it’s just too heavy for Superman to lift
[Note from the six-degrees-of-separation world of Taylor Hicks: In April 2006, a [wink] Taylor Hicks fan blog quotes Dave Eggers discussing whether The Flaming Lips have “sold out” and what selling out means. This puts The Flaming Lips squarely in the consciousness of any Taylor Hicks fan who bothers to really read the Eggers quote. With The Flaming Lips on the brain, I eventually get The Fearless Freaks—a documentary about the band—to the top of my Netflix queue. Then, I shamelessly wring a new Taylor Hicks blog post out of it. Booyah!]
Anyhoo, watching the documentary: we get the backstory, the Oklahoma scene, the post-punk 80’s, how the band got started, some modest words from the lead singer, Wayne Coyne, some lessons learned about heroin abuse, and surprisingly very little about music itself. That is, there’s a lot about presentation and symbols and getting the fans excited, and then some words about the religious implications of The Who and how to copy the Butthole Surfers. At one point, Wayne explains how he came to affect his trademark white suit for shows. He saw some news footage after a young Miles Davis was attacked in public. Miles was wearing a light yellow suit and had bled all over it. Wayne says the blood on that clean-cut suit creates a shiver, a frisson between the symbols of the respectable suit and the grotesqueness of blood. Wanting to exploit that frisson, Wayne adopted wearing a white suit for shows and used fake blood to create a theatrical effect from what was an actual event. At one point in the documentary, Wayne takes the time to explain his method of soaking his suits overnight in cool water to effectively remove the fake blood stains. And this is genius rockumentary stuff: we are taken on a fantastic trip from footage of someone actually injecting heroin, to shots of the live shows (animal costumes, fake blood, megaphones, fire), to a domestic scene about getting out pesky laundry stains.
Symbology and theater and fans and music…this leads me to notice some news here and here about a new book, Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar.
What is this? Well, you can read about it, but basically, from 1968 to 1977, Mike Stevens, a Washington D.C. native, created a whole collection of fake soul music album covers. Mingering Mike (Mike Stevens) created the art, but lost it when he went broke and a landlord gave away all his belongings. A flea-sale addict found the collection, and announced his find on a blog. He eventually tracked down Mike, who thought the material had been lost forever. This story has been around the Internet for a few years, but the media coverage you see now is in support of the new book and a gallery show on now in D.C.
A book review from The New Yorker caught my eye:
[Mike] painted some fifty LP covers and nearly as many 45 r.p.m. picture sleeves (inserting cardboard disks with labels, even painting record grooves). […] …[T]he naïve charm of the album covers is a reminder that the greatest pop musicians succeed at implying an entire world as dazzlingly seductive as their songs.
Wayne Coyne appropriates symbols to make theater that attracts fans to his music and to create the world of The Flaming Lips. Mingering Mike did something similar in his desire to create a fake soul music world with his album art. What Mike was capturing, of course, are the symbols of 60s and 70s soul music. Sam Cooke is not just Sam Cooke, he’s a series of images, music, meanings for the soul music fan.
If a musician makes the Tolkien-esque journey into creating a musical world, how does s/he enter the realm and how does s/he create or appropriate symbols for certain genres? This is meta-meaning that lurks around and beyond the music, something an artist in a particular genre must tap into to be taken seriously. It’s everything from clothes, album covers/website design, live shows as theater, interaction with the press and the fans, editing one’s backstory, to simply embodying the music in a fully individual manner, even as the content changes over time. When an artist doesn’t quite capture the symbols, or sends conflicting symbols, there is resistance from potential fans. Can we say we purely listen to and experience music without these symbols? I think not.
How does an musician “imply an entire world”? To me, this means that not only does the music satisfy us, but also that we feel we have entered a fully imagined (but not necessarily static) concept of the world. That is, the artist can take us on the creative journey through theater and self-actualization. The Flaming Lips would fit that kind of definition. The old soul music greats are the standard for this kind of work, and other artists easily come to mind: Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Van Morrison, Robbie Robertson…ah! I see a problem. Can a new artist create a “world”? Or is that something that only comes after years or decades of public musical production?
Does anyone current fit the definition for you? Feel free to pick your fave artist and ’splain.
