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Nickelback, the people’s band
Published November 28, 2011 | 
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.
The Smile Sessions
Published November 1, 2011 |
At last, after 45 years, the listener can make up their own mind.
Is Smile by the Beach Boys a work of genius or did it deserve to be buried?
The Smile Sessions box is massive. Five CDs, a double vinyl album, two 7” singles, a poster replicating the Smile album cover, a photo booklet and testimonials by the surviving Beach Boys in a hard cover book that also includes essays.
At the centre of Smile are 49 minutes of music and Brian Wilson.
After 1966’s Pet Sounds, a remarkable coming of age statement that didn’t sell, Wilson was being hailed as a genius. He was only 24 years old but had clear ideas where he wanted to take his music. Wilson rebounded from the disappointing failure of Pet Sounds with the six month marathon that was “Good Vibrations,” The Beach Boys’ biggest success.
He stayed at home, writing and producing music while the other Beach Boys — Al Jardine, Mike Love, Bruce Johnston, Carl and Dennis Wilson — toured.
They came home to a Wilson who had teamed with lyricist Van Dyke Parks and a bunch of recorded fragments of which they couldn’t make sense.
Meanwhile, a sensitive, delicately-balanced Brian was falling apart. Love, for one, didn’t like Parks’ lyrics, didn’t understand them to sing them. The others, alarmed by the tanking of Pet Sounds, feared that Brian Wilson was messing up a good thing. They wanted songs about cars and girls and summer nights, not dove-nested towers or columnated ruins domino.
That resistance and other factors led to Wilson breaking down and the scrapping of Smile.
Over the years, versions of Smile leaked out, various songs showed up on later Beach Boys albums, facsimiles were bootlegged, and Smile achieved a mythic status. The great lost album.
In 2004, Wilson and his incredible (and incredibly devoted) backing band reconstructed Smile. Great as the resulting record was, as Brian Wilson notes, “People loved what me and my band had done but it made ‘em want to hear all the original recordings.”
So here they are. Having Smile is enough. The additional discs of the Smile sessions are fascinating though possibly too much of a good thing. Does anyone need 33 different excerpts from “Heroes And Villains? Twenty-four variations of Good Vibrations?
The completist does and demands it. At the same time, it’s possible to learn how each song developed, how Brian Wilson worked in the studio and possibly to appreciate how driven he was.
The last is hard. It’s why an engineer or producer can hear 100 takes of the same movement until he hears what he alone hears. With the Smile Sessions we get close to hearing what Brian Wilson was hearing. It feels like a privilege
It also feels like entering a time tunnel. For what might have been regarded as avant garde then isn’t now. What would have been a challenge in 1966 or 67 is dated now.
The humour that was important to Brian Wilson was corny then, Cornier now. Then again, it was one of The Beach Boys’ endearing qualities.
Seeing Smile exposed is like solving a mystery that might have been better left as a mystery.
Having the proof diminishes a myth that had grown larger than the Smile Sessions possibly can be.
The listener can make up their own mind.
Reunion
Published August 29, 2011 |
A reunion was more a test than a triumph.
Years after Bruno Gerussi’s Medallion changed its name to Little Games and broke up a few fruitless years later, we’d get unexpected feedback.
By“we” I mean Jimmy Walker and I. Jimmy was recognizable and I was the singer, so people put two and two together and came up Bruno when they saw us at a club. Also, people who knew I was the writer for the Province tended to know that I also was with BGM. It was apparent that nobody remembered Little Games but everybody remembered Bruno Gerussi’s Medallion.
They’d tell us we were their favorite band at the Town Pump. Randy, the Town Pump’s sound man, apparently loved doing our sound because Jimmy was such a good guitar player and we were unpredictable. Maybe we were unpredictable at the Pump shows. I arranged to play there on Gerussi’s 60th birthday, made a poster, bought a birthday cake. Some elderly Gerussi fans showed up hoping to meet him. I taunted Jimmy mid-solo with a slice of cake. As he backed away, I mashed some cake into Jimmy’s face. Opening for Rank And File, guitarist Ron Scott (who preceded Jimmy) threw his guitar over to Buck Cherry of the Modernettes, who was at the side of the stage because he knew the Kinman brothers and Alexander Escovedo of Rank And File, all of whom were admirers of his song The Rebel Kind. Buck snatched the guitar mid-air and played a solo. When he was done, he threw the guitar back to Ron, who grabbed it and played another solo. Was that unpredictable?
