Last night, I was procrastinating going to bed – checking comics, flipping through blogs, checking comics, nuking a bowl of Rice-a-Roni, checking comics – and came across a link to this, by Something Awful user Daryl Hall. I was going to do my standard shrug, I think you’re wrong but it’s whatever, kinda thing — but I changed my mind; I wasn’t just going to accept this.
First off, because I believe in disclaimers: It might be that we’ve listened to entirely different bands and have different ideas of what constitutes nerd rock; I follow BrentalFloss religiously, but because it isn’t aimed to be music, I don’t count it in the genre. That being said, I’ve listened extensively to the only band that he name-drops (The Protomen), so I think we’re on roughly the same page.
Second, because I believe in theses: Nerdcore is not as one-dimensional or lazy as Mr. Hall portrays it.
If you haven’t already read the piece, please do so, because I don’t want this to be one-sided; Mr. Hall does have points to make, so please bear those in mind… even while I’m doing my best to tear them apart.
His main argument is that nerd rock is dismissible because it is a weak genre that trades on its lifestyle, subculture fan base, rather than each band earning a following independent of the lifestyle it’s associated with. He cites The Protomen, video game cover bands, and nerdcore MCs as examples, claiming that these either serve as extensions of a nerd lifestyle or serve as shallow jokes.
I won’t dispute that the reason I first listened to The Protomen was because of the lifestyle; I think I was linked from 8-Bit Theatre, and the official leak of “Breaking Out” reached me via Penny Arcade. If they were only trying to play the nostalgia card or my desire to belong to a subculture, then I would’ve stopped listening to them. Instead, Act II is one of my go-to albums because I enjoy it as music. As odd as it sounds, when I started reading this piece, I’d forgotten they were based on Mega Man; anyone who walked away from their debut album thinking that it was primarily about Mega Man instead of mankind’s unwillingness to stand up for the right thing isn’t just biased, they’re wrong. The Mega Man setting is an element rather than the whole.
Similarly, in power metal, bands will occasionally write songs based on Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I listened to Nightwish’s “Seven Days to the Wolves” for months before realizing the link. Some of these tracks I like and listen to, some of them I don’t – my final judgment isn’t made by the fact that they draw on a subculture, because the nerd-trappings are just a setting, a context that gives it additional meaning. When it’s done right, it’s no different than referencing The Departed or biblical stories, because it’s just a literary technique. And yes, I believe that in most nerd rock, it’s done right.
When Mr. Hall gets specifically into claiming nerdcore MCs are just about making the joke of a hardcore format with nerdy lyrics, I have less to draw on: I haven’t listened to many nerdcore MCs, mainly just Weird Al and Adam WarRock. I include Weird Al because he fits the joke paradigm, but he’s hardly limited to a single joke; not only does he lampoon everything, he does it extremely well. If Weird Al is how Mr. Hall sees nerdcore, then I have to agree that it isn’t meant to be treated as music, although I’m dubious about his claim that tracks like “White and Nerdy” are as much about mocking rap as skewering nerdery.
For me, though, Adam WarRock is the face of nerdcore, and he’s got more in common with Cee-Lo than with the Marvel Universe. “The Silver Age” isn’t a joke, it’s an earnest use of a non-standard format. Unlike the power metal bands described earlier, this isn’t just a use of setting – comics are the track’s raison d’être – but the quality of the track enables it to stand on its own. The high-speed delivery and instrumentation isn’t just a rip-off of hardcore rap, because there’s nothing hardcore about it. Instead, it’s a style that I haven’t heard much of, except for the aforementioned Cee-Lo. Lazy? Joke? This isn’t just earnest, it’s pushing the boundaries of my knowledge of hip-hop.
The contention is that all these bands are doing is trading on the genre’s fans instead of making music. I think that The Protomen are more than that; they’re a band that finds inspiration in weird places. Check out their mash-up of Pat Benatar’s “Invincible” and Danzig’s “Mother”: it’s so bizarre that they’ve called it the Rattlesnake, but it’s a hell of a track.
Eclectic? Yes. Nerd-friendly? Yes. One-dimensional? I don’t think Mr. Hall’s listening deep enough.
That being said, if you are devoted to these bands simply because they’re part of the subculture, I do think that you’re doing music wrong. I’d say the same thing to a hipster who only listened to indie rock, or to a metal head who refused to try country. Nothing I’ve said has contended that limitations in music or musical tastes isn’t stifling, only that nerd rock isn’t as limited as Mr. Hall claims.
So go out there and listen to some Garth Brooks. I recommend “Rodeo”.
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