Here’s one candidate:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R3CYVLcYZw&mode=related&search=]
categories: music
posted by guinness at 01:00 am
I’m not familiar with enough artists to throw a name in the pot..as far as creating a world, my guess is that it would take time…how much I wouldn’t know, but certainly a world would not be created by one song…mho..Just for the record, this guy has a nice voice…
Some will say that’s what Taylor Hicks is trying to do
with his “Modern Whomp” music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Hicks_(album)
Have not read the whole article as yet, but man, does that dude sound like Brian Ferry.
Bryan Ferry - yes - Roxy Music
I can’t believe you posted that Antony and the Johnsons video. I have that on my Myspace page I love it so much. He is a very interesting dude…and definitely creates a mood, a space, something, but I don’t know if it’s a ‘world’.
I vote for Mark Hollis of Talk Talk, or David Sylvian, even, though I can’t explain why. Their music is moody and otherworldly, and transports me somewhere else.
Mark Hollis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adOqPNdZtSw
David Sylvian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKojaaH3r8E
And at the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the amazing Dexter Romweber:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXkCJ_KGXuc
Guinness,
Thank you!
Joan as Police Woman fits the definition for me. She derives her name from her blond hair period…”channeling her Angie Dickensen from “Police Woman”. She played violin/viola in Antony & The Johnson’s band for years. He duets with her on her cd “Real Life (my favorite song)”. So good. Like Joan Wasser, I prefer them straight up. He had apparently injured his voice recently per his myspace.
Here’s the duet
http://www.myspace.com/joanaspolicewoman
I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, starting to reply, but stopping each time because I keep thinking I’m not understanding the question. When I think of artists who create a world, I don’t think of people like the classic soul artists, Johnny Cash, or Van Morrison: these are people who evoke a world because they are/were so authentic to their time and music that it all stays connected.
Flaming Lips, however, are more akin to my other musical universe, historically informed performance. The HIP people are exploring old music (like really old) by deciphering early notation, studying the writings of composers and performers and reconstructing old instruments to get a handle on how music of past centuries might have sounded. There are a lot of different motivations, but one can certainly think of this as creating a world of sound by very deliberate performance choices. Interestingly enough, what was formerly applied to much earlier music (1000-1750AD) is now applied to music of the 20th centuries, with people using old or reconstructed guitars, analog recording equipment to capture particular sounds.
So, with this understanding, I’d say two modern groups which, for me, create a world are The Decemberists and DeVotchka. Neither is really touching directly a previously known world. With the latter, it’s a world of music as storytelling: with their name, added in, I’m in a late afternoon cafe sipping sherry with a storm raging outside. With the former, it’s in my mind as a post-communist eastern European nightclub. I’ve never seen either band perform, so these are sonically induced images, which I maintain by ignoring the actual geographical reality of the two bands.
i do love the flaming lips and i’m familiar with that eggars quote. i’m so glad you explored this topic. i do think it’s relevant to this whole, i don’t know, taylor hicks experience.
first of all, i only just discovered the flaming lips by watching austin city limits two months ago. what i noticed right away was that there was a very strong connection between the band and the audience. and there was a tremendous amount of joy. that was the common denominator. that really impressed, because there is a lot of good music, but it tends to take itself kind of seriously. but the flaming lips are very playful (there’s this song, cow jam, an instrumental, that features a cow and a duck.) they tend to want to make good music but also envelop you in a theatrical experience that can be profound but fun, and they aren’t afraid to be teased about it. i think that eggars guy was upset about the lips losing their ’80s punk cred. but they’ve been around a long time, and they just evolved, esp. after this musician steve something, a great keyboardist and guitarist, joined the band. it’s so easy to be sour grapes. most critics seem to love them, though.
anyway, about the beatles…because the lips remind me of them, in their magical mystery tour phase, with the wry videos and the costumes, i think the best part of the magic of the beatles is their palpable sense of joy, which is, i think, factor x that will make their music live forever. joy and inventiveness and a sense of no boundaries. when they were starting out in hamburg, i read that the owner of the club kept haranguing them to “mach shau, mach shau,” make a show of it, and that’s how they developed this zany, over the top performance style; they made jokes, did impromptu skits, anything to keep the audience’s attention. it was about the music but also creating an experience.
now, taylor doesn’t goof off like the beatles or use puppets like the flaming lips. but, like them, he does have this palpable sense of joy when he performes and that is what draws me to him more than anything, i think. it’s a sense of expansiveness, of generosity of spirit, of inclusiveness, wrapping you into this sphere of pure joy in the music and in the moment, that reminds me of iconic bands like the beatles and the flaming lips. you get the sense that music is everything to such people. it’s an intense, kind of fierce experience. i hope that as taylor hicks continues his musical journey, he will find songs that hit their mark with more and more people, so that more can share the love! because when you get that in a performer, it’s about the music, yeah, but also about being really and truly alive. i hope some of this made sense!
