We played at Bonnaroo festival on Sunday. We arrived in the
neighboring town in the morning having driven overnight from Asheville, NC and
awoke to find ourselves surrounded by big box stores—all of them, all around
us, in one place: Home Depot, Wall Mart, Target, Staples… on and on. There are
no independent stores anywhere to be seen.
On arriving at the festival site, I pull my folding bike
from the bay and set off to get the lay of the land; which stage is where, that
sort of thing. I have done this in the past, and it’s a really speedy way to
get from area to area, via the behind the scenes paths that staff and artists
use, and one can then see many acts in a day. It’s fun and super efficient. But
this time a security guy (their shirts say SAFETY) stops me and says there’s no
bike riding anywhere in Bonnaroo. Woah. OK. I don’t challenge him, but WTF. I
guess I’ll be walking today.
I manage to catch a few
acts before we have to get ready for our 7:30 show…we’re the last act on the
"Which" stage for this festival. Tom Petty, who goes on after us at the larger
"What" stage, has no one playing against him. Same went for Paul McCartney and
whoever was headlining last night.
I caught quite a bit of Macklemore’s
set. Some of our horn guys sat in on his "Thrift Shop" song. For the bulk of his
set, it was mostly him, a DJ/laptop guy, and a trumpet player. He was good! A
real showman and improviser (or so it seemed). He doesn’t have many songs so
far, so he padded out the set with entertaining patter and clever spoken bits
that were funny and sometimes quite serious—there was a long spoken
word/unaccompanied poetry thing that was impressive—a bold move.
Made it over to the comedy tent where I caught David Cross’
set—really good, though he did go to some iffy places: jokes riffing on Sandy
Hook? Really? Well, to be fair the jokes were about the NRA’s response to Sandy
Hook. Brave move here in Tennessee.
Kendrick
Lamar was pretty much what you would expect. If you know his material—as
the huge and vocal audience did—you were in it 100%. I was impressed by the
emptiness of his stage setup. It’s a common hip hop thing—the vast empty stage—no
amps, instruments, cables, singers, musicians. Visually it’s closer to a stand
up comedy look, or a serious dance performance than it is to a stage associated
with the rest of the musical traditions represented here. I’ve tried to come close
to this, and in recent years I’ve managed to eliminate a lot of cables and mic
stands. About a decade ago I switched to in ear monitors, so I don’t need any
of the monitor speakers that line the front of the stage here and block part of
the audience’s view of the artists. Monitor speakers—especially when they’re
loud—also make it difficult for sound mixers to get a super clear mix as well.
Swans were a
revelation. I didn’t see them back in the day, maybe I wrote them off as Glenn
Branca or Rhys Chatham clones, but they were great. While there are elements of
the guitar drone orchestra that they share with those guys, Gira has taken the
thing into a more expansive place. There are songs, or bits of songs, and the
look is of a bunch of characters out of a dark Flannery O Connor story—men in
black come to tell you that the end is coming soon, and here’s what it sounds
like. I stayed for 40 mins. and was right up close in front, but then I had to
leave, fearing that my ears might close down (our ears “close down” when
assaulted by loud or sustained loud noise—they re-open after awhile, usually)
and we still had a show to do.
Anyway—amazing set.
Our show goes well. It’s shorter than our normal set—fewer
ballads as the festival crowd has been out in the sun most of the day. I sense
that the reception to our show carries less baggage than our theater shows. In
other words, there isn’t a contingent of folks who mainly want to hear my old
material. I enjoy doing some of
those songs, but what was nice is that this mainly young festival audience is
hearing much of our material, mine and Annie’s, maybe for the first time, so their reactions are visceral—based on
how they liked the songs and performances right there and then. Sometimes an
Annie song that maybe got an OK reception in our typical theatrical settings
got a big response here. That was nice—there was a more level playing field.
Despite the hills in this town, I go for some bike rides.
Down by French Broad River (yup,
that’s the name), it’s especially scenic.
One day there is a Celtic
heritage festival in a riverside park. I can hear songs about drinking sung by
men in kilts.
I stop at a farmers market—there are black honey and pork
butts.
