Bad Medicine

Anything you've heard about The Strokes, The Hives or any other plural garage-rockers "saving rock and roll" is bunk. Complete hogwash. Rock and roll is no closer to being saved than I am to winning the freakin' lottery. Why, you ask? Two (sic) words: Bon Jovi.

The NJ native is enjoying an entirely inexplicable renaissance, from a live concert in Times Square to kick off the NFL season, to a #2 debut on the Billboard charts for his new album Bounce, to a global audience of 375,000 tuning on online to a live webcast from a club in England, which has been described as "the most successful live internet music event of all time."

Now, part of me wants to be fair, and investigate as to whether or not the former Mr. Bongiovi has reinvented himself in some way that doesn't rely on '80s arena-rock clichés and power ballads, but seriously, what are the odds of that happening? Could it really be that the new CD is piracy-proof to such a degree that a (much) greater proportion of aging hair-metal fans felt compelled to buy it? Could there be some conspiracy where someone was spoofing downloads of the concert? Maybe SoundScan got their ID numbers confused, and counted sales of someone good by mistake? Or people just felt bad for him having to stoop to appearing on Ally McBeal last year?

I honestly have no idea what to make of this. The notion that the anti-piracy efforts may have had something to do with it is an intriguing angle, but I don't know if the songs have been any harder to find on the file-swapping networks. It's probably just that plain old "people are dumb, and will do whatever you want given a big enough marketing budget" thing again.