By Sean Sullivan Lagniappe columnist

A three-hour road trip and a 6-CD changer were the ingredients that got me thinking last week about how the music in my collection relates. I thought on this for an off ramp or two until I decided no common thread bound together the music I like.

I tried linking the Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” album and the new Lil’ Wayne and the Birdman album that were lying next to each other in the 6-CD bullpen and I couldn’t. Maybe I could find a connection between Dire Strait’s “Alchemy” and Master P’s “The Shocker” CDs that were currently rubbing shoulders in the disc carousel, but I couldn’t.

Before you shake your head at the music a professional music fan like myself spins for himself remember; De gustibus non est disputandum (In matters of taste there is no dispute). That’s what the Romans used to say. If this phrase was good enough for the Legions who would carry their collections of eight-tracks with them to Gaul and Britannia on vacations of conquest, then who am I to challenge the wisdom of the ancients?

The logic of the Cesears calmed me for an another exit or two and then I started to think about what strange bed fellows the fraction of CDs behind the seat in my 64-disc travel case were. Not since David Guest and Liza Minnelli were there any stranger bed fellows.

I thought more about how when my music collection started rap music was a true fringe genre. Rock and roll dominated the pop scene and rap was several tiers away from getting airplay on any station. Early rappers that made the cross-over to top forty employed rock hooks and structures to make their sounds more marketable i.e. Run D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys.

Leap forward 20 years and my how the times have changed with the pop music scene and the charts being dominated by rap or rap influenced pop. It’s a miracle worth Papal investigation if a real rock record makes into the top ten of the top forty. With this all on my mind I started to pontificate, day-dream, not pay attention to the road, whatever you want to call it about how today’s rock musicians could take some advice from the rap world, specifically the Gangsta’ and Dirty South sound, to make their music more marketable and help themselves keep a share of the current popular music market.

Can “Gangsta Rap” and the “Dirty South” sound save rock music? Absolutely, with two little words and those words are gettin’ paid! Rock musicians make the mistake of putting the product (music) before the pay day, big mistake! To take a cue from the rap world not only should they rockers be gettin’ paid just for being in a band they also should tell us about the riches they are paid in their songs. The rock musicians of today need to spend less time crafting lyrics about love, loss or the human condition and more time adding lyrics about how much they get paid and what frivolous things they buy with said monies.

Another benefit of rock music following the Gangsta lead is that they will have more lyrics to work with. Follow me here. Many rap artists will spend the first minute of the song telling you who they are, what year it is and what label they are on and who else is featured on the track. If rock musicians took this lead and opened all songs with a minute of verbal posturing then by the end of an LP they should have accumulated enough material for at least one extra song. If a guy like Tom Petty spent more time reminding everybody that he was on Warner Brothers records and the new song was featuring Benmont Tench with special apperance by Mike Campbell then he’d be able to beat out guys like Lil’ Wayne and Master P for dominance of the pop charts.

If only more rock artists talked about what they had, they’d have more listeners. Let’s dream big here; if Clapton would talk about his one-of-a-kind Porsche roadster and the multiple castles he owns and how all the girlies love to come and get in his super-sized hot tub, and spend less time trying to impress people with his guitar work then maybe he’d be a more viable product to the next generation.

Lil’ Wayne and DMX are two rappers who like to talk about their motorcycles. An older two-wheel affcionado like Mark Knopfler has wrecked more expensive motorcycles than those two gangsta’ rap youngsters even thought about owning, so he needs to let the peeps know what he’s got. Maybe on a new album Mark can rap, over one of his trademark riffs, about how he is so rich he can wreck a motorcycle and leave it where it lays and just gets another one off the rack on the back of his stretch limo that has a waterslide on it and lots of topless babes and how he’s the best guitarist and if Steve Vai wants to “step to him” he’d take him out. Yeeeaahh boyyy that is what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!

If today’s rock musicians would take a little more career and promotional direction from Snoop Dogg and a little less from some hazy recollection of Robert Johnson then they’d have something.

I’m just trying to help today’s rock musicians pave a future for themselves and their music and I’m trying to come to grips that the songs “Good Vibrations” and “Make ‘Em Say Uhh” sometimes play back-to-back in my world.

Sean Sullivan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact him at ssullivan@lagniappemobile.com.

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