Apr 302010
I just have one question: what are we to make of the Kings of Leon‘s transformation from greasy-haired, southern-fried dirt rockers — i.e., this:
… to poncey American Idol contestants; i.e., this:
I mean, really, am I the only person who finds this transformation both weird, and, I dunno, somehow backwards? Aren’t rock stars supposed to start out dressed for success, then let themselves slip into lazy, bongwater-atained hippiedom? What’s going on here?
HVB
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulvSS3nAK1I
Can’t answer your question better than kilroy did, but I can add this: I’ve never knowingly heard any of their early stuff, but their hits, “Sex on Fire” and that “Whoa-Oh!” song, are atrocious. I can’t imagine the early stuff is much better.
And anyway, this isn’t that unlikely. If you’re a rock band, and you want the big audience, you have to look and sound like this now. Remember when Green Day and Foo Fighters sounded and looked pretty scrappy for major-label acts. No more.
In many ways, it’s makes the continued success of Luddite Jack White all the more impressive. I don’t like everything he does, but he make rock music that sounds kinda like the way I like it to sound.
Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.
No, but wait — these guys had rock critics eating out of their ass-cleft when they came out. Don’t you find it unusual that a band could so brazenly slap the hipster hand that fed it? I can’t think of another band that took this particular path to mega-fame. Green Day’s makeover doesn’t even come *close* to this one. All I see different in those guys is more eyeliner.
Let me be clearer: I remember the buzz surrounding these guys was all about their “discovery” in some Alabama holler, amps overgrown by kudzu, chain-smoking dirtweed joints rolled in pages torn from Faulkner novels. I mean, it was all about their grunge-y, “authentic” rock. They were the South’s answer to the Strokes, and thus far more “real.” Now this!
I don’t know, HVB, you sound to me like one of those old dudes who are way beyond comprehending the difference between “sell-out” and happening makeover. Beside your assumptions regarding the band’s early neo-Southern Rock hype, how different is their sprucing up as what The Clash went through from the time of their debut to London Calling? Beside, what business do you have worrying about the Look of Kings of Leon? 🙂
Oh, come ON, Mr. Mod! True, the Clash’s Look did evolve over the course of their growth as artists — but at no time could you have looked at the band and thought that their Look in particular was part of an attempt to sell out to prevailing fashion trends.
As to why I should care: well, I dunno, I guess I just consider it part of my life’s work to protect the actual value of rock as a cultural statement. There *is* good rock that is good because it’s raw and naive. And when people pretend to make that kind of music for all the right, raw, naive reasons, then become… *this*, it pisses me off. And it’s another thumb in the eye of the rock critic community for falling for/creating the bullshit/hype/mythology to begin with.
I am conflicted, I know.
I see where hrrundi is coming from, and I am with his rock preservation society; why else would I be here.
But a) I cast aspertions on whether Kings of Leon were ever about being right, raw and naive — I suspect that was a pose, and now we’re seeing the Real Kings of Leon
and
b) I think their makeover is a macro version of the deal with the devil that so many bands that sign to major labels eventually find themselves facing. Some bands, like Soul Asylum and the Replacements, try to fight it and it usually results in watered-down music that fails to make its mark in the marketplace. Other bands succumb somewhat while keeping a toe in their scrappy roots — I guess Dave Grohl fits in there. Kings of Leon are, on the other hand, complete and totally willing servants of the machine. They say “We thought we wanted to be The Band, but on second thought we would much rather be REO Speedwagon.”
Keep in mind, though: I only know two of their songs.
More accurately: “We told you we wanted to be The Band, but we were just kidding. We really want to be REO Speedwagon.”
You know, maybe this goes deeper into the band’s backstiry. Seriously — they were sons of a traveling Southern tent preacher (or so the legend goes), who, when Dad lost the calling and divorced his wife, went straight to Nashville to get high, get laid and make rock and roll. That kind of motivation, I think, may lend itself to a pretty shallow dedication to the real purpose of Rock. Maybe all they really wanted was to forsake their trashy Pentecostal roots — and I think you could do a more thorough, comprehensive job of that by becoming Madonna than by becoming Black Oak Arkansas.
I’m serious!
What’s up Fritz? Aren’t rock dudes allowed to grow up like the rest of us. I know it’s fashionable to hate these guys — or anyone who’s made it — but I’ll say this. Their first two albums were honestly pretty good. Good production, good song writing, unique sound, etc. Gee … what happens then? They get famous. It’s very much like Metallica. Until they all got their hair cut, did they truly reach mega stardom. Cut the guys some slack. They put many a mile in the econoline van, too.
