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December 12, 2006
The Steve Bartman Effect as it Relates to Music
Sometimes the most un-expected of characters can find themselves putting slight pressure on and off the gas pedal of moving history. Historians love these moments, these bridges and surges where everything before and after seem to change. They are the figures like Gavrilo Princip who in three seconds fired two shots from his pistol killing Archduke Francis Ferdianand and his wife affecting all programming on The History Channel from then on after. They are the great moments of change such as when James Joyce finishes Ulysses, when Alexander Graham Bell stumbles upon phone sex, or when Al Gore invents the Internet. Most of the time these figures are pinpointed as the final straw but truth be told the camel has been having back problems all of his life.
However, unlike Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” sometimes all of modern history cannot be revealed with a four-chord progression over five stanzas. Every so often if you spin in enough circles and stop suddenly you can feel the earth moving. Every so often individuals find themselves within the curve of the great time line. They are the Steve Bartmans, the Bill Buckners and the Forest Gumps who with a mix of fate and accident find themselves with their hand on the wheel as the road merges and in the end, at the very least, have the pleasure to say they were a part of it.
ahhh Bartman...
Musical history is no different, and in such a history that has evolved all the way from Beethoven’s Ninth to Beethoven’s Ninth remixed in disco style, there are plenty of examples of individuals that took one from this and one from that in order to make three. The big names have already been written about. They are the Dylans and Lennons who without which Rolling Stone would have no one to put in numerical order. Yet, there is also a different brand of musician who, like Steve Bartman or Gavrilo Princip, awoke to find themselves as being in the center of it all for a brief moment. For these reasons I wanted to concentrate on those who never had a VH1 special but at one moment in musical history they found themselves standing still while the earth as a whole was moving.
The first installment and one of the perfect molds to this “Steve Bartman Effect” are The Melvins who inspired this thought process when I saw them at the TLA in Philadelphia back in October. Musically the Melvins brew a sound so thick and soggy that they could even make the Swamp Thing buy some paper towels. In a career that still finds itself on a grueling tour schedule following a new album release, The Melvins are known for taking the reigns of a a post punk/ Black Sabbath guitar ridden angst and driving it into the 90’s with a sense of humor and thick sludge of sound.
Yet even though the wheels of their tour bus are still rolling, The Melvins will most likely be found in sentences that share residence with Kurt Cobain.The reasons are simple enough. The Melvins had immeasurable influence on a young Kurt Cobain who was from the same town of Aberdeen, WA.
So as the fable goes a young Kurt Cobain was a devoted fan of the band, carried the Melvins equipment for a couple of shows, and even auditioned for the band on guitar but did not make the cut. It was also The Melvins’ drummer, Dale Crover, who played with Nirvana when they were drummerless in 1990 and it was The Melvins’ founder, Buzz Osborne, who pointed Nirvana in the direction of Dave Grohl when they were looking for a permanent replacement.
a cover that seems to admire and big brother Cobain at the same time
Of course nothing is ever a cut and dry cause and effect relationship, but historians sometimes make these leaps in order to tell a good story. After all WWI would have happened with or without Gavrilo Princip, and both the errors of Bartman and Buckner occurred in only game six of a seven game series. Even though it is understood that these figures alone are not the sole “and” between the cause and effect there is a need to sometimes pinpoint the moment where history swerves. For this reason historians love to make overly bold statements. Under these principles I have no problem concluding with my own bold generalization that without The Melvins there would be no Nirvana, and without Nirvana, Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” would have stayed on-top of the charts in 1992.
Posted by Yonah Korngold at December 12, 2006 07:00 PM
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Comments
Dig the post Yonah.
-Max
Posted by: Max at December 12, 2006 10:34 PM
Nicely done.
Posted by: bmarkey at December 13, 2006 03:35 AM
Yet another great post to notch on the old belt.
Encore please.
Kelli Douglas
Posted by: Kelli Douglas at December 13, 2006 10:11 AM
A great post from a great writer!!
I think this would make a kick ass coffee table book:
The Bill Buckner of the Bands You Love
Posted by: Born Loser at December 14, 2006 05:33 PM
Yon- Bartman's trying to get a job in someone's front office ... not the Cubs.
Posted by: Neal at December 15, 2006 11:12 AM
