The Death of Enthusiasm

I actually don't believe in the term, "guilty pleasure." Why should you have to feel guilty about liking something? (OK, actually, pedophilia is probably a guilty pleasure.) Admitting that you love Hall & Oates shouldn't make you feel guilty about anything, you just need to accept that sometimes the popular tastes of a current era may run counter to something you like.

It seems that everything my generation embraces has to be wrapped in 12 layers of irony so that if someone tries to ridicule your tastes, you can fall back on the excuse that you actually like it ironically. Like, is enjoying the music The Darkness made mean that you sincerely like butt-rock? Or are you just ironically enjoying the idea of butt-rock (the 80's are funny!) since The Darkness themselves seemed to be mocking the genre? But what if you actually start to sincerely like butt-rock? You would have to call it a "guilty pleasure" just to keep your distance, when in reality the only thing you should feel guilty about is being too wrapped up in your own image that you can't even remember what you're supposed to ironically appreciate and what is OK to sincerely admire.

Really though, the two paragraphs above are all just an elaborate justification for one of the most spine-crushingly un-hip things I've ever admitted: I have become a fan of The Osmonds.



This wasn't a conscious decision on my part. It all started when I was at the DI browsing their records (only 25 cents each) and I came across a double LP of the Osmonds Greatest Hits. It looked insane enough to buy just for the cover art, so I picked it up.



My knowledge of The Osmonds up until a few weeks ago was this: A bunch of Mormon Jackson 5 wannabes who sang cheesy songs, spawned a variety show with Donny and Marie, and then faded away and ended up in Branson Missouri (which is like show biz purgatory). Most of that is true, but I had no idea until now that the brothers Osmond were actually a self contained rock band--and boy did they rock (in their own awkward-white-Mormons-from-Utah way). Here is the video for "Hold Her Tight." I realize that they look ridiculous in their Elvis-suits and the dance moves are super cheesy, but damn, this was 1972. That song has got to be one of the harder rock songs to chart that year, since the early 70's were dominated by the sensitive singer-songwritery types like Carole King, Cat Stevens, and Don McClean. "Hold Her Tight" may seem kind of show-tuney to us now, but at the time it was pretty hard (even if they did steal the bass line from Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song").



"Hold Her Tight" is pretty intense, but what really made my head explode is the title track from the album, "Crazy Horses." Honestly, I had no idea that such a strange convergence of pop-culture could even exist. "Crazy Horses" is part Vegas horn section, part "Helter Skelter," and the opening synth squeal (courtesy of Donny) sounds like something that went wrong in Spinal Tap. The kicker is that the song seems to be about cars (the afore-mentioned "crazy horses") and their pollution which is "smokin' up the sky." This is the "Road House" of rock songs: a ridiculous bombastic combination of other genres, but at the same time professing some deeper philosophy; Road House with the Buddhist philosophy major who travels from town to town beating up rednecks, and the Osmonds with their proto-environmentalist message embedded in one of the best and strangest rock songs of the century. Take a look:



So, there it is. I kind of like the Osmonds, in all of their strange Mormon-rock glory. Stay tuned for my upcoming discussion of their strangest creation of all, the profoundly odd, yet awesome concept album called "The Plan." That's right; it's about the plan of salvation.

Labels: music