Walked along the just opened, not quite finished High Line elevated park last night after taking my daughter and her pals to a birthday dinner. It's extraordinary... postmodern zen... the feeling of strolling on an elevated walkway is pretty special. Romantic but industrial. Slick but free.
Here are some black metal (and related genres) album covers.
I think they're beautiful. They've gone beyond the cartoon horror of traditional metal graphics, and have arrived at something sublime, something almost peaceful in their apocalyptic moodiness. I've heard only some of these bands, so I can't claim to be knowledgeable about all of the music these covers represent — but my imagination can fill in some of the blanks.
We’re three shows into this NA leg. By last night’s show in Montclair, NJ we felt like we had clawed our way back to the level of performance we reached at the end of the previous legs. We were fine at the first two shows, but some of us, not just me, had to think now and then about what we were doing — which didn’t really affect the show, but was a little bit of a reminder that there’s a lot going on.
Jon Pollak, our LD for this whole tour, has left for I don’t know where. We’ll miss him — his lighting was wonderful — but our new LD, David A, will be up to speed soon.
On the night bus ride from Canandaigua, NY (near Rochester) to Montclair the crew bus broke down — a radiator pipe problem, I was told. In the middle of the night (5 AM?) the band and dancer buses circled back around and picked up the survivors. Crew members groggily piled on and slept the rest of the night in the empty bunks and on lounge sofas as we continued on to NJ.
Amazingly, I slept though the whole thing, as did Mauro, Paul and some others. I woke up in a parking lot in Fairfield, NJ to find Victor (guitar tech) and Bruce (FOH mixer) sitting in our bus lounge, surrounded by luggage, drinking coffee.
The abandoned bus was repaired, and showed up in Montclair mid-afternoon with Arlene, the driver, behind the wheel.
Mauro and I decided to bike from the hotel in Fairfield to the Edison house and lab, a National Historic site in nearby West Orange (about 9 miles away). Rolling hills along the route, through Verona and some other hamlets, made for a bit more of a workout than we anticipated. We passed by pleasant wooded suburbs and some pretty big houses. No bike paths (no surprise there) and not even sidewalks in some areas. If you don’t have a car in NJ you really are a second-class citizen. When we got there — a gatehouse to a private community marked the entrance — we were told that it was open only on weekends, and the lab was under renovation. My fault for not double-checking opening hours.
I’d read in a new book about recorded sound (Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner) that Edison arranged demonstrations of his “perfected” wax cylinder recorders at various theaters around the continent. He’d have a known singer sing along with their own recorded voice, and then at some point the singer would stop and the recording took over. Testimonials claimed that the audience gasped and couldn’t tell the difference between the live singer and the recording (like “Is it real or is it Memorex?” for those who remember those cassette tape ads).
This seems a little far-fetched, though it’s true that we do hear what we want to hear to a large extent, and the amount of hype Edison was capable of generating was considerable — and hype can affect what we see and hear. There was indeed some information that surfaced alleging that Edison had “trained” the singers to imitate the quality and sound of the recordings — slightly pinched and not very loud — to make the gag work. This seems likely, as any decent singer could sing far louder than the volume of those old machines.
Although this may make Edison out to be a bit of a three-card Monte showman (as, like that game, the demonstration was rigged), it also shows what a talent he had for marketing and promoting his inventions. Coming up with an amazing idea and even patenting it was only half the battle… at least as far as getting it out there goes.
The rigged demonstration also gives an early hint at how performance is influenced by technology. Technology feigns neutrality — to simply record and capture (photography, audio, digitizing) — but not only does each technology skew the copy in some direction, the copy soon becomes the gold standard against which performance is measured. Even if the copy is not 100% faithful, in a weird backwards turn it becomes the “real” thing. While this seems almost comic — early singers imitating wax recordings or photographers imitating Impressionist paintings — with multi-track and now digital recording the worlds of recorded (and manipulated) sound and live performance drift ever further apart.
Our show in NJ went great — the crowd was up on their feet for a good part of the evening.
I’ve been in contact with some of the Extra Action Marching Band crew about doing more songs together when we reconnect in Portland, Seattle and Berkeley. Emails have been exchanged about brass arrangements and stage attire.
That’s certainly what Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta thought in 1881 when they established what would become the original Whitechapel Gallery. “The finest art of the world for the people of the East End.” The gallery has recently expanded and reopened, having usurped what once was a public library next door. The Whitechapel and the public library were both, in their time, efforts to bring culture to the poor masses of East London, a working class area that has been regularly inhabited by waves of recent immigrants.
Pictures “raise blessed thoughts in me — why not in you, my brother? Believe it, toil-worn worker, in spite of thy foul alley, thy crowded lodging, thy ill-fed children, thy thin, pale wife, believe it, thou too, and thine, will some day have your share of beauty.” -Charles Kingsley, Victorian Christian socialist, as quoted by Tom Lubbock in The Independent. [Link to article]
Those damned Christians — always on their evangelizing missions. Always bringing what is right, proper, and by implication, morally good to the poor heathen or unwashed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Art is the path of the creator to his work.” Emerson also said that art existed to make men better.
Edward C. Banfield, a Harvard government professor, writes: "The art museum was founded soon after the Civil War as part of a long struggle by the Protestant elite, which ran the large cities, to moralize their populations by eliminating vice and inculcating the domestic and civic virtues." [Link to article]
According to John Ruskin, the English writer and painter who was widely read and hugely influential in the 19th century, “Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth. All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.”
Ruskin paraphrased: Art is the expression of delight in God's work. From that, he glides to: “All great Art is praise; and, Art is the exponent of ethical life.”
