Dagli archivi del New York Times, un pezzo del 1999 sulla crisi della musica rock. Che c'entra? C'entra, perché l'autore,
Neil Strauss, dice che la soluzione è fare come la WWF - all'epoca fenomeno culturale assoluto.
What Rock Could Learn From the W.W.F.
By NEIL STRAUSSMARCH 28, 1999
ONE of the most telling moments in modern professional wrestling came during Wrestlemania XIV, last year's World Wrestling Federation event that featured not only Mike Tyson in the ring but also Gennifer Flowers. (''Everyone likes Gennifer Flowers,'' commented the announcer on her role as a timekeeper.)
During one match, Chyna -- a raven-haired woman with arms the size of barstools -- was handcuffed to a W.W.F. commissioner, forced to watch helplessly as her partner, Hunter Hearst Helmsley (known as H. H. H.), lay unconscious in the ring, being punched silly by Owen Hart. Out of nowhere, a handful of lye appeared in Chyna's gargantuan hand. She threw it in the eyes of the commissioner, blinding him, and dragged him to the ring, where she proceeded to crack Mr. Hart in the groin, thus winning the match for H. H. H.
In the slow-motion replay afterward, viewers watched the lye gradually, grain by grain, enter the eyes of the commissioner. Commenting on the blinding, the ringside announcers didn't see any rules being broken. ''This is a brilliant, brilliant maneuver!'' they exclaimed. Later in that same Wrestlemania, when Pete Rose (yes, the baseball player) was slammed head first onto the mat and hauled away on a stretcher, the commentators were just as glib. ''Watch Rose's head,'' they instructed gleefully during the slow-motion replay.
Some 19,000 people feasted on the carnage in the Fleet Center in Boston. Tickets sold out in about 90 seconds, making it the highest-grossing indoor show ever held in Boston. Another 700,000 people were watching on pay-per-view, landing the match on the service's list of the top five events and bringing total Wrestlemania XIV revenue to $24 million.
A music fan watching from the sidelines might wonder why rock bands aren't doing this well. After all, professional wrestling may be a macho soap opera incorporating pieces of Japanese anime, P. T. Barnum circus, cold war politics, ''Rocky'' movie, vaudeville, Shakespeare and lucha libre (masked Mexican wrestling). But at its heart it's a heavy-metal arena show. It's got the flash pots, the testosterone, the portentous music, the violent invective, the satanic mythology, the crotch grabs and the self-invented characters who speak in monosyllables. Before Vince McMahon turned wrestling into a theatrical spectacle, there was Kiss with its makeup, rocket-launching guitars and blood spitting. And the main thing professional wrestling has that Kiss doesn't is the illusion of violence and danger.
After all, the reason professional wrestling continues to grow since its reinvention in the 1980's is that it constantly finds new ways to up the violence and danger ante. Why just hit someone in the face when you can grab a folding chair from the audience and bash your opponent with that? Why simply body-slam someone when you can grab a ladder from under the stage and perform a flying drop from 10 feet in the air? Why stop at knocking out your opponent when you can bury him alive or stuff him in a coffin and set him on fire? All of these events took place -- and many times -- during wrestling matches last year.
Sure, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, the voodoo-loving New Orleans rhythm-and-blues singer (and a former boxing champion), used to appear on stage in a flaming coffin. But that was decades ago. Today, rock is having problems. Promoters say there are no new bands with members under 40 that can sell out stadiums the way wrestling can. Monster truck shows, on the other hand, have no problem selling out stadiums night after night. And monster truck shows don't even have real celebrities, as wrestling does: just unseen drivers like Gravedigger, who is basically loved because he takes his turns too fast and too tight and likes to drive through stadiums destroying props. There's that violence and danger again. And maybe that's what rock-and-roll needs.
