to America here, Adrian. Yes, authenticity is still seen as an asset here, but that just makes it easier to commodify.
I liked the group, though.
That book looks interesting, John.
Country artists (the ones you hear on the radio coming, usually, out of the sanitized Nashville scene) are constantly singing about how "country" they are and how "country" is better then, well, anything. All the while these same successful artists are living in mansions and everywhere but their perceived audience lives.
Rap isn't that much different. Talking about the street and keeping it real, while not struggling at all anymore.
Kikaren
I havent seen more than five minutes of Nashville but I liked the little bit I did see with the Cheerleader from Heroes in it. She was good.
"Consumers get the music they deserve or are willing to tolerate..."
Maybe that should be, "consumers get the music they are willing to pay for." If you're "authentic" then you make music for yourself and for people like you - if those people don't have as much money to buy concert tickets or iTunes downloads then you won't make as much. If your parents aren't paying for your apartment in Brooklyn then your chances are very slim.
One thing about early rap musicians, they made sure they got paid.
John
You've mentioned Espedair Street before and I still havent read it which is odd, as I've read every Iain M Banks and about half dozen Iain Banks. I WILL get to it.
Peter
Its that old thing isn't it? If you can fake sincerity you've got it made...
I'm reading a history of Britain by AN Wilson at the moment called Our Times and he talks about how The Rolling Stones were better than The Beatles because they didnt take themselves too seriously and they were cynical and they understood irony whereas the Beatles were the opposite in every degree. Well I prefer the music of The Rolling Stones but I prefer the idea of the Beatles (at least in the early days) as sincere and serious and heartfelt. If you begin your musical career as a cynic where do you go from there?
Alan
Thats why I think first albums are always the most interesting, because all of the artists experiences are channeled into that one record...
Seana
Well not everyone gets corrupted by the suits. Most of them do, yes, but surely not all...
Brian
I think authenticity still lives at the margins. The city of Nashville is an interesting place where you've got a lot of struggling singer songwriters outside the music industry machine. And some successful acts do still keep it real. I read a quote from Tom Waits's wife that Waits "lives like an illegal immigrant from Central America constantly in fear of the INS."
That New Yorker piece on Bruce Springsteen however put me right off. How can you write anything from a two hundred acre horse farm in northern New Jersey?
John
I think thats why I'd put my naive faith in a band that comes from Nashville rather than a band that comes from Brooklyn (or to be even more particular Williamsburg). The rents are much cheaper in Nashville and you can be part of a music scene for almost nothing.
I'm not saying the musicians necessarily get corrupted, but more that the powers that be are really only interested in them for their marketability. If it's anything like the bigger print publishers, the marketers probably do have some sort of interest in music, but it falls very far behind their interest in prestige and money.
The most amusing thing was the bit where Mantel, at a gathering for the queen, feels quite overwhelmed and ends up sitting on the floor behind the couch. Not what we expect from a double Booker winner, but good.
On a tangent, I just read about the Hilary Mantel bashing over her take on Kate Middleton in the London Review of Books, and it led to my finding the real article, which of course is so much more astute than anything the journalists--and the prime minister--have to say about it. I was able to read it for free here.
Sorry, the sequence of that got a bit mangled.
Certainly the idea of the Rolling Stones wanting to play American blues music is ironic, but that doesn't mean they understood the irony. The famous Mick and Keith meeting at the train station with Chuck Berry records has some sincerity in it, doesn't it?
And The Beatles are cynical, aren't they? They were just more firmly rooted in the English music hall tradition, weren't they? Even before, "When I'm Sixty-Four," they had plenty of songs that could almost be Gilbert and Sullivan, though with an odd edge (think of, "We Can Work it Out," or "Run For Your Life").
The Beatles got away with a lot because of the cuteness, but there was always that Lennon wink and sneer.
But lately I've been listening to The Kinks...
Seana
The Mantel comments were spot on if you ask me. No one in the UK seems willing to admit that the truth that Kate Middleton is a rather dull plain Jane with dead eyes. Of course William is no catch either is he?
Both their siblings however have charisma in spades...
John
Initially I think they let Brian Epstein be the cynical one.