A band from Sakatchewan covered one of our songs.
I still get emails from strangers wanting to know what happened to us and will we ever get back together.
Not long ago, I was in a North Vancouver pub and listened, embarrassed, to a guy rave about BGM. Another guy, at the same pub, figured — ahem — we were the best bar band ever.
A few encouraged us to reunite.
So we did. October 28, 1998
One of those few was Jamie Perry, aka Bocephus King. He was in awe of Walker and wanted to see us play again. Not being fools, we agreed to open for Bocephus King at the Vancouver Press Club. That way, there’d be a full house, less pressure on us, Perry would get his wish and Bocephus King also could tape its set.
The recording was an afterthought, but did make sense. This was a one off occasion and the measure of ourselves
More to the point was the question of who would be the band. The answer turned out to be obvious . We went with the last incarnation of the guys who recorded In Search Of The Fourth Chord.
The recording set up was as simple. The mixing console came out of my basement. We drafted Tom Carter of MagicLab, who pulled in Craig Stauffer, who grabbed an armload of MagicLab microphones. The two wired us up and we were ready to roll.
Or so we hoped.
We had two rehearsals with Jim Elliott, Bruce Faulkner, Ron Hyslop and Jimmy Walker when Bruce had to drop out. He has a list of health problems stemming from when he was a teenager and diagnosed with Krohn’s disease. Any one of them could hit him at any minute, which makes him unpredictable and why he quit BGM the first time. Our drummer on tour was Jack Guppy from Barney Bentall and The Legendary Hearts. He knew our songs and was available, at least for a few weeks. Jack practiced with us one and a half times, which was all he could spare and all the time we had. Jack did a great job.
The small Press Club was packed, mostly with Bocephus King fans but a few BGM curious. We drew our breath collectively and took to the stage. This was the first time I’d appeared with a guitar (my red Fender Squire) but I promised the band I’d stay out of the way. Maybe hit the one or two chords I knew.
The set went well and we were pleased with ourselves. We got a good reception and everything seemed worth the effort. Possibly we were so focused and upbeat because we knew that this was it. Exactly what we proved we weren’t sure, but somehow felt validated. The tape recording might tell the story.
The tape. It’s an accurate reflection of the performance barring a couple of repairs. The first two songs were not recorded as Craig and Tom used these to get proper levels. The first song on the record, Fantasy Garden, is the third song in the set. It’s the first song I ever wrote on guitar. Walker put it into shape. Anyhow, the first two notes I sing were so off the map the MagicLab pitch corrector didn’t know where to go. I corrected these. Ginger’s Alright required Elliott to retune his bass, but we went straight into the song, giving Jim no time. Walker corrected that. He redid the bass part.
During Muswell Hill Ray, a song dedicated to The Kinks, there is a spontaneous break as Walker takes a solo that is right out of the Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin book. The band comes to a full stop, he rips it up, we jump back in. I love that intuitiveness.
We close with Bruno Gerussi’s Medallion, a song given to us by No Fun’s David M. It’s a simple, funny number but we hadn’t performed it in years when were still together, and I stretched it out. Maybe too much. By the time it’s over, I wish the singer would shut up. The rust that had grown from not playing it for so long shows, but this is no big deal. It’s a one time live recording, right?
We called the album The Secret Return. Originally, it was to be called The Uncalled For Return Of Bruno Gerussi’s Medallion. Nobody asked us to reunite. We just did it. The Secret Return was a valid title. Not that many people knew of the gig (and probably not that many people cared) and, in keeping with the low profile, not many records were made. The main idea was to press enough to give away at Christmas. It was never meant to be a commercial proposition.
In discussing the cover for the LP, I envisioned a cowboy on a rearing horse, firing a pistol over his shoulder at some imagined bad guys. I had this vague Boys Own picture, stealing an image from the preteen books. Grenville Newton, who was the original bassist and christened us Bruno Gerussi’s Medallion, got excited and volunteered to paint what became the art for the CD. The Newt was fond of strong images of sailors and warships and that’s what we got. However, the tapes languished for a few years until we heard that Gren had cancer. Fortunately, subsequent operations were successful and he’s in good health, but, back around 2000, his cancer prompted us to package the album at last.
The Secret Return probably is the truest representative of the band from its first recording to the Little Games phase to our sometimes left field choice (and treatment) of covers. That it came years after we broke up, says something about hindsight.