Steven Van Zandt may have had a sweet ass role on The Sopranos and DJd the awesome Underground Garage show, but now he just sounds old and irrelevant. Because he’s bitter and wants things to be all 1974 again, Little Steven put up a rant, “A Crisis of Craft,” (originally given as a speech at SXSW), on his website.
Pretty much, he wants young bands to play more covers because that’s how you truly learn how to write songs (??). He also says rock ‘n’ roll is cursed by the rise of the single and a push to make rock bands more pop accessible. He says all of this started, you guessed it, at the rise of MTV, like a century ago.
Ok Grandpa, I’ll listen to your old “Beatles” records right after we watch “M.A.S.H.” and talk about “Watergate.” Then I’ll go listen to the latest Kanye single and watch American Idol because that’s all I do. I’m young and ignorant blahblah.
I dunno, I think that Van Zandt makes a some very legitimate points in his speech. Of course, I also feel that if he truly feels this way about modern rock (that “it blows”) then he’s more than a little out of touch with the times. He feels that all music today is disposable garbage, but clearly must not be aware of the multitude of bands and artists that are worth listening who are creating album oriented music.
It pays to play covers, to study music to find inspiration, to work with veteran artists to find direction or hone and shape your talent. However, I feel that he doesn’t know of the young artists who are doing this, and much of what he does hear is only the mainstream music that is produced, disposable, or otherwise unguided, the type of music that has been around for every generation.
But he says “bada bing,” so that’s pretty sweet, right?
PS – at least Brian Williams gets us