The Winklevoss twins were ready to rock! It was June 2022, and the billionaire entrepreneurs roared into Asbury Park in a 45-foot Prevost tour bus that announced, in huge letters, that MARS JUNCTION had arrived to bust the house down. From CREEM 002:https://t.co/TrP5qDbfqc
— CREEM (@creemmag) December 24, 2022
Nothing gold can stay. From Sam McPheeters:
… In the 20th century, the label “rock star” was the ultimate statement of individuality, a license for generations of swaggering, staggering musical geniuses to trash greenrooms and hurl televisions off balconies. In this century, the term has an extra meaning. This new usage came from the workplace, and originally implied virtuosity, like “ninja” or “guru.” By the 2020s, however, the term seems to have further devolved into something closer to “productive.” In many offices around America, telling someone they’re a “rock star” is now the same thing as telling them they did a really good job, a verbal downgrade so widespread it’s rendered the term meaningless. A quick search on my local Craigslist jobs board found “rock star” applied to a dental sterilization technician, a Jimmy Johns delivery driver, and a commissary kitchen prep cook in Canoga Park. One board management software company markets itself with a web banner reading “Become a Compliance Rock Star.”
Another switch happened this century, one that feels related in ways visible only to future historians. The bosses are rocking out. The late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen played guitar in Paul Allen and the Underthinkers. Lamar McKay, BP oil executive, plays guitar in the pro-whiskey Southern Slang. Both bands sound like Home Depot commercials. The founder of Xerjoff hired Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi to jam with him on an instrumental track promoting a new line of perfume. David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, is also known as DJ D-Sol. His peppy EDM tracks sound like hold music for a Finnish airline. “No matter how much money you make or what you do, everybody wants to be Keith Richards,” Mangano Consulting CEO Charles Mangano said of his Rolling Stones cover band in a 2006 interview with The Wall Street Journal. Cablevision CEO James Dolan once booked his own band to open for the Eagles, at Madison Square Garden, which he owns…
I’ve spent years touring with bands. Most of my friends have as well. For us, memories of touring are memories of grueling slogs. Not just the physical labor, the amps lugged up stairwells and the epic quests for clean restrooms, but the emotional labor, the enforced downtime of sound checks, the slow-motion exhaustion of driving hundreds of miles to play to dozens of dinkompoops for tens of dollars, night after night after night after night.
“Dinkompoops”—what a terrible word to call your own fans, the people who came out to see your touring band. And yet, you begin to resent them, the people who support you, because you are so goddamn fucking tired; tired of the driving, and the bad food, and the no sleep, and the ugly odors, and having less privacy than a convict, and at some point you project your fury outward, at these nice but ultimately anonymous people you meet every night, an endless procession of them, these wonderful people you’ve started to call “dinkompoops” in your head because you just want to go home. Money can only shield you from so much. I’ve seen biohazard horrors in nightclub bathrooms I’ve never shared with my therapist or wife.
So what is it about this lifestyle that would attract someone who can do, literally, anything? If you could race Ferraris, or hang glide in the Sahara, or explore the ocean floor, then Christ on the fucking cross, why on Earth would you do this?…
My personal guess: ‘Rock star’ looks like an easy gig! Buy some instruments, hire a(nother) personal trainer, throw couch-cushion money at booking agents and touring companies, and VOILA! You’re Mick Jagger, who gets all the sex & drugs despite looking like last week’s leftovers from the back of the frig! No heavy lifting, no unbought competition, no having to show up on other peoples’ schedules to exert physical or mental effort… or so it seems, to the bored and incurious.
It’s the 21st-century version of the maxim about why rich people prefer visual art to literature: It’s much easier to walk through a gallery with a cocktail in hand, gaze blankly at a bunch of carefully-labelled capital-A Art, and pronounce it all So interesting, than it is to sit down and read a whole, y’know, book. These days, music is ubiquitous, and with the help of relatively inexpensive technology, anyone can convince themselves they’re just a few social-media hits away from being the next… Rock Star. (Of course, the people actually making careers out of YouTube and TikTok clips are not actually ‘rock stars’, but can you expect a bunch of bored billionaires to parse that?)
Hoppie
Yes, the legal protections that keep us from pillaging their wealth (ie taxing them fairly) and stringing them up: they do not want to ruin that. Narrow needle to thread, eh?
eclare
DJ D-Sol for the CEO of Goldman Sachs? God that is pathetic.
different-church-lady
For a while there in the video biz, when everything was moving on-line, I’d frequently see listings looking for “a rock-star sound engineer,” obviously written by some youth who hadn’t yet had all the enthusiasm beaten out of them. It was an immediate sign of a job I wasn’t interested in.
I’d think to myself, “You know what rock stars are known for? Showing up late; substance abuse; poor grooming; foul language; property destruction; general behavioral issues; etc. No, you really don’t want a rock star sound engineer. You want an experienced and reliable sound engineer.”
different-church-lady
@different-church-lady:
left out “sexual predation”
Ken
Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free, I’ve heard.
CaseyL
Yet more guys (it’s always guys) who never outgrew the need to be Cool, seen as Cool, spoken of as Cool. Since they aren’t cool, and have more money than they can spend in a lifetime, they buy the buzz.
At least the Dinkompoops care(d) about the music itself, enough to show up and listen to real people playing real tunes.
