Guess What?!? Year's Over!
So You Wanna Be a Rock'n'Roll Star
The Gob Squad's production of Safe is only funny because it's true.

by JOHN GRAHAM
jgraham@wweek.com

Portland audiences are infamously undemanding when it comes to theater productions. Prop up a few fresh thespians, hammer a script into the actors' heads until they spout dialogue on demand, maybe nail together a kinetic set design, and you've got all the workings of a standing-O worthy play. But even knowing this, it was somewhat surprising to hear cackles of rabid laughter erupt during the recent staging of Safe, a satire of rock'n'roll clichés and dreams by British/German theatre troupe Gob Squad. Sure, the play was entertaining--but rib-splitting? Are Portland audiences so starved for highbrow dramatics that the very sound of European voices is cause for group outbursts of joy?

Maybe. Yet while the actors' dry British wit, deadpan timing and knowing insiders' grins were appealing, it probably wasn't merely their charismatic stage presence or audience-involving script that tickled Portlanders' collective sense of humor. As much as anything else, it probably had to do with the play's subject. Six musicians with workaday jobs and a wooden rhythmic sense fantasize about becoming rock'n'roll megastars and act out some of the standard scenes: the simultaneously self-effacing and self-aggrandizing interview, the high-voltage arena-rock show, the desperate pursuit of fame's fickle spotlight, etc. Of course, they pine for the mythological version of Rock Stardom and act out their roles as we are programmed to think rock stars act--something like Oasis' egotistical Gallagher brothers, albeit without the drug addictions, chippies and old manor houses in the Cotswolds.

Ha ha ha.

Because what, really, could be funnier than rock'n'roll?

We've had rock stars for 50 years now, and we've seen them follow the prescribed career arc so many times that an episode of Behind the Music is more predictable than a Harlem Globetrotters game. Starting obstacles--disappointed parents, dismissive A&R reps, the deaf-and-dumb record-buying populace--will be overcome. Singles will suddenly fly to the top of the charts as if lifted by the Hand of God. Then success will spoil the fruits of the artists' labor, as free drugs and sex with 16-year-old groupies astonishingly overtake songwriting as the artists' favorite pastime. Somewhere, a Porsche will be crashed. Suicide--the existential horror!--may even be contemplated when the coke supply runs low. Finally, the future looks bright as the shadow of death (and poor album sales) finally lifts.

Seen it, done it, been there. And Portland's got not only real rock stars, but plenty of wannabes as well. So when Gob Squad lays out the clichés, everyone chortles because, at the end of it all--after the days of exuberant youthful rebellion and nights of quasi-transgressive inebriation--rock'n'roll is completely freaking ridiculous. I know that, you know that, even Courtney Taylor probably knows that. Let Greil Marcus trundle out all the obscure political movements he can unearth for his intellectually overcooked treatises on the Sex Pistols. It won't change the fact that the mythology of Rock Stardom is emptier than George W.'s promises of bipartisanship. But still the dream persists, a pole star of hope in a world with an increasingly cloudy future.

We, the musicians, journalists, publicists, record execs, CD buyers and Gob Squadders of the world, perpetuate these silly rock'n'roll lies for one reason: Death, like, totally sucks, dude. Cloned sheep, cryogenic preservation and cyborg technology aside, we're all gonna die, and rock stardom is the easiest, best way to achieve cultural immortality. Hell, in rock'n'roll, death isn't just that moment of final oblivion when the brain shoots its last neural pulse across synaptic space, it's a smart career move that ships units. Die now, live later, and watch the number of those SoundScans, tearful Spin tributes and glossy bios go through the roof. Working schmucks like the Gob Squad characters--like us--get none of that. Jimi Hendrix, guitar god, glows in his eternal firmament; Jimmy Hendricks, gas station attendant, will kick off alone with a cirrhotic liver and a garageful of greasy dipstick rags. So we have to slog through page after page of Q&As with some coiffed rocker insisting, "It's all about the music, man."

Stupid.

But funny. And, deep down, anyone who's ever started a band or written a song has wanted their own star, no matter how small, distant or dull, in rock'n'roll Heaven. So we let the myths continue. And we dream. And we laugh at the absurdity of it all. Hell, it's better than working.