Some of us go for a tour of the Moog factory. I
remembered using a minimoog on some Talking Heads songs, and Bernie Worrell was a forerunner using
the fat bass sounds on these Moog oscillators to do some of the bass parts on
P-Funk tunes. Unfortunately, those early synths were tough to use on stage, as
their pitch “drifted” a bit over time, but great sounds.
Now many of those problems have been solved, and on some of
the gear you can save your settings…which is a huge help as well.
Here are a bunch of bass synths getting burnt in—they leave
them on for a while to see if any parts burn out.
Previously, Annie had acquired a guitar they made that uses
acoustic synthesis. What does that mean? It means their device activates the
strings of the guitar rather than synthesizing sounds. It makes the guitar a
whole new instrument—you can’t play it like a regular guitar, well, you could,
but it would be weird. Imagine something like a set of E-bows, one for each
string that can keep them sounding once activated or touched. It has way more
options—filters, arpeggiators, mutes, etc—than an E-bow, but that analogy might
allow you to picture it.
Anyway, it’s nice to see them developing that and some of
the other gadgets that have no obvious market. I doubt there are players out
there asking for something like this, but some might figure out a way to make a
new kind of music on it. You have to figure out how to use them or play them
from scratch (sort of). A guitar virtuoso wouldn’t be able to jump onto this
thing for example—it requires a re-think.
Some of us jammed briefly on some of their gear that they
had set up in a back room.
I saw other synths in a used gear store—some made by former
Moog factory employees—that were equally bizarre. One had no keyboard, or way
to input a keyboard, and it had alien glyphs to assign patches. Another had
many buttons that were completely unlabeled. What’s going on down here?
Southern Foam
Some of us went to a very tasty restaurant called The Admiral in a cinder block building in
West Asheville.
There has been an explosion of foodie places around here. Some
are impossible to get into. We had to book ahead for this one, and we just got
in for the last orders before the place turns into an innovative and fairly
small dance club! They remove all the tables.
There was local cuisine with foams—all very tasty, but not
sure I approve of the Southern Foam concept…this (below) is probably the reason
a lot of restaurants discourage food photography…sorry guys. It WAS really
tasty.
Carter (Trumpet and Flugelhorn) was at the same music store,
and after leaving he witnessed a local cyclist get into an altercation with a
driver. One of them (the driver or the cyclist) had cut off the other. The
angry cyclist pulled around to the driver’s window to exchange words, only to
throw his hands up and quickly back away when confronted by a gun.
It sounded like this cyclist has a little bit of a short
fuse, which might need to be addressed, but it also shows the ease with which a
gun comes into play in many parts of this country. Easy to see how a random
stupid confrontation or bit of road rage could quickly escalate into someone’s
death. Scary.
The audience here in Asheville was incredible! They were on
their feet from the beginning of the show. "Wild Wild Life" is going over
well—OK, it is pretty familiar, but Kelly’s arrangement and Annie B Parson’s
choreography really helps as well…not to mention the willingness of the band
to go somewhere completely new on that song.
Here
Lies Love is still running! What a weird feeling to leave town when
this show I have worked on for so many years is still playing almost every
night.
We have to get out of the LuEsther space at The Public in
August, so we are looking for appropriate or could be venues in NYC where the
piece could move. Very exciting.
A cast album has been recorded, and mixing is proceeding in
stages—we’ll pick it up again when I have a break from touring. There are many
(7 or 8) songs that were written for the show that were not on the previous
recorded version. The narrative and character are much more apparent with these
new songs…and the cast do an incredible job singing them.
The floor (standing room) for Here
Lies Love is sold out for the entire run! Most of the audience will be
on the floor— there are only a small number of balcony seats for those who
can’t stand throughout the show, so this news is pretty thrilling. I did hear a
rumor that the show might get extended through the end of May; so more tix may
become available soon.
Here’s the LuEsther space where the show will take place. (This
is from about a week ago when construction was still in progress.)
The “action” takes place on the small stages and platforms
one can see all around the edges. The audience stands in the middle. Balcony
railings are not in yet.
Had a day off in Sydney before heading to Tasmania, so I took
advantage of our being part of the Sydney Festival and got a ticket to Verdi’s Masked Ball
directed by La Fura dels Baus,
a longstanding Barcelona-based experimental theater group.
First of all, the opera house is NOT the building that is
usually pictured in the postcard views of Sydney—that is the symphony hall. The
opera house is the smaller, almost identical building that is often hidden
behind it. In the photo below, the opera house is on the left.