These post-modern, post-reality, post-talent rich babies want a curated bubble universe to do their LARPing in.
It enrages me when I think about the other things their money could be doing – the good, constructive things, if they weren’t hogging it all. But when I get past that, all I can think is how pathetic the posturing is.
lgerard
This is giving me a stabby feeling
sukabi
@lgerard: he’s likely a cooperating witness in a larger federal probe….ie, he’s cut a deal and is providing details and dirt on trump and family….
Amir Khalid
I don’t really have a problem with wealthy guys like the Winklevoss twins having a lousy rock band in their spare time. I do have a problem with the idea that that by itself makes them rock stars. Calling them that is a kind of grade inflation. No one is a rock star until they and their music have earned a real following. The Winklevi and those other CEO types with bands are just rich dudes with an expensive hobby.
Tony Jay
Dear God. Florence Foster Jenkins really did a John the Baptist on these sad fucks.
OzarkHillbilly
Ummmm…. No. Just no. Not in this life or the next.
Tony Jay
Is this the equivalent of a hostage blinking “They’ve wired a bomb to the cell door” in morse code?
“Wow, that was great. Just great. Best jam ever. I was really rocking it on that chorus. You felt it too, right? We’re pals now, right?”
“Uh, let me have a quick word with my lawyers about that”.
OzarkHillbilly
@lgerard:
Translation: “There is not sufficient evidence of them having committed the crime of voter fraud while white.”
James E Powell
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, maybe not you, but I did. Though not to actually be Keith Richards, but to play like him. He’s the reason I started playing guitar.
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
In their minds, Keef picked up a guitar and boom, just like that, he was a star. They’ve elided that whole struggling-young-rocker stage of Keef’s career, when he and Mick were shoplifting from grocery stores just to have food to eat.
eclare
@Tony Jay: If the movie was truthful, she had a really sad life, and I don’t begrudge her playing Carnegie Hall.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: They also skip that whole “practice” phase, bereft of talent.
Amir Khalid
The Zinger of Rats is no more: Benedict XVI, the Pope Emeritus, has died at age 95.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: Wow.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: I never called him “Pope.” Just called him “Ratzinger.” Actually remember where I was the day I learned he was “elected”, for being so disgusted.
Do you think we will ever find out, in our lifetimes, what forced that asshat to resign?
Tony Jay
@eclare:
But does her story inspire you to become a billionaire executive just so you can afford to pay people to pretend to like your awful music?
If not, you have failed the Terribly Sad Loser test. Congratulations.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Good, good. He can pop upstairs for his performance review.
eclare
@Tony Jay: No. And I never said it did. I just have empathy for someone who suffered so much. That does not apply to Elon, SBF, Zuck, etc. who are all self-absorbed pricks.
Tony Jay
@eclare:
That was my point, yeah.
eclare
@Tony Jay: Oh, maybe I did not understand your original comment. I am sorry about that.
eclare
@Tony Jay: A true exit interview.
Tony Jay
@eclare:
S’okay, I’m often pretty vague.
AM in NC
@CaseyL: This. All this.
waspuppet
Besides, reading means HOURS, even DAYS, where you have to be quiet. With visual art you only have to wait 20 seconds or so before you can get back to talking.
oatler
I think of George Bailey Sr.’s explanation of Old Man Potter’s meanness.
Kristine
Heh, I subscribed to CREEM during its first run–I don’t recall much social commentary. I re-sub’ed today. We’ll see how it goes.
The Moar You Know
I’ve been a working musician as a primary or secondary source of income my entire life. These coddled billionaires playing for fun would not last out one typical workweek of mine. It’s hard fuckin work.
It could be made easier by roadies, I suppose, but I can’t even afford to pay one.
Hoodie
@OzarkHillbilly: Knowing him, Josh Stein is not prosecuting because he thinks he doesn’t have sufficient evidence or can’t secure a conviction. Now, that may be because he thinks he can get a jury with white folks to convict but, if you’re implying otherwise, you’re dead wrong.
Cheez Whiz
@Amir Khalid: yeah, this is the “exception that proves the rule” example where that Vonnegut quote (we are what we pretend to be) falls apart. Billionaires can easily purchase the image of a rock star, but have no idea of how to inhabit it beyond some 80’s comedy about an average schlub becoming a “rock star”.
I went to The Jim Irsay Collection show in San Francisco and thought, this is how “the 60’s” dies, not with a bang, but by being rented by a billionaire “for fun”.
Tony G
I’m an old (67) baby-boomer who remains a big fan of a lot of the rock bands/musicians of the sixties and seventies — but, I AM AN OLD GEEZER. At this point in history, aspiring to be a Rock Star seems like aspiring to win a ragtime dance contest. Although I like rock music, it’s kind of archaic. The first rock-and-roll songs were recorded more than seventy years ago, The Beatles came to the U.S. almost 58 years ago, and Jim Hendrix died more than 52 years ago. For a “tech” billionaire to try to pass himself off as a “Rock Star” just illustrates the limited nature of his imagination.
Tony G
@Tony G: Actually, “The Beatles came to the U.S. almost 59 years ago”. Everything gets older every year!
Eric K
@Amir Khalid: I’d like a much higher tax rate, but given that they’ll still be really rich I much prefer my billionaires wasting their money living out their band camp fantasies instead of manipulating politics like the Koch’s, Merced’s, etc.