Sports once had the problem rock did. Like rock-and-roll, sports events demand credibility: the game has to be real, the outcome just. Nobody likes a fixed game. Wrestling was once credible: even Abraham (Honest Abe) Lincoln served his time in several hundred wrestling matches in the mid-19th century. But then came Classy Freddie Blassie and Killer Kowalski in the 1950's, with larger-than-life personas, overblown moves like spinning airplane body slams and a love of cheating -- pulling hair, beating up referees, using canes and two-by-fours. Suddenly wrestling became the most popular sport on television.
Like traditional sports fans, music audiences like their stars to be real. Concepts of credibility and authenticity are important. Music fans create an intimate bond with a singer, who is somehow able to voice their feelings in song and make them feel that they are not alone in the world anymore. At a concert, all these loners and small cliques of friends come together and magically, for one night, they are a community. But maybe rock should take a tip from Vince McMahon and stop pretending to be so real all the time.
TODAY, rock-and-roll is in a huge decline; rap music, full of wrestling-type personas like Ol' Dirty Bastard and Big Punisher, is dominating the market. Many put the blame for this on alternative rock, and on its performers' insistence on keeping the music real by eschewing spectacle and performing concerts in which they stand still and wear everyday clothes.
But it's not all alternative rock's fault: in forming such deep personal relationships, music has fragmented into hundreds of sub-genres in order to satisfy every personality type. Those who worship violence must choose to identify with either heavy metal or hardcore rap, and if you choose heavy metal, then there is speed metal, black metal, hair metal, Christian metal and dozens of other spinoffs to choose from. Can't we just come together and share in something we all love, like violence and danger? By banking on the generation gap instead, rock only divides and limits its audience, while professional wrestling and monster truck shows rake in the cash because they are, believe it or not, family events.
What follows is a proposal to make music concerts big again, to take a tip from professional wrestling and monster truck shows and sell out stadiums. After all, professional wrestling stole its thunder from arena rock, so maybe it's time for rock to steal it back. A new tour, a battle of the bands, must be created. At every performance, there would be a routine of competitive contests interspersed with rock and rap theater. At these events, established performers would have to change their names slightly to become Mick (the Lip) Jagger, Dave (Madman) Matthews and the Great Big Punisher. On tour, they would join a new breed of battling rockers, guitarists like the Mad Axman and rappers like M. C. Kick-You-in-the-Head. Managers would become important characters, representing forces of evil who manipulate musicians to rock or rap harder and destroy one another.
Each monster rock show would open slowly, with local bands performing on either side of the theater in a contest to see who could play at the loudest volume and blast the other out of the stadium. Cheating tactics, like sabotaging each other's equipment, would be encouraged. For the second event, a Kenny G or Vanilla Ice impersonator would come on stage to perform, only to be crushed by a falling lighting rig or beaten up by a marauding rock band. Following that, there could be rap battles in which rhyming insults spur violent reactions from opponents. In another event, the stage would be set up with enough gear for one rock band. Yet three or four rock bands would be sent on stage to fight one another to get to the instruments. In the meantime, rappers would drive through the arena in monster trucks, firing guns at one another.
Music concerts already have their own built-in battles between good and evil, with concert security guards, police officers and picketing fundamentalists representing the dark side. Events could be choreographed in which security guards rush the stage and try to keep a band from playing, resulting in plenty of guitar bashing and microphone stand fencing. After all, every instrument on stage is a potential weapon: bands need to do more than just smash them after a concert. In the same way the wrestler Undertaker can summon lightning bolts from the sky to strike down innocent bystanders, lead singers need magical powers besides charisma. They need to be able to fly, see through people's clothes and shoot lasers through their gold teeth; this way they can come to the superheroic aid of an audience member being roughed up by a security guard.
Between events, the camera would take audience members backstage, where various bands could be seen feuding, fighting, doing drugs, destroying dressing rooms and entertaining groupies. This would culminate in a finale in which the headlining act went on stage to play, only to be continually attacked by the enemy it had been fighting with backstage. The enemy would come at the band, struggling to perform, with bulldozers, bombers and armies of right-wing Congressmen. Eventually, the enemy would be vanquished and the headlining band would perform a few victory songs full of pyrotechnics, leaving the audience exhilarated and the promoters millionaires.
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