There has never been any reason to be objective about pop music. I mean, come on--it's pop music! Turn it up, sing along, jump up and down, and try not to break too much stuff. You can take it as lightly or as seriously as your little bit o' soul demands; you can examine its meaning, extrapolate its relevance, speculate or even investigate its origins, or just freaking play air guitar with it. Pop music invites you to do all that, and more. But objectivity? No. If pop music has a point, any silly notion of "objectivity" misses that point by 25 miles.
Pop music journalism is advocacy. Folks who write about music, who engage in what Martin Mull compared to dancing about architecture...well, I can guarantee you most of us aren't in it for the fame and fortune. Maybe some of us are in it for the occasional free CD. I can't speak for anyone else who does this, but I betcha I'm not the only pop pundit pursuing two goals above all others: to write, of course--writing for its own sake is all the justification anyone should ever need--and, frankly, to push an agenda. If you think there's some scandal in a writer admitting he's just expressing his own opinion in a record review or an article about pop music, then...well, sorry, you're a dumbass. Writing about pop music is, really, all opinion; there are stats, and facts, and histories, and names to be spelled correctly, and a writer had damned well better get all that right. But the questions of good music versus bad music, the thrilling versus the mundane? Those aren't objective discussions; they're opinions. Irwin Shaw said that the writer's role is to report his journey as he sees it: "This is where I think I am, and this is what this place looks like today." A music journalist's credo is less grandiose, but still a mirror image of Shaw's words: This is the music I like, and this is why you should appreciate it, too.
I like The Flashcubes, Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse. I've spent decades presenting my case on their behalf, and you can read all about it all over this blog. I think I may have even convinced a few folks along the way. If you have heard of The Flashcubes, but you first heard of them sometime after the group's original 1977-1980 run, then I may have helped to bring them to your attention. I'm not the only writer who's preached the virtues of the Northside Sound--I know that the great Bill Holmes, Pat Pierson, Jordan Oakes, and John M. Borack also wrote about The Flashcubes in the years after last call at The Firebarn, and I apologize if I'm forgetting any other writers who did likewise--but it has been a special, specific passion for me.
I've told the story so often that it's comical to repeat it yet again, but here goes: my all-time favorite bands are The Beatles, The Ramones, and The Flashcubes. Add The Kinks and The Monkees, and I've got my Top 5, sitting atop a list of dozens and dozens and dozens of pop acts that I also love without reservation. Very early on, I knew I had to spread the word about The Flashcubes. A lot of people didn't know who The Flashcubes were? Fine. Let's see how we could remedy that.
Before I tried to write about The Flashcubes, however, there was a more intimate tool at my disposal, coupled with a new means to stalk new vict...er, find new like-minded pop fans: mix tapes, distributed to contacts made on the internet. Every mix tape I ever made for any internet pal included at least one Flashcubes track, and usually more than one. I extolled the group's irresistible pop power in annotated track listings for these cassettes, in e-mails, on bulletin boards. I then wrote about The Flashcubes in Radiovision (the hype-sheet for WNMA, the short-lived radio station that launched the predecessor of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl back in 1992), in The Syracuse New Times, and on the Audities web page. When I wrote the liner notes for The Flashcubes' anthology CD Bright Lights, I successfully begged my editor Jeff Tamarkin to also publish the liner notes as an article in Goldmine.
(Side-note to the Goldmine piece: some time after its publication, Flashcubes guitarist Paul Armstrong went to see the surviving members of The MC5 play a gig. Paul made his way backstage after the show, introduced himself, and asked the MC5 guys if perhaps they'd heard of The Flashcubes? And one of these seminal Motor City rock 'n' rollers replied, "The Flashcubes...? Oh, right! I read about you in Goldmine!" Score!!)
Now, there were much larger elements than li'l ol' me at work in spreading the untold legend of The Flashcubes. Rhino Records included the first 'Cubes single, "Christi Girl," on Come Out And Play, a 1993 CD compilation of American power pop from the '70s, and Jordan Oakes' first Yellow Pills power pop CD comp included a newly-recorded Flashcubes track, "It's You Tonight." But I like to think I did my part. Speaking with writer Ken Sharp for the book Play On! Power Pop Heroes Vol. 2, bassist Gary Frenay credited The Flashcubes' reunion and rejuvenation in part to "Yellow Pills, Rhino, and Carl Cafarelli." And I always look back in particular at a comment from an on-line friend named Kathryn Francis, who posted after seeing The Flashcubes for the first time, at their first-ever Los Angeles gig in the late '90s: "Oh my God! Carl has been so right for so long!"
I once read a post from some anonymous twit, stating that his fondest wish was to fly across the Atlantic from England, just to punch me in the nose for saying that The Flashcubes are my favorite band. But I'm not at all sorry to break this news to him, and to everyone else: The Flashcubes will always be one of my favorite bands. I'm always going to play their recordings. Whenever possible, I'm always going to try to catch their increasingly rare live shows, as The Flashcubes and as their individual group and solo incarnations (particularly Screen Test and 1.4.5.). And I'm for damn sure going to keep writing about them. It's not objective. It's not supposed to be objective. Like the Flashcubes song "Radio" says: "I'm sincere, and I hope it's clear: that pop music is my religion. And I don't mean to preach, but I know it's right."
[POSTSCRIPT: when we were putting together the first This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio CD in 2002 and 2003, my co-host Dana Bonn and I asked The Flashcubes if we could use a 'Cubes track on the CD. But instead of digging an old track out of the vault, The Flashcubes said they wanted to do a new song, a song about...us. "But," we stammered, "you already have a song called 'Pathetic!'" Nonetheless, The Flashcubes gave us a new song called "Carl (You Da Man)." And here 'tis:
Carl (You Da Man) by The Flashcubes
"Radio" and "Carl (You Da Man)" written by Paul Armstrong and Gary Frenay
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