San Diego Serenade

When I was in 8th grade, I somehow obtained a copy of Rolling Stone that had the band Belly on its cover. I was confused. This was at the height of my devotion to WHFS and DC101, but I had never heard of these guys. Who was this band? What had they done to warrant this sort of publicity? Where did they go from here? Is there a song out there by Belly that I would instantly recognize, but am just not aware that it is Belly?

An Embarassing Magazine Cover

I still don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I have gotten more experienced with Rolling Stone, and realize that they are far from perfect in terms of the horses they occasionally back. Strange articles, like the Belly cover story, do have a tendency to stick with me though. So when I saw a review of The Vines new album "Vision Valley" today, I remembered a few more inexplicable articles I had read about the band four years ago, which still read as some of the most ridiculous hype gone awry in recent music journalism. First off is the above Rolling Stone cover story, proclaiming "Rock is Back!" Four years after the fact, I still remembered that this article talked mainly about how many bong hits the singer took. The funny thing is is that the cover also mentions a few other bands. The Hives haven't been heard from in a while but at least their albums rock and are catchy. Those other two bands did pretty well for themselves as well. I wonder why Rolling Stone picked The Vines to write about, especially with the insightful level of detail provided into the singers musical inspiration:

"He watches a lot of TV on the bus, but he doesn't remember much when it's over. He plays a lot of Tony Hawk video games. He identifies with Shaggy from Scooby-Doo because he used to have a dog. Trying to think of a film that made an impression on him, he ponders in silence before coming up with David Spade's Joe Dirt. "

The David Spade reference is quite telling. Compared to the other bands they were lumped in with in every story, The Vines are easily the Spade or even the Schneider of their class of SNL vets. But the whole hyping The Vines thing wasn't just Rolling Stone taking an alternative stance, hoping to be recognized as visionary geniuses, like the woman in your office pool who picked Monmouth to win it all.

A critic for Slate.com wrote a piece that I still don't understand the point of. First of all, he lumps in The Doves with The Hives, Strokes, Vines and White Stripes, because of the monosyllabic "The" name, ignoring the fact that the White Stripes had already proven this "unifying factor" pointless and inaccurate. Secondly, he keeps referring to the groups as "The Vowel Bands." I didn't understand why when I read it my junior year of college and I still don't understand it. Most of the band names end with E, is that why he calls them that? Is it because there are five bands, so they are the A, E, I, O and U of the rock world? The guy then proceeds to go on to write the kind of article where the points he makes to convince you that that Vines are better than the Strokes and White Stripes all sound like very negative things about the band:

"The most naive-sounding and overtly commercial of this year's unusually diligent crop of top new bands"

"He sounded like a cat stuck in a tree, and then he tried and failed to play his guitar behind his back."

"Highly Evolved is actually a pretty good facsimile of an old-fashioned classic rock 'n' roll album"

"A rousing teen anthem that mirrors the emotion of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" without any of the wit"

I have to figure that both of these articles were written in the same "long shot bet" style as the average music blog who tosses out dozens of recommendations hoping that one will stick and they will get credit for being the first to talk about the band. Either that or editors didn't want to write another yet story about more deserving bands like The Strokes and the White Stripes. Without the compelling "Vowel Bands" backstory to nab them magazine covers, most of us heard The Vines last song "Ride" as the soundtrack to some commercial, I think it may have been for a cell phone company. I don't imagine too many more of us will hear anything off of this new album, unless that new movie "The Benchwarmers" staring everyone's 8th and 9th favorite SNL cast members from 1994 features them on the soundtrack.

The Vines Myspace site where you can hear a few new songs.

The whole albums is streamable at AOL Music