I like to consider myself the Dark Knight of The California Aggie, and not just because I have a deep brown complexion. Like the Caped Crusader himself, dear readers, I live by one simple rule that has come to define my suave, brooding existence — if the song you’re listening to can be enjoyed by a 14-year-old girl at a middle school dance, turn that shit off and never look back.

It’s not that I don’t trust the taste of prepubescent postmodern piles of progressing progesterone. It’s that I’ve come to understand the inner workings of an industrial machine preying upon a terrible trifecta of parasitic interactions between artist, producer and audience.

Somewhere in recent history, big-time producers and corporate executives realized they can make a killing on the marketing of carefully carved piles of steaming shit to teen audiences and the unwitting parents that buy it for them. Every facet of blockbuster artists such as Ke$ha, Bieber and Chris Brown is crafted with the intention of selling millions of records, appealing to the raging hormones and underdeveloped brains of innocent young adults, only to be forgotten fast enough for the next big name to come along and top the charts. Think about it — who remembers any of the lyrics to “Don’t Stop the Party”?

Exactly.

You’re not supposed to. You’re just supposed to dance hard enough at the junior prom to buy the song on iTunes, third on a list of filler tracks you’re supposed to brush over. After you’ve forgotten about it, you repeat the cycle when the next Pitbull song comes out and the producers are laughing at your ass all the way to the bank.

Who remembers the words to “Rolling in the Deep”?

Everyone.

What’s worse is seeing great artists with the potential to produce brilliant work succumb to the temptation of major success.

Let’s take my favorite example — the fallen angel of a musical act that is Maroon 5 (or Adam Levine feat. those other guys, as they now are). Enter 2002, when the fab five of fresh-faced Berklee College of Music graduates debuted with their tour de force Songs About Jane, an album so filled with musical creativity, ingenuity and experimentation that to this day their anthems still grace much of popular contemporary radio. You can hear the passion behind every refined strum in a funky guitar riff, searing solo and bombastic bassline. Each song had complex structure, interesting melodies and sultry vocal performances by a then-unknown lead singer. Sure, most of the lyrics had a sensual overtone, but so did Al Green. He even became a reverend. Make note of the album artwork — a red cartoon of a woman with voluminous hair holding Pandora’s box.

Fast forward to 2011. The original drummer of the band has jumped ship and marketing has realized the sex appeal of Adam Levine (and the prosperity to be found in the teenage niche). Enter Hands All Over — a naked woman draped in white sheets masturbating with 10 hands on the cover of an album so watered down they had to re-release it with a song made famous by CBS’s “The Voice” in order to generate more sales.

And teens ate it up.

This isn’t like the music scene of the 1980s, where everything was unintentionally terrible and the general population simply didn’t know any better. There’s an endearing innocence to the monstrosity that is Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical.”

This is a calculated effort to propagate the hypersexualization and dumbing down of our media for outrageous profit.

Ke$ha releases a photo of herself smiling amidst a pool of sparkling semen and yet she still sells out arenas to a teenage demographic.

Chris Brown beats an innocent and talented young woman. Now he’s making more money than I ever will hope to.

Look what he did to Rihanna, people. Look at her goddamn hair.

You might read this as the crabby ramblings of an old soul, demanding youngsters to “get off his lawn” as he listens to Abbey Road on his gramophone.

But our music is our culture. Like art, cuisine and dialect, what we we listen to is a vital part of our identity and plays a critical role in the shaping of our society.

I’m just a 20-year-old editor frustrated with the hijacking of his cultural identity.

Just as Harry Potter revolutionizes adolescent reading, promoting strong young female characters taking on the forces of evil, Stephenie Meyer comes along to anal fist the fantasy genre and convince a new generation of teens that all you need in life is to find a man.

Something is very wrong with what we’re spoon-feeding our youth.

It’s heartening to see Mumford and Sons’ Babel take Album of the Year just this week as the popularity of organic artists like Adele and The Black Keys continues to rise.

I commend the Entertainment Council for bringing similar artists to the hallowed halls of Freeborn this April.

But for every Jack White out there today, there are too many One Directions to drown out the faint signal in a whitewash of gregarious noise. For every Alicia Keys and Florence and the Machine, you have the next Bieber waiting on the wings to fuck it up for everyone. For every Macklemore and Frank Ocean, there’s a post-Degrassi Drake spouting on how much he’d love to stick his Lil Wayne in your daughter.

For now, I’ll continue to turn on the radio and listen to the diarrhea that spurts all over my face from the speakers. I might even hum along to it as I flick the specks of fecal matter from my lips.
If we’re being honest here, “Moves Like Jagger” is rather catchy.

Then again, so is herpes.

ADAM KHAN will continue to tap his feet to Maroon 5 and hate himself for doing it. Chastise him in tempo at features@theaggie.org.

