Well-Crafted Power-Pop Is Well-Crafted Power-Pop, Regardless of the Cheekbones and Disney Contracts of the Bearer. [Heroes]

OK.  That is a heck of a mouthful of a post title for this loooong musing. It’s probably for the bravest among you to endure in detail (or just skip if you aren’t in the mood for neurotic fretting, LOL…to quote Big Rob: Go, save yourselves!).

Anyway – at least for myself – it needed to be stated. It’s been a very Jonas-y weekend, so while I have been savoring them, I’ve also had lots of time to reflect on their recent career happenin’s.

That title quote was encouragingly well-put by a repeat voice-of-reason, critic & rock expert (and my current, unofficial boo) Chris Willman. It came as a great relief to me last night in a Huffington Post blog piece entitled: “Jonas Haters, You Have Nothing to Fear But JoBro-Phobia Itself“. Like me, he’s apparently been pushed to edge by raging anti-Jonas backlash.

I was working up a doozy of a handwringing post…prompted by the frantic dismay that came from reading too many soul-crushingly negative reviews and now so-called “bleak” box office predictions (which I plow through out of a morbid sense of bloggerly obligation) for the 3-D Concert Experience and other hateful nonsense. I was feeling riddled with indignance and even some self-doubt; Chris’ column helped bring me back to a Jonas-friendly Earth.

Do I really care about what critics think? Not individually, no. They’re just regular people with the same baggage and frequently off-base preconceptions as all of us. They can’t tell me what to think or enjoy.  But what bothered me was the trend: a critical mass of mocking disapproval – that despite managing to pull off a Grammy nomination and more under-the-radar musical accomplishments, the average cultural commentator thinks it’s OK to treat the Boys at best as a guilty pleasure, at worst as a joke. It’s not the industry role I think they deserve.

Needless to say it was bumming me out to have so few credible people stand up for the Boys and what made me take notice of them – skilled musicianship and stellar stage presence that makes them worthy of their now-overwhelming hype.

But then a hero came along (hehe)…

Find out what he said, after the jump!

Says Chris of the Jonases:

…what they are coming up with is bloody impressive, and not just for their age. Listen to the dozen-plus songs performed in this concert movie (and it is a concert movie, not a pseudo-documentary, a few backstage bits aside) and you’ll hear unpretentiously propulsive rockers like “Pushin’ Me Away” that could have been hits even in the more demanding late ’60s. In fact, if many of the Jonas Brothers’ songs appeared in a vintage compilation like Nuggets, the celebrated garage-rock collection that is a staple in every rock critic’s household, the rock intelligentsia would have collective dry-mouth from slobbering over these newly discovered gems.

That’s an important observation that needs to made clear about the Jonas Brothers and their music, and one which should be relentlessly touted to the naysayers above all else.  Commercial success is awesome – but  emphasizing their musical achievements should be probably more important than commercial benchmarks and a desperate scramble to achieve them.

Let me take a breath for a moment here, and enjoy some nice live video of the song Willman likes to hold up as an example of Jonas prowess (I obviously agree):

All right, then. So, on the basis of this alone, maybe I should just shut out the haters, but often I can’t.  I am just not good at ignoring the smarmy chattering classes who I can’t resist thinking need to be told the truth.

Sometimes it bugs me because underneath the familiar dismissiveness towards the Brothers – unfortunately the current default position in most things I read – there are repeated points of criticism that ring understandable. Something about the Jonases’ current marketing allows critics to push the value of their music to the wayside, and instead only look only at their earnings before proceeding to shower them with artistic disrespect and focus on musically-irrelevant “news” about purity rings, personal lives or their perception that the Jonases are all prepackaged personalities and arrogance (say hwa?).  WDT know that isn’t true – we’ve seen their realness, humility and grace displayed a million and one times over the past few years.

