monsoonmartin

Dear Legendary Roots Crew,

Have you heard of “tough love”? It’s when a friend or family member sits you down, fixes a grave stare upon you, and initiates a frank discussion about some shortcoming you have or some baffling behavior you’ve engaged in.

And before we get to the “tough” part, let me—as one should in any intervention that hopes to be successful—talk about the love I have for you.

I have been a rabid fan of your Grammy-winning, authentic hip-hop selves since hearing your song “Proceed II” with jazz institution Roy Ayers on the Red Hot + Cool compilation way back in 1995. I bought your first major-label album, Do You Want More?!!!??!, and instantly loved Black Thought’s flow and witty rhymes, ?uestlove’s inventive percussion, and the organic sound of it all. At a time when hip-hop was succumbing to widespread sampling and stale, programmed backing music, The Roots burst on the scene with live instrumentation, a multiplicity of influences, and fierce talent.

When you released your second major label album, Illadelph Halflife, I was at the release party at the now-defunct HMV Records in Philadelphia at midnight on September 24^th, 1996.

Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, I’m sure you recall greeting us at the door and shaking my now-wife’s hand as she gaped at your massive, Afro-topped frame—6’ 5”, with the Afro 6’ 9”, apologies to Fletch. I’m sure you also recall that I excitedly notified my then-girlfriend as we walked away, “That was a Root!” (for I was not yet a dedicated enough fan to know the name of each band member). And you might finally recall—and who could blame you?—thinking to yourself at that moment, “White people.”

You played for free that night and rocked that store off its foundation with songs like “Concerto of the Desperado” and “Clones,” among others. Rahzel, the human beat-box who was in your employ for a time, was particularly outstanding during this intimate performance.

[For those of my readers who are unfamiliar with The Roots, might I direct you to two videos on YouTube—which you’re free to explore further to find other Roots treasures—that exemplify their artistry and energy in concert. In the first they are performing the song “Game Theory” from the album of the same name; the second video is a recent performance of one of their original hits, “Mellow My Man.”]

We followed you loyally from record label to record label, through band departures (Malik B., Hub) and additions (Kamal, Captain Kirk), through awards, critical successes, and disappointing sales, and popular breakthroughs.

But Roots (here comes the tough love part), What in funkless hell is up with Deerhoof?!!!??!

Deerhoof is an avant-indie-rock band based in San Francisco and has been described by the otherwise competent and reliable music critic Ben Ratliff of The New York Times as “one of the most original rock bands to have come along in the last decade.”

I was blissfully unaware of Deerhoof before I attended my next Roots concert. Billed as “An Evening with The Roots,” the show was held on September 15^th, 2005 at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall. I had noticed a full roster of at least five opening acts—none of whom I had heard of—but thought little of it. I had an outstanding ticket, having splurged on a box seat, and would see The Roots in a state-of-the art venue in their (and my, sort of) hometown. I was psyched.

I arrived midway through the “lesser” opening acts, which consisted mainly of local acts, close friends of the band, and other up-and-comers. The two most prominent openers for The Roots were TV on the Radio and Deerhoof. TV on the Radio was quirky but decent, though their set went a little long, and we (along with the overwhelming majority of the crowd) were anxious to see the headliners.

And then, Deerhoof came onstage.

My friends, I like many types of music and have been known to embrace unorthodox or experimental acts in my time. I remember listening to my dad’s Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefhart albums with a perplexed awe. Some of my favorite artists of all-time—Minutemen, John Coltrane, Jethro Tull, Fela Kuti, Rage Against the Machine—are artists who are notable for having blended genres, changed the rules, taken a stand, and dared to be distinctive. I am not some kind of musical ingénue who only likes to hear three-minute pop songs or something with a good beat. I like some goofy shit that ostensibly no one else does.

But I say this to you now: Deerhoof was the most upsetting aural experience of my lifetime.

Onto the stage stepped three slender, indistinctive white dudes who looked like they could have been plucked from any suburban high school’s A/V club. Accompanying them was a short Japanese woman, who appeared from her position onstage to be the bassist and vocalist.

