Pomp’s not dead

Pomp rock lives – run to the hills! – Sounds, 1978

These are the confessions of a closet pomp-rock admirer. By "pomp rock" I mean the brash, fist-pumping, over-the-top arena-rock sound of bands like Styx, Kansas, Journey, ELO, Genesis, Boston and Asia, among others. The guys from The Darkness prove that pomp’s not dead, it just struts around in a red cat-suit. Allow me to qualify, first. The same with any other musical category (such as "new wave" or "Britpop"), pomp rock was something invented by rock scribes. It could mean everything and nothing. I was reading this Q magazine article on guilty pleasures (re: Meat Loaf, Supertramp, ZZ Top and – yes, yes – ELO), and found out about the tag. Interesting. (Hmm, or was it in Classic Rock magazine?)

Most people claim to listen exclusively to the cool stuff. In my case, I also want to check out what’s un-cool. Maybe I could find something new and enlightening, something I could never find in the music of whoever’s cool at the moment (which is always relative, anyway). I put my foot down on Bad English, though.

Pomp plus rock? Instantly, it gave me a mental image of Mozart in his powdered wig and stockings, fingering a Stratocaster and playing one of those power ballads that start faintly and then end with a coruscation of guitar licks, drum fills, lush strings and all the bombast in the galaxy. (A ballad usually about a girl named Carrie or Amanda or Sara.) Or that time a mustachioed Ritchie Blackmore played a Beethoven number during a Deep Purple gig in Australia. I bet Ludwig head-banged in the afterworld. Grandiose does not begin to describe it. It’s more like, uh, paranormal.

Pomp rock is the musical equivalent of a King Arthur ballet. On ice. With a drunken Rick Wakeman. And no one in his right mind would admit to liking a band such as Styx. Well, except Adam Sandler’s character in Big Daddy. And, I dare say it, me.

Ah, Styx. It is ridiculous to name one’s band after the river in the underworld in Greek mythology. That’s a case of engineering one’s own ridicule. Maybe singer Dennis DeYoung was reading Bullfinch and then – Eureka! – found a name slightly better than "Cocytus."

For one thing, the jokes tend to fly like incessant arrows. In one episode of The Simpsons, Homer travels down the River Styx in Hades while skeletons are on the shore playing Lady. (Lady, when you’re with me I’m smiling.) Pure, unadulterated cheese. Homer promptly exclaims, "Oh, this truly is hell!" In an episode of Futurama, Styx is referenced again as the perfect band to play a wedding reception in hell.

Some of the Styx songs don’t help the band’s cause either. What the hell does "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto" mean, anyway? The lyrics are bollocks. That is, until one discovers that the song is part of a – gasp – concept album. The premise of Styx’s "Kilroy Was Here" album: in a bleak Orwellian future where music is outlawed, an unjustly incarcerated rock star (played by Dennis DeYoung) ruminates on life. But the concept still doesn’t save the song from lines such as "You’re wondering who I am – machine or mannequin/With parts made in Japan, I am the modern man." Duh!

In the short film (Kilroy Was Here) that preceded Styx shows in the ’80s, bassist Chuck Panozzo utters the unforgettable line, "Hey, Roboto, your mother was a Toyota!" Double duh!

But for every Mr. Roboto and the schmaltzy Babe, Styx has good songs like Suite Madame Blue and Come Sail Away. The former is in the same league as Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven and the Eagles’ Hotel California – well, according to the Styx singer (and not all over the world, but just in Quebec, Canada). The latter, from "The Grand Illusion" album, was used effectively in Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (along with another pomp rock classic, Strange Magic by ELO). Great tune, but not for everyone. Who will dig it? Those who love songs about seeing "a gathering of angels" that turns out to be a formation of UFOs. Like Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush. Like a narrative by Kurt Vonnegut impersonating O. Henry with his surprise endings.

That’s how good Styx is. Even ear-achingly corny songs like The Best of Times have stellar arrangements and unforgettably melodic guitar solos. That’s one distinctive element of pomp rock: the guitar solo that tells a story. It’s not just a bunch of pentatonic notes cobbled together to match an E bass riff, mind you. The solos make the song move forward to some climactic chorus or bridge. (Even Scott Garceau, who was a bit perplexed about my fondness for pomp rock, agrees.) Listen to any Steve Lukather solo with Toto or the solos in Kansas’ Carry on My Wayward Son and you’ll find out what I’m talking about.