The production was set in some indeterminate Orwellian
dystopia. As the pit orchestra played the overture, a pretty spectacular film
of body parts with texts and mirrored masks was projected on a scrim. This flew up to
reveal the giant set which consisted of industrial columns that could move up
and down (where is the fly-space in this building?). When this part of the set
was down it resembled a concrete freeway underpass—a weird urban dead zone out
of a J. G. Ballard novel. A false ceiling of fluorescent panels flew in; it
looked like office lighting. Like the columns, the fluorescent ceiling could
also be raised and lowered—sometimes with “watcher” characters on board,
looking over railings above the lights.
All the actors wore business suits that were visibly
numbered, as well as weird headpiece appliances that covered their ears and
made them all look like bald clones. I liked it.
This being a Verdi opera, there were plenty of catchy tunes.
(Maybe the piece had been compressed a little? The running time was only 2 ½
hours.) The hits came about every 10 minutes. I left singing a particularly
ironic one in my head, which is what is supposed to happen. (This particular
tune was ironic because the tune itself is jaunty, but it’s sung by some
conspirators who are up to no good—it’s a foreshadowing of bad things to come.)
Of course I’m watching all this thinking, “Budget!”. It’s no
accident that “experimental” or “downtown” composers and theater directors
angle to get gigs in the opera world—where else could one have the budget to
indulge in a vision like this!
What does the dystopian vibe have to do with Verdi’s opera
and its narrative? Not a whole lot, though the opera is certainly set in a
royal court full of intrigues and political (and sexual) rivalries—not much has
changed. And one could argue that the “masks” could be viewed, metaphorically,
as the face one puts on to one’s peers and to meet the public.
Does Verdi need updating? Probably not, though the spectacular staging
was part of what one was paying to see. Did it give the piece a new
contemporary resonance and meaning? I dunno about that either. One ultimately
wishes for new works with the tunefulness of Verdi, or equivalent musical
impact, that fit a staging as revolutionary as this one.
Yesterday a group of us were
invited by Pete Lawler of the band Weddings Parties
Anything to visit the Percy
Grainger museum here in Melbourne. A group of us grabbed local bike share
bikes ($2.70 for 24 hours!) and mandatory helmets ($5 at the local 7-Eleven,
with a $3 rebate if you return your helmet!) and headed towards the university.
We were met by Monica Syrette and Brian Allison, curators at the museum, who
explained a little about the museum and Grainger before we began our viewing.
Grainger was a turn of the last
century composer, most known for some band arrangements that almost every
school band learns.
He was also a lot of other
things—among them a famous concert pianist who played worldwide. Band students
aren't told about all the varied aspects of his life, however he stipulated
that it should all be laid bare when his life's work was presented in this
biographical museum. His idea was that every aspect of a creative person’s life
has some bearing on their work. So this museum has rooms about his dad, who
built bridges and civic buildings around Australia (when he was sober), and his
mother, whose dresses are on display. It’s an admirable idea—to include more
context in the presentation of an artist’s work—though how much of his
attachment to his mum and her tragic suicide shows up in his composing is
questionable.
In his later years, Grainger
developed an aversion to English words with Latin roots—so the word “museum”
was, in this system, to be replaced with the term “Hoard House”. He hoped this
was what all museums would henceforth be called. I agree. The Guggenheim Hoard
House, the Hoard House of Modern Art—let’s be honest about what these places
are.
He lived in England for a while
and is remembered there as a folk song collector, and some of his compositions
show this influence. One of his famous tunes was called “Lincolnshire Posy”. In
the U.S. he is remembered as a concert pianist and composer. and in Australia
he is virtually unknown (this could be disputed, as most in Australia are at
least familiar with his arrangement of the folk tune “Country Gardens”). We
have, it seems, many biographies.