And paraphrased again by art historian Kenneth Clark: The greatest artists and schools of art have believed it their duty to impart vital truths, not only about the facts of vision, but about religion and the conduct of life. [Source]
What mystifies me is the “morally good” part — that a leap is made from simply enjoying or being inspired, to being “improved” as a person by viewing pictures. These guys imply that art that is good (according to whom?) contains vital truths… and therefore functions as a signpost — a guide — for correct and better living. This is the part where I become very skeptical. If being educated at the best schools Western education has to offer doesn’t cultivate morality (look at all the white-collar criminals, and crimes against humanity committed by Harvard and Yale graduates), then what hope does looking at a picture have?
On the foundation of the National Gallery (in 1824, initially a banker’s picture collection), Sir Robert Peel said, “In the present times of political excitement, the exacerbation of angry and unsocial feelings might be much softened by the effects which the fine arts had ever produced upon the minds of men.” [Link] The Gallery, on Trafalgar Square, is located there because at that spot, the rich of West London could visit on their carriages and the poor from the East End could walk — thin pale wife and ill-fed children both. Significantly, admission would be free, further emphasizing that exposure to art could benefit all. Peel trusted that “the edifice would not only contribute to the cultivation of the arts, but also to the cementing of those bonds of union between the richer and the poorer orders of the State...” [Link]
It was thought that by exposing the poor and often uneducated to “culture,” their minds and hearts would be stimulated to deeper, more profound and noble thoughts. That exposure to culture is somehow morally uplifting, a bit like a church sermon, but presumably slightly less tedious. It also seems that culture was thought of as a kind of protective security device — from the angry and unsocial feelings mentioned above — and that exposure to it would alleviate the anger of the lower classes and thereby buffer the upper classes from their wrath. It was also thought that learning to appreciate culture would keep the rabble out of pubs and from pursuing other dubious activities.
In two senses this seems ridiculous — the first being that the modern art the Whitechapel was aiming to show was and is simply baffling to ordinary people, though in the UK arts current, shock and tabloid value is certainly a draw to many. Ordinary folks — and this is not a criticism — tend to like pictures that show evidence of skill and time spent in their production. Most folks also like to recognize what it is they’re looking at, be it a landscape, a face, a spear or an abstract pattern on a rug — across cultures, the forms may vary greatly. For poor English folks to be told back in the day that looking at wacky pictures would make them better people must have seemed like some sort of cruel joke — or that there was something profound in the pictures they didn’t yet understand.
The second absurdity is that this art, and the serious books that the library would deem to make available (libraries don’t usually stock porn or pulp fiction), were deemed worthy primarily by one’s “betters.” The higher, more educated classes naturally decided what pictures and books were good and capable of moral uplift. Given that the higher, especially the upper, classes of English society by nature had more spare time on their hands, there is at least some rationale that they would have had ample time to read and gaze upon pictures… and therefore might have some favorites to recommend — a service which might save those with less free time some precious hours, should they grow curious about those pictures or books.
Whether the lower and immigrant classes would be interested in the same pictures or books as their “betters” is never questioned — it is just assumed that the more “refined” taste of the higher classes is better and therefore more worthy. Why this should be so is not explained. For example, I find the machinations surrounding Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy amusing but somewhat disgusting as well — the lives of the rich and bored are often overrated, it seems to me. (However as a witty soap opera the book is hilarious.)
Likewise, the novel and convoluted new ways of interpreting the world, and the investigation into modes of visual perception and into art itself that modernism focused on, might also seem a trifle irrelevant to those struggling to stay afloat — unless some of those strugglers aimed to someday pass themselves off as being from a higher class. Good luck with that in the UK!
However, I myself can testify that being from an upper lower-class background in Glasgow, with parents who had immigrated and then worked and saved themselves into the middle class in suburban Baltimore, the local public library was invaluable. It was the Internet in a building — a building located down the road, under a bridge, past the train tracks, on a slight rise.
For example, in the late 60s, when I was in high school, I fell upon a copy of Naked Lunch, among many other strange and unusual books. I found it innovative, weird and slightly disgusting — though not in the same way as Pride and Prejudice. Even the book cover seemed to refer to some mysterious universe — the shadows and objects depicted are unclear. Maybe they are a junkie’s “works,” but I’m still not sure.
I also borrowed vinyl from the library — Folkways records of gospel, blues and Bahamian singers, Nonesuch recordings of Xenakis, Indian classical music and Balinese gamelan. There were also albums of pop music that weren’t getting played on the local rock station — The Kinks and Buffalo Springfield and many others. So, while some might have represented a rarefied academic and presumably more refined world — Xenakis, Varèse, Ives and Stockhausen, for example — even the academic composers were pretty trippy, and not all that different than what some of the pop musicians were doing, just less accessible. It was all a gateway into a host of new worlds. Lowlifes, highlifes and weirdness beyond anything I could imagine.
So, in a sense, the public library did do partially what the Victorians claimed — it made available to me a whole world I never knew existed. On the other hand, it opened my mind to realms of debauchery, experimentation and craziness that was like nothing else in suburban Baltimore. Nothing I’d seen, anyway… though I did go camping with some gal pals once, and their biker friends shot up a watermelon with vodka. That was pretty wild — and tasty.
I also took a liking to the visual arts at the time, stimulated at the outset mainly by album covers, psychedelic posters and underground comics. That was what was available to me. I was aware that some of those images and artists overlapped with what was deemed to be fine art, but that was not what made things interesting. I’m not sure if I went to an art museum more than once during high school — though I remember the Walters Art Gallery downtown had a very cool, small ancient carving of a man that seemed to be half tree. There was no modern or contemporary art there.
