Off the charts

Until you REALLY master social media, #KeepingTabsOnYourFavoriteCelebrityIsTough. #IGetIt. That’s why you, my dedicated reader, deserve to hear it straight from me, with normal punctuation and spaces: I am a rock star.

You have likely not heard my greatest hits yet. That’s only because I’m not a MODERN rock star, selling out to any worthy cause with a benefit show. But I have all three primary qualifications for being a GREAT rock star:

1. I own a guitar.

2. I can make very loud noises using my throat.

3. I have principles, dammit, and those principles bend for no car company unless it offers me a bunch of money.

At least those were the qualifications in the days of Nirvana, The Beatles and Mozart. The blueprint was flexible; a band lacking one or even all of those requirements found other routes to success.

For instance, any ol’ unfortunate incident involving a helpless mammal, like a bat or a shark, convinced parents and other squares that the band worshipped the devil. This, in turn, cemented an entire generation of devoted teen-agers who, over the course of their lives, would buy the vinyl, the eight-track, the cassette, the CD, the MP3, and the vinyl reissue of every album.

But there’s sadly no such golden ticket to success in today’s shrinking field of rock-stardom. More shocking things happen every week on reality shows like “Pawn Stars,” where people haggle over the remains of both the bat and the shark. (The shocking bit is how much the seller thinks they are worth, despite lacking Certificates of Authenticity.)

The most common crapshoot tactic for today’s would-be rock stars is to film videos in their back yards. Because music is a visual art form, the most successful back yards have irrationally attractive people jiggling about them, preferably on trampolines or diving boards.

Bands post these videos on YouTube, a highly selective online media filter. According to some guy I met in a bar once, hitting it big on YouTube is simple because every video instantly receives 83 million page views like THAT. This built-in audience guarantees a certain demographic – scientifically categorized as “old people” – impulsive enough to click on the ads, thereby generating revenue for the band members’ girlfriends.

If modern musicians want to branch out and play gigs, they are also expected to tune their own instruments, schlep their own amplifiers, drive their own vans, and fend off their own crazed groupies. This is WAY too much work for a true-rooted rocker like me! Work is for The Man, as well as for roadies. That’s why, nowadays, the surest way to the top is to win a contest.

Contests work exactly like democratic republics, except people actually vote in contests because they can use smartphones. However, GREAT rock stars never enter traditional televised music contests. We don’t believe that a single vowel should contain 37 syllables and imitate an elk’s last desperate mating call.

So imagine my delight over National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk Concert Contest!

(Lingo check: Tiny Desk Concerts are, quite clearly, concerts given around a tiny desk. That is, unless they are tiny concerts performed around a normal-sized desk. And radios are science-fiction devices able to transmit song waves without the aid of the internet. Someday, they will be installed in every flying car.)

Tragically, you cannot enter this contest. The entry period has ended. I mercifully withheld it to spare you having to compete with me. I’m a shoo-in, because I already own a desk! Furthermore, entrants must write their own songs. I already write this column thing. How much harder could writing one measly culture-defining song be?

The answer: not even a tiny bit harder! Songs generally have fewer words than a Scooby-Doo Valentine card, and they are less intelligible. Seriously – does ANYBODY know what Elton John sings after the line, “Goodbye, yellow brick road?” Where the doggone society hounds? You can’t catch me in a vent now? I’m boating back to my clouds?

I can’t disclose the secrets of my award-winning song here without causing another stampede. But stay tuned to the top o’ athe charts! I’ll wave at you from way up there.

UPDATE: OK, so writing a song isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s much more boring. And a lot fewer words rhyme with “sexy grapefruit” than you might suspect.

I’m not frittering away my life on lyrics when everyone knows it’s the rhythm guitarist who defines all great Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Speaking of which, how many chords should a rock idol learn before imploding? I hope less than two, since I’m still looking into what exactly a chord is, anyway.

– Zach Hively