So why has this been so hard to convey beyond the target demographic?  Is it the critics’ problem, or the Jonas Group’s?  Are Disney execs to blame? I surely don’t think the Guys should have to compromise themselves or their beliefs, ever, and they don’t appear to.  But often that fact – and the parts of their personality that don’t rely on that aspect of themselves – seems like something only superfans can see.  I sometimes wonder if Disney handlers are completely clueless that there are many curious adults and serious critics looking for a toehold of insight into the Jonas magic-beyond-the-music, and that they are failing to be satisfied, so far.

So, I worry. I worry that each Disney project makes it harder on the Boys. I worry about them getting defined as little but a target for cynical snark-peddlers. I still worry they might be slightly mis-positioned by the very corporation to whom they owe their household name, who seem to play right into the haters’ hands by keeping their eyes on the prize of the moment (money from the young and hysterical) without a care for the Jonases’ musical future or reputation (what do they really care?).

JB3DCE might not cut it as a rock-documentary (it should never have been promoted as such, anyway) but I adore the movie, of course, duh. I sort of wish that some of the more natural charms of “Living the Dream“, or even a live chat came through for the benefit of those forced to review this movie without that context that we have. (I see what they were going for overall, and it wasn’t that “holistic view of Jonas” some of us may have wanted.)

But what I really wanted was a movie for everyone else to fall in love with the sound and energy and personality of the Jonas experience. Many reviews made it abundantly clear that this mission was not accomplished the majority of the time. Whatever! How hard could it be, just looking at this?…

Of course, Willman rocks a defense much better than I could. He doesn’t let frustration with peer ignorance get the better of him or rail against the failure of the producers to showcase the Jonases offstage perfectly and authentically, as I did in my head.  He simply puts it in perspective and sets the record straight in terms of what to focus on in the film – the concert sequences - it’s an exquisite concert movie of a great young group and that should be more than enough for you people!!

Oh, and he throws critics’ ridiculous biases in their faces wonderfully with more of his historic rock expertise:

The Los Angeles Times review of the new film, which couldn’t be bothered to definitely distinguish which brother is which, found the tuneage “mostly sounding like a modernized iteration of the glam-pop style of Cheap Trick or Redd Kross but minus the rust-belt roots or ironic self-regard.” Sounds like a resounding endorsement to me, though the critic in question meant it as a slam.

…

But two decades on, do we really require “ironic self-regard” as a prerequisite for enjoying the timeless virtues of nitty-gritty riffs, soaring hooks, clever bridges, and reasonably articulated puppy lust? Even if the purveyors are preternaturally talented, or at least largely self-made, teens? We once bought the earnest, adolescent glee of “Can’t Buy Me Love” without forcing the song to pass some archness bar; perhaps it’s not a nullification of everything we’ve learned about the world since to embrace it again.

We discerning types know how to steel ourselves against unfair negativity. But impressionable young fans do not, I don’t see how this couldn’t have a negative impact.  We may not want to address it further, but the Jonases’ management has no real choice.

The fact remains that the Jonas Brothers do have the eyes of the world on them right now. This isn’t easy to come by, and I still think they’d do best not to squander it, by pandering to a fickle audience that is best for Disney but not always for the band (letting commercial goals trump artistic ones) and, further, letting the jerks out there manipulate their image into a false one.  You only get one reputation. In any case, it is nice to have someone other than squealing superfans (myself included a lot of the time) take an interest in safeguarding their public dignity for the long haul, while it’s still developing.

Anyway – I was happy, on my last viewing of the movie, with LBF, to let my reservations melt away. I watched her bop and clap along…she was, indeed, in love with the experience, and reminded me why I have been too for all this time…for us it is about musical performance.

Great is great…it doesn’t have to matter what other people think – or buy – and I sure don’t want to see the Jonases burned by any of that.

Please give Chris Willman’s whole piece a read and thank him for not bowing to the status quo!

So take heart, but seeing as this is mostly still an official handwringer post, feel free to air your own frettings, misgivings, ideas & supersonic blasts of positivity (please!) in the comments, below, and consider…

What do you think about commercial and critical expectations and judgments the Boys are subjected to these days?

[Via: FanFamilyExperience (image); Chris Willman @ Huffington Post; xsassyx (YouTube); JonasBrothersMusic (YouTube)]