Eat My Shit, Jack Johnson

"If the music is thin and empty, then our souls will be thin and empty." - Cornell West Just look at that fucking mongo.
I have to listen to a lot of shit at work. From the new Dolly Parton (she fucking cover’s Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy” and the Queen says he believes she can do whatever she wants since she’s got longevity in the biz. Whatever. I asked him if that would excuse her from clubbing baby seals with her massive, surgically enhanced knockers and got no response) to the Pupini Sisters (these gals do old 40’s vocals around modern pop tunes which ain’t too bad but hearing “Crazy in Love” in any incarnation just murders the soul) and lately, Jack Johnson.
If you’re not familiar with the, ahem, “artist,” you needn’t be ashamed. Neither was I until my ears were befouled with the pathetic, lazy machinations of hung over frat-boy rock. You know what I’m talking about: quiet gentle strumming of the basest chords with almost a whisper to spout the lyrics and not an ounce of emotional investment. I like to call this garbage, cracker music.
It’s just like the saltine motherfuckers who proliferate this sad genre. Bland, inoffensive and absolutely soulless: it is without a doubt the biggest plague facing rock ‘n’ roll since Fall Out Boy. And while that pathetic faux-pop-punk boyband bullshit seems to be staid and their fans moving into the emotional desolation of high school, cracker music seems to be the cure all for anyone who doesn’t want to think and just drift off into blissful stupidity. Think of it as People magazine or US Weekly in audio form.
And the way the mags, labels and fans are selling Jack Johnson you would think he was a noble soul. Quite the contrary. The establishment is trying to milk that laid back, care-free warmth of the sun lovin’ surfer image for all it’s worth. And while he boasts that his latest album was recorded with solar energy and he sings about global warming there is no urgency in his message. It’s as if he feels everything is gonna work out okay and by casually pontificating on these matters via song his fans will get the message. It doesn’t work that way.
Anger, contempt and disgust are what raise the biggest stink. Would that twat Anne Coulter, Ingrid Newkirk or (on the respectable end of the spectrum) Chuck D or Kathleen Hanna receive such attention if they weren’t intensely passionate about their subject matter? Fred Phelps has a handful of inbred dickpigs that make up his “church” and he still gets more press than Joel Osteen (who I am not sure is any less evil).
If you want to get a message across it can’t be passive. Not in these dire, turbulent and decaying times. A righteous cry in anger moves more asses than some douche strumming G-chords and singing, “'I hated everyone' said the sun.”
I’d like to ram one of his surfboards up his ass sideways.