Kansas, dear Virginia, is not just about Dust in the Wind – a song (along with The Boxer and Time in a Bottle) murdered by every Lumanog-guitar-wielding gin-bulag drinker in the late ’70s or early ’80s, playing impromptu gigs in sari-sari stores. (Comedian Will Ferrell does his own audio homicide in Old School, when he croons, "I close my eyes…" during old man Blue’s funeral.) Aside from the brilliant Point of Know Return, the guys from Kansas can be proud of Carry On My Wayward Son.

Hey, even Dream Theater covered a couple of bars of Carry On in Big Medley from "Change of Seasons," along with snippets from Pink Floyd’s In The Flesh?, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, and Genesis’ Turn It On Again. And everyone will agree on how cool Dream Theater is.

You could crucify singer-composer Jeff Lynne for Xanadu (featuring post-Grease Olivia Newton-John), or for tweaking the Beatles’ sound on Free As A Bird, but you have to give him credit for being in the Traveling Wilburys and for creating good, Beatlesque, quasi-classical pop tunes with the Electric Light Orchestra or ELO. Is there anything more quirkily charming than ELO’s Strange Magic?

Lynne claims ELO’s MO is to pick up where I Am The Walrus left off by using classical instruments in a pop-rock context. In one recording session, the cello player used a grapefruit to play his instrument. Absurd, yes, but not as bizarre as using a huge spaceship as a stage prop during the ’78 tour. Shades of Spinal Tap. By the way, the band’s "Out of the Blue" album is so uplifting you could even build a spaceship out of the original vinyl record sleeve. Maybe ride it to Xanadu.

Steve Perry and Journey designed the power ballad blueprint with Open Arms, a song so cloying even Mariah Carey with her mighty iron lungs couldn’t wail more sappiness into it. The song boasts what Classic Rock calls "The Surge" (a gush of sonic tsunami when listeners least expect it) and "The Cheese" (lyrics sung in a pleading, often tormented manner). Ah, the horror.

But Who’s Crying Now? is not a bad song. Nor is Don’t Stop Believin’, which has the same positivistic worldview as Asia’s Heat of the Moment. You could listen to Asia’s song in the morning when you don’t feel like going to work – and then magically get the desire to rule the world. (Another effect is that it can make you want to get into punk rock all over again, says Scott.)

Postscript: Steve Perry left Journey and recorded the song that all show-bands and acoustic artists in the Philippines consider the international anthem: Foolish Heart.

Admittedly, lots of pomp rock bands have created a lot of crap through the years. Remember REO Speedwagon’s Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore? Or how about Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is or Hot Blooded? What about tracks by Loverboy, Damn Yankees, Survivor, or Night Ranger? You don’t want to be caught with your pants down listening to Lovin’ Every Minute Of It or High Enough. Although Night Ranger’s Sister Christian was used brilliantly in Boogie Nights (in the scene featuring the eccentric drug lord Rahad Jackson and the crazy Chinese kid igniting firecrackers.) Tan, tan, tan, tan, you’re motoring! And Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones claims Johnny Rotten was a closet Foreigner fan, and that Lester Bangs crucified the band in his articles but played air guitar to Foreigner tunes at parties. What a strange world we live in.

Which brings me to my point.

My girlfriend Becca freaks out whenever I sneak a pomp rock CD into my usual cache of jazz, classical, blues and unclassifiable CDs. (To regular reader Karl Walder, my current favorites are Joe Cocker’s "Mad Dogs & Englishmen," Tom Wait’s "Used Songs," and anything by Sun Ra, Sigur Ros and The The. Check them out, man. More about the "cool stuff" in future articles.)

Well, music is music. The Aminor7 in a Smiths song is the same one in a Styx song (well, just take away the celibate melancholia and substitute it with mustachioed melancholia). This is one of the few things I have learned in all my years as a music writer: if it moves you, it’s good music. So, what if your neighbors don’t share your fondness for Sister Christian or Telephone Line? They could listen to their shampoo commercial jingles for all you care. We can’t all like the same thing. Which is good. Kanya-kanyang trip lang ’yan.

Anyway, you can glean something cool from a supposedly un-cool source. (Think of Marcel Duchamp inventing installation art by exhibiting a urinal, or Radioactive Sago taking bits of un-cool music such as tango or salsa and turning them into something heady and hip.) Boston, for all its aural transgressions, gave Kurt Cobain the guitar riff that would anchor Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit – the filched riff that became the first shot fired in the ’90s rock revolution. Without Boston, Teen Spirit would be nothing but an obscure poem about a deodorant brand.

Even Mr. Roboto would agree.

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For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.