Quite right. Yet consider: arguably this is a common thread that’s run for decades now about ‘real’ rock and roll, or if you prefer ‘normal,’ something as distinct from a mainstream that purportedly gets it all wrong and/or ignores it and/or exploits it. No need to rehash every example, but there’s a state of siege mentality that regularly evidences itself whenever this mythical entity is perceived to be threatened, something which I sense an echo of in Kubler’s sense of abandonment. As a result I’m always wary of claims made on its behalf, and the fetishizing appears in these ideas of ‘no it must be like THIS’ — a fetishizing of reality, of normality, in the face of something else, something other. An inversion of your construction, if you like, or a parallel.

I’ll also be the first to admit that the desire to hear these elements is culturally informed.

Which probably is the paramount point in the end, really. My own early self-conscious musical lodestones in 1983 were, above all else, Duran Duran and Def Leppard, at the time popular, omnipresent, mainstream — ‘normal’ if you like. Yet at the same time the rhetoric about them at the time was heavily negative and suspicious, channeled through a variety of viewpoints (social, political, whatever) that ranged from them being examples of how rock and roll was intrinsically awful to their being anything *but* ‘normal’ or ‘real’ rock and roll, which was intrinsically great. Has anything changed much besides the names and genres under discussion?

I mentioned a handful of elements (guitars, riffs and hooks, verse / chorus) not as much to imply that these are essential elements of rock music, but more to say that I don’t think it’s odd to want to hear these things. However, I’ll also be the first to admit that the desire to hear these elements is culturally informed. Kubler probably grew up listening to (what we would now think of as) classic rock and this (in part) formed the basis of his musicial aesthetic (look no further than his Les Paul and tube amp setup for proof). Had he been born ten years earlier or later, or in a different part of country (or world), I’m sure his musical sensibilities would be entirely different (and he would probably have a different take on Radiohead).

OK, I respect Radiohead. I think they’re a great band, they’ve influenced a lot of great bands, and they have some songs I absolutely love. But do I really enjoy their music? Not particularly.

The Hold Steady, on the other hand, is somewhere on the lower end of my (non-existent) list of my ten favorite bands ever. I flat-out love the Hold Steady, even though I’m straight edge and not the kind of guy who hooks up with random girls at parties. I don’t know why, but they speak to me, whereas Radiohead (despite repeated listenings throughout the past decade of my life never has and probably never will.

“Never before has there been a “greatest band in the world” who had so little to say about anything.”

Yeah, but think of it this way: to my mind, this description could equally cover, say, Bo Diddley and the Young Marble Giants, Tool and the Raincoats, the Shaggs and Disco Inferno, etc. etc. What you see (at least, so it’s implied) as something specific I find to be an incredibly broad church, though within that is something described by you as ‘straight-forward rock.’ Fair enough, but why is that take seen to be the standard, what standards created and shaped it, and why is it prioritized? Fetishism may be a poor choice of terminology, but there’s a question of meaning at play regardless which you’re taking as a given and which I — quite admittedly — want to address at its roots. (Which means we have now moved from Matos’s perceived junior high into an incredibly full-of-itself graduate studies program — I oughta know, I was in one for four years.)

… please?

I’m not sure that Kubler is stating anything more than his personal opinion, as his statements are qualified with words like “I think…”. But I personally don’t believe it’s fetishistic to want to hear music that is: made with guitars; contains riffs and hooks; and uses a verse / chorus structure. And it doesn’t even mean that Kubler can’t appreciate music that doesn’t have those things – I think he is simply wondering why Radiohead in particular ran so far away from their roots so quickly. Was the experience of “Creep” so traumatic that it caused Radiohead to distance themselves from that style of music?

The Hold Steady are just up there having a good time, more interested in hyping up the Minnesota Twins than making a political statement – and that is fine by me!

@Ned Raggett: I was thinking more “Big Lebowski” but either way, the point is definiteley that Hold Steady fandom is somewhat parallell to the Lester Bangs theory in “Almost Famous” wherein, “…the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you are uncool.” There’s also a lot of that same principle at work when they talk in interviews about not wanting to ever be the “in” thing.

At the same… damn, I felt the contact high coming on the moment the lights dimmed.