Kill Your Idols (2004)

Kill Your Idols is a documentary film focusing on the No Wave music scene of New York City in the late 1970's and early 1980's and the influence it had on current noise rock bands like Sonic Youth, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Liars and Black Dice. The film features interviews with many founding members of the No Wave scene such as Lydia Lunch of Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Glenn Branca of Theoretical Girls and Arto Lindsay of DNA. The film also utilizes some rare footage of early No Wave performances by the fore mentioned bands and a few others.

For those not hip enough to know what the No Wave scene was all about, it was basically a DaDaist approach to music that sought to remove the trappings of traditional music and create "songs" that were totally original in structure and sound. The performers often thought of their performances more of as art than music. Most No Wave "songs" were atonal jumbles of sound with no distinct rhythm or melody. The documentary is in standard rock documentary fashion, juxtaposing interview segments between performance footage.

The first half of the film focuses on the early bands of the scene and how they came to be and what they were trying to invoke with their bands. There are some insightful and interesting sound bytes from some of the artists about the musical landscape of the time and trying to shatter the boundaries of conventional songwriting. However, a lot of the time the artists come off as a little too self-important. The film then jumps ahead 20 years to 2002 and checks in with some new bands that make weird noises. Some that are fairly well known (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Liars) and some that are not (A.R.E. Weapons, flux information sciences). The newer bands, for the most part come off, as sub-mental retards not capable of completing an entire sentence without the word "like". Especially the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. By the time the movie was over I think I heard Karen O say "Like, ya knyow" about 100 times. The Black Dice came off as the most genuine and intelligent, which isn't saying a whole lot. Sonic Youth serves as the bridge between these two generations of noise makers and is probably the reason 80% of people will pick up this DVD. Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo offer some interesting anecdotes and thoughts on the No Wave scene and how it shaped Sonic Youth's sound. However, there's a huge shortage of performance footage from Sonic Youth. I was really hoping to see some early 1980's footage of a young Sonic Youth live in concert.

My biggest complaint about the film is probably the subject itself. I have listened to several No Wave albums and can appreciate their attempt to create something totally new and unconventional. There's just one problem; most No Wave music is utterly unlistenable. It's like, I dig your theory, guys, but not your product. See, what really got me angry was listening to these aging hipsters bitch and moan about how important what they were doing was and how commercial and boring the music today is. What a load of shit. I mean, sure you may have influenced a handful of marginally popular bands, but let's face it, most of the time these "artists" were just dicking around. And then to hear Lydia Lunch bitch about how boring music today is when I can think of nothing more boring than listening to Lydia Lunch play atonal sounds on a guitar and scream into a microphone.

The irony is that there was a real musical revolution happening right under their noses, where most musical revolutions happen; in the black community. Like No Wave it sought to shed the trappings of conventional guitar based blues music. It too also started in the underground, and not the fake fucking art underground either, the real underground of the streets. But unlike No Wave this musical revolution actually got people's attention, connected with the people, it was exciting and it has endured to today. Of course, I am talking about hip-hop. But that revolution doesn't fit into their lily white, New York artsy, pretentious idea of what musical rebellion is, so I guess it's just another "boring" "conventional" musical form to them. Fuck 'em.