However, one thing led to another and connections, sometimes bizarre, were made. I painted a picture in high school of a phalanx of identical businessmen (who may have resembled my dad a bit), in a style reminiscent of George Tooker (I realize now) — standing against a wall of brightly colored, abstract empty picture frames and on a floor decorated with Northwest Indian tribal images, with hook-beaked creatures and densely packed biomorphic forms. It could have been a psychedelic record cover, and it referenced, or maybe simply imitated, everything visually available to me in suburban Baltimore that seemed wild and cool.
The big downtown art museum, with its Cone Collection of Matisses was, of course, a repository of high quality art — it had to be if it was housed in such a temple. I knew I was supposed to be impressed, but it was, at the time, nowhere near as inspiring as the counter-culture stuff that was exploding everywhere.
[Danielle adds: "Given these examples, another interesting question to pose would be, how has art changed — how have the values changed? And even if they have, has the role of art in social hierarchy changed or not? Because in fact you can now go Harvard on the basis of your Burroughs scholarship; counter-cultural art can give entrée into the privileged strata of society. There’s some interesting inversion that’s taken place where the avant-garde has been re-assimilated and the relationship between high and low has become infinitely more nuanced. Sotheby’s sold some of Manzoni’s shit for a couple hundred thousand dollars not so long ago."]
So, was art good for me? It got me out of gym class, that’s for sure. Working on these detailed and obsessive pictures took a lot of time, and the high school art teacher kindly sent a slip excusing me from gym. I made a bunch more of these pictures, and at some point they were “exhibited” in a display case in the school hallway. Probably due to their resemblance to record covers, they were deemed OK and even hip by some of the students, and I was cool for a day — which was pretty great for someone as shy as I, who managed to make this, and later music, a way to be in the world. So in this sense, art was certainly “good” for me at the time.
I think discovering and making stuff was good for me in another way too. Not only did making stuff give me, a painfully shy person, a way to communicate, but in the process I got myself sorted as well — at least a little bit. Expressing myself became a process of self-discovery and healing, casting out demons and finding joy. (Not that I’m done now, by any means.) The process was far from conscious — only in retrospect can I see what was happening. And it doesn’t mean the things I was making were all explosions and expressions of angst, terror, fear or guilt — though occasionally, yes, those things would surface. Making stuff gives someone like me a reason for going on, a focus, a pride in oneself. I’m not saying one has to be damaged to benefit from this kind of activity — but we all need a little sorting here and there. I’m not sure the creative process works for everyone — in fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. And I’m not saying that “everyone is an artist,” though I suspect many people have creative urges that go unacknowledged. I’m not sure everyone needs to make arty stuff as a path to self-discovery — home improvement, software development, getting dressed up and general problem solving are all immensely satisfying.
But back to the question as to whether art is morally uplifting. If idle hands are the devil’s playground then doing this stuff indeed kept the devil away — for a while. But what about looking at pictures, as opposed to making them? I love doing it — my house and office are plastered with stuff — but I don’t see how it can be uplifting, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. My friend C says that pictures are indeed a place, a forum, a venue for ideas, deeply felt emotions and radically new ways of looking at and being in the world. They are, she says, stimulating and inspiring — when they connect, at least. It’s certainly true for those of us who are part of that world. It seems to me that more consistently, it is the act of making stuff that changes a person, although with books, just reading them can certainly open new worlds. Looking at a Jackson Pollock is about as innately stimulating as looking at gum on the sidewalk — but that is not meant as a criticism. Reading about Pollock, his world, why and how he made his stuff and what kind of life he and his contemporaries had, might indeed be stimulating. Then one might see his picture as a kind of corollary — an adjunct piece of evidence connected to his story and those of his peers.
So, interesting that the Whitechapel displaced a public library. When I was there a month ago the crowds were immense, with a line to get in, and the galleries were chockablock. The work, mainly a show by Isa Genzken, was pretty kooky, and not at all “easy.” All the papers had run lengthy pieces on the re-opening. Everyone was making a pilgrimage to see the revived and improved space — one had to say one had been there and seen it with their own eyes. I’m not sure all these folks are experiencing self-improvement, and I’m certainly not sure they emerge or soon become capable of greater and sounder moral judgment. But they’re hell-bent on having the experience.
But where did the books go? Reading, the part of the Victorian outreach that involved more interaction and could actually be brought into one’s house for a while, is gone.
Maybe, with the sheer volume of text on the Internet, it isn’t deemed as important to make books available for free to the poor and newly arrived in the East End. Art you have to visit and see, for the most part, and books you can buy, browse at bookstores or now download. Maybe part of the museum or gallery’s attraction is the social aspect — reading is solitary. The Whitechapel was crowded, and people would presumably discuss their visit later over dinner, or at the office the next day. Picture viewing is also fast, while on the other hand, it takes many hours to read a book — which is another reason the literary experience has such a profound effect. Viewing an exhibition can be done in an afternoon or much less, and if you don’t like it you just walk out. The speed of the visit doesn’t make it less deep — a short experience can also be profound — and visual experiences can imprint if we are receptive enough. (Movies and music, I’ve noticed, are like books — you have to commit a sizable block of time to the experience.)
I can see that if exposure to culture brings the lower classes and immigrants into contact — indirectly and incrementally — with the world of the accepted and dominant classes, and thereby into the world of their values and morals, then yes, that exposure helps society to become more harmonious. Most moral values, in my opinion, are not absolute. They vary depending on the culture, and vary from place to place (though some moral commandments, like not having kids with your sister or mother, could be considered absolute — for humans anyway). Morals are rules that allow a society to function smoothly, or smoothly enough. By assimilating the implied values inherent in pictures, viewers are subtly brought into line with what has become accepted and dominant in a society. Although one might complain that what is acceptable and moral has been determined only by a portion of society — the portion in power — if harmony can be achieved without force, terror or fear, then maybe that’s nothing to sneeze at. Survival is better than pure chaos and destruction, though we seem to like those things too. Funny how things that may have once been attempts to overthrow the apple cart of power and dominance are now taught as fine literature or art at major universities. Some might say that this kind of harmony is like living ignorantly inside the Matrix — that it’s not “real” — but maybe that’s another rant.
