perfidy

Via Crooked Timber and Doktor Frank comes this website dedicated to the celebration and eradication of the Truck Drivers Gear Change, otherwise known as a final half- or whole- step modulation. The Gear Change is so called as it allegedly gives a tired song one last kick into a higher gear before the fadeout, like a weary trucker kicking it up to high so he doesn't pass out before the next Travel America plaza.

For you music theorists, there are four common Truck Driver changes, I-II, I-bII, i-ii, and i-bii. The good folks at gearchange.org have been collecting egregious examples of this musical offense, complete with a musicological essay explaining the mechanics of the thing and why the Beatles get a free pass for using it. Very nice site indeed!

But their animus is misplaced.

As the owners of the site point out, the the truck driver's change is frequently deployed by the fantastically lazy and obvious (say, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston), But I believe the good it does outweighs a ton of bad. The entire point of the Truck Drivers change is to inject energy into a song without transforming the song's structure or melody. This can either be a hallmark of laziness or an admission that there's a good thing going here that oughtn't be screwed with.

Exhibit A: Cheap Trick, "Surrender." Right before the third verse, the song shifts without passing chords from B to C, and ends there [see update below]. The verses and chorus are all sung the same way in the new key, as required by the Truck Driver Gear Change Code of Conduct. But far from being a cop-out ploy designed to prop up a boring song, the boys in Cheap Trick looked at their creation, saw it was good, and improved it the ONLY POSSIBLE way they could have. When you have a perfect song, you can't do more than this without ruining it.

Exhibit B: Bon Jovi, "Living on a Prayer." The final chorus is a whole step above the rest of the song, elevating what's already a timeless, sugary hair-anthem into celestial territory. Who knew any man not named Dio could sing that high?? Again, it's a perfect song. Perfect production, perfect playing, perfect lyrics and mise-en-scene. But it needs a kick on the final chorus. What better way, what less intrusive way, to close the song on a bang than to do the simple and obvious? Finally, can you honestly expect anything more than the simple and obvious of Bon Jovi?

Exhibit C: Ramones, "The KKK Took My Baby Away." A TDGC from C# to D, right before the last verse. The Ramones can do no wrong. None. Not even Brain Drain was wrong, just unfortunate. This song is perfect.

Mind you, I'm not arguing that every use of the TDGC is warranted. No, I suspect rather that songwriters too often get stuck in Cheap Trick's trap and believe their song is perfect, and choose to resort to the TDGC instead of try more creative measures that could ostensibly undermine the song's effectiveness. Unfortunately, since every song can't be "Surrender," and songwriters can be unbelieveably biased toward their own material, they usually end up with dreck festooned with poo.

My question to the gentlemen who run www.gearchange.org is this: what else would you want? Say a song is kicking along nicely in a standard I-IV-V progression with a bridge in vi. The outro chorus is a little boring, and you need something to punch it up a little. The obvious thing would be to kick it up a half step. But since that is now illegal, what do you do? Maybe try a little double coda with a false ending that cycles through the circle of V's via flat-ii's, all the while trying to keep things nice and singable? Please. Maybe if you're Yngwie Malmsteen.

If you're gonna attack a musical trend, at least go after one that's totally inexcusable in every case, like the propensity for hip-hop and R&B to use i-VI-V in every damn track (Irv Gotti, you've got a lot to answer for), or the use of the tritone in nu-metal, or the use of I-bII movement in every cheap house, techno, and flavor of the month dance track.

Leave the Truck Drivers and their modulation alone. Evil does not live here.

[update] It occurs to me: "Surrender" modulates twice-- once from B-flat to B after the 8-bar intro, and then again to C before the third verse. That's a DOUBLE Gear Change!

It also occurs to me that there are successful ways to kick a song up without the Truck Driver Gear Change: 

Exhibit A: Alice in Chains, "Would." The entire song is built on two chords, with different melodies on verse and chorus, but at the end of the last chorus the song switches into an entirely different change, with different rhythms. This is great songwriting-- it took me probably hundreds of listens through the song for me even to notice the unconventionality of the structure. As long as you have a good enough closer, this is a fine way to go.

Exhibit B: The Knack, "My Sharona." When I play the song, I fade it after the amazing, kickass, totally non sequitur guitar solo rather than sit through the rest of it, making the solo the outro. It's a terrible song, but the solo is so awesome that it transcends the fact of the song's suckage and achieves the same propulsion that the Truck Driver Gear Change tries for.

Exhibit C: The False Outro Fade. Recipe: Start hot ending jam. Fade out slowly. Song fades to nothing. But wait! Here it comes again. More hot jam. Soulful, ohhhh so soulful! Fade out again. Goodnight, Cleveland! Most often heard (by me) in the single mix of Parliament's "Flash Light," but with a long and storied history otherwise. Alternative method: the differently mixed ending, as in Pink Floyd's "Have A Cigar." The solo plays but....WOOSH...now it's coming through an AM radio. Even more than the TDGC, this is truly a solution of last resort.

[further update] More on this controversy here, here, here, and my commentary here, here, and here. Ohhhhh yeah.