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    The Day Punk Died: Nardwuar the Human Serviette versus Sonic Youth

     Slate's Mark O'Connell (here) highlights one of the main virtues of Nardwuar the Human Serviette:

    One of the most interesting things about watching a lot of Nardwuar’s interviews (and if you watch one, chances are you’ll end up watching a lot) is the way that they tend to reveal aspects of artists’ personalities that we’re not accustomed to seeing. His aggressive uncoolness—the silly hat, the grating manner, the relentlessly pursued obsession with minutiae—amounts to a kind of challenge. The respect he gets from people like Big K.R.I.T., Grimes, Brother Ali, Pharrell, Snoop Dogg, Joanna Newsom, El-P, Questlove, and Ian MacKaye reflects the extent to which these people are, in their different ways, smart and empathic enough to see past the geeky, gimmicky surface to the value of what he’s doing.

    But that uncoolness brings out a lack of basic decency—a shabbiness and stupidity—in others. A 1991 interview with Sonic Youth, for instance, was especially difficult for me, a Sonic Youth fan, to watch—first for how it reveals their stunted and clichéd conception of what it means to be a bunch of cool people in a cool rock band, and then for how it reveals them as just standard-issue schoolyard bullies. Lee Ranaldo breaks a rare 7-inch record Nardwuar has brought them, and then he and Thurston Moore (then age 33 and 35 respectively) grab him and pull his T-shirt over his head as he struggles and shouts. “You idiot!” he screams at Ranaldo. “You fucking piece of shit!” It’s a grim spectacle, but worth sitting through as a reminder of how shallow and transparently fraudulent the performance of countercultural cool can often be.

    Patrick Lyons (here) also sees this virtue of Nardwuar, with the list of the three best and worst (to my list of bests I would add Questlove (his beautiful laugh, the way he is reduced to tears at the fifth or sixth present Nardwuar gives him at around the thirty-two minute mark, and the end of the interview), Pharrell Willliams (the way he turns the table and interviews Nardwuar and also, with Snoop, helped Nardwuar get over so largely in the hip hop community), and Courtney Love, who cherished Nardwuar long before he had gotten over with other musicians). Kyley Elison (here) has provided musicians with a list of rules for dealing with Nardwuar (it's actually pretty good general advice: (1) Do Nardwuar impersonations, (2) Don't do cocaine, (3) Do come bearing gifts, (4) Don't underestimate Nardwuar, (5) Don't act defensive. Please follow the link, as each rule is illustrated with a Nardwuar interview.)

    In any case, the Sonic Youth interview makes me recall K-Punk's wonderful diatribes against the band (for example, see here and here). It also makes me realize just how prone humans are to become the very things they take themselves to be against.

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    17 responses to “The Day Punk Died: Nardwuar the Human Serviette versus Sonic Youth”

    1. fausto Avatar
      fausto

      aren’t you taking this a bit too seriously? I hope you can still enjoy some SY records.

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    2. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      To be clear, I was never into them and found K-Punk’s articles compelling. The horrible way they treated Nardwuar (and lack of any apology since) just reinforces their essential phoniness.
      More broadly it is very interesting just how easy it is for the bullied to become the bullies (cf. Henry Rollins, who nearly disgraced himself in his first Nardwuar interview, but then found redemption in the second one).
      But as far as taking it too seriously, Beck completely botched his Nardwuar interview but that doesn’t reflect on his music. The difference is that Beck writes good songs, and Sonic Youth just regurgitate bands less popular than them with little references (e.g. sampling the Stooges) thrown in so that their fans can feel like paragons of good taste.
      I realize that people of good will like Sonic Youth, but I still think the Emperor’s naked. As far as I can tell, Sonic Youth is just an empty signifier of coolness, when the whole point of punk was supposed to be the defeat of cool in favor of truth and beauty.

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    3. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      But if you have some of their records to recommend to the skeptical, I’ll certainly check them out.

