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Bette Midler’s point about MTV and the rise of the music video ruining live performance may have something of a corollary: Do certain bands’ images, broadcasted through said videos and performances, actually make them more anoying than they might be if you just stumbled onto their music while flipping around the radio or hearing ambient songs in a public place? I think the obvious answer is “yes” (surely a blind taste test of, say, Fall Out Boy would result in at least three out of the 10 people who were so ready to make that band an easy punchline saying “huh, this isn’t bad, what is this?”), but an incident that just took place in the cafe where I’m working today brought the idea into sharp relief.
So a couple of years ago I went to this godawful club night celebrating Swedish music. It was one of those places with a velvet rope, where I was made to ask the doorman if I could actually enter with my friends. There was bottle service. And a gigantic disco ball that was, if I remember, cut out and turned into a VIP section. And a decoration behind the bar of a woman’s legs, which opened and closed on command. And the band playing was this band the Ark, a Swedish outfit who I remember at the time thinking was totally ripping off the schtick of both L.A. Guns and Pretty Boy Floyd. The music sounded like an awful muddle, the people who weren’t my friends were all horrific i-banker/model asshole types, and I pretty much wanted to be anywhere else.
But as was just revealed to me via the sound system in this East Village cafe, the band’s single “One Of Us Is Gonna Die Young” is actually not that bad! It reminds me of the sort of powerpop that Idolator emeritus Brian Raftery would always post, and I actually thought when the song first came on that the band in question was the M’s. I mean, I doubt I’d give the band another chance in a live setting, but it certainly wasn’t as repulsive as I’d initially thought. And it’s not like there’s a lot going on news-wise, anyway, so I figured I’d share this story and wonder if the Idolator braintrust out there had any similar incidents, in which actually hearing a song caused an artist to transcend any superficial reputation garnered by previous actions. (And yes, this ties into the whole discussion from yesterday about reading about music before it’s been heard. What can I say, this is how the dog days of summer are melting my brain.)
The Ark – One Of Us Is Gonna Die Young [YouTube]