I did a benefit show Sunday night for the Red Hot organization at Radio City. I joined Bon Iver, Dirty Projectors, Feist, My Brightest Diamond, The National, Dave Sitek and Sharon Jones, and it went extremely well. The concert revolved around a double record, Dark Was The Night, which features those artists plus Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire, Yeasayer and a bunch more. I did two songs live with Dirty Projectors, and duets with Feist and Bon Iver — I was pretty thrilled. St. Vincent, TV on the Radio and Lavender Diamond were hovering around as well.
There’s a lot going on musically right now. It’s an exciting time. Other than Sharon Jones’ soul music and some of the other artists’ folk leanings, the overall tendency amongst this group seems to be a kind of potpourri of art rock. I mean that in a good way — it’s art in that pop music is taken, assumed even, to be a serious and open form; a genre that admits a wide variety of approaches and instruments; and a musical form that is equal in depth and emotion to anything else out there. That’s a really different approach than what might be called traditional rock or pop, which can be extremely dogmatic — not to mention disposable — with prescribed instrumentation, tempos and subjects. There’s a sense of seriousness about this crop of artists — serious play, but still serious.
Besides their dedication to their art, most are successful — but one senses that fame wasn’t their primary engine for choosing a career in music. There was no hierarchy in this group — everyone was treated as an equal, and participated with everyone else where they could. Many were already acquaintances or friends. Times have changed. No one was drunk, on drugs or two hours late for rehearsal. There was no “rock star” behavior. That could sound boring — but such rebellious, clichéd behavior hasn’t always guaranteed good music. When great music would surface from a personal or professional mess, it often seemed like a rare but happy accident, unlikely to be repeated.
Maybe it’s the headiness of being surrounded by so many creative folks, but it seems that popular music — some of it anyway — might be going through one of its periodic peaks. It also seems that rock music, or some sizable branch of it, has evolved from being a throwaway piece of merchandise for teens to a respectable art form. The transformation, made in fits and starts over many decades, seems more or less complete.
Hit factories and Scandinavian songwriters churn out chart-toppers — some of which I love — but that kind of pop music stays within fairly proscribed boundaries, while this other stuff — though not as slick or polished — ranges all over the place.
I’m somewhat fascinated by the factory approach. Terius Nash and Christopher Stewart wrote most of “Umbrella” — a song many of us can’t resist. Nash was interviewed in the New Yorker, saying, “I usually don’t do second verses… I just do the first verse and do the hook.” (On that song he made an exception.) [Link to article] Doesn’t do second verses! Wooo. From a certain standpoint, he’s right. If you haven’t got the listener by the first verse and chorus/hook you might as well quit, because the regular pop fan won’t even make it to the second verse. And once you have the listener hooked, you can say pretty much any old thing in the second verse as long as it fits melodically and metrically.
It’s a different approach — an intensely detailed way of making music — though in some ways it’s less like music than some kind of sonic mind fuck. It’s polished to an inhuman sheen — and when it works, the machines win hands down. I have friends who just do beats — a seductive beat with the right sounds can go halfway to sucking in a listener. I’ve heard that Missy Elliot used to audition beats, though her run with Timbaland was hard to top.
I have memories of this town as a gray, depressed, former industrial giant that’s been turning its previously abandoned and decrepit riverside industrial spaces into hotels and arts centres — those that haven’t been torn down already. While my cynical assessment isn’t far off, this visit offered another side of the area — and the sun came out. The day we arrived, I first checked out the Baltic, one of the aforementioned arts centres — this one in a former flourmill. It was in between shows; though in a room off the lobby, a lovely video of an immense concrete slab being poured and raised in a Berlin factory, set to Glenn Gould playing Bach, was surprisingly moving, and even beautiful. Gould played slowly and simply on the soundtrack — it wasn’t the headlong rush of notes that you often hear in Bach — which gave a kind of majesty and grandeur to the shots of concrete being poured, smoothed and eventually raised up like the 2001 monolith (or, in this case, like the décor of the Toronto theater where Gould was playing and recording).
I then pedaled upriver along a waterfront promenade, where at certain points, men leaned against the railings with their fishing rods dangling and thermoses of tea at their sides. Below were the muddy banks of the Tyne. The water seemed low; perhaps this part of the river is a tidal estuary, but a sign said the Tyne is traditionally and notoriously muddy and shallow, and therefore for centuries it was unfit for navigation by decent-sized ships. Odd for a town known, until recently, for its heavy industry.
At some point the river was dredged, which opened it up much more to shipping — though most of the industry lies downstream, closer to the mouth of the river. I pass a Rolls Royce engine factory (they make aircraft engines, not just cars) and another factory that makes tanks. The muddy riverbanks are filled with stuff people have chucked down there — shopping trolleys (lots of those), traffic cones, bicycles, baby carriages and even a wheelchair — one that I hope was no longer needed.
After our show at the Sage, a symphony hall encased in glass caterpillar skin, a local friend of Mark’s mentions that there is a bike path that leads to the sea, and there’s even a bike tunnel under the river somewhere downstream. The next morning is gorgeous and sunny, and Natalie, Jenni and I head out, cross the Millenium ped bridge and head west towards the North Sea.
It’s a gorgeous bike path, right? (at least in spots) and of course we were super lucky to have such a sunny day — not exactly an everyday thing here. I should be working for the local tourist board with these sunny pictures! The path often veers away from the riverside and fields to accommodate the remaining bits of industry, or a housing estate.
