Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

by Chuck Klosterman

We are inside the Supper Club in Times Square; there is a blizzard on the streets of Manhattan, but the amplifiers are melting inside. The Supper Club is hosting a semi-private party for Showtime’s lesbian soap opera The L Word, and we are experiencing the headline entertainment: Lez Zeppelin, an all-girl tribute to the greatest rock band ever to sing about The Hobbit. Tonight, Lez Zeppelin will play just four songs—“Good Times, Bad Times,” “Black Dog,” “Whole Lotta Love” (including the theremin solo), and “Rock and Roll.” Their replication of these songs is 80 percent flawless and 99 percent awesome. They sound like what would have happened if Heart had somehow written four songs that were all better than “Barracuda.” And there are a few jarring moments when it will feel like the most powerful all-female band in rock history is not the Runaways or L7 or Sleater-Kinney; it will feel like the most powerful all-female band in rock history is four women playing cock rock to a room full of hard-drinking, cable-subscribing lesbians. That might sound sexist (and perhaps it is), but it also might be true.