Tynan's Anger

SONGS OF THE DECADE #51

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Heavy Trash - They Were Kings (2007)



25 years ago, Jon Spencer was excommunicated from D.C's Dischord scene (and D.I.Y. President-for-Life Ian MacKaye). Critics scoffed off the Blues Explosion in the '90s for Spencer's willful pomo posturing, which came right as the American mainstream had just accepted that stealing rock music from blacks may have been a bad thing. Despite being ahead of his time in his approach to rock plagiarism (imagine the accusations against Spencer being applied to Girl Talk today), Spencer's been relatively silent this decade. He still found time to crank out, with almost complete critical ignorance, his most blatantly sincere track yet. "They Were Kings" honoring the "misunderstood geniuses of rock and roll" in a time when the rest of the world stopped trying to do the same years ago. (In this case, the geniuses are as the Gories and Doo Rag, who were willfully posturing in the exact same style while Spencer was still in his teens.) Spencer's a contrarian fuck, but he's the best contrarian fuck in rock 'n' roll today, entirely consistent and self-aware in his indignation. If Spencer's unpopular, that's the entire point; from the very onset of his career, he understood that rebellion endures whether or not you have a cause, be it Vietnam, Iraq, or American Apparel. James Dean died so Spencer could live.

Labels: 2000s, heavy trash, lists, pop music, songs of the decade, they were kings