Eventually we see signs for the tunnel, tucked in the middle of a derelict industrial zone. We follow arrows to a tiny, round, 30’s-style deco structure; it houses two wooden escalators that descend deep into the Earth. They’re not working, though one could walk down them. Luckily there is a little square building right behind the circular one, with one word on it: “lift.”
Sure enough, there are two small, green-tiled tunnels at the bottom — one for peds and one for cyclists. Incredible! No one’s around, though it’s obvious the tunnels have just recently been cleaned — there’s a faint smell of cleanser. We zoom on through. I imagine that back in the day, there was quite a bit of traffic between the working class residential zone south of the river’s mouth, and the factories and shipbuilding on the north Tyneside. There is also a little ferry nearby for the same purpose — it doesn’t accommodate cars.
The Lawless Lands
We emerge on the other side and pause to consider whether to aim for the sea or to head back along this side of the river. A young man on a bike emerges from the tunnels and asks if we need help. We ask about the distance to the seaside and if there’s a place to stop for tea. Our time is limited so we can’t do it all. He opens his backpack and produces a plastic pouch stuffed with detailed maps of the area — it turns out that this guy, James, is the area bike path coordinator! He has no idea who we are — that we performed in town last night — though he certainly knows we’re not from around here. James advises us to head back along the river, as the sea is actually quite a ways further on, and this side is easier and more scenic. He offers to show us where the path approaches the remains of a Roman fort and the eastern end of Hadrian’s wall. The fort is partly buried under a car park, but quite a bit of the foundation is visible.
This was nearly named the northernmost point of the Roman Empire. Hadrian’s successor built yet another wall further north — the Antonine Wall, 100 miles away — but it wasn’t feasible to defend and was therefore abandoned. For 300 years this wall became the main instrument used by the Empire to regulate travel and trade between north and south. It extends clean across the whole of England — from east to west coasts — and was about 15 feet high and 10 feet thick. In many places there was a ditch on the northern side, and earthwork fortifications on the southern. Built in AD 122, it took three legions of men six years to complete, and there were over 30 forts along the length of the wall. The wall and these lands were abandoned — not because of some momentous war, battle or invasion by men in kilts — but because, like all empires, they overextended themselves. Shades of Iraq and Afghanistan — a country nicknamed, for good reason, the graveyard of empires.
James has marked his map where improvements need to be made and where sections of the paths might be linked up. In one area the path peters out near a former industrial site, which is currently being dug up by a group of Geordies who tell us we can’t get through that way. We go back to the road for a bit and James leads us onward, along a section on which horses once towed wagons heaped with coal, on wooden rails (this was pre-steam). We reach a lovely pub overlooking the city — The Free Trade Inn— where we have tea before we all move on.
I had already scheduled a meeting with Diana Hamilton, the curator of Belsay Hall, a manor and castle 25 minutes outside of town that is (surprise!) being turned into an arts centre. Well, not exactly — but they do invite artists, musicians and fashion designers to install pieces in the empty hall or on the grounds. Stella McCartney has a piece on view there now. Nat and Jenni join me, and on the ride out we get the story of the hall.
It seems the family held the property for many generations — as they’re inclined to do. Over the years they married “wisely” and managed to increase their land holdings until they owned everything as far as the eye could see. A small village was engulfed by the property, and the Laird at the time relocated the villagers outside their property (!), building a new village for them with a school to boot. During the Victorian era, the family squire took his Grand Tour. It was de rigueur for a person of means, wishing to be erudite and in possession of good taste, to take a tour of what was understood to be the font of civilization — the ruins, homes and classical architecture of Greece and Italy. Upon his return, he knew what he had to do: construct a Palladian Villa on the crest of a Northumberland hill, with clean lines, symmetry and columns inside and out. The family would evacuate their old-fashioned castle — which was difficult to heat anyway— and move into their tasty new classical digs.
To emphasize the cleanliness of line, he had rainwater channeled indoors. The rainspouts emptied into pipes that snaked through (mainly) the servants’ quarters — an innovation that would cost him dearly in the future, as dampness and heat are major issues in Northumberland (though they’re no big deal in Tuscany, of course).
As often happens, the wealth of the landed gentry eventually dissipated and diminished. To top it off, at one point the man who would become the property’s final owner became a Christian Scientist. His relatives, fearful that he would leave all the remaining holdings (including the mansion and the old castle) to the church, persuaded him to donate it to the National Trust — a state organization in the UK that looks after hysterical places such as this one. He agreed, with a stipulation: that the contents of the house be removed — every carpet, chair, painting, table, spoon and knife — and the house remain forever bare.
Quite a place! No wonder the idea of turning it into an arts centre occurred to someone — it has the emptiness of a gallery. Usually these historic houses are filled with period furniture, as if the owners had just moved out. Down in the wine cellar, the acoustics were astounding — to be “correct” the house needed one, though it was never used, as it went against the new religion. Diana told me that Antony did some kind of audio recording here, but we haven’t heard it. The three of us spontaneously improvised, taking advantage of the incredible echo.
The house was made of stone quarried out of the back garden, and the owner cleverly had the rock dug out in such a way as to create a meandering canyon, where he introduced all sorts of exotic plants. They thrived amazingly well, as the gulch now had its own microclimate. It looks like an Italian grotto! These gardens are a local tourist attraction, particularly in the summer — the English love their gardens, and this one is beautifully eccentric.
Further on we pass what appears to be an old stone church peeking out over a grassy hill, but we’re told is just a folly — a building constructed to please the eye and create a mood. Set dressing in the real world. Nice to be flush enough to create your own universe!
Just beyond the grotto were the castle ruins — the McCartney piece was in the main dining hall.
