Music: The road to ruin

Other Christian bands following U2's sad fall from faith | Arsenio Orteza

During the '80s, the idealistic young rock band known as U2 designed the mold in which all subsequent idealistic young rock bands seem to have been cast. First, such a band goes through an energetic, callow period during which it captures the attention of the kids. Second, the band enters the period during which it grabs a hit single, some headlines for having said or done something provocative, and the attention of the kids' older siblings. Third, the band scores more hits, sells millions of albums, appears on the covers of magazines-inside which they hold forth on social issues-and has those parents who are concerned with "relating" to their children remarking, "You know, that group isn't just screaming and noise; they really have something to say." Fourth, and finally, comes the cynical phase, out of which the former idealists-disillusioned by their inability to bring about world peace-express contempt for the impersonal, repressive democracies of the West, as if the millions who buy their music were aborigines. Somehow, the impersonal, repressed Westerners fail to notice and continue to keep their heroes in caviar, fine hotels, and private jets, where the rockers behave like aborigines as a show of oneness with their fans. Such a band will at best eventually harden into something like the Rolling Stones; at worst, they'll die young. What this scenario has to do with the Cranberries and King's X is that both bands currently find themselves somewhere between stages three and four. Dakoda Motor Co., on the other hand, having just begun stage one, may yet avert disaster.