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　　Has the Internet killed the myth of the rock star

　　"In the last three or four years the internet’s taken a stranglehold and

　　killed off the myth of the rock star," Tom Meighan of Kasabian told Bangshowbiz

　　last week. "You know when you used to buy records and there was a myth behind

　　them? There’s too much on blogs now and I think it’s killed it off. There are so

　　many rock stars writing these self-pitying blogs and it’s not in the spirit of

　　rock’n’roll."

　　The irony of giving such a headline-grabbing opinion to an internet-only

　　news service seems to have been lost on Meighan, but as a singer clearly in

　　thrall to the mystique of Bowie, Bolan and Bj?rk, he makes a good point. For all

　　the wrong reasons.

　　We are in danger of losing the enigma of the rock star: you only have to

　　stand Grizzly Bear next to pop stars like Dizzee Rascal, Florence Welch, or Lady

　　Gaga in her blowtorch bra to see that the mainstream has gazumped alt-rock in

　　terms of retina-frying freakishness. Dolled up in Napoleon outfits for their

　　last promo stint Kasabian seem like a throwback to a time when rock favoured the

　　fantastical. A time before hair metal made dressing up seem corny, long before

　　lad rock forced music to be "real", and long before Pitchfork made a star of the

　　bearded troubadour.

　　But it’s not Twitter that has exploded the myths behind the rock star.

　　If anything it’s magnified them, making it easier to sort the say-nothing

　　chaff from the proper-bizarre wheat. Yes, Calvin Harris and Mike Skinner go on a

　　bit with tweets about sandwich fillings and train delays, but that’s because

　　they’re fundamentally ordinary blokey-blokes; only a particularly naive T4 guest

　　booker would kid themselves that they were "pop stars". Follow the Proper Rock

　　Stars on Twitter and there’s plenty of propagated myths – there are pictures of

　　Muse playing futuristic digital clarinets in Japanese airports, while Liam

　　Gallagher roars expletives about his brother’s haircut. Even if it’s not

　　actually the star in question doing the tweeting, the fact that an impostor can

　　convincingly impersonate them is testament to a heroic or cartoonish character

　　in the best rock-myth tradition.

　　Any rock star worth the name is a rock star as much in tweet as in a glossy

　　video, tour-bus boudoir or fatal strangle-wank accident. True, had Twitter

　　existed in the 70s several major stars might well have been ruined by the

　　exposure – Clapton would have seemed less God-like if he’d been squeezing his

　　"rivers of blood" rant into 140 characters, while authorities might have been

　　alerted to Gary Glitter much earlier. However, today’s rock-star bloggers are

　　more interested in breaking down the barriers between them and their fans. The

　　real rock icons maintain their mystery simply by not blogging.

　　No, the reason the internet may kill off rock-star mystique is that the

　　blogosphere, by its own limitation and design, is not in thrall to image.

　　Traditional music media requires cover stars to be the complete package, looking

　　as good as they sound and producing snappy, controversial pull-quotes at the

　　drop of a Dictaphone. To earn the status of rock legend, the old-school star

　　needs to lure in the browsing commuter with the secret Strokes shirt on under

　　his office clobber.

　　Music websites, however, have no news-stand to leap out from; their

　　"covers" consist of pictures little bigger than postage stamps, so they rely on

　　Google to draw in traffic. The click-to-hear-it nature of the web goes against

　　the alluring band-as-gang image readers buy into, copy and adore long before

　　they hear a note. It doesn’t matter if a singer has anything important, funny or

　　interesting to say, or if they say it dressed as Caligula with a chicken on

　　their head; the music is all that matters online.

　　The blogosphere’s appeal is momentary so attention-seeking bands are

　　turning to shock tactics to create a controversy buzz while the printed press is

　　now forced to chase internet hype for their next cover stars.

　　词句笔记：

　　stranglehold：压制，抑制

　　self-pitying：自怨自艾的

　　headline-grabbing：吸引眼球的

　　thrall：奴役

　　be held in thrall to：被……深深迷住

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