The fabrication of glory
MTV-made singer Cheyenne Kimball and the epitomizing of pop music’s synthetic subsistence
By John Figlesthaler
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It was especially hard to tell if anyone actually knew who this young blond bombshell was, as she blew out kisses and ecstatic thanks to them between songs.
While scurrying from mountain to mountain all over Summit County, Colo., with a lust to get a taste of all of the magnificently brewed beers — plowing heavenly virgin lines through the best powder in 13 years — live music became an obvious necessity on this short trip.
On an opaque afternoon looming in the not-so-quaint ski village of Breckenridge, the last breath of dignity wheezed out of what is known as “pop music” today. Reality has reared one of its ugly heads yet again, in the form of 15-year-old Cheyenne Kimball, a rising star in the limelight of MTV’s drooling eyes.
This poor girl will most likely burst into flames in a fireball of mediocre success, as she is prematurely slapped in the face by vice in its omnipresent forms of sex, drugs and, least of all, rock ‘n’ roll.
Picture Barbie’s adolescent sister, raging with hormones, about to get the keys to the family truck, dressing six years too old, teetering on the brink of womanhood, and her parents have been shoving guitar lessons down her throat her whole life. Golden angelic hair, blue eyes, and everything about her is as perky as it will ever be.
Fate smiled on young Kimball, giving her an MTV reality show and bringing her strumming and singing to the pop world, though she embodies pretty much everything that is wrong with music.
It must be noted that the reason of the militaristic MTV presence in Breckenridge was to launch a new branch, MHD (Music High Definition, I believe). Several performances were scheduled to take place on a mobile stage that consumed an entire parking lot. The stage towered like a volcano in the middle of the small ski town, spewing a radius of MTV technical crews and their fleets of RVs, trailers and busses over the entire town.
Although there were countless idle hands that made the horrible show go on, MTV employees or whomever, these workers assimilated all too well with the hoards of young people, who were all just looking to have a good time.
Consisting of 100, maybe 200 including MTV staff, confused and melancholy onlookers, the mix of college students, lost foreign tourists and winching parents who attempted to keep their spastic children under control, made for one alienated and laconic demographic. It was especially hard to tell if anyone actually knew who this young blond bombshell was, as she blew out kisses and ecstatic thanks to them between songs.
Kimball wasn’t performing solo, but with a backing band that seemed as out of place as most of the audience. These four guys looked like they had been disqualified from a high school battle of the bands, not only for their sub-par playing, but also for being way too old.
Each one of them had at least a dozen years on Kimball, just adding to the disconnection between their playing and her lazy strumming. They seemed like a pack of strays backing the first little kitten that would take them on the road.
As they bopped from one song to the next, with Cheyenne’s mousy and overzealous singing about relationships — surprise — and the rough life of being a teenager stricken by stardom — surprise! — my confusion deepened. Entering a sort of trance, I was slapped back to consciousness by the high pitched, “This’ll be my last song.”
What followed is what is going to be the first single off of her album on Sony/Epic, which according to her Web site is “coming soon.” As the last two and a half minutes of painfully playful noise subsided, the several cameramen who had been meandering around the audience and on stage suddenly converged on the thick of the crowd at the base of the stage.
From offstage came dashing an MTV host who was enthusiastic as a cheerleader on amphetamines, her smile only bested by Kimball’s. Her efforts to conclude the concert for the cameras with the usual working the crowd into a frenzy of admiration for the performer failed miserably the first couple of times.
Again and again, as she gave her scripted farewell to Kimball and Breckenridge, the cameramen swarmed and pushed their cameras into the faces of the mob, with the hopes that the large area of vacancy would not be seen. By the seventh or eighth faked farewell, she gave up, realizing that making the concert appear to be a success was worthless.
Maybe if Kimball paid the dues necessary to break into the ugly world of popular music, instead of being scooped out of high school by MTV and squished into a cliché mold, she would have saved her poor little heart one more smashing.
On the Net: Cheyenne Kimball: www.cheyennemusic.com.



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