Kill Your Idols
Sometimes documentaries get made that are just completely pointless. Guess what, Kill Your Idols is one of them. A better title would probably be I’m Awesome or How Your Favorite Band Sucks. This film is basically an ego stroke to a bunch of people who made little to no difference in the world of music and would have slipped off into oblivion if it wasn’t for people like director Scott Crary.
Kill Your Idols tracks the formation of the late seventies avant-guard rock music known as No Wave. This style of music lasted only about eighteen months and pretty much only existed in New York’s Lower East Side. These bands dropped all preconceived ideas of what music was and made something else entirely that lacked any sort of melody or instrumentation. No wave was abrasive, confrontational and totally atonal. The small contingent of people who actually like it, or pretend to, think that because there are so few of them in their special little club that they are better than everyone else. That, basically, is the whole tone of this film. At best this music is a footnote in history and it shows.
The place where this film begins to derail is about thirty minutes in. At this point, Crary really pushes the point that bands like Sonic Youth are members of or a direct offshoot of the No Wave movement. It then proceeds to turn into a vehicle to bash the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Firstly, to imply that Sonic Youth are members of this genre would be completely false. It totally dismisses the influences of bands like The Stooges or The Velvet Underground. As a pretentious music geek, I take offense to this. It comes off like a sad attempt to attach themselves to a band that actually has some talent and success. Frankly, Thurston Moore seems a little dismissive of the whole scene, as if it was almost a novelty. I think the fact that he gets up to answer the telephone mid-interview sums it up perfectly.
Secondly, all the time spent ridiculing modern music just comes of as sad. Not that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are that great a band but to go out of your to make them look bad comes off as bitter and spiteful, especially when there’s no real link between their music and No Wave. Some of these people, especially Lydia Lunch, seem pathetic since you get the distinct impression that being accepted, liked and possibly famous was all she really wanted in the first place and with a camera in her face she gets to talk about the good old days when music was supposedly good.
Here’s the deal, if you’re interested in the No Wave movement by all means check this film out. Be warned, that only about thirty minutes, if that, actually has anything to do with it. However, if you’ve never heard of DNA or Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, then don’t bother you’re not missing anything anyway. If you want to hear good music from that time go get a Ramones album and if you want to see pretty good doc about good music see The Velvet Underground: Under Review or No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.
The Grade
- Story: N/A
- Acting: N/A
- Visuals: C
- Originality: C
- Enjoyability: D
- Overall: C-
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