notes on relitigating the p(odc)ast

The Smashing Pumpkins hit mainstream success during the early 1990s grunge/alternative rock era. The rock band Bush came soon after.

Breakout bands and artists, especially when they offer something fresh, are soon followed by similar-sounding bands and artists. Bush, one could say, came in the slipstream of The Smashing Pumpkins and the first wave of grunge and alternative rock.

Billy Corgan of the The Smashing Pumpkins recently interviewed his counterpart, Gavin Rossdale of Bush, on Corgan's podcast.

 

I enjoyed the 90s look-back.

Corgan tried hard to sound admiring, tried to make a point of his respect for Rossdale. I thought he tried too hard.

During the interview, Rossdale said he wished the widely admired recording engineer and producer Steve Albini would have given him more direction on the songs while recording the second Bush album, "Razorblade Suitcase," instead of just engineering the sound.

I also learned that people think Bush's debut sounds like Nirvana's "Nevermind" and that the follow-up sounds like Nirvana's follow-up, "In Utero," which Albini also worked on before the label and Kurt Cobain pushed him out. This clearly led to insinuations at the time that Bush was aping the hot bands.

Throughout the interview, Rossdale seemed thoughtful and very normal. A family guy. And as they compared their lives as parents, Corgan admitted being selfish and disconnected.

Note:

- Breakout bands and artists being followed by similar-sounding bands and artists is the music and entertainment business. Look at all the country-themed albums coming out. Ridiculous.

- Rossdale still has Cobain's haircut. Bush was seen as sort of a mashup of Nirvana and Pumpkins.

- My memory is grunge predates "alternative rock" as a genre label.

 

Something on the film W

Left-leaning critics of George W. Bush tend to fall into one of two camps: Those who view the man as evil and those who view him as a puppet ne'er-do-well. Oliver Stone's film "W" agrees with the latter view, depicting the 43rd President as an over-confident and devout man driven by his need for approval. This angle of the W story is a familiar narrative--that of a son always seeking his father's approval. To be the man his father could admire, W believes he must appear in control. The role of "the decider" becomes crucial.

The film feels a little canned, but that may be part of the point: Bush is not an exceptional man, nor is his story at its core. What was extraordinary was the consequences of the group-think so pervasive in his cabinet, seized upon and steered by Vice President Cheney--the unassuming villain in this film, always lurking at the edges.

By combining an uncomplicated character study of George W. Bush with a cohesive narrative of his tenure, the film is useful for giving critics a shared interpretation of the events that transpired between 2001 and 2007. The film reviews I read when "W" premiered were pretty consistent and accurate in voicing surprise at Stone's restrained depiction of the younger Bush, revealing a deeply flawed man who found his own direction rather than a one-dimensional villain or straw man. The film attributes W's formidable initial political successes to his religious conversion, brought on suddenly after a physical and mental collapse during a very hungover three mile jog. His failures come as a result of his gullibility and insecurities.

Stone uses a thematic metaphor in the film--the baseball pop fly: the movie Bush often dreams of fielding a high fly ball in center field and then basking in the the praise and adoration of a cheering crowd. In the film's last scene, Bush, dreaming again, backs up to make the play on the pop-up, but the ball never comes down, leaving a confused Bush staring into the quiet stadium lights, wondering how the winning moment and adulation eluded him.