Chi Cheng, the bassist for the rock band Deftones, passed away today at age 42 after years living in a semi-comatose state caused by injuries suffered in a 2008 car crash. Allow me to put on my old music journalist hat for a second to memorialize both Chi, and state the importance of Deftones in and of themselves.
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Any organic trend eventually gets swallowed up by a corporate machine and digested, and, for lack of a better term, excreted into a mass-marketable product. Such is the case for movies, TV shows, clothing and hair styles, even sociocultural aesthetics (hellooooo, hipster chic!). However, no entity gets this short end of the stick more than music.
It's 2001. We are living blissfully in a pre-9/11, pre-Facebook, pre-smartphone world. Napster is the source for music. TRL is still on the air and doing pretty well. The Phillies are still playing in Veterans Stadium and averaging ~12,000 fans a night to see Brandon Duckworth and Travis Lee (ok maybe only I remember this one). Whether you were in grade school, high school, or college during this time, your soundtrack of choice may have been the genre known as "nu-metal." De-tuned guitars. Hip-hop drum and bass sensibilities. Alternate singing and rapping vocals. Maybe even a DJ thrown in, you know, for the ladies.
You know the bands, even if you couldn't spell them correctly. Korn. Staind. The original incarnation of Linkin Park. And of course, the unforgettable Limp Bizkit.
I was 14, stupid, and going through puberty. I adopted the clothes, the music, even the misogynistic and homophobic worldview of some of these assholes with 7-string guitars and piercings. I am not proud of this past, but I'm not going to deny that it's what I did when I was 14 because for some godforsaken reason, I thought this music "spoke" to me.
June of 2001, I hear Weezer and Saves the Day for the first time and the rest of that is history, though those bands certainly had their own problems with misogyny. That's another post, though...
When I was listening to the Staind Korn Bizkits in Linkin Park's Puddle of Mudd of the world, I thought I was listening to art. Ha! But with the exception of mainstays like Korn, System of a Down, or Rage Against the Machine, what I was really listening to was "product." Record companies, MTV, and other taste-makers of the time found early adopters of this style of music and found artists that copied these elements note for note, stripped them of any nuance, politics, or intellectualism, and signed them, marketed them, and let the idiot 14-year olds like me line their bank accounts.
One of those "early adopters" was Deftones. They were a band recording and touring well before Puddle of Mudd had probably learned how to play their instruments. They toiled for years in anonymous Sacramento, CA clubs and shows. And what they did was nothing short of revolutionary. The reason it doesn't sound so revolutionary nowadays is not just because all those nu-metal copycats diluted the formula, but even other genres of music (dubstep, for one bass-dropping example) have aped the Deftones' aesthetic and turned it into their own.
On it's own, Deftones' music stands the test of time about 5868249x more than any of the bands they spawned. This is for a couple of reasons:
1) The lyrics are very well thought-out and articulate, and keep their first-person boasting (and conversely, their Korn-esque overwrought despair) to an absolute minimum.
2) Their songs, for the most part, don't include the idiotic DJ scratches that were one of the long-dated staples of the genre (Deftones have a DJ, but he is used much more for keyboards and other electronic sampling).
3) Deftones are equally adept at rocking out and being sensitive or downright sexual in their vibe. You can probably have sex to a Deftones CD in ways that you definitely can't with most other bands of the genre.
4) Deftones have rightfully ignored trends and stayed true to what made them great. Unlike Korn desperately trying to hang on with a dubstep collaboration record, or Linkin Park vainly grasping for a thread of U2-esque arena rock godhood, Deftones has stayed relatively the same, throwing in new touches here and there, but always sticking with their strengths.
So the death of Chi Cheng, even though he's ostensibly been replaced since 2008 by the very capable Sergio Vega, marks one of the first big losses for contemporary hard rock. Bassists are often thought of as interchangeable parts, but one listen to any of Deftones' landmark songs of the late 90s-early 00s will illustrate just how indispensable each of the five members is in Deftones' overall sound.
In that vein, it's a good thing that Deftones found a bassist as good as Vega, he of the immensely-influential NYC hardcore band Quicksand. The band has released two records since Cheng's accident, 2010's superb Diamond Eyes and 2012's even better Koi No Yokan. Deftones are probably nowhere near finished. But there's no denying a big part of their heart, as well as a big part of the heart that dominated my 1999-2001 headphones, has been lost with the passing of Chi Cheng.
From those years, Deftones are the one band I've continued to listen to in anything more than a nostalgia-trip context. They have stood the test of time to become one of the most influential rock bands of the past 20 years, not to mention one of the most resilient. They deserve all of the accolades they get, and even some they'll probably never receive. But at least I can spit out on this blog how much their music has made a mark in my sonic tastes over these past 15 years. Please give a listen below to some of their best tracks, and may Chi Cheng rest in peace.
"Change (in the House of Flies)" - White Pony (2000)
"Needles and Pins" - Deftones (2003)
"Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)" - Around the Fur (1997)
"Sextape" - Diamond Eyes (2010)
"Leathers" - Koi No Yokan (2012)
:) Will always remember Chi.....He GREATLY influenced me as a youngster. If you like Deftones check out an old band that is no longer around called Relative Ash. They were actually a great band from the "nu metal" era. Very much compared to that of the Deftones. R.I.P. CHI!
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