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    4. Anonymous Avatar
      Anonymous

      I’ve never heard of Nardwuar, but I’m a bit sympathetic with the bands that react badly to him.
      Maybe he’s sincere, but he sends my BS-o-meter through the roof. He reminds me of those obnoxious actors that descend into the theatre audience or an over-earnest butter-churning historical re-enactor who demands you play along with his script.
      In a word: he’s aggressive. I know he’s supposed to be the little guy here, the victim, but to me he comes off like a bully. And just because it’s intra-dork bullying, doesn’t make him less of one. He reminds me a bit of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, or maybe the interviews from the Ali G Show, but their victims usually deserved the hostility and confusion they were inflicting.
      And reading some of the links and other interviews my impression is that it’s his fans who are pulling the cooler-than-thou card, since they know his schtick and get the joke and are mocking artists who don’t get it and just think he’s a random weirdo trying to make fun of them on camera. Again, maybe he’s sincere, but I don’t see why we should expect anyone he interviews to not think they’re being mocked and attacked. Maybe I’m wrong, but this guy strikes me part of the meta-level hipsterism that involves being cooler than the cooler-than-thou by being anti-cool, still a pose designed to create a sense of superiority.
      On SY: the emperor isn’t naked, his fans are. SY fans are often really obnoxious snobs, and pretend that SY is high concept experimental art. If you approach it through their lens, you’ll be disappointed.
      If you don’t take SY so seriously, and just listen to them as a rock band, they’re fine. Not the second coming of Christ or the next VU, but a band with some great rock songs and some great atmospheric moodier songs, even if there are overindulgent, pretentious songs in the mix.
      I can’t believe anyone could strongly dislike their bigger singles like Teenage Riot, Kool Thing, 100%, Dirty Boots, or Youth Against Fascism, even if they didn’t love them. And there are plenty of other decent ones. For example:
      Sugar Kane http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIIEbrMXs20
      My Friend Goo (a satire of the the kind of phony cool that your post is about): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTKsywYMro8
      Disappearer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8MFqJ22kSs
      Cover of Carpenters’ Superstar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y21VecIIdBI

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    5. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Hey, thanks for the links. Have you read the K Punk essays (about some of these songs)?
      My wife shares your response to Nardwuar. I have to respectfully disagree though. I love Ali G, but the two are doing radically different things.*
      Nardwuar is just very much a nerd who is tremendously excited and knowledgeable about the bands he’s interviewing. He exaggerates some of his mannerisms to build the schtick, but when he’s excited and not interviewing people all of the same mannerisms get exaggerated. He brings an aspie like attention and passion to detail that many better musicians share with him (fascinating to see him get over so big with giants of hip hop). And he brings presents.
      His interviews were much better when nobody knew who he was, because he then functioned as a much better barometer at least with respect to how bands deal with uncool people who love music.
      He might be cool in spite of himself now. I don’t know. Jerk rock stars like the members of Sonic Youth probably now already know how much opprobrium will descend if they act towards Nardwuar the way high school popular kids once acted towards them. This being said I think in hip hop that people are not being nice to him merely because they don’t want to offend his early fans Snoop and Pharrell. The kind of skill set that makes for making good hip hop I think overlaps with the skill set Nardwuar brings to interviews. As I noted earlier it’s weird and refreshing to see just how nerdy (in the Asperger’s like sense of the word) are so many giants of hip hop as they bond with Nardwuar.
      Check out his great ted talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkSUazeI2nM . The fearlessness and DIY ethos is what I associate with punk at its greatest.
      For another band that related to him before he was a household name, check out the White Stripes (pre Elephant) interview ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDMiJ0rSxF0 ). It’s pretty great stuff.
      [Note:
      *This being said, part of the reason Ali G succeeds is because he is also a moral barometer. The way you habitually respond to the clueless surely says something of great moral significance about yourself.]

