![]() ![]() While the world waited for the Strokes to follow up Is This It (and they wouldn’t have to wait much longer), rock music was in a weird place. Our shattered complacency had many of us seeking out music that suited a more dour mood. Maybe it’s the effect 9/11 had on our collective psyche, not to mention our world leaders launching us blindly into a never-ending war. Looking back at the charts, alternative rock in 2003 was in a dark place. And that’s okay! If a song is that immediate, why deny it? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to enjoy these songs, but you’d be an idiot not to. There’s just something about a big ol’ guitar riff that taps into this primal pleasure center of our brains that turns us into Beavis & Butt-Head. They make us dance even if we don’t know how to, with one hand holding onto a beer and the other pointed to the sky. These songs and these riffs are engineered to make you move without thinking. “Smoke On The Water”? “Back In Black”? “Blitzkrieg Bop”? All dumb. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”? Kinda dumb. Some of rock’s most beloved songs are just plain dumb. ![]() If country music is “three chords and the truth,” then rock and roll is four chords, a good riff, and a whole lotta lust. It’s part of what makes picking up a guitar so fun. Tweedy didn’t take the bait, not because he knows better than to talk shit about other musicians, but because he understands that a world without bands who make dumb rock music like Jet would be so boring. “Don’t you like rock music?” That was Jeff Tweedy’s answer to a quip about the band Jet during an interview with writer Chuck Klosterman, who was trying to goad Tweedy into bemoaning how lame the Aussie rockers were.
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