I can't bring myself to like the term "pop-rock." Some of my favorite local bands have started referring to their material in this way, and though I understand why they do it, I still don't like the sound of it. After all, whether rock's artsier farts accept it or not, rock has always been a popular form of music, so the term is redundant. But that's not what bugs me--I hate the trivializing ring to it. A long history distinguishes the term "pop" from "rock," one suggesting entertainment for entertainment's sake, the other promising something more.

Still, I know why some are embracing the term. The label "pop" allows a musician the freedom to embrace elements of rock's history that hipsters may not think are cool. "Pop" implies both the lush glories of New York's Tin Pan Alley (its echoes in the confectionery styles of everyone from Brian Wilson to Bob Mould) as well as that slice of teenybopper music we all unconditionally loved at some moment in our development. "Pop" is an idea embraced by the Ramones thereby laying a cornerstone for punk, and it is the freedom to be as direct as Joan Jett. Calling yourself "pop" beats the rock snob to the punch.

The term "pop" also makes sense in an era when music is so rigidly formatted that nothing resembling an inclusive Top 40 has existed on the radio since about 1993. The rise of Nirvana happened at the exact moment R&B overtook the Billboard Top 10. At that same moment, Kansas City's straight Top 40 station (Contemporary Hit Radio) changed to country, black artists were largely relegated to KPRS and "alternative rock" became the greatest misnomer for a format in the history of radio. Using the term "pop" suggests a sensibility of a bygone era, when Guns'N'Roses could be heard back-to-back with Bobby Brown, Madonna and Public Enemy. I like the sentiment.

I just don't like the term. I'm a "rocker," not a "pop-rocker." The term "pop" implies some kind of commercial watering down of the most potent musical idea imaginable. For me, "rock" says two things--straight out of its roots. One thing "rock" suggests is a Pentecostal intensity, a house-rocking Holy Ghost fever, the hallmark of most music worth my time, whether it gets there through a subtle swelling of emotion or balls to the wall guitar power. The other thing "rock" says is sex--not pristine lovemaking but hot, wet humping that you never want to stop, and the connection between that and Holy Ghost fever is what defines an artist like Prince and drives William Bennett mad. Attaching the term "pop" to either one of those ideas does little for my body or my soul.

Sometimes words just get in the way.

I certainly haven't felt much like writing my column this summer. A vacuum of silence follows too much of my writing, and I don't know what to do with the scattered compliments I do receive. Writing is about communication, and when it feels like you've talked too long without a dialogue, the desire to keep the conversation going becomes ludicrous.

Another response that makes me want to stop writing is the pat on the back that people feel they have to give you after you write a paragraph like the one I just wrote. If I point out my despair, I'm not looking for reassurance; I'm looking for a connection. If somebody connects with what I have to say, the reassurance will come with the connection.

Bands must feel this way just before they break up--or during those trying times when they seriously contemplate it. It's an important feeling. It's a useful feeling. I'm happy to be at my own wailing wall because I know the true job of growth is to make the change necessary to feel like I'm achieving something again. Musicians learn the same hard truth face-to-face with their audiences on a regular basis. Breaking up the band is not just a death but a step toward rebirth. Fortunately, the change doesn't always have to be that drastic.

I heard Bruce Springsteen take such a step yesterday morning, although he's actually been taking that step all summer long. I had been hearing about this new song he is using to close his shows, "Land of Hope and Dreams," and the reverent way people refer to it suggested it was one of his benchmark moments. That song was on a bootleg concert tape a friend sent me a couple of weeks back, but stumbling around in the dark as I have been lately, I didn't get around to playing it until yesterday.

I played it in the morning on the way to work, and, by midway through, I realized just how much I needed it, and how much Bruce Springsteen needed it. The song is a classic Springsteen idea. Two lovers/two partners set off on a mission to restore their faith. But the image isn't that of two isolated characters in a car. Springsteen has finally written the great train song that he has worked on as a unifying device for his encores for years. These two set off as passengers on the mythical train to the promised land (not an otherworldly heaven but the promise of America straight out of the Great Migration), and it is the very nature of this train that brought tears to my eyes, made me want to stay in the car and listen to it over and over again rather than go in to work . . . . It is the nature of that train that gave me this column.

Augmented by spry mandolin, urgent sax and, ultimately, a gospel choir, a lilting groove gathers you up in the "Land of Hope and Dreams" and builds and builds while Springsteen's voice grows more assured and hopeful and even triumphant, the lyrics describe the train you realize is leaving the station with you in it. The lyrics describe the gospel of rock itself-

"This train carries saints and sinners,
This train carries losers and winners,
This train carries whores and gamblers,
This train carries midnight ramblers . . . ."

The list goes on and the promises grow stronger, including recognizable rock characters ranging from "the brokenhearted" to "souls departed," from "lost soul ramblers," to "fools" and "kings." The list is repeated and altered. The images swirl together and become something like a cyclone of energy, drawing in every kind of listener and every part of the listener, whether defined by hope or failure or despair. The song promises, on this train, "faith will be rewarded."

No, it's not the world we live in, but it is a world the song dares us to imagine, a world not unlike that one John Lennon dared us to imagine a quarter of a century ago. The train is Springsteen's vision of rock, but it is also the same train the Impressions and Rod Stewart told us to climb aboard; it's the same promised land the Staple Singers and Big Daddy Kane offered to take us. It's "Great Balls of Fire," "Hey Jude" and "Purple Rain." It's the way to "Paradise City" and "Doggy Dogg Land." It's rock Pentecost, and once we've been struck by that vision, the greatest sin is to settle for the world we knew before.

To hear it spoken so plainly made me realize what has made it hard for me to find motivation to write the same old way lately.

There is an elitism like a cancer in the music community (at its worst in much rock criticism) that is absolutely antithetical to the passion that drew us in. Like the plagues of the society we fled for something better, this disease reinforces the artificial walls we place between us. Those who embrace the idea of "pop," whether they know it or not, are simply using a semantic tool to bust down some of these walls. Consciously or intuitively, they sense the truth about rock. Its glory is in the length of its reach and the depth of its compassion. In a world all but ruined by greed, hatred and self-loathing, rock music has said, in movement after movement-you are accepted, come as you are, and you don't need a ticket to get on board. "Pop" then is an ironic term for those who see the music in this way. It's hard to imagine a vision less popular in our society, and that's what keeps rock so dangerous; it never stops pushing for a world to roll over.

--Danny Alexander
danny@thezone.org