Chattanooga Pulse

You know the saying, “I wouldn’t kick her out for eating crackers in bed,”?

Well, I would kick you out for playing Cracker in bed.  Not because they are a horrible band, and not because they grate on my nerves, but because David Lowry, the lead singer, might be one of the cockiest people I have interviewed in the last four years.
When I spoke to him, he brazenly told me his band was the first indie rock band.  The inventor of indie, huh?  Really?  You think so?  Well, that’s neat that you think so, because you may be the only one.

Granted, he said that he tours about 200 days a year, which might be independent, except for the fact that Cracker just signed with 429 Records, and that is definitely a label.  A label started by Kings of Leon, which is pretty cool, but still a label.  So, that is not exactly independent or indie…

Wait, did you mean the genre and sound of indie rock?  I think I am going to need your definition of “indie” and your definition of “first”, sir.  If you are using “first” as some sort of new slang that means “definitely not first”, or if I somehow missed the inflection of your sarcasm, then I could possibly look past it.

The brazen nature of this statement made my skin crawl so violently it made me question if it really happened.  I immediately got on the interweb and searched to see if someone in the press had, in fact, accused them of being the first indie rock band, so as to give David a viable excuse to say such a thing.  No such luck.  It seems that David took that liberty himself.  Well, at least someone thinks highly of you.  I think that Pavement, The Stone Roses, or about 30 other bands you could insert here, might disagree.

When I Googled “indie band”, the band Cracker didn’t come up on the first 36 pages, and after that I gave up.  If you aren’t on the first 36 pages of Google, I definitely don’t think you constitute being classified as the first of anything.  Although I didn’t try searching for the term “pompous”.   It’s also interesting that the press kit from the publicist describes the music as having a “late 70’s-early 80’s power pop punk aesthetic” and then boasts that the group “introduced brash irreverence and irony into alt-rock”.
So, now it would seem that Cracker is the pinnacle of pretty much every genre.  No one ever used irony in music before, either.  How did they get so awesome?  You would think that after 17 years as a band, they would have formed a more concrete identity or at least have chosen a way to describe themselves and their sound that wasn’t all-encompassing.

As if this aforementioned comment wasn’t enough, David then proceeded to tell me that he was big in Spain.  Wow.  He’s big in Spain.  Cracker is big in Spain.  That is newsworthy, right?  Oh, wait, no it isn’t.  I mean, people joke about bands that suck or that are just starting out being big in Japan.  We also all know that Germany is a bit mental as apparently David Hasselhoff is “big” there, but I haven’t ever heard anything about the big dogs of Spain.  Now we know.  It’s the inventor of indie rock, and possibly the Internet, Cracker.

I know the song, “Low”, because it’s played all over the radio.  I asked David if he was surprised by how successful it became, to which he responded that it, “was an odd hit, because it took so long to catch on, but now it’s definitely considered a classic on most  rock stations.”  Who needs a publicist when you are cool with dubbing your own works “classics”?

Evidently, 429 Records is not located in Spain, since if you go to their web site, you will see that the home page is dedicated to the fact that they just signed our local favorites The Features, (way to go, guys!) and then there is a brief mention that Cracker just released a new album, somewhere in the upper left corner in small print.  The new album is called Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey, and I am sure that this album has probably invented a new genre that will change the face of music yet again.  They will be playing at Rhythm and Brews on July 21. You should probably go check it out and get your whole life completed.

Cracker
$12
9 p.m.
Rhythm & Brews, 221 Market Street
(423) 267-4644. www.rhythm-brews.com