Saturday Night Live incidentally will have Paul McCartney on next week which shows you how hip and happening it really is.
Of the Beatles and the Stones, the Beatles were, of course, the ones from a working-class background. Could that have had something to do with a striving to be taken seriously?
And does anyone know where I can get some cheap ugg boots?
Ah, "Run For Your Life" doesn't have an edge, it's just whiny shite. I think even Lennon admitted it was the worst song he had written.
Harry and Pippa are not just charismatic, they are extremely fortunately placed. All of the celebrity, none of the expectations.
Did you ever read Paul Shaffer's autobiography, Adrian? Great read.
Adrian,Thank you for this thought provoking discussion of authenticity. Seana link to Mantel's article about whose creature and creation the 'Royals " are is almost surgical in its dissection.Surrounded by myth,history and public reverence ,adulation and expectation, the people often get what they expect,i.e. scripted behavior.I remember my feelings about John and Jacqueline Kennedy and the tacit media circumspection about their private lives. Despite Cuba the public loved "OZ " or" Camelot " as it was then called.Most people love illusions that comfort them and "Rock"with its huge global concerts appears to be no different.Best Alan
Alan, yes, I'd take Hilary Mantel's thinking over many another's,and don't like to see her pilloried in the press. But as Sam Leith, who wrote article that led me to her essay says (after noting that author Anne Enright had a similar drubbing after Booker win):
"Writers, whose business is representation, will from time to time seek to examine the wilful and damaging stupidities of our culture. We should not be surprised if from time to time stupidity fights back with the only weapon it has – which is to say, more stupidity. For the moment, though, the best advice to any writer not wishing to be wilfully misconstrued is starting to look like: don't win the Man Booker prize, and if you must, then whatever you do, don't write anything in the LRB."
Big fan of Alabama Shakes, since the first time I heard Hold On. It was one of those holy Sh*t type of moments, where I did not know who the artist was, but made it a point to find out asap. With rare songs like this, there is a real emotional experience to it, for me at least. A couple other examples that had that first listen magic were The Shins "New Slang" and Rihanna's "Stay"
Recently got turned on to a band from Providence RI called Deer Tick. Might want to give 'Twenty Miles" and "Dirty Dishes" a try, as they are really great.
I think the common thread is that what really made these songs so outstanding to me were the fairly simple instrumentation, great lyrics , and awesome singer's voices.
I forgot to mention that I had not heard of Alabama Shakes (I'm even less cool than you are, Adrian), but I liked this clip a lot. Thanks.
Heard a lot of Janis Joplin in that voice. The tune didn't knock me over but there's a lot to be said for authenticity. Tons of bands here in Hermosa Beach but the guy who overcame a drug problem and sings from his gut puts the others to shame.
Matt
No I havent. He seems like an interesting and knowledgable guy.
Alan, Seana
Its hilarious and typical that the attacks on Mantel are so crude whereas her attack on Middleton if you can call it an attack is so subtle. Middleton I think is a harmless dimwit, Mantel might be the best novelist writing in English today. I know which of the two ladies I'd rather spend the evening with.
Sean
Deer Tick! Aha! I've actually heard of them through my friend Brian who lives in Providence. I agree, they've got the moves.
Peter
Neither of us have our finger on the cutting edge of hip I suspect. Hows that for a mixed metaphor?
Tom
Joplin, yes, that's what its in there. Joplin and Aretha and just a touch of bloodhound and Jagger.
Oddly enough, a couple of my friends had been talking about authenticity in rock and roll themselves, it turns out. And they came to the same conclusion that I'm starting to draw, which is that once you call something having to do with celebrity authentic, it's already probably not--or not as much as it once was. I suppose it doesn't preclude it being good, though.
I don't think Mantel was really talking about Kate Middleton at all. I think her whole point was that the person becomes invisible behind the role. Or, in her case, roles--motherhood being the next one she will have to play convincingly.
AS someone who has both labored with depression and played the blues for money, I can tel you that what Adrian is describing is the difference between having the blues, and playing the blues.
If you really have 'em, it comes out when you play 'em.
Gigcity
Yup I think you're right about that...
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