Frank Kogan

But the Hero Story doesn't just work as validation, it's part of my experience of a lot of music. "Heroin" and "Sister Ray" still sound risky to me, even though I know that for an indie band to make music that tries to sound like that now would be the opposite of risk, and that there's no longer any risk in my listening to it. (The risk in my listening to it then wasn't so much that all but two or three people I knew thought that it was utter garbage, but that I felt it was a challenge to me, that the music held me in contempt.) Of course, there's risk and then there's risk: some members of the Plastic People Of The Universe ended up in Czechoslovakian jails for playing music that sounded like the Velvet Underground, and Vaclav Havel used part of the band's name in his Velvet Revolution that overthrew the government of Czechoslovakia. But I still think that the relatively small risk that, e.g., Pink took to make "Don't Let Me Get Me" (an adventure that the song refers to in its lyrics) enriches the song, and I think you lose something by not knowing the risk is there. (I say this even though I prefer "There You Go," the type of r&b Pink jettisoned in order to make "Don't Let Me Get Me.")*

I could do without the critical context that makes my championing Ashlee and Paris slightly heroic, since I've got better things to do than think about the babies, bullies, bores, and idiots whose catcalls make my musical analysis a tiny bit "risky." But back in 1973 (see p. 121 of my book: "This was part of the atmosphere too, part of the event for me, standing up and dancing, withstanding the contempt") standing against an earlier generation of bullies and bores added energy to my love for the Dolls.

*It was while reviewing Pink and Shakira (who also fought her record company) that I got the idea to write down the Hero Story.