The Hidden Agenda Behind Rock n' Roll

To continue my series on fictional film bands I present a confrontation I had with my childhood and The Clowns, the alleged musical protagonists of the 1982 film Terror on Tour.

As a child I was exposed to a fair amount of metal by a couple of older friends (the teenaged brothers of the babysitter!) Nevertheless, at the age of eight a person is, understandably, susceptible to suggestion, and I was no exception. For some people, the unquestionable evil of metal was quite threatening, even satanic, and it would surely induce me, they were convinced, to murder my parents and boil their severed heads in urine if I listened to its seductive riffage. KISS as many of you may remember was particularly vilified, and coupled with their visual presentation these rumors of “evil” sank their hooks into my soft brain. It’s one thing to hear some music, and another to directly associate that music with a particular source. Some years later when I finally heard the sounds of KISS and made the cognitive association with their physical appearance I was dumbfounded. There was no evil, no misanthropy. In fact, there was no threat at all. These guys were just dumb party dudes who learned a few blues riffs and spent a lot of money on Halloween costumes.

The Clowns, sent to us all the way from 1982 in their convenient VHS time capsule Terror On Tour, capture both of these objective realities. For those who wish to believe that rock n' roll is the gushing phallus of Satan, The Clowns' stage personas are the epitome of cultural despoilment. They perform a show featuring bloody death and dismemberment and afterwards, consume piles of drugs, booze and slutty groupies with gusto. Their idiotic costumes notwithstanding, The Clowns could hardly be a worse influence on the soft, delicious minds of today’s youth. And in the ultimate nightmare of courtroom backwards-record-playing inducing debacles, someone dressed as one of The Clowns actually is murdering women! (overall this is a vile, mysoginistic film which I won’t get into here) Is it one of the demented fans, a repressed roadie, a sociopathic Christian determined to frame the band, or even one of the band themselves? The answer is the stuff of exposition and climax, but ambiguity fuels the fire of misguided fanaticism just fine.
 
I drink it 'cause I live it man.

With a healthy sense of theological skepticism this simplistic indictment of rock n’ roll doesn’t hold water. Concocted stage personas and outward appearances notwithstanding, a rockstar is still just a regular person. Crediting a musician for soiling the moral fabric of society steps over a very large pile of bullshit lying unaddressed in the middle of the room. Namely, that upon examination their music is usually lousy and/or derivative and/or boring. When one actually hears The Clowns, one quickly realizes that all of their songs (an extrapolation I’ve made based on the fragments of the two they actually play in the film) are predictably self-indulgent and tame rock tunes. Off stage they’re boring and predictably shallow jerks just like you and me; one guy isn’t happy with the direction the band is taking musically, another disapproves of the nasty stage persona, a third is a useless junkie, and every one whiny and self centered. The reality simplydoesn’t jive with the legend.

Those who think rock and roll (or TV etc.) is evil are in a way “right”, because it reflects the underlying disaffection of youth culture to which it caters. It is a manifestation of their loss of control over their children, their slipping position of moral dictatorship and thus absolutely terrifying. Furthermore, for terminal cynics like me who find the reality behind public personas to be hilariously pathetic, The Clowns' (and KISS’) ultimate boringness further undermines the authority of adulthood. Clearly adults are willing to lie to be “right”, which calls into question all the clear-cut notions of good and evil by which we have been taught to measure ourselves. The things we have been taught to fear and revere serve as nothing more than ciphers, a cover for a political agenda. By confirming both of these at the same time, The Clowns represent nothing less than the death of the hero myth and transgressive exceptionalism.

"Dude,The Clowns are like, a totally complex metaphor for like, the moral struggles of the human spirit."

"What? I totally can't hear you dude!"


If you want more, I also discussed this sordid film at some length here on my film blog Lost Video Archive.