The drummer, Greg Saunier, stepped to the microphone and offered a brief, endearing introduction to the band that went something like: “We’re Deerhoof, and we came from California. We hope you’ll like the sounds we make for you.” It was the very last moment I felt anything but fury toward Deerhoof.

And then they began to play.

Saunier instantly became a human Herky Jerk, playing spastic runs that sounded like snippets from a free-form drum solo, never really falling into any recognizable pattern or tempo whatsoever.

The other two guys held guitars and summoned tuneless, often distorted rock chords and the occasional tortured, miserable single note from them, and looked as if they believed they were playing actual music. Their guitar sounds seldom matched the percussive seizures that were happening behind them at the drum kit, as if they were isolated in some sort of invisible soundproof room. (If only I could have found such a room at that moment.)

And then there was the band’s diminutive singer/bassist, Satomi Matsuzaki. Dressed in what appeared to be pajamas, the Japanese-born Matsuzaki—who apparently speaks little English—flailed away inexpertly at her bass guitar, further adding to the musical cacophony. She also sang unintelligible lyrics in a high, gibbering, childish voice devoid of any attempt at consistent pitch.

The aforementioned Ben Ratliff of The New York Times described her thus: “Ms. Matsuzaki, who also plays bass in the quartet, never sang or played an instrument before joining the group 10 years ago, and her thin voice is an acquired taste; many of the English lyrics she sings do not use stresses where normal speech puts them, which can make them nearly impossible to understand.” This is all a very learned, affected way of saying, “The singer is atrocious, but those of you who are so shallow as to demand talent from your musical groups are too unsophisticated to comprehend what Deerhoof is all about.”

What she actually sang about is anyone’s guess. At one point she seemed to be crying, “Don’t eat meat! Don’t eat meat!” as if it were some kind of vegan manifesto, but she could also have been saying “Dominate!” or “Mosley Street!” or almost anything else at all. The lyrics of a song they sang that night, entitled “Flower,” run in part: “Flower, flower, flower / Power, power, power / I come over / I take over!”

[I admit that even my purple, overwrought prose may not be able to convey the actual sounds that confronted us that night when Deerhoof performed, so here are two videos from YouTube of their live performances. The first is entitled “Panda Panda Panda” and encapsulates pretty much all that is wrong about Deerhoof; the second is a live performance of “Flower,” some of whose lyrics are transcribed above. I want you all to check out at least one of these videos, but I must also apologize in advance for the adverse reactions—skin rashes, ear bleeding, and vertigo are not out of the question—you may experience from doing so. I feel like a man who has eaten a bite of a putrid sirloin steak, turns to his dining companions and says, “There’s something hinky about this. Try it.”]

The collective effect of a Deerhoof performance is the musical equivalent of postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida: inscrutable, pretentious, and infuriatingly obtuse. The sounds stop and start jarringly; the noise threatens fleetingly to fall into an actual meter, then veers wretchedly off into oblivion; and overlaying it all are the Minnie Mouse-like screechings of its lead vocalist, indecipherable and ridiculous.

I looked on with an ever-deepening, bewildered despair that I shall never forget as each song set new standards for unlistenability and horridness. At one point I tried to insist that even though the cumulative effect was horrific, I could tell that the drummer in particular was actually quite an accomplished musician; my companion glared at me with such betrayal in her eyes that I quickly realized any attempts to mitigate or elucidate this auditory travesty would be foolhardy.

I looked around at the diverse crowd that had assembled in Verizon Hall to hear their hip-hop heroes, The Roots: hardcore hip-hop fans; WXPN types who had been turned on to the band by their young urban professional friends; fans ranging in age from teens to fifties, easily. I saw everything from tautly polite expressions to gawping outrage, from bitter resentment to trying-to-make-sense-of-this confusion, from naked rage to blissed-out euphoria.

Wait—“blissed-out euphoria”? Yes, there they were: two art-school types, clearly dedicated Deerhoof fanatics, bopping along and gyrating to the strident din being blasted forth at the audience from the stage. They, I said to myself, and probably to my companion, are goddamned insane.

As I endured the hideous din onstage—which by now was calling to mind the irregular, heaving kecks of a vomiting mule—I fully expected one of The Roots to come onstage, halt the performance, and offer profuse apologies for its lack of quality. But unforgivably, and unforgettably, no such Root forthcame.