He had many diverse interests and
felt that artists were always in danger of being pigeonholed for one thing—I
have to agree. Here is a quote from him:
“The artist is not (as so many so called ‘inartistic’ people seem to
like to believe) a being supernaturally gifted with skill for some branch of
art. To sing, make music, paint, draw, carve and dance is natural to all
humanity, and it is only a lopsided civilisation, mad on ‘specialisation’, that
scares the ‘tame cats’ of humanity into abandoning their natural right to an
allround manysided life.” Source
Here’s another quote—a sort of
early idea regarding emergent art forms:
“I don’t especially
value ‘originality’ in art, as I consider the communal development of folksongs
is no whit inferior to the original achievement of a great outstanding
‘original’ genius. It is the universal that pulls me in all matters and I am
more thrilled by these points that all people have in common than in the
special achievements and specialness of individuals.” Source
He was the definition of an
iconoclast. At one point he and his wife had the idea to design clothing made
of towels.
This was not just some idle wacky
whim. Grainger had a thorough justification for these outfits:
“My mother was devoted to Lafcadio Hearn’s stories of Japan and she
worshipped many aspects of Japanese civilization—for instance its cleanliness.
And she and I often discussed the filthiness of European clothes: men’s coats
in which the sweat of years is allowed to gather, our shoes that bring the dirt
of the streets into our homes. And around 1910 (after we had both been fired by
the beauty of Maori and South Sea island clothes and fabrics seen in museums in
New Zealand and Australia) my mother mooted the idea of clothes made
of Turkish towels – cool in summer, warm in the winter, and washable at
all times.” Source
He actually wore these outfits
while teaching and writing, and he was assisted in making them by both his
mother and his wife.
“Between
1910 and 1914 I wore these clothes while giving many of my lessons in London
and continually during my composing holidays in Denmark. In 1932 or 1933 my wife and I took up again this
idea of clothing made of towelling and when in Australia in 1934 and 1935
we were amazed by the beauty of
the bath towels on sale in Australia—some imported from England, Chekoslovakia
and America, but most of them (and among them the most beautiful ones)
manufactured in Australia.” Source
And here he proposes a proto-Bauhaus
idea—the beauty and practicality of machine-made objects:
“Here was
a chance to show what could be done with the beauty born of machinery—a beauty
as rich and subtle, in its own way, as anything made by hand or loom. The
problem was to use the towels with as little cutting and sewing as possible,
and in this skill my wife shone.” Source
Now, you might be thinking, “Hold
on, this guy is crazy!” You might also be thinking, “This guy is straight?” One
could say he simply had the courage to indulge in his own very forward and
original ideas. The kinky sex part will come later.
In later years he got fed up with
performing, claiming—like Glenn Gould would many years later—that the music he
conceived was not translating accurately into scores or performance. The music
he was writing was getting quite complicated, and was often scored for unusual
instruments. Here’s a piece for an imaginary ballet:
His idea was to “free” music.
Some of his compositions at this time were free of a central tonality and were
in this sense way ahead of their time. These avenues of inquiry eventually led
to the invention of a host of oddball electronic instruments—including one that
plays via rolls of cardboard, which he called the Kangaroo Pouch machine. Here
it is in the Graingers’ house in White Plains, NY:
The cardboard rolls scrolled from
one side to the other, and the sheets were cut much like a range of hills and
valleys. Small rollers ran along the crests of these “hills”, which caused the
attached arms of various levers to go up and down and effect a change in the
pitch of 4 oscillators. The resulting music was a bit like a series of sirens,
all going up and down at different times. Not as unpleasant as it might sound.
You can hear a recording here.
Following Grainger’s wish that
nothing in his life be left out in the Hoard House we come to the biggest
surprise—the "Lust Branch". He left a trunk that he stipulated wasn't
to be opened until 10 years after his death, so the University held a big
ceremony for the trunk opening. What kind of wonders and unpublished musical
scores might be inside?
When they opened it up it was
filled with, amongst other things, bloody shirts, a large collection of whips,
diagrams showing various ways to be whipped, and photos of his naked backside
covered in bloody whip welts.
...they quickly put it all back
in the box. But by deeming that the lust collection be included in the Hoard House
it was clear that he wasn’t ashamed of his both sadistic and masochistic
leanings.
“I am a sadist & a
flagellant—my highest sexual delight is to whip a beloved woman’s body… To a
lesser degree I enjoy being whipped myself (& before marriage used to whip
myself every few weeks)…” Source
He knew the contents of the box would cause an uproar, but he wasn’t
trying to hide it and didn’t seem to think it was sinful or anything like that.
