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In the beginning, there was rock. Eventually, from its foundry were poured myriad new forms of music, including ones in which guitars were replaced with samplers, basses with synths, drummers with programmable machines. Still, it was a mere few months ago when the media moguls rubbed their eyes, saw that European teens loved the Prodigy more than the Beatles, and realized something was amiss. What was this crazy "new" stuff? "Electronica," they said, "and it's gonna be huge." The sales explosion hasn't happened yet--still too many stodgy Neil Young-lovin' neo-Luddites for that--but a few major acts have surfaced from the techno sea. In America, the biggest catch of the day is the Crystal Method. The Las Vegas-raised, Los Angeles-residing duo of Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland started working together in the late '80s, releasing their first work as the Crystal Method in 1994. Last year's debut album, Vegas (Outpost), has clawed its way up the charts--more than 20,000 records sold in the last two weeks alone--thanks to savvy pop structures that prop up trebly squelches, bass belches and squiggly blips of synthetic bliss. Whether it's the ripping sequences of "Keep Hope Alive" or the lazy-rolling beats of "Bad Stone," Vegas has all the addictive elements one would expect from a group whose name could be viewed as "crystal meth OD." As Jordan explains from a tour stop in Philadelphia, the phrase actually refers to a fully legal form of transportation. It seems the boys were hanging with a rapper acquaintance of theirs, who muttered the words when told a certain female friend could drive them somewhere. According to Jordan, "He said, 'Ahh...it's the Crystal Method.' When he said it, we all heard the drug reference and thought it was clever." Dubious double-entendres aside, the name caused a slight PR problem late last year, when the band was linked to an incident involving illicit chemicals. Again, Jordan insists it's a big misunderstanding, a case of wrong place, wrong time. The place: a promoter's house in L.A., where the duo were dropping off CDs for free giveaways. The time: right after cops had pulled over a driver transporting two gallons of GHB, who then led the fuzz straight to the promoter's pad. "We're in this house for like five minutes," Jordan relates, "and the riot-commando-stormtrooper LAPD drug-enforcement squad breaks down the doors and arrests everyone in or near the house." Eighteen hours later, they were freed without further trouble. Still, he sighs, "there's a little bit of guilt by association with everything, no matter how much you explain it away. But no big deal." The drug connection persists regardless of Jordan and Kirkland's attempts to shrug it off, due partly to the fact that techno-rave music has long been linked to a mind-enhancing lifestyle. Whether the drug is ecstasy, meth or ketamine, there's always something the press cites as an evil perverter of teen-age brains. Historically, some link the rave scene to disco, others to post-hippie love-ins--neither a good place to look for examples of clearheadedness. "There's more positive things behind [the scene] than there are negative things," Jordan says. "It's supposed to be all about the music, accepting everyone and being non-judgmental and non-racist. The positives have always outweighed the drug and fashion content." Not that Jordan and Kirkland object to being fashionable, mind you; after all, the duo did play on MTV's Fashionably Loud. Neither do they reject popularity or fame. Far from being high-concept/low-accessibility avant-garde, the Method's music follows in the techno-pop footsteps of Moby, Messiah and the Chemical Brothers. The pair understand their place in the pop world and don't hide in faceless anonymity like many electro acts. "I think it's not such a bad thing if people buy the record and want to know more about the bands they're listening to," Jordan muses. "If you just want to make records and you don't want anyone to know anything else about you, or to see you, or whatever, that's fine. But don't be surprised if no one's interested in you after that. That stuff cuts both ways." Despite his desire to avoid a low profile, however, getting the word out on the airwaves hasn't been as easy as one might think. He notes that television commercials have been more progressive (well, musically, at least) than commercial radio lately; advertisers, he remarks, are "trying to target the young, hip, whatever.... They've more incentive to play whatever's new and good and to seem hip, whereas radio is just about trying not to lose a listener. It's so backwards [in America]. Radio here is doing such an injustice by trying not to offend the listener enough to change the station, rather than playing something that might challenge the listener." Of course, it could be that pesky anti-technology bias all over again. Critics have fired ceaseless ammunition at electronic acts for being engineers rather than musicians, for not really knowing how to rock out. Jordan answers such criticisms: "We don't try to emulate a traditional rock band, but one thing we try to do is make our live shows a performance...I mean, I don't move around as much as Scott does, but he's definitely exciting to watch. Sometimes, y'know, he's more dramatic than any guitar player I've seen." Great, but does any equipment ever get trashed onstage? "Every night," Jordan says, laughing. "Every night something else is broken." Now that's rock 'n' roll. |
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