There’s no wrong way or right way to answer this question, however one interprets it is fine with me. I thought the meanings that lurk around the music, in the artist’s performance style, in the conscious and unconscious choices artists make about how to sell oneself, in what symbols WE bring TO the music because of past music, all of this would be interesting to explore.
To me the Mingering Mike art is really important because it gets at how music was packaged even in the heyday of soul music. Being authentic to one’s time, as What points out, still involved appropriating certain semantic and symbolic meanings in the music and in the performances. “Authentic” is a way of saying we can’t see the seams of the costume. But I do believe music involves donning certain symbolic costumes to help perform the music and sell the songs. If Wayne Coyne does it consciously by applying blood, that’s the intellectual approach which works perfectly for the world he is trying to create.
I guess I would argue that old style soul musicians did give “historically informed performances,” but they weren’t consciously trying to recreate something, they were representing a heritage, from the style of singing, to the themes of the songs. Nevertheless, I still think there is a case for a soul musicians creating a world. And by “world” I guess I mean, as I wrote in the post, that we feel a consistent artist vision, a view that we enter, that becomes almost palpable though its strength and consistency.
And Johnny Cash definately created a world. If you think of what he was trying to accomplish with the Folsom Prison recording: to create an “atmosphere,” to make a statement about the reality of humanity, to create a world that you understand through the eyes of Johnny Cash. I would put Johnny Cash on the Wayne Coyne side of things, actually. A man in white with blood stains and a man in black.
On the other hand, if the musician’s symbolic choices aren’t consistent, there’s a disconnect and potential fans are turned off or confused. This is the problem Taylor Hicks has for the time being. An overly slick pop CD being toured as a Olde Timey revival meeting live show, A vacillation between wanting the traps of professional publicity and a desire to associate oneself with old soul and blues music symbology. Everyone calls it “the line” he has to tread. I’m just trying to get at what that means, and how some artists are great at walking it (or at transcending it).
But again, it’s just an open-ended question…
Your post has had me thinking for days now. I loved it. Really sorry I was not able to write sooner. I was almost giddy with your reference and link to Mingering Mike. Having been captivated by that whole story since I read about Stevens when the news first broke. He is kind of the modern day Walter Mitty. (Who was Mitty some are asking?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mitty
The world of Mingering Mike is so palpable his work invites you move in, sit down and listen to some music. Concentrate with your eyes closed and you might even hear some.
Here is the way I am looking at your question/s Guinness. I see two types of worlds that come from musicians that I and others follow. One is the world that some highly public figures open for us via the press. The second is a personal world that opens inside of us, inside of you and me, the audience, when the performer does their stuff. I find the second a more interesting trip.
There are dudes like Elvis and Frank Sinatra who had such public colorful lives that when they would perform their fans felt like they knew them intimately. Going to see them felt like visiting a friend. You jump into their world- or the one you think is their world. Many artists over time if they stay in the public eye fit that type of example to some degree.
What I think is more key to music’s intimacy to our hearts is the way some musicians bring us to a type of emotional cusp where we create a new room in ourselves that is triggered by them. When we see or hear them again we are whisked to this new room. Over time that room gets more fleshed out — maybe becomes a whole mansion with a woods where we walk when we hear them. R.E.M., Van, The Bealtles, Ray Charles, SRV, Paul Simon, Dylan. My list is longer and my rooms that have turned into mansions are the places where my heart as an arts myself still grows. They are the places were I as a seeker or what this living experience is about finds room to dwell. You might have a room created by Ray and I have mine. Our rooms came from him but are different because the substance of the walls come from who you are and who I am.
If I could only name one person who has started me building a new room in the last few years it would be Taylor Hicks. That’s why I’m here.