His wife even aided him in his painful desires or was the willing victim in
some cases one might assume—so it was a family arrangement. Here he wrote to
his future bride, "I shall thoroly thoroly (sic)
understand if you cannot in any way see yr way to follow up this hot wish of
mine." (Source) But she did manage his
hot wish, and they got married in a ceremony that capped a concert at the
Hollywood Bowl!
Grainger had what we would
now define as a dark side. Ever since he was a boy he was enamored of Norse
myths and tales, and he felt that these were obviously the product of an
extremely creative people. Not to take anything away from the Scandanavians,
but Grainger had a theory that Northern people were more creative than
Southern. By Southern he meant the Mediterranean people. He felt that Italian
composers and operas were overrated—this included the Semitic people and
composers whose symphonies were popular.
Grainger went so far as to take a
series of pictures of the eyes of composers and musicians he came in contact
with to show that the blue-eyed ones were superior. Oddly, this odd theory or
prejudice didn’t diminish his respect and admiration for other groups outside
of those he disdained—he was a big Duke Ellington fan in later years, for
example. He brought the Ellington big band down to his classes at NYU to
expound on the ingenious and novel approaches the Duke had taken to
arrangements. This was well before jazz was taken seriously in academia.
To further these ends Grainger went so far as to develop “Blue-Eyed
English”—a version of the English language purged of all Latinisms. Of course,
so much of our language has Latin roots that what he ended up with was
something truly bizarre. I’ll wrap this post up with this glossary
“translation” of many common words into Blue-Eyed English:
Last night I watched a UK doc called Wagner and
Me, the me being British actor and personality Stephen Fry. He loves
Wagner’s work and in the film he visits Bayreuth. Besides talking about what a
shrine the place is for him, he asks the inevitable questions about whether our
assessment of art should be affected by an artist’s behavior, politics, or, in
this case, anti-Semitism. Fry is Jewish, so he embodies this conflict in some
ways. He doesn’t focus on the serial adulterer side of Wagner’s personality—so
we assume that doesn’t necessarily affect whether or not we like Wagner’s work.
I know a smattering about Wagner: the big rousing tunes, the long mythic Lord Of The Rings-type operatic saga,
his professed need to build a completely new theater to perform his new work
in, his anti-Semitism, and his Gesamtkunstwerk concept—a creative form that
embodies all the arts. But I was hoping to learn a little more, so I rented
this doc.
Wagner’s work was notoriously loved by Hitler, though of
course Wagner had been dead for decades before the little guy came to power—so
Wagner didn’t write work supporting the Nazis or encouraging the Holocaust. He
can’t be blamed as being a supporter or collaborator. However, in a famous essay
that Wagner wrote before he became successful, he railed against Mendelssohn
and another Jewish composer who was very, very popular at the time. No doubt
there was professional jealousy involved, as these guys were both wildly
popular and had found patrons to support them. Wagner, meanwhile was getting
himself deeper and deeper into debt, and at one point he found himself on the
wrong side of a revolution (though a side we might politically agree with) and
was forced to immigrate to Switzerland for many years.
After his years in “exile” he returned, having conveniently
made friends with the wife of the new King Ludwig II. The King was a madman who
was extravagant and rich beyond imagining. Below is his castle, which was the
inspiration for the one in Disneyland. The castle itself was based on a
fantasia of what a medieval castle might look like—but this was the mid-1800’s and
no one was building medieval castles anymore! Not only that, it was a
simulation of something, a physical manifestation of a historical architecture
style that had never existed. Perfect for Wagner though, as this castle has now
become a kind of archetype of a fairy tale castle and Wagner was all about
embodying German mythology and archetypes in his operas.
Can I offer that this cozying-up–to-the-wife-of-the-crazy-king-thing
might be viewed as a craven means of securing arts funding (pretty sleazy
actually), but really how different is it from the schmoozing and ass-kissing
that goes on today? And it worked. Wagner got himself out of debt, began completing
his Ring cycle of operas, and securing a suitable venue in which they could be
performed.
Most of us musicians and composers don’t have the hubris to
think that a completely new venue should be built to accommodate our artistic
dreams—though there are indeed visual artists who have had museum wings and
structures made to accommodate their work. More often we look to existing
venues (concert halls, ballrooms, bandshells, basketball arenas, and re-purposed
industrial buildings) and hope to find our work performed in the one that will
showcase it in its best light. Wagner is the exception to my rule that we tend
to tailor our art to these existing and available venues.
