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TH E DA I L Y HA M M E R
Citizen Cope is a dirty hippie. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
September 27, 2004
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Dirty, dirty Citizen Cope
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Tom Waits once said, "Everyone likes music, but music doesn't like everyone." Music as in the muse. There are people who have great taste but no affinity with the muse. Like Modest Mouse. With their pretty good rhythm section they can occasionally fool you into thinking that their tedious chanting is music, but it's just not. It's a bunch of noise that has been wrangled, through sheer force of their style, into something acceptable to people who have been trained to like anything "alternative."
Martha Bayles wrote in Hole in our Soul:
For years Springsteen's trademark sound was that of many instruments blending into a single monotonous pounding that Dave Marsh aptly calls "that dinosaur beat." To be sure, Springsteen's
best songs have a melodic force capable of defying gravity, in effect lifting the dinosaur off the ground and making it fly--albeit heavily, like an overfed pterodactyl.
Martha Bayles is wrong about almost everything. I can nod in agreement while reading her analysis of why, for example, the band Television have a wrong-headed, even vaguely racist aesthetic, but one listen to "Hear No Evil" reminds me that music just doesn't work that way--it doesn't care about ideology or aesthetics or anything. Music likes and dislikes people at its whim. Or, to quote my other favorite songwriter, Elvis Costello, "Music is not like a rhino charging down a single path, it's like water, rushing madly in all directions." But she's kind of right about Bruce Springsteen, and, uh...wait, why did I just quote her? I think I'm losing my train of thought...Oh, yeah! What I wanted to say was that Modest Mouse are almost exactly like that: They can take flight from time to time, like in their latest single "We All Float On," but this flight is a very fleeting, unnatural thing, and soon enough they crash down again into their characteristic caveman chanting.
Anyway, to complete my thought about who music likes and dislikes, and good vs. bad taste, you can divide all musicians into four categories:
- Have Good Taste/Music Doesn't Like Them
(Modest Mouse)
- Have Good Taste/Music Likes Them
(David Bowie)
- Have Bad Taste/Music Likes Them
(Dave Matthews Band, Barry Manilow, Hanson)
- Have Bad Taste/Music Doesn't Like Them
(Michael Bolton)
Categories two and four are the easiest to cope with, but category three is in a way the most interesting. When you hear a category three musician, you have to decide if you are going to give into the pure pleasure of music or resist because of what your good taste tells you should and should not listen to. Of course there are degrees of bad taste. E.g., Hanson=acceptable, Barry Manilow=not so much.
Citizen Cope (we are finally getting to my main point) is in this interesting third category. I once had a vocal coach who told me people should worry less about how their singing sounds and more about how it feels. To Citizen Cope, singing obviously feels very good indeed. I was lucky enough to see him in an intimate acoustic setting, and he really knew how to let himself go, sliding into a deep, resonant groove. His lyrics are entirely vacuous, though. He has this self-righteous vibe a lot of hippie types have, like, "I know the dark, seedy truth, man, the way things really are, and I'm going to lay it on you." My friend said Citizen Cope reminded him of an old housemate of his who was simply filthy. He was just too goddamn real to use deodorant or clean the toilet.
His dirty hippiness (and here, finally, this disjointed little essay is staggering to its conclusion) doesn't stop music from liking him, though. His voice just goes. It commands the room because the room knows it is hearing the muse, no matter how smelly the muse's vessel.
Index of past entries
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02-13-2007
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Stop comparing things to punk rock
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12-31-2006
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But we climb the stairs everyday
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12-28-2006
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Accidentally Famous Dullard Best Known for Pardoning Crook Healed Nation, Nation Told by Media
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11-07-2006
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Down for the Dem ladies
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10-03-2006
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Why you don't want to watch a DVD with me after I've smoked marijuana, which I regularly get from Alfred Hoffington, of 8722 18th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98103
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08-20-2006
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Does your trash can need batteries?
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08-06-2006
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Four generalizations about New Yorkers
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05-21-2006
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Muriel Spark
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04-22-2006
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Maya Lin: Don't touch the particle board
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03-26-2006
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My version of bible education
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03-08-2006
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Dental surgery with the oldies
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02-16-2006
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Junkie brother in China
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02-02-2006
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True, shameful story
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01-02-2006
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Rough start to the year
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12-26-2005
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That Narnia movie
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10-31-2005
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Plamegate metaphor of the day, from Tim Dempsey
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09-17-2005
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Another question and follow-up question from my daughter
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09-01-2005
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Real American hero
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08-24-2005
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This just happened
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08-18-2005
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Morning bus tale
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08-01-2005
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A question, and a follow-up question, from my five-year-old daughter
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07-25-2005
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A biker who hates bikers
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07-11-2005
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Great news for Star Wars fans
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06-28-2005
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The invaluableness of gay eyewear
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06-16-2005
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Viva Le Robbie Fulks
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06-09-2005
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Angry Dale Chihuly dealers
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05-26-2005
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WTF is an up or down vote?
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05-18-2005
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Sweet Isabella Carbonell
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04-25-2005
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MoMA and the Mob
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04-05-2005
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The world mourns. Not.
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The Daily Hammer Archive
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Fabulous book cover of the month