It turns out that after this structure was built (around 1370), the wealthy began building fortified houses in the area. The surrounding landscape is dotted with little castles and these fortified homes, walls and defensible structures. The area was known as the Lawless Lands — or the Debatable Lands — as ownership, security and property were constantly in flux for 300 years (!). Until about 500 years ago, the area resisted the authority of both Scotland (to the immediate north) and England. Everything was contested — debatable. Many people survived by reiving, or raiding their neighbors’ land for cattle, sheep and anything else one could transport back home. The reivers built their own fortified strongholds in the area, many of which remain today.
Having a fortified house was essential for protecting some of your goods and your family. There were entire reiving families, many of whose names survive: Armstrong, Graham, Elliot, and Maxwell. The first man on the moon and Richard Nixon are both believed to be descendents of reivers — no surprise in the latter case. When James I became king, the practice was gradually stamped out, and many of the families moved to America or Australia. One might say that explains a lot, but ah… no comment.
The start of our European tour. We arrive at an ungodly hour in the morning, having only slept a few hours, at best, on the flight. Most of us sit like zombies wolfing down the amazing breakfast spread at our hotel. Some of us agree to meet at 1pm to get out and about.
There’s a Sonic Youth exhibit called “Sensational Fix” at the local museum. It’s got the expected album covers and music paraphernalia, but given that it’s Sonic Youth, the show is split between their art collections and their own work. As such it’s a taste of their world — friends, influences, connections, collaborations and accumulated collections of artwork and ephemera. (I’ve heard that Thurston and some of the others are obsessively rabid record collectors — especially obscure “out” stuff like old Sun Ra vinyl and Japanese noise bands — but that trove might have to wait for some other venue to see the light of day.)
There is work by their pals Richard Prince, Raymond Pettibon, Tony Oursler, Mike Kelley and Rita Ackermann — some of which was used for record covers; work by those who inspired them — a video of John Cage on “What’s My Line?”, Ginsberg photos of his Beat pals, William Burroughs’ gunshot art; and some of their own videos, paintings, collages and installations. Here’s a lovely walk-in room that Christian Marclay did — the floor littered to a few inches thickness with old vinyl. For a record lover, the experience is a kind of sacrilege — and that’s the point.
The exhibit posits Sonic Youth more as an art/media collective than simply as a band — which is probably accurate, though most people know them through their more accessible recordings, of course. But this is closer to how they must see themselves — as the hyphenate legacy of both the Beat and performance art worlds, and the wacky fringes of pop culture — death metal, freaky cults, underground comics, vinyl junkies and the dark side of Madonna and Karen Carpenter. What’s nice about it is the thread that ties together the art world with the pop music world with the Beat poets and a million others — and it stretches through time, backwards, forwards and sideways. It’s also a world of fandom — in a way, Sonic Youth are impresarios presenting the work of others that they love.
I might be imagining it, but it seems to me that in Europe, the mixing of pop culture and high art — as evidenced in this show, put on in a big, state-run museum, as opposed to an alternative art space — is more accepted as an idea than in the US. It could explain why the show originated here, and might only reach the US after traveling elsewhere for a while. Here, it seems that Sonic Youth can be perceived as an arts collective that happens to occasionally make accessible recordings, rather than as a pop band that dabbles in art.
The venue in Düsseldorf is called Tonhalle — the sound hall. When it was built in 1926, it was a planetarium — the largest in the world. A temple to science and knowledge, on the banks of the Rhine.
About 30 years ago, it was converted into a symphony hall, and the acoustics required some modification. Invisible steel mesh was inserted inside of the dome, which helped improve the sound greatly. The steel magnate who originally commissioned the hall had some connection with or was himself a glass collector, and the décor reflects this interest, in a very unique way.
I think it’s beautiful, in a Teutonic/Brazil the movie kind of way. Under the main theater there is a maze of ramps, stairways, ductwork and futuristic arched supports. I got lost more than once, as some elevated walkways don’t connect to others.
The audience, at first a little reticent and serious — given that it’s the local symphony hall — was standing and dancing by the last 3rd of our show. I noticed some people in the audience taking pictures of the crowd — apparently a show of enthusiasm isn’t typical. After 10 days off the treadmill, we’re back in gear and it feels wonderful — we’re ecstatic. This is why we put up with the jet lag and the constant dislocation.
Just did our two nights at Radio City, and we’re ecstatic and exhausted. Doing shows in one’s hometown is always a thing — more thrilling when it goes over well, and there are always many, many more things and people to attend to, and more nerve-wracking aspects in general. We got back from Canada, and the very next day we went into rehearsals and cleanup mode — rehearsing the surprise ending for the Radio City shows, and cleaning up the choreography that, inevitably, gets a little loose. The 4 choreographers dropped by while we were all in the same town, which was convenient.
The cleanup was actually minor — in the course of the first sixty-some shows, we’ve internalized much of the movements, so it feels more integrated and organic… but some details still needed attending to.
While we were rehearsing, Mark Degli Antoni was at Radio City getting a crash course in the Mighty Wurlitzer. The original idea was that he’d play the giant house organ and then we’d join him on “Take Me To The River” — but as the volume level of the Wurlitzer is what it is, we couldn’t get the organ and the band to mesh. So, Mark did a short introductory piece that he wrote that highlighted some of the sounds, bells and whistles.
The surprise ending can be seen here on someone’s YouTube posting:
We learned this ending in two afternoons (and at sound check on Friday). There was one real Rockette in the bunch, who generously offered us tips on some of their typical moves. The additional dancers were all friends of our dancers and choreographers — and as Chris, Annie-B’s collaborator said, “It was like the cream of the downtown dance world all said YES to dancing on the Radio City stage.”