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    6. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Yeah, Suger Kane is absolutely awesome, so I’m starting to get the hoopla a bit. And he really is an extraordinary guitarist (I’d put him with Pat Smear and Johnny Marr in unsung hero categories).
      The lack of melodic catchiness in the other ones are too offputting to me though (For what it’s worth I don’t like Minor Threat’s music for the same reason).
      My Friend Goo is just too uncomfortably close to Nirvana’s In Bloom:
      He’s the one who likes all our pretty songs
      And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun
      But he knows not what it means
      Knows not what it means and I say. . . [Repeat chorus]
      Come on, get over yourself. For starters, don’t defecate on your own fans this way. Second, your lyrics aren’t that deep. Come on.
      At least to the extent that the Nardwuar interview isn’t a gross fluke, I’d much rather hang out with Goo than Kim or Thurston.

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    7. Anon Avatar
      Anon

      Here’s the entirety of Sister (1987): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2G-gw1pogg
      And Daydream Nation (1988): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUVQbyOi8RE
      I won’t argue with the general assessment that Sonic Youth are art school dicks, but need this interview even be a “gross fluke” to change your opinion? Things aren’t typically so black and white. People have their moments, both ways, especially in groups and when dealing with confrontation. I met SY very briefly (I performed a lowly service for them in my first job out of high school). They were perfectly pleasant. On the other hand, while MacKaye is linked to as a positive interaction with Nardwuar, many would take him to be a classic example of the holier-than-thou hardcore prick. And while I don’t agree (I dig Ian), I can see it.

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    8. Anonymous Avatar
      Anonymous

      I think for melodic catchiness the major singles are probably your best bet, so check them out if you haven’t heard them: Kool Thing, Dirty Boots, 100%, Teenage Riot.
      I agree that the In Bloom lyrics are annoying, but My Friend Goo never struck me that way. I always assumed that Goo was a lighthearted self portrait, mocking their own too cool for school personae.
      I’m willing to accept that Nardwuar’s for real, but I think it’s understandable that many would think it’s an act, so he may not be an accurate barometer of an musician’s asshole-ness. Isn’t part of the fearlessness of the punk ethos the unwillingness to play along with and to call out BS? So even if they’re mistaken, that may be all some of the interviewees are trying to do.
      I tried to read the K-punk pieces but couldn’t get very far. I follow the pleasure principle with music, and those pieces seem to over-intellectualize it far too much for my taste. From what little of it I was able to digest, the complaint seemed to be: “they think they’re anti mainstream but they’re not.” Who cares? To me this sounds like: “they’re not as pretentious as I am, not cutting edge enough for me”. It’s a snob war, everyone loses, and I don’t want to be on either side.
      It’s just music. I had no idea there was a reference to the Carpenters cover in Juno, but why does he attach all this symbolic hipster weight to it? It’s a beautiful cover of a nice tune. No more, no less. That’s why people like it. Not because pretentious people like the writer of Juno or this guy use liking it or hating it for indie cred.

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    9. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Ooh thanks again. Sugar Kane rocked my socks, so I’m hyped about studying those pieces.
      Everything you write here scans to me, and I’m going to go give My Friend Goo another listen.

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    10. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      The “Superstar” cover is from this album:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B1g_X7kED4&list=PLAEB197271AB6E23A
      Quite a few of the songs are great, though the Shonen Knife version of “Top of the World” is my favorite.

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    11. Jack Samuel Avatar
      Jack Samuel

      I’m not sure what I think about In Bloom. I’m not shy about throwing “sell out” around, and I fully appreciate that no one forced Nirvana to become mega-rockstars. Still, Kurt maintained a confrontational attitude toward mainstream values and used his public profile as an opportunity to challenge them. They wrote catchy songs and put them out on a major label but he never let go of his commitment to calling out sexism and homophobia etc., and I buy that he was genuinely conflicted about being a punk-rock-star. Compared to Green Day or The Offspring he comes off looking pretty good.
      As for Rollins I tend to give him some extra leeway just for being entertaining, but in the best of all possible worlds he stayed in DC singing for State of Alert. (I’ve never really liked post-Morris Black Flag.) And I’m too young to have ever thought of Sonic Youth as “punk;” for me they’ve always been emperors of a legion of nudists and I relate to them the same way that I do to The Smiths or any other hip pop artist that makes interesting music in a non-DIY context. And Tom Violence is a serious banger. Hell I’ll even go to bat for Rather Ripped and Sonic Nurse, on purely aesthetic grounds.