Wagner wanted the orchestra that would play his work to be
both larger than usual and hidden. That might seem a contradiction, but he had
his reasons. He wanted expanded brass and bass sections to accommodate the
bombast to come, and he hid the orchestra in order to submerge the music—at
least visually—more thoroughly into the total work. To his credit, he also
wanted the performances to be less elitist than opera had a tendency to become.
He was annoyed at the extra-musical behavior that often took place during opera
season—the socializing, gawking, and gossiping. To emphasize the more
egalitarian aspect of his theater he eschewed much of the Rococo decor and gilt
that often covers opera venues. This was to be serious—a shrine, a people’s
temple, set isolated on a high grassy hill.
Though I view his hubris at insisting on a purpose-built
venue as the exception as far as composers go, I realized while watching the
doc that there are indeed recent equivalents—Celine Dion, Elton John, Cirque du Soleil, and a handful of other Vegas shows have had venues specially built to
accommodate their needs. Lion King and Spiderman on Broadway in NYC are others—the
amount of remodeling and construction that went into the theaters where these
shows run effectively makes them into new purpose-built venues.
I find this slightly disgusting and unfair. I tend to
believe that part of the challenge of any artistic endeavor is to find a way to
work within the limitations and physical restrictions that have been given to
you. That’s part of the game—to acknowledge the rules and context but then come
up with something totally new within that world. Maybe there’s some creative
jealously here—I convince myself that ignoring the rules is easier than
accepting the restrictions as given; that ignoring them isn’t playing the
game. (What rules one might ask?) To propose impractical projects might be the
mark of a visionary, but one wonders if the huge effort and expense to realize them
necessarily guarantees an appropriately increased level of audience experience.
Think of Jeff Koons’ locomotive that he proposes suspending by the barely
solvent LA County Museum. Sometimes yes, bigness is indeed part of a piece—but
scale is not a sure-fire guarantee of a great experience.
Back to the question of whether or not we can allow
ourselves to like someone’s work knowing they might be a despicable human
being, hold abhorrent views, or possibly be a complete pervert. Do we care that
Picasso may have been a bad father and mistreated all his wives? Not
particularly—we tend to separate his work, or at least our judgement of its
quality, from his private life. Do we care that the poet Elizabeth Bishop made
excuses for the brutal dictatorship in Brazil? Does that invalidate her work?
The composer Gesualdo
murdered his wife. Mussorgsky
was an alcoholic. The composer Henry Cowell went to
prison for molesting young boys. Caravaggio killed a man over
a game of tennis! And the contemporary painter John Currin goes against
most of his peers and often espouses conservative Republican political views.
Actors and singers have a harder time separating themselves
from their work. Mostly because physically they are their work—to a large extent their bodies are what we see and
hear in their work—it becomes hard to separate them from what they do. As a
young man I found both Charlton Heston and John Wayne intolerable based on
their political views (though I’ve managed to watch Wayne’s John Ford westerns
lately). I’m suspicious of Scientologists—Beck, Cruise, Travolta—but they seem to keep their wacky cult leanings out of their work. More than a few
country singers hold pretty radically conservative views and sometimes it makes
it into songs like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue”. Ted Nugent is just a crazy person,
period. It can be confusing.
And if we do sometimes judge someone’s work based on their
extracurricular behavior, is the reverse then true? Does being a good and kind
person make your work better? Most certainly not. The painter Jacques-Louis
David promoted the overthrow of the monarchy during the French revolution—something
we tend to empathize with. A lot of his work was propaganda; his political
beliefs were very much entangled in his work. Here is an unfinished work
depicting the provisional government forming at an (indoor) tennis court:
Though we might agree with his politics and instincts, do we
give him extra artistic points as a result?
Picasso’s “Guernica”—an act of political protest—is given
high marks. But imagine if instead of depicting the pain and horror of the
civilian bombing of a Spanish village, it depicted civilians being bombed by
the Allies in Dresden or Berlin. The painting might not look all that
different. Imagine what our architectural taste would be like if Hitler had
decided to promote an industrial-inspired Bauhaus aesthetic rather than the
romantic imperialism of Speer. Would modernism have been suddenly abandoned as
a project?