Somewhere in the Far East, I had enquired about the possibility of having the Radio City Rockettes join us at the end of our show. When we finally got their budget, it proved to be way too expensive — and we hadn’t even brought up the subject of rehearsals… so I asked the band and dancers what they thought about developing our own tribute to the institution. I did a quick budget, and figured we would have more fun, and more financial wiggle room, if we just did it all ourselves.
Annie-B Parson agreed to compose a short dance that would merge into the existing choreography at the end of “Burning Down The House,” and finish with the iconographic kick line. We bought 30 tutus, and asked the new dancers to wear white. When I saw it begin to come together in rehearsals, I was ecstatic — the “tidal wave” entrance alone was spectacular — but, like the rest of the show, it was all sort of downtown spectacular — homemade, not too slick, precise but not cold.
On my way home later, I witnessed a showdown for a parking space on my street. A woman, who was holding a space by standing in it, motioned to a slowing car to move on, but she was ignored. The car stopped, the woman shouted “no no” and “not available” and waved her hands around, but after a beat the car began to back into the space anyway. The woman held her ground. The last I saw, the passenger riding shotgun leaned out and said something like, “You can’t hold a parking space!” They were obviously prepared to use their car as a battering ram, and force the woman onto the sidewalk — and there’d be some unavoidable, nasty showdown when they exited the car. I sure wouldn’t want to leave my car on the street after making an enemy like that!
On the road into town from the airport we pass favelas with their orange bricks; shopping malls; a giant Santa hat on top of a local Home-Depot-type box store; and numerous billboards for local singers, drum ensembles and bands who are performing during the holiday season and on up to Carnival. They often refer to these performances as “rehearsals,” but they are in fact completely worked-out shows. The rehearsal reference implies that it’s all a lead up to the “real” performance — the one during Carnival. I see a billboard for Olodum, the famous percussion group, and one for Chiclete Com Banana (Banana Chewing Gum), a local pop band that has been around here since forever. Every big intersection has more music billboards. These are all local acts, proof that Salvador continues as a breeding ground for music.
In a way this town is like New Orleans, another place where European Catholic culture met Africans, and where a new musical and cultural hybrid was born. Also like New Orleans, many of these acts tend to remain local — their appeal is limited to either Carnival crowds up here, or to the Afrocentric culture that flourishes here much more than in Rio or São Paulo. This is, after all, the westernmost African city.
Paulinha, Caetano Veloso’s wife and a serious movie producer, invites us to join them on a friend’s boat which is going out into the harbor to view the fireworks at midnight. We stop by their house overlooking the beach and rock at Rio Vermelho. The house is modern, clean and uncluttered, with a few abstract paintings on the walls. A wall by a stairway has a kind of Mondrian 3D arrangement of white shelf-like projections upon which various souvenirs and items of personal significance have been draped and placed: some Candomblé beads, a Filhos de Gandhi turban, a traditional Northwestern cowboy hat, bottles of dende. Large balconies overlook rocks down below where waves crash in the darkness. There’s a cool breeze from the sea despite the fact that it's summertime here.
We have some dinner and drinks, and drive to a tall apartment building in the well-to-do Vitoria district where we head to the rear of the building, and take a four-person gondola down the steep forested cliff face to a tiny dock. The gondola is a little ball that dangles and sways, with 60's modernist styling that makes it seem like a remnant from an imaginary future. The ball descends into the darkness through a miniscule trace of the once-great Atlantic forests that covered the coasts here and in much of Brasil.
We end up on a little dock where others appear and eventually board a sizable motorized sailboat that heads for the lighthouse point where the fireworks will go off at midnight. Almost everyone is dressed in white (C and me included) — a reference to Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion, whose Goddess of the sea, Yemanja, is honored tonight in many parts of Brasil. In Salvador the larger seaside event for her occurs at the beginning of February, when thousands place offerings into the sea, but tonight most pay their respects simply by dressing in white and offering a few flowers to the sea. The fireworks go off in other parts of town at the same time. It’s a long display — my favorite firework is one I can best describe as a twinkly blob or cloud. This one wasn’t a blossoming globe like most of the others, but an amoeboid shape that hung in the sky, almost stationary, and sparkled. We throw flowers into the water. Some people jump into the dark waves as well — a symbolic clean start. Feliz Ano Novo. The husband of the boat owner acts as DJ; he plays some incredible Brazilian recordings I am unfamiliar with, and he also mixes in a hilarious recording of Charro singing “Let’s Spend The Night Together” with the Salsoul Orchestra. Cuchi cuchi!
There are bands playing in tents and outdoors on the various beaches and beachfront areas tonight.
Jesus on Board
I mentioned a religious procession C and I hope to see tomorrow on the 1st and Paulinha, producer that she is, arranges another boat trip. In the morning we head to a spot just inside the breakwater in front of the Nossa Senora Da Conceiçao church, near the base of the iconic elevator that has become the symbol of Salvador. This is where Our Lady’s son (Jesus) has been visiting for about a month. Today, via a small boat, he will return to his own church further down the coast at the Boa Viagem neighborhood. This particular Jesus is Senhor Bom Jesus dos Navegante, the patron saint of Navegantes (sailors and fishermen), so a large floating contingent has turned out to accompany him on his return trip.
Some of these are basically rowboats with motors, some are cabin cruisers, and some are old wooden boats configured to hold a bunch of passengers. Some of the last have been hired by various groups of worshiper/supporters, who all wear matching T-shirts. One of these boats has a brass band gathered around the prow that energetically blasts out samba-ized versions of anything in their repertoire, including a raucous version of Neal Sedaka’s song “Diana.”