Oh, and since the haircuts, these guys are banging a much hotter level of woman. There, I said it. 🙂
I think the suddenness of KoL’s revamp is what’s so jarring to HVB and I. One minute they’re chewing straw in promo photos and getting their Jim Dandy on. Next minute they’re making latter-day U2 sound like The Birthday Party.
I’m curious, hrrundi, of the refurbished Kings which one bugs you the most?
Say it ain’t so, machinery! You, who taught me so much about rock (at least I assume it’s you), falling for those first two KoL albums. I have a recurring nightmare that my business partner is one day going to ask me what I thought of the second KoL LP, which he thoughtfully gave me one Christmas, thinking I’d like it. I did not! I thought it was faux-rock of a pretty high (or is that low) order, dressed up in stems and seeds for a nostalgic audience of aging rock pundits.
Further, I reject the notion that a curvy southern hippie chick in a tight T-shirt with no bra and plain cotton panties is somehow less bang-able than a rail-thin, dressed-in-spandex, New York fashion model with absinthe-and-clove-cigarette breath. No sir!
And, Mod: talk about a Hobson’s choice! I suppose the punchability ranking, from lowest to highest, would be as follows — taking dude on the left as “#1,” and dude on the right as “#4.”
#1 — still looks like a schlub, which is endearing in a way
#3 — that hair-do is so god-awful, and he doesn’t know enough to realize it. Pity points keep him from getting a sock in the face first
#4 — though his Look is the most unimaginatively derivative of every American Idol finalist from the last five years, at lest this dude has the good sense to avoid the “kiss me, for I am a beautiful young man” pout of
#2 — get set, pouty guy — here comes a Rock Town Hall haymaker!
Thanks, Hrrundi. For me the order of ass-kicking would go #2, #1, #3, and #4. At least #4 can pull off the new Look.
I wish you’d have tried pissing up this rope before they toured with U2 and saw what it takes to be stinking, filthy rich without doing a damned thing. Their first two albums are terrific, and I’m no rock pundit. I got lucky and saw them while they toured with U2, and for some reason they showed up at The Beachland here, without U2, and they tore ass on a hot summer night in a small, sweaty club and it was glorious.
They’re one of those bands that started out on a major label, and that hardly happens these days. That they got two good albums out and a third that really started pointing the way to the future, but is still half good is pretty impressive. I’m sure the label told them they wanted a U2 album and if they didn’t deliver it, they wouldn’t be backed by a major label anymore. I’m okay with that. They made two albums I’d have thought RCA would have shelved immediately and got them released. All those glowing reviews were from the British Press, they were pretty ignored her in the US, and everyone gets wet panties for pussy rock like Blur and Oasis because they’re poofters from England. At least KOL know what it’s like to go 80 mph in a Camaro with The Stones blasting and seeing who can smash the most beer bottles on stop signs without slowing down.
The drummer is really good, too.
It occurred to me that I didn’t really know what this band sounded like other than I had them confused with My Morning Jacket and figured they were similar. Check out this transitional Look video I landed on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMt1Xbofi4M&feature=related
Here’s another earlier clip. I guess the guy with the huge ears is the one who used to have the short bangs and bad mustache? Now I see what all the fuss was about! (The music’s not bad either! This sounds like an deep cut from one of the first two Tom Petty albums.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQqh315QCSk&feature=related
Yes, even though I too dislike the musik these guys now make, their first album did have it’s moments.
I think they jus’ got tired of being broke all the time.
I dunno, in a rock world full of synths and reverb and heavy eyeliner and bad drum sounds, I always give it up for the four-piece with a stripped down sound. We saw them last year at (gasp) the Spectrum and the crowd was the whitest of white college students. What I would imagine it would be like at a Dave Mathews concert. But I bet these guys rock up close.
Don’t you think their success surprised even them? I never got the impression that they changed to make big bucks but that the fashion makeover and such were the result of unexpectedly huge record sales, first in the UK and only later in the US.
What would you do if you found yourself with a hit record? Fuck it up? That’s what most artists seem to do. My Morning Jacket (like Mod I associate them with KoL) seems to have taken a deliberate left turn to avoid this kind of success, but I can’t imagine Jim James hiring a hair and makeup consultant anyway.
Hrrundi, may I turn the question back on yourself, based on what BigSteve said? Let’s go back in time and say all of us musicians got to that level where we almost had it made – or even MADE IT. With added money, label pressures, and stylists how would you have grown your youthful Look? I know what I would have done: gotten tailored, velvet suits and custom-made shirts with ginormous collars.