Wagner’s anti-Semitism is not inherent in his work, I don’t think.
Though his operas evoke a sense of the deep roots of Teutonic culture and
therefore encourage a pride of that culture, it isn’t exclusionary. So, we can
compartmentalize here if we want to. Picasso’s work doesn’t espouse bad
parenting. Currin’s paintings of grotesque nudes don’t promote the Tea Party.
Caravaggio doesn’t excuse murder in his paintings. Similarly, Fry concludes
that Wagner’s work should be judged solely on its merits, and he suggests we
view and hear it independently from his personal views.
Until The Light Takes Us(2008), is a documentary about black metal music culture in Norway that’s quite good. You don’t have to know much about, or even like the music to be drawn into this film. It seems that the impulse of the original black metal bands, who had a miniscule following, was in part, to defend Norwegian culture—at least as they saw it. They saw the Americanization of their culture as a terrible thing and something to fight against. When the first McDonalds came to Norway, they shot at it. Similarly, they felt that Christianity imposed upon true Norse culture and mythology (i.e. Odin and Thor)—quite reasonable, in a way (I was rooting for them, at this point).
The documentary describes the rise of the black metal scene. One guy, Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, was the first to wear “corpse” makeup.
Another artist, to make a statement, burnt a church that was built over a pre-Christian sacred site.
One practitioner compares the scene’s music and art to that of Edvard Munch, another Norwegian, which isn’t a big stretch. Both Munch and artists of the black metal scene express parts of their culture that are generally kept tightly bolted down.
Although, they aren’t all necessarily “nice” guys. Burzum frontman, Varg “Count Grischnackh” Vikernes, is interviewed in prison (a prison with very homey curtains it seems!), where he is serving 21 years for murder and several church burnings. He describes the murder, quite matter-of-factly, in the film. It’s a chilling scene, as he comes across as articulate and disarmingly mild-mannered, explaining that their music is a way of defending Norwegian culture and heritage.
The press portrayed the black metal scene as purely Satanist, which it was not. But, it was the press’ branding of the scene as Satanic that caught fire (oops). Soon, everyone accepted this as truth and as younger bands came into the scene, they claimed to be Satanists. These kids burned more churches than ever before, and also put up 666 graffiti. It all spiraled out of control—not that there was much “control” from the start.
What began as a not totally unreasonable impulse to defend Norwegian culture, (though I’m not defending the burnings and murder) was perverted by the media. This perversion encouraged a far more deeply disturbed youth to emerge, badly copy, develop and act out in sad and meaningless ways. The “evil” thing that was preached against in press, was, in a way, encouraged to come forth and manifest.
A friend wrote to me, “David, didn't something vaguely analogous happen with American skinhead bands back in the day—I mean, decline of western civilization one day? Didn't [west coast punk groups] groups like TSOL launch entirely banal attacks on suburban ennui, but looked like skinheads with some window dressings, got written up as white supremacists, and so began a generation of surf Nazis?”
One can see how forms, not just musical, that trade and dabble in dangerous, disturbing images and provocative actions—even if these images and actions are not the main focus of their intent—run the risk of being perverted. There is, it seems, a great likelihood that potent images and actions will be used for other purposes. Not just likelihood, one can almost predict that powerful memes like these, like some strong medicine or drug, will inevitably be repurposed. It’s almost as if there really is a dark world, and upon entering, one surrenders some control—or at least maintaining control is extremely difficult. Someone like young Vikernes, disgusted by the bombardment of commercial images he saw all around him, decided to resist not just a little, but completely reject the whole package of how other people accept the world. He, alone, struck out into remote and barren territory, as he described, “to find the truth in a sea of lies.” Again, I’m sympathetic to the resistance to the McDonaldification of his country—most of us simply cave in and accept that this is the way things are going to be. It takes a saint or a maniac to reject the status quo, and maybe the two are flip sides of the same coin.
Going at this alone is a solitary quest, in a dangerous landscape, taken, in this case, without a guide. One would be tempted to say that maybe Odin, Thor, Wotan and the rest of the Norse horde, might have been summoned—but maybe these Gods or archetypes are too powerful to be confronted by an amateur. As with Voudoun, chanting, LSD and many other arts and practices that reach parts of us that we often don’t touch, it might be wise to have a professional along who knows where the dangers and pitfalls lie.
