In my first quarter-year of writing How Bad Can It Be?, I have occasionally been accused of “not being the intended audience” for whatever it was that I was hatin’ on that particular week — as if that was somehow a knock on my critical credibility. That attitude confuses me, frankly. Shouldn’t art aim a little higher than simply to please those who are predisposed to be pleased with? “President of Mishka Fan Club Praises New Mishka Album, Proclaim Mishka Himself ‘Super-Delicious’ ” — that’s a “Dog Bites Man” headline. There’s no surprise, no sense of discovery, none of the stuff that makes us want to read cultural commentary to begin with. Nobody — critic or audience — is learning anything.

Still, I’m sensitive to the feedback and concerns of our readers. So when I got my review copy of Nickelback: Uncensored — Live at Sturgis 2006 (Koch Vision/Coming Home Media) — a concert film of the multiplatinum Canadian hard-rock band’s performance at the world-famous motorcycle rally — my primary focus was on the audience. Let me observe the true fans, and divine their expectations, their preferences — and try, thereby, to understand their experience, and what they’re getting out of it; or at least to distract me from the sound of the music, which — notwithstanding that Nickelback themselves seem like sincere, likeable guys — has all the melodic uplift and tonal variation of a garbage can full of angry hornets.

So. Who likes Nickelback? (more…)