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    12. jm Avatar
      jm

      Breaking the record was an asshole move, but I can’t entirely fault Sonic Youth for reacting sourly. Nardwuar was more abrasive in those days. His current method is to catch his subjects off guard with his familiarity and generosity, but in those days he often did it by berating them with weird questions and totally dominating the conversation. It can come off like bullying.
      If you haven’t seen it, he gets a nasty reaction from Lydia Lunch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E92qnnRlQ2w

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    13. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Yeah, Beck initially responds well, but hangs up on him after he hectors Beck about why he won’t play “Loser” on the road, the kind of question he probably wouldn’t ask these days.
      I’m thinking more about the Ali G comparison made above, and I think there’s more to it than I initially thought. Both Ali G and Nardwuar take people out of their comfort zones. Some people react quite defensively, and it’s not that clear that one can make any deep judgments about character based on a one time bad reaction after being pulled out of one’s comfort zone.
      I think that it ends up being most distressing when it seems to confirm other fears one might have. With Sonic Youth that there really is no alternative to high school ethics (something amply verified from all of the Bush Administration people who didn’t even have to pretend they weren’t bullies, but which should have been clear from all of the Bloodsugarsexmagic era Red Hot Chili Pepper male fans who were “alternative” yet glorified the very sort of meatheadedness that art is supposed to provide an alternative to). With Lydia Lunch (and to a much lesser extent the Nirvana interview) you get a kind of toxic level of condescension/unearned contempt which characterizes Generation X at our worst. And, in any case, if we’d wanted unearned contempt we could have just kept listening to our Billy Joel records.

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    14. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      I actually think Nirvana only really became rock divinities with In Utero (and then Unplugged as a follow up to In Utero). The way they successfully wove together of such transcendentally beautiful melodies with such distressing harshness/dissonance is sui generis, even with respect to their own earlier work. I place it with Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” as canonical albums. It certainly belongs fairy high up on Cobain’s own list of 50 albums ( http://nirvana.wikia.com/wiki/Kurt_Cobain's_Top_50_Albums ).
      Note that Black Flag’s My War is number eleven on Cobain’s list!
      I tend to think that Rollins era and pre-Rollins era Black Flag are just two different bands (in terms of musical style there are three bands, pre-My War, My War, and post-My War), so different that it’s hard for me to compare them. With My War you had Rollins starting to exert aesthetic influence, but after My War this was leavened somewhat by bass-player Kira (who came in half way through recording My War) having an interesting creative influence in her own right. For post My War, In My Head seems fairly canonical to me (as well as the live album of that era, “Who’s Got the Ten and a Half”), and the other two not nearly as successful (though there are some great tracks such as Black Coffee, Wound Up, and Out of this World.
      But other than Greg Ginn’s guitar style, you wouldn’t think this was the same band who wrote Jealous Again, Wasted, etc.
      Thanks for more Sonic Youth leads to follow! From the wikipedia entry I’m really hyped about giving Rather Ripped a listen.

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    15. jm Avatar
      jm

      I do really, really like Nardwuar’s current interview style. He’s amazingly good at figuring out a musician’s formative influences without having to directly ask, which means that he can drop some item of knowledge out of the blue and elicit awesomely geeky reactions. And as he’s gotten more famous you have bands like HAIM who are just overjoyed to be interviewed by him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmOEKvcASB4

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    16. Marijo Cook Avatar
      Marijo Cook

      Here’s something melodic (and crazy sexy): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JGBNkLM9_8
      And something unexpected: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEcsXre6leY
      My husband has played the album ‘Dirty’ so many times that I can’t be objective about it, but obviously he loves it. I think it may tell the story of an abused woman, and Sugar Kane is on there.
      He also says check out their collaboration with Lydia Lunch.

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    17. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Awesome!
      The department is not the same since you graduated. You are much missed by all, but I trust that you are continuing to rock out.

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