While our generation didn’t invent Samuel L. Jackson, it feels like we found a way to turn him into an icon. It’s been commonly known that he’s a big fan of saying “motherfucker” or various derivations of this word. It’s almost required that when buying the ticket at the door, they assure you that Jackson will say it at some point in the next two hours of your life. It will make you smile, realizing that he uses profanity with such poetic charm that his grave will probably just say “Here lies a bad-ass motherfucker.” The cemetery will get complaints, but The Jackson Estate will just shrug and say “Do you know a better way of describing him?”
Back in 2006, there was something odd going on. He had a cultural moment with a film that largely feels like it’s been forgotten since: Snakes on a Plane (2006). At the time it felt like one of those ridiculous premises that you just had to see to believe. Was it going to be a B-Movie masterpiece? Based on the trailers, many believed that one thing was clear. People took to YouTube, changing film history by suggesting that Jackson say:
“I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.”
If you think that KickStarters are impressive, read up on how Snakes on a Plane listened to their “fans” and made the film somewhat redeemable with a line that’s even more amusing in a TV-edited version. It’s a manufactured moment if there ever was one, but it serves as the film’s lasting legacy, itself buried inside the fact that it shows just how great (and predictable) Jackson is. As it stands, him not using this approach on every movie he’s in grows a bit disappointing. Who wouldn’t want to hear him say “I’ve had it with this motherfucking Captain from this motherfucking Marvel”?
I promise to cut down on the profanity from here on out. However, it’s difficult to not think of this subject without thinking about this meme. Snakes on a Plane was always designed as a joke, and it makes it strange to note how much I personally associate Cobra Starship with that movie and… just about nothing else.
Then again, that’s what happens when your first major single is called “Snakes on a Plane (Get It)” and feels more like a novelty band. Seriously, this feels like all they do is write songs about snakes on planes. They use so many slithering puns in this song and it all amounts to this cheeky pop-punk song that is a genuinely fun use of your time. It will get you pumped up and want to dance. However, it’s so clearly the Snakes on a Plane song that it’s impossible to hear it outside of context. It’s something as permanently intertwined as Simple Minds and The Breakfast Club (1985). It’s just how things go sometimes.
And yet somehow I found myself curious to know if Cobra Starship amounted to anything in their career. In doing research, their THIRD album (“Hot Mess”) got a 10th-anniversary retrospective with a track-by-track analysis from the band members. There’s something there, and yet I had to start at the very beginning, in 2006 with their debut album “While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets.”
The story goes that singer Gabe Saporta took a trip to the deserts of Arizona. While there he was on a vision quest with Native Americans while smoking peyote. This leads him to realize that he wanted to make a band that was more synth-pop and hip hop oriented than his previous group Midtown. One parody video of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” song (called “Hollaback Boy”) later and he was signed to Fueled By Ramen subsidiary Decaydance Records with Cobra Starship.
I assume that the music video for “Send My Love to the Dance Floor I'll See You in Hell (Hey Mister DJ)” explains how he saw this event playing out. What ends with a fun dance club scene starts with an alien abduction that includes: A. Cobras, and; B. Starships. He’s talking about how he must return to Earth to make the world a better place for people, including making emo kids less emotionally unstable. At least, that makes more sense than “The Church of Hot Addiction” music video where he marries a rabbit and fathers several cotton-tailed children.
That’s an acceptable way of looking at pop-punk in general. The whole idea is to be goofy and not take yourself all that seriously. That’s what I get out of these music videos and makes me think that I may have liked them if I was willing to give them a chance. Then I remember something more tragic of the time. Almost every band, even vaguely associated with Fueled By Ramen, were variations of each other.
Want a starter pack? You go with Fall Out Boy. Feeling the need for a cabaret touch? Check out Panic! at the Disco. There’s some hip-hop with Gym Class Heroes, and even the sugar-free The Academy Is…
When judged like this, I can see where Cobra Starship falls in the big picture. They wanted to be the pop-punk band who knew how to party, at times recalling New Wave and dance music. It was fitting that I kept seeing beer ads while watching these videos on YouTube because I can’t imagine them performing live without socialites raising Red Solo Cups into the air and singing the lyrics with reckless abandon. That is the world that they exist in, and it sounds like a fun place to be. The only issue for me, at least at 17, is that they were so much like those other bands in blatant ways that I probably didn’t find them appealing.
Just look at their song list and try not to think of Fall Out Boy, who turned titles into overlong jokes. The opener “Being From Jersey Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry” is one of the worst examples of this, quoting Love Story (1970) and reflecting a shameless acceptance of yourself that would only be outdone by Ke$ha in the next few years. Then again, claiming that you’re from New Jersey around the end of the 2000s was definitely hip, and there’s a good chance that he was about to unleash some Tony Soprano energy on us.
