Presidents of the United States of America
Mailer probably isn’t a big fan of the Presidents of the United States of America, a Seattle grunge-rock trio fronted by a gangly bald freak. The lyrics to their big hit “Lump” mean nothing as near as I can tell–they’re about a girl named Lump who’s stuck in the singer’s head and who also might be dead. Their other songs tackle such heavyweight topics as kitties, peaches, and dune buggies. But so what? If rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t invented to make you laugh, humor has certainly been a lucrative by-product. Some of rock’s most memorable songs–like the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” or the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird”–say almost nothing of substance. They endure because they’re simple and fun.
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Funny bands have a certain dignity. If you try to make people laugh and you fail, well, at least you tried. If you try to make a serious statement of political value or social insight and you fail, you sound pretentious and self-indulgent–far worse sins, if you ask me, than merely being unfunny. In other words, I’d rather listen to the Presidents sing a cutesy chorus of “meow meow meow meow meow meow” than decipher all the opaque spiritual references in Bush’s “Everything Zen.”
The Presidents can do whatever they want without fear of being labeled unsophisticated. They played on the same night as game five of the NBA Finals wearing T-shirts touting the Bulls’ nemeses, the Seattle Supersonics. A small television set was tuned to the game. They sang the self-deprecating “We Are Not Going to Make It,” with the lyrics “there’s a million better bands, with a million better songs,” then segued into “We’re Gonna Make It After All,” a variation on the theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. They covered the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” and made it sound deliberately fun, unlike the original, which was a howling political plea for rock rebellion.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Photo of Presidents of the United States of America by Marty Perez.