“The truth is hidden, under grass, under rocks, in a hidden trail, a forgotten trail in the forest, you know? And when you find these trails you will stumble, you will get branches in your face.” -Varg Vikernes
Additional quotes from others in the scene:
“He is like an angel lost in a dark universe.”
“It’s out there now [black metal]… anyone can have it… it’s like a brand now.”
This image was captured by one of the cast members, Evan D'Angeles, in a moment when our rehearsal was interrupted by the fire alarm
The story follows former first lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos, from her childhood up to the moment at the end of the People Power revolution when she and Ferdinand Marcos flee Manila (the infamous shoes were yet to be discovered, so they are not mentioned). Here Lies Love is entirely true and much of the lyric content comes from speeches and interviews the various characters gave over the years.
The production is a disco musical that I (with occasional help from Fatboy Slim) have been working on for many years. The production is directed by Alex Timbers and features a mostly Filipino cast of amazingly talented actors and singers. To make a long story short—it went amazingly well. Yes, there were problems, but all of them seem fixable. The main issues we were concerned with before the series of live performances were the following:
Can a story be imparted with almost no dialogue, and
Can we stage this "beast" (as Oskar at the Public Theater refers to it)—the reason Oskar calls the staging a “beast” is because the audience stands (and dances!) in the middle of the room while the action of the production takes place all around them.
The answer to both concerns is yes—the staging and the concept work. It works so well that I sort of cried at every performance. I attended all six performances, as we kept making small changes. To be honest, my tears at one show were because the sound mix was so atrocious, but at the others I cried because I was deeply moved by the story and emotions that the actors depicted. Now, one might say, “Sure, he knows the story inside and out,” and some might think that I got emotional because I was simply thrilled by seeing my vision finally realized—but I think some others may have had the same experience. In the end, I'd say it's the best thing I've done since the Stop Making Sense tour—which I guess is saying something.
The music, much of it done in collaboration with Fatboy Slim, is influenced by about 4 decades of dance music, much of which I have posted on this months’ streaming radio playlist. Funk, electro, disco, house, go-go, techno, samba, zouk, dubstep... I could go on and on. The score doesn't follow any particular club style—it hops all over to better represent each character's moment. This playlist is long (over seven hours of inspiration!) and it could have been longer—but this gives you an idea of the many beats and styles that fed into this thing.
I purchased Jay-Z's book, Decoded, via Amazon Kindle to read on my iPad. I was mostly interested by the mosaic/collage/multimedia aspect of the book—which turned out to be less impressive than advertised.
A couple of weeks ago, I updated my Kindle iPad app, along with a bunch of other apps. A few days later, I was discussing my upcoming music book with Adam, from McSweeney’s. I wanted to show him the way the video excerpts were inserted into Mr. Z's book.
The videos from Decoded are at the beginning of each chapter—a feature I like because they don't interrupt the flow of reading. In the videos, Jay-Z sits at a desk and tells us that rap is poetry. It's nice to see him step out from behind a persona, but as far as extra content goes, it is less than hoped for. How about a tour of Marcy Projects (a subject explored in some of the chapters)? With multimedia implemented throughout the book, I thought he could have done much more with it. Regardless, there is good stuff in the book—and it has a nice cover too!
Anyway, in my attempt to show Adam the videos, I discovered that they were all gone—in their place was a message that this content was not supported on my iPad.
It seems that, once again, Amazon has removed purchased material from our devices. I suspect Apple had a hand in this as well. Apple has consistently sabotaged their competitors’ apps and software that allow you to sync other devices with their own. Then, all of the sudden, apps that once did X and Y suddenly don’t perform those functions anymore. In most cases those apps were free—so it is hard to complain too much. Although, some of the free apps contained magazines, books and other content, like Decoded, that I purchased and though they may not have been very good, I paid for them and they were mine to keep! They came to my house and ripped pages out of my book!
I love reading on these devices, as I travel a lot when I tour. They allow me to easily have access to, and read the newspapers and magazines I subscribe to... but these "fuck you" gestures to us, the consumers, reminds me of the nonsense the record companies got up to—and a lot of good it did them!