On the one hand, Cobra Starship’s debut is washed out upon first listen. It does everything right, but the songs are so clearly designed to get you dancing that it almost doesn’t matter what’s inside. I’m looking at the list of songs and trying to determine what they all are, trying to figure out how “It’s Amateur Night at the Apollo Creed!” goes. I’m drawing a blank, though, for the first time in over a decade, I’m now singing “Snakes on a Plane” ad nauseum.
That’s the thing that’s immediately appealing about this band. Every song sounds like it was designed to be used as a background song in any given movie between 2006 and 2010. They are a dance pop-punk band, but not in the obnoxious indie proto-punk way that you’d expect. They’re a shameless band, ready to play those fun chords and adding a keytar in for good measure. If that’s not enough, they get a DJ scratching over certain songs before landing on some intergalactic motifs that are downright silly, reflecting how “out there” this band truly is.
Much like the film they debuted with, they feel like a B-Level band, constantly producing catchy songs but never quite becoming the breakout hit that you know they can be. There is very little wrong with their 2006 album, but there’s also little reason to believe that they’ll be more than local legends, opening for random bands across the country and building their fan base by ones and twos over the years. This is a fun album, but I think it will take many more listens before I’m able to truly differentiate the songs from each other.
Then again, this feels like a slightly more tolerable version of the bands that would follow, blending punk and rap in memorable ways. It’s like 3OH!3, but with more personality. Then again, Saporta claims that every song on the album is drawn from some personal experiences, making the earnestness clearer. Though that raises questions as to what songs like “It’s Warmer in the Basement” means when he sings:
You can't escape now
I've got you locked inside this room
You know I tip good
And soon, you will love me too
A certain thing that generally gets ignored in the pop-punk and emo genres is how it uses misogyny in ways meant to sympathize with the male singers. Saporta claims that this is about loving a girl so much that you keep her from leaving. It’s a sentiment that hasn’t aged well but reflects desperation within the Fueled By Ramen era of music that is unpleasant and unhealthy in how love is seen. At best I can see it paired with the ending of “The Kids Are All Fucked Up” when it ends with the sound of lasers and abduction. If the protagonist is alien, it’s barely more forgivable. Otherwise, it raises more questions than it answers.
Given that this whole album ends with “You Can’t Be Missed If You Never Go Away,” it kind of makes sense that anyone would not want to be with Saporta. As a lover, he sounds a bit desperate. While he sounds like this wonderful man on “ The Kids Are All Fucked Up,” reflecting on his youth and believing that he has his life together, his unwillingness to take the blame for his emotions, constantly blaming “you “ only shows how much growth he needs to have before he becomes a rational adult. As a character portrait, it’s definitely one as wonky as the band’s name.
With all of that said, “Snakes on a Plane” is a genuine hit that does for Snakes on a Plane what “Shake Ya Tailfeather” did for Bad Boys II (2003). It may never be a big and sustainable hit, but for those who are at the right point in their lives, it will always be this wonderful ball of energy. It’s a tongue-in-cheek creation that includes collaboration with Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is…, and The Sounds. It’s big and excessive, reflecting the future of pop-punk in these surreal ways that transcend its genre.
Sure, it is a dumb song that includes lines like:
Ladies and gentlemen
These snakes is slithering
With dollar signs in they eyes
With tongues so reptilians
This industry's venomous
With cold-blooded sentiments
No need for nervousness
It's just a little turbulence
But it all works if you just go with it, accepting everything is meant to build this absurd energy around a song about snakes on a plane. The whole thing feels like a joke assembled by the filmmakers who have no purpose but to make the goofiest song about snakes imaginable. What better way to do it than get a band with the flashy nonsensical name of Cobra Starship? The only saving grace is that it all kind of works. Even if there are aspects of them that feels like a knock-off Fall Out Boy (more than once I thought Patrick Stump was singing), it has a carefree atmosphere. If you’re getting worked up over this song, then you frankly misunderstood the intent of something called “Snakes on a Plane.”
At the end of the day, this is a solid band from a bygone era. It feels like they set out to take over something greater than pop-punk, and I commend them for finding their own niche. I personally miss this overcompensating era where song titles were too long and lyrics had these bizarre jokes while having some solid guitar riffs. Most of Cobra Starship’s album is good, though by the end it definitely wears thin. I can only hope that the rest of their decade long career produces something more solid.
Still, for a band that I was pretty sure was meant for nothing more than a joke, they really delivered something substantial. I love their excessive behavior, their willingness to just be goofy even while bearing their soul for fans. I may see everyone in the crowd lifting a beer in the air, but it captures a unique perspective of dance music that isn’t quite LMFAO. They’re still pop-punk kids who want a good guitar hook, and this has it well enough. It’s very well produced and what it lacks in meaningful lyrics it more than makes up in energy. It’s a wrecking ball of absurdity, and every now and then it’s fine. I’m just personally surprised that they didn’t have more bangers out there that became party anthems.
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