Deerhoof’s unceasing, blaring racket stretched on and on, seemingly for days, and I began to wonder why you, The Legendary Roots Crew, would have felt it necessary to inflict this desolate clamor upon your loyal and true fans. Have we—who came to support your joyous homecoming, your ascendancy to Philadelphia musical royalty, your acceptance by polite society—have we failed you in some fundamental way? Is this a punishment of some sort? (And if so: message received.)

The other possibility—and this one was almost more painful to consider—is that you guys actually like Deerhoof. And it’s this potentiality that brings us here to this intervention.

Roots, please hear me: Deerhoof is not, as its fans and some critics have asserted, deconstructing traditional structures and eliding the foundations and boundaries of popular music. Deerhoof is not delightfully turning the industry on its head, interrogating accepted paradigms, or meaningfully subverting compositional rules.

Deerhoof is sucking. That is all they are doing. They are sucking, and they are doing it hard. The sooner you come to terms with this, the better off you (and your fans) will be.

The one bright spot during Deerhoof’s set—aside from its eventual conclusion—occurred immediately following a rousing “tune” that featured Satomi Matsuzaki on cowbell, when a member of the audience bellowed, “More cowbell!” alluding to the “Saturday Night Live” sketch about a Blue Oyster Cult recording session.

Happily, you, the Legendary Roots Crew, played a blistering, two-and-a-half-hour set that night at Verizon Hall and I even met Black Thought—which, again, I’m sure you recall vividly—so the Deerhoof unpleasantness receded into the background of my memory. You came into the room led by a New Orleans jazz band (whose members had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and whom you—The Roots—had actually invited to stay at your homes), you had great guests like Dice Raw and even a surprise appearance by the incredible, incomparable Jill Scott.

Since that night, I have tried many times to explain to my friends the horror of—and explain to myself the appeal of—Deerhoof, who evidently has quite a cult following. I have a theory I regard as strong, and—as I am anxious to put the whole Deerhoof matter behind me, as one would any trauma—I will share it here and move on with my life. Deerhoof has set itself up as a truly alternative artist in a world of supposedly “alternative” acts that sign with major labels and “sell out.” Critics have decided that Deerhoof is operating on a more complex and urbane musical level than the average person can really get his or her mind around. The net effect of all this is that music critics or indie fans are afraid to not like Deerhoof because they fear being exposed as Beyoncé-loving troglodytes who are incapable of appreciating dense, intricate music.

No one—not even their fans and fawning critics—understands Deerhoof because Deerhoof is unknowable. It is impossible to derive meaning from the nonsensical, just as it’s proverbially futile to try and get blood from a stone. Deerhoof is a stone that has been thrown at my earholes repeatedly, and I want it to stop.

And this brings me to the renewed sense of urgency that necessitated this little talk, my dear Roots.

Last month, I learned that you would be hosting The Roots Picnic at the Penn’s Landing Festival Pier in early June, which promised to be a wildly entertaining show. I was even looking forward to seeing your co-headliner, Gnarls Barkley.

But as my eyes rested on the third name on the billing for this show, I gasped (literally, audibly; I have a bit of a tendency for the dramatics): Deerhoof. And all the old questions came rushing back: Why do you, my beloved Roots, keep wreaking this dreadful band on your fans? How have we forsaken you?

Again, I understand that Deerhoof has opened for plenty of well-known bands, whose devotion to Deerhoof has been described as “evangelical”: Sonic Youth, Wilco, Radiohead, and The Flaming Lips among them. The only explanation I have for any of this is that there’s been a massive psychotic break in the music industry, and that the members of these bands—and yours—are afraid of not seeing the “genius” in Deerhoof, as I posited above. It’s the only explanation I can live with.

Legendary Roots Crew, my plea to you is this: cease and desist any association with the band Deerhoof and drop them from your June show at Penn’s Landing so that I, and legions of your true hip-hop fans, might again feel able to come and see your concerts without fearing exposure to the rancid, devoid musical stylings of Deerhoof.

Sincerely,

Monsoon Martin