ROLLIN’ STONED: One Year Later, The Magazine Pretends to Care
Let me start right off by saying, by way of a disclaimer, that I’m not a huge Great White fan. I enjoy their music, and even own one of their records (…Twice Shy, on cassette), but when listing all my favorite bands, it would take me a good while to get to Great White. Just so you know gushing fandom isn’t driving this week’s column. Nor am I a serious fan of the other GW, the one from Texas, who sounds like he’s about one second away from forgetting his lines.
I have sworn off reading Rolling Stone many times, most recently after their bad-joke list of top 100 guitarists last fall. Then I started reading again, ostensibly just to see if they printed my angry letter. They didn’t; Patti Smyth’s was more important, apparently. But before long, I found myself reading most of the articles again. I think Trent Reznor said it best, in that very magazine, about MTV. Something about how he thought it sucked, but he liked knowing what was going on.
And that’s how things stood last week when I got ahold of the March 4th issue of Rolling Stone, and saw the one-year-after follow-up article on the fire at the Great White concert in Rhode Island that killed 100 people, injured 200, and affected the lives of many more. It’s funny, I’d just been thinking to myself not two days earlier that for all their self-proclaimed indignation at the tragedy’s being roundly ignored, Rolling Stone seemed to have forgotten about it too. So now here’s this article. What would they possiblby have to say about it? I flipped right to it to find out.
If you haven’t read it yet, this article is a total disgrace. Why? Oh, how about because Rolling Stone uses it as yet another way to further their own political agenda, as if they don’t do that often enough. Here’s how it goes: it’s all Bush’s fault because instead of paying everybody’s medical bills personally, he went and played war in Iraq. Boo-hoo! The writer, Peter Wilkinson, went around and interviewed three grievously-wounded survivors, and talked about how high their medical bills were (into the millions), and how they didn’t have insurance, and who was going to pay for all this? The case was made that the federal government should have declared the whole thing a natural disaster.
Now let’s stop and think about this a minute. A natural disaster? A hurricane is a natural disaster. A flood is a natural disaster. An earthquake is a natural disaster. But a fire that destroys a nightclub that should never have passed inspection, sparked by pyrotechnics a band and road manager should’ve known not to set off in a place like that? I don’t think that qualifies.
But nooooo! Bush and his cronies didn’t care about the fire because it’s in Rhode Island, a state that usually votes Democratic, and besides, Bush was too busy playing cowboys and ragheads anyway. Is Iraq paying this magazine to advocate for them or something? Because their constant anti-war shrieking is just about unbearable, not to mention the soundness of their arguments, which is debatable. I guess they’d have us hug the terrorists and hope they’d feel better.
In any case, this whole article does way too much Bush-bashing and barely mentions another factor that played just as much a part, if not more so, in the lack of attention given to the fire and its aftermath. Near the end of the article, Wilkinson allows that a “possible media and cultural bias against metal music” may have played a part. Yes indeed! I do believe so. And there’re examples of that very bias throughout this same article.
The very first mention of Great White here is that of an unnamed “washed-up boogie band.” That they may well be, but what does it say about Rolling Stone to take such a blatantly condescending attitude? Oh, they’re just a washed-up boogie band, they don’t matter, but let’s do this article anyway so we can slam Bush some more. Also, there are the continued references to the “blue-collar” people who were at the concert, in what I take to be a snooty tone. Oh yeah, just some blue-collar people out to see a washed-up boogie band. And not just any washed-up boogie band either, but one from the ‘80’s! I kept waiting for the hairspray or mullet jokes to come, but luckily, Wilkinson showed some restraint. And every dumb-ass high-school kid knows from watching MTV or VH1 or reading magazines like this that any band who didn’t play thrash or New Wave in the ’80 was an odious “hair band,” and thus to be trivialized and ridiculed. It’s like anything from that decade that wasn’t “serious” is unworthy of any sort of attention unless it’s to make fun of it. Meanwhile, disco, possibly the most vapid musical fad ever, is routinely held up as “classic” by this very magazine.
You know what? Fuck you! Blue collar people burn up just the same as white-collar ones, it’s all the same to a fire. And I can guaran-goddamn-tee you if this happened at a White Stripes concert, Rolling Stone, who make a point of mentioning every time Jack White breaks a fingernail, would be doing a shitload more than sitting on their asses pointing fingers at politicians. Ain’t that just like a hippie Communist bed-wetter, wanting somebody else to clean up after him? Has Rolling Stone made any moves to donate money? I bet Jann S. Wenner, Editor and Publisher has plenty to spare. Oh wait, that’s earmarked for backing Ralph Nader, who won’t win the election anyway and even Ralph knows it. Or else it’s going to pay for some reporter to go and grow corn alongside the natives in Paraguay for a year. Won’t that be fascinating to read about in a music magazine?
What about the rest of the music community? What does Bono have to say about this? Never mind, he’s off in Zimbabwe, kissing AIDS patients. He and all the rest of the high-profile “rock star activists” have gotten fat enough and rich enough to be able to conveniently forget what it’s like playing clubs. Why hasn’t Neil Young organized a benefit concert? That’s right, everybody knows what a phony he is. Maybe Pearl Jam can write a song about it. Nah, guess this isn’t as important as saving the children of Kosovo. I guess Ted Nugent was too busy with his reality show as well. I figured HE might have something to offer at least.
Nope, it’s gotta be Bush’s fault. Why not? Everything else that’s wrong with the world is his fault, according to Rolling Stone, up to and including the death of Tupac Shakur (which NOBODY gives a doodle or a fart about). Let me ask you something: do you think Al Gore would have handled it any differently? Tipper would probably have reminded him about songs like “Stick It” and “Mista Bone” and their gratuitous sexual innuendos and rebellious message. Oh no! John Kerry might’ve done something, or said he would, but two minutes later, he’d change his mind and decide not to. I doubt he would touch the Ketchup Queen for a quick $20 million. Besides, she’s more into giving money to terrorist fronts.
Look, I don’t want to sound callous. It’s a crying shame that so many people are so seriously injured and require so much medical care, and aren’t able to pay for it, and all because of something that could’ve been easily prevented. Even if they had health coverage, you know the dirty bums at the insurance companies would be trying to find a way out of paying for it. (You could even blame Hillary Clinton for that.) But the shameless way Rolling Stone used this (unnatural) disaster to push their own politics, with the pretense of caring about the actual story, is absolutely egregious. The one saving grace of the article was that Wilkinson did not use the phrase “sifting through the ashes.”
I bet they won’t print my letter either.
Today’s inspirational song lyrics are brought to us by (who’d you think?) Great White:
“I got a fire like a heavenly light!”