Another boat has an Afro-Brazilian drum group on board; we can feel their grooves and see the dancers gyrating. A few boats have DJs on board with keyboards, playing and singing along with programmed tracks. A fireboat squirts a fume of water into the air and the tiny little boat that will carry the saint (the Jesus statue) arrives at the shore. The statue is surrounded by revelers on land, many of them dressed in white. He is transferred to his boat, nestled amongst a large pile of yellow flowers. A group of men in sailor outfits begins to row the saint to his home church. A blast of firecrackers goes off as they depart.
Now all the boats point towards the peninsula where this Jesus is headed. After a few minutes, the rowing of Jesus’ boat is replaced by a rope that allows the little craft to be towed most of the way by a police boat. People wave at one of our passengers, Lazaro, who is a young movie actor. He waves back and gives everyone the thumbs up.
At Boa Viagem the rowing recommences as the little boat with Jesus on board passes inside the breakwater close to the shore. The beach is packed with people, many of whom haven’t gone to sleep. From the nearby church emerges his mom, also nestled in yellow flowers. The two statues meet on the beach and a whole lot more fireworks go off — pow pow pow, all bangers — which gives their meeting a slightly sexual overtone. This is the highpoint of the procession, the climax, and now the two of them, mother and son reunited, go off together back to their home for the next 11 months. The flotilla begins to disperse.
Our boat now heads across the Bay of All Saints towards some tiny islands next to the larger island of Itaparica. We rendezvous with the larger boat that we were on last night, where more folks are waiting, and head off for an idyllic lunch in a beautiful old house on a tiny island owned by the family who has the large boat. This house is the only house on that particular island; the rest is a kind of nature reserve. Naturally, we have moquequa da piexe, a local fish stew flavored with coconut and dende (palm oil), which is delicious.
A restaurant where we have a moquequa (a seafood stew with coconut milk and dende-palm oil — Mauro refers to this area as Moquequaland) has a TV on playing music DVDs. One is a live show by Lucky Dube, the African singer, another is a compilation of local MTV unplugged shows featuring some artists I know and many I don’t. Among the familiar ones are Rita Lee, Gal Costa and Paralamas — but the rest (they excerpt one song each) I don’t know. The visual format (and to some extent the music as well) is repetitive. The colors and patterns of the sets change with each act, but the singers and guitar players always sit – either on a stool or on a chair — and there are lots of steel string acoustic guitars around them being strummed. I say to C that I think the seated gag is meant to reference a casual get together amongst musicians in someone’s living room or at a corner bar among friends — as often does happen here in Brasil. It’s meant to signify “informality” — though in this context it's anything but informal. Informality formalized.
I’ve seen some of these acts as shows where one artist does a whole set — Gilberto Gil’s and Zeca Pagodinho’s for example — that are funny (in Pagodinho’s case), moving and great-sounding. Sometimes the forced abandonment of full-on production and duplication of the recorded instrumentation lets the essence of some songs be better heard. Sometimes some artists' songs sound even better stripped bare, but for some of the more standard pop artists, it’s more like they simply don’t have any clothes on.
The owners of our pousada tell us that there is a lovely small terreiro (Candomblé temple) in a small town located inland. They all come out for the February 2nd water offerings to Yemanja — when drums accompany boatloads of adherents out into the sea where offerings are placed into the sea for that Goddess. There are often folks going into trance states as well.
A couple of weeks ago an archeological discovery was made between that village and an extremely isolated one on the southern end of the island. There had been interminably slow and incremental progress on putting in a fresh water pipe to that distant town when the diggers hit a large ceramic urn that contained a skeleton. The urn was broken, but not too badly. The owner of our pousada saw it and realized it was probably of archeaological value — and was possibly pre-Tupi (the tribal group that controlled most of the Brazilian coast when the Portuguese arrived). It was too substantial, he reasoned, for the Tupi, who kept small villages and didn’t accumulate stuff.
He put the pieces together and went off in search of professional help, which I can’t imagine would be anywhere local. Sadly, by the time he got back to the site the digging had continued and both the urn and its contents had disappeared.
The NY promoter has urged that we add a second Radio City date (February 28th) and I have agreed. I had to think about it for a few days, as it’s a big place and the possibility of playing to a half-filled hall on the second night would be both depressing and bad for my rep. There’s something about the proximity of bodies in a theater that generates excitement and energy. Granted the top balconies could be empty and no one would know, but empty seats scattered here and there in the orchestra and lower balconies generally makes it harder for an audience to achieve release, to let go and enjoy themselves.
Marc Geiger, my booking agent, says that “playing your hometown is like having a pimple on your forehead — everyone can see it.” Very funny, but I’d like to think my show is more enjoyable than a pimple. Both to myself and to the audience. We’re looking into using the Mighty Wurlitzer that rises up out of the side of the stage — the largest in the world that's still in its original location, I believe. Also looking into the Rockettes, but I think they go elsewhere after the Xmas show.
The first show is almost sold out after being on sale for only a couple of weeks and with only one significant ad — so that was an argument in favor of adding the second show. With more ads and posters around town, more people will know about the event; many friends I meet have no idea when I’m playing NYC. “Oh, you’re on tour! When will you be playing New York?” — so if we can reach those folks there is a chance the second show will do OK. Maybe even better than OK. (There is also the small matter of the economic meltdown, but Geiger says there has been less impact on “quality” acts, which I guess he means includes me.)
Anyway, I had an idea for a poster, and maybe an ad, that would include a lot of the snaps taken by fans and journalists of the tour so far. I talked to Danielle about culling the sources for that material and about a design idea — so that is in the works.
The deluxe CD version designed by Sagmeister Inc. is reaching people. BB e-mailed me that she got a copy and that her daughter thinks it’s cool. My daughter thinks the audio chip recording of footsteps that ends with a door squeaking and slamming shut is creepy. There are more songs on the 2nd disk, so I wonder if any of those will get reviewed or blogged about.
