Nick­el­back played at half time and the world stayed on its axis.
What was sup­posed to hap­pen, some­thing as cat­a­clysmic as the gulf oil spill?
It was only rock and roll. Maybe not everybody’s idea of good rock and roll, but noth­ing dam­ag­ing.
I didn’t hear the band’s half time few songs at the Detroit Tigers-Green Bay Packers’s game, but the set at Sun­day, Novem­ber 27’s Grey Cup show­down between B.C. Lions and the Win­nipeg Blue Bombers  at B.C. Place was inof­fen­sive. Noth­ing to get twisted over.
The Detroit fans who before­hand signed an anti-Nickelback peti­tion, all 55,000 of them, had the big­ger beef than those B.C. fans of Van­cou­ver, Nickelback’s adopted home, who hardly made a fuss. One Detroit Twit­ter com­ment spoke for the oth­ers, “the peo­ple of Detroit have suf­fered enough.” In Van­cou­ver, there was all but silence.
Many of the peo­ple who signed the peti­tion wanted to know why Nick­el­back was cho­sen over Motown acts or vet­eran rock­ers.
So, let’s spec­u­late.
Motown Records,  the inde­pen­dent label that put Detroit on the map as “the sound of young Amer­ica” with clas­sic record after clas­sic, from My Girl to Reach Out,  has been in Los Ange­les more than 40 years. Most of the acts that were the sound of young Amer­ica are no longer with Motown. Some are dead.
A trib­ute to the orig­i­nal Motown would be ghostly if not ghastly and does any­one know what Motown means these days?
Each of the rock­ers that made Detroit a bas­tion of hard, uncom­pro­mis­ing rock can be dis­missed, Bob Seger pos­si­bly being the excep­tion. MC 5, too left wing.. Iggy And The Stooges? Too fucked up. Ted Nugent? Too right wing. Mitch Ryder? Oldies cir­cuit. White Stripes? Bro­ken up. Alice Cooper? Before Detroit became the band’s home­town, it was based in Phoenix.
Seger becomes the log­i­cal choice. He cur­rently has a dou­ble CD of his hits and a cou­ple of EMI reis­sues of two of his biggest albums. It would have been timely if he did play. Maybe he was on tour. Maybe he declined. Maybe he wasn’t asked.
Nick­el­back was . Prob­a­bly had no idea it was walk­ing into con­tro­versy.
Not that leader Chad Kroeger is blind and deaf to adver­sity. As soon as it became suc­cess­ful, Nick­el­back had its crit­ics. Kroeger and Nick­el­back know this, but sell records, sell con­cert tick­ets and gar­ner indus­try awards. To a band that has sold mil­lions, a peti­tion of 55,000 is rel­a­tively mean­ing­less. Some peo­ple don’t like Nick­el­back. So what?
It would be more wor­ri­some if there was a benign accep­tance of Nick­el­back.
If every­body hated Nick­el­back, there’d be no dis­cus­sion.
In short, Nick­el­back must be doing some­thing right to cause such a divi­sion and that is good,
It’s cause for a per­sonal reeval­u­a­tion of what we want from rock.
For Nickelback’s crit­ics the band is shal­low and doesn’t offer much. For the many who are fans, Nick­el­back offers enough.
The prob­lem is, what does “enough” mean?
When the band has had its day, will sell­ing records be enough? As it’s been noted before, just because you sell a lot of ham­burg­ers doesn’t mean you make a great ham­burger. Quan­tity over qual­ity.
That maybe is what Nickelback’s legacy will be. No legacy at all.
It won’t have been an influ­ence. Not like other half-time per­form­ers (who, admit­tedly, played the more pres­ti­gious Super­bowl) such as The Who, Rolling Stones, Prince or Paul McCart­ney. By com­par­i­son, Nick­el­back is anony­mous and mean­ing­less.
Another rea­son for the anti-Nickelback faction’s loud protest is that Nick­el­back has become suc­cess­ful with­out media help. It stub­bornly believed in itself, became suc­cess­ful because of such bull­head­ed­ness, and sees no rea­son to devi­ate from the course it’s set for itself.
It is, then, a people’s band.
It sells records in spite of being scorned for being unfash­ion­able or unhip.
There is an entire his­tory of people’s bands such as Tommy James And The Shon­dells or Three Dog Night,  who were regarded as com­mer­cial, a dirty word in the late  60s and through the 70s. The one that springs instantly to mind as the stand­out exam­ple of the people’s band is Grand Funk Rail­road, who were regarded as being worse than com­mer­cial; they were a hype. Grand Funk wasn’t asked to play the Detroit game either, despite being from Flint, Michi­gan.
Grand Funk Railroad’s music was blunt and sim­plis­tic, more so than Nickelback’s, and def­i­nitely a prod­uct of the time. The trio had the worst reviews of any band. Some were cruel. Some were unfair. Some per­pet­u­ated myths. Grand Funk went on sell­ing records, only later in its orig­i­nal incar­na­tion try­ing to appease its crit­ics, which was a los­ing cause. As a people’s band, Nick­el­back might have its ene­mies, but right now is hav­ing the last laugh. One day, the laugh­ter will stop, but there is a feel­ing that this will be Kroeger.s decision.