If mainstream radio has taught us anything, it's that the saying "You can never hear a great song too many times" works much better in theory than in practice.
One can indeed hear a great song too many times. I've heard most songs widely agreed upon as "great" so many times, in fact, that I've become numbed to their greatness. "Purple Haze" and "Ziggy Stardust" are brilliant, timeless rock 'n' roll tunes, for instance, but a single year at university living with a roommate who played the two songs - along with, if I recall correctly, the Presidents of the United States of America's "Peaches," which is not a great song - four or five times a day, every day, was all it took to wipe them off my personal playlist forever. Greatness can still grate. With a mixture of horror and puzzlement, then, I am at this moment staring at a press release from the Hard Rock Café's Club 279 for a new series beginning this Thursday wherein "Q107 house band" Michael White and the White will perform the entire Led Zeppelin discography live, one album at a time - plus "all the Zep hits you love" - on a bi-monthly basis until, presumably, it reaches In Through The Out Door sometime in early 2005.
Nothing against White and the, uh, White, but why? Why, God, why? Next to the Rolling Stones - who are in a league of their own in this regard, but at least still exist - I know of no band more religiously overplayed and overexposed than Led Zeppelin. I don't own a car anymore, but every time I set foot in one, "Black Dog" or "Rock 'N' Roll" is guaranteed to come on the radio within a few minutes. And on top of this, every rock station in North America is apparently duty bound to "get the Led out" at least once a day, as if playing three songs from Houses Of The Holy in the same 24-hour period stands as some bold refutation of programming convention. "This is it, folks! They'll never let us play 'Dancing Days' again!"
Oh, if only.
The Led Zeppelin catalogue is pretty much untouchable, granted. But at this stage, I don't want to hear even Jimmy Page and Robert Plant playing that stuff anymore, let alone a cover band. The songs have remained the same for far too long, and it's time for a break. It's bad enough that radio insists on heavy rotation of the classics. Rock 'n' roll is supposed to thrive on surprise, spontaneity, living "in the moment."
But the same reliance on repetition is carrying over to the live stage. Hence the popularity of greatest-hits and nostalgia tours by aging artists - and, when they're not available, by the cover bands who emulate them for a living.
And it can be a good living. Tribute acts are so numerous (there are 277 listed on the Web site CanadianTributeBands.com) precisely because the field is so lucrative; working musicians often use cover gigs to support their own, personal musical projects. Here in Toronto, the pick-up band series Classic Albums Live (another Q107-sponsored endeavour) has packed 'em into the Phoenix to hear the Beatles' White Album, the Stones' Exile On Main Street and Supertramp's Crime Of The Century faithfully reproduced "note for note, cut for cut" (Queen's A Night At The Opera is up next on Nov. 20).
I've never quite understood the phenomenon. I am, in fact, struck by a peculiar kind of dread whenever an act, an album or a particular song of which I'm fond begins to take root in the public imagination. "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful," Morrissey once proclaimed, and I am inclined to agree.
It's not that I'm one of those indie snobs who abandons his favourite band as soon as it scores a mainstream hit, signs a major-label recording contract or finds an audience beyond the small circle of tape-trading, 'zine-writing shut-ins who were there for its first four gigs. I rather like it when the Mobys and the Strokes and the Broken Social Scenes of the world gather enough momentum to infiltrate the MuchMusic playlist or the pages of GQ magazine. Given the narrow creative parameters within which the music industry operates, it feels almost subversive, as if a hopelessly outnumbered and under-armed rebel force has suddenly achieved a miraculous, Trojan-horse infiltration of the upper Imperial ranks.
The danger inherent in such a scenario, though, is that these performers will catch on just a bit too much, that they'll score the one mega-hit song or record that becomes so big, so exhaustingly ubiquitous, that under no circumstances do I want or need to hear it ever again. Experience has taught me that I will hear it again, though. Over and over and over again, until it becomes just another disregarded element in the background hum of daily life.
"Brown Sugar." "Another Brick In The Wall." "Hungry Like The Wolf." "Even Flow." All of Moby's Play. Every music fan has his or her own List. The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" recently made mine. Perhaps we never get tired of the tunes we really love - Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" and AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" have, for me, endured years of repetition - but generally, my enjoyment of a song ends the moment it attains omnipresent "hit" status. It's unclear when a tune crosses the line to become contemptibly over-familiar, but I always know the boundary has been crossed when I automatically start reaching for the radio dial or the remote control because it's coming on again. "Oh, well. Another one retired."
It's never a great feeling when a song you once loved suddenly triggers indifference bordering on revulsion.
Dear Ben:
I appreciate the fact that you don't hold me personally responsible for this tribute phenomenon that you 'never quite understood', but since I invented the tribute band thing back in 1979, I guess I am responisble.
You spell out quite clearly that you think common social points of reference are a bad thing, but if you are going to strip away all social commonality you're left with extremism, and we all know what that can lead to. I am not suggesting for one moment that rock & roll should become homogenized, since it was born from extremism, but the removal of commonality in rock & roll to a great degree is responsible for the mess the music business is in right now.
You are obviously missing the point that the era of classic rock created a shared lifestyle that is a collective point of reference for people not only from that era, but this one as well. Young people that come to my shows (most of them dressed in 1970's era clothing I might add) are obviously looking for something more than they are getting from todays music. When people stop enjoying classic rock I guess I will fold up the tent and go home, but until that happens why don't you join the crowd, let your hair down and have some fun dude!)
Michael White