Artist: Pure Love
Title: Anthems
Rating: 3.5/5
Check out these tracks: “Handsome Devils Club,” “Anthem,” “The Hits”
Similar Artist: The Fratellis, Razorlight, Maximo Park

Happy Valentine’s Day to all, don’t let the grumbling loners keep you down. Celebrate! I have eloquently chosen an album by the artist Pure Love. No, their vocals don’t solely wax on the nature of love. If you require such paltry fair, I’m sure T-Swift can provide the whole spectrum of relationship angst.

This week my offering is an interesting cross of genre. Harkening back to bolder days, Pure Love has an infusion of British underground a la 1999. It’s punk-inspired but does not embrace that moodier genre. Instead, it’s crafted into less-rebellious sorts to suit our coddled 2013 disposition.

I can tell you it’s good. For, at the very least, my ears enjoyed the experience. I would not say any one song grabbed my attention but I was entertained throughout. Perhaps the monotonous homogeny of the album is what soured my heart.

In my youth, growing wiry and misshapen among the thistle, I learned a powerful lesson that an album has to “check yourself before you wreck yourself.” I also learned to wear stunna glasses at night but alas, all that glitters is not gold.

Pure Love’s vocals are what drew me close. Their lead singer, Frank Carter, has a voice that pulls you in, embraces you, and maybe brushes that tube grit off your shoulder. Sadly, due to the “garage rock” subgenre they freely associate with, his voice is periodically stifled by instrumental flair.

I’d say this band has potential, but there are ailments they should quickly address. It does not fall into the two camps of alt rock clones that plague the genre; that of the sleepy man-boy technobabble or the heavy-handed Fall Out Boy callback. There is always room for more shout anthems, and they appear to have a few. I encourage you to listen — though unvaried, this could be your new sound. This band has more than enough room to improve. I will patiently wait.

— Beaugart Gerber

John Iacovelli has gone from graduating art school to working on the number-one show on television to becoming a stage design professor at UC Davis.

Iacovelli’s interest in art design began at a young age.

“When I was a child, I played with puppet theatres. The whole family helped me out,” Iacovelli said. “I was interested in the actual space of the theater. My father was also an artist so there were a lot of art materials in my home.”

Iacovelli graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1984, alongside such people as Ang Lee as well as Tony Kushner, who wrote the screenplay for Lincoln.

“It was a very good class, and the alchemy of the students is as important as the quality of the teachers,” Iacovelli said.

While attending school there, Iacovelli took classes from people like Broadway designer Oliver Smith (West Side Story, My Fair Lady), causing him to become interested in stage design.

Since graduating, Iacovelli has worked on many projects on television, film and stage. His stage shows have played at the Pasadena Playhouse, the McCarter Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum.

Some of his film and TV credits include four episodes of “The Cosby Show,” all five seasons of cult sci-fi show “Babylon 5” and art direction on Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.

So how does someone go from Hollywood to teaching in Davis?

“I worked at UC Riverside for 10 years and I have been working here for 13. I was headhunted to design the design component of our MFA program,” Iacovelli said. “Some of my students from this program have worked on ‘Modern Family’ and ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’”

Iacovelli goes on to comment about the demise of the program.

“Sadly, we’re graduating the last of our specialists now. It’s sort of sad for me because I came here to design that program, and now it doesn’t exist anymore.”

Those who have worked with Iacovelli realize the opportunities he has created and how many will now miss out on them.

“It’s really sad and difficult to see John embrace students because the paths he made to help them are dissolving,” said Travis Kerr, a graduate student in scenic design who works very closely with Iacovelli. “Whenever I work with John, it’s always a whirlwind of exciting things that happen. I will have fun and work my ass off at the same time.”

Kerr has worked with Iacovelli on shows at the Pasadena Playhouse, the Aurora Theatre and the Odyssey III.

“This summer, we were working at the Shakespeare Santa Cruz festival. We built the show up here and we were constantly going back and forth. John would draft even more shows, apologize to me and then say that it was for my own good,” Kerr said. “He’s a fantastic mentor, facilitator and friend all in one. Basically I feel like he’s often going to bat for me.”

In addition to working with stage and art design students, Iacovelli teaches a couple of classes as well.

“The thing I enjoy the most about UC Davis is the actual interaction with the students. Undergrads have a unique hunger for learning that graduate students sometimes don’t have,” Iacovelli said.

This quarter, Iacovelli is teaching an advanced film study class for undergraduates, Drama 115.

“He has a lot of hands-on experience and knowledge of how the film industry works and how to make a movie,” said Danilo Becerra, a third-year film studies major who is currently taking Drama 115.

Becerra takes the class with Cameron Congdon, another third-year film studies major.

“I think he has one of the most important characteristics in an educator, and that is passion,” Congdon said. “He really enjoys what he teaches, and it’s cool to get that perspective from someone in the field.”

JOHN KESLER can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.