For this interview, I spoke with a former colleague of mine about his musical preferences, regarding both taste in music and use of technologies. Smith went into great detail through the interview, and the responses I have selected for summary below only glimpse some of the broader issues addressed. Unfortunately, the audio recording I made--speaker phone to digital recording--peaked throughout the interview and unfortunately is very distorted. However, if anyone would like to read the full transcript, it is posted here.
Q: With the mood-related music, is there one aspect of it you tend to relate to—tempo, beat, lyrics, aesthetics, etc?
It’s a balance often. I’m absolutely interested in lyrical content and there are artists such as, oh well, without getting too specific, someone like Bob Dylan, who fascinates me as well as others because the lyrical content is so important. However there are other realms too, rhythm particularly—I grew up in a household with an older brother and sister and my musical tastes were very much influenced by theirs. And oddly enough, about the time that I would’ve been a young teenager, it was the punk incursion in America, as well as shortly thereafter sort of the start of rap and hip-hop music, but more significantly I think for me was that my sister had just traveled to Jamaica. She had brought back records from that country that were absolutely riveting to my brother and me. So there has always been that attention to heavily rhythmic music like rap and reggae, both of which remain very important to me.
Q: From what you’ve said about your history with vinyl records and other formats, I have to ask what new technologies you use in discovering/listening to music—iPod, iTunes, MySpace, Pandora?
Primarily iTunes. I find it absolutely fascinating and I got into it in this way. There was a part of my collection that was simply not appearing on vinyl for a long period of time so I would continue to look for traces of it out there and now of course as more time has passed more and more of what in the marketplace would be obscure recordings or not previously commercially a viable recording, in other words 10, 20, 30 years old, are appearing now, and it’s so much easier to look back through iTunes and pick out several of the songs that I liked or remembered. Also within that realm, there was always a tension in years past, you never got to preview a vinyl album unless they had one on in the store and of course I’m talking about ancient history here. Now however if there’s an album, for example, if I’m thinking about the new Lil’ Wayne album… heard the big hit, perhaps in the club perhaps on the radio and I want to know what the rest is like, well, I can actually sample it online, and I think it’s absolutely wonderful. Oddly enough it hasn’t led to greater increased purchases for me, in terms of purchasing entire albums based on this or along the lines of purchasing specific songs. That tends to be a mean too now in my listening which is, I tend not to be as much out of focus as perhaps I once was. I’m much more into preparing mixes or different compilations and that tends to be very rewarding for me and they even have a new feature on iTunes, it’s a button where if you selected a specific song in your library it will arrange a mix for you based on its interpretation of the qualities of that song and I find that delightful.
Q: Touching on what you’ve said earlier, what is your relationship with live music and what do you get out of it as opposed to recorded music?
I started going to live performances when I was a teenager, and I’m racking my brain now to try to remember a touchstone live performance and it probably wont come right to the surface. However, I did start going when I was a teenager. The interesting part of it was I think I initially went probably out of that teenage desire to just get out of your house and do something fun with your friends and all the rest. But you’re also very much too a part, not just of experiencing the music, but many of the initial concerts that I went to were a part of that whole fandom that many of us lived in to in that age. It was not just that you needed to see a live recreation of your favorite song or album, but you really wanted to see that performer and you wanted to have that physical experience of being in the same room with them. I still remain a fan of certain performers, but it doesn’t have that same emotional resonance that it might have at say the age of 15 or 16, being in the same room with someone you considered the greatest artist that year. It’s interesting, because I’ve had this conversation with friends, I’m obviously, as any concertgoer, I’ve been to some pretty bad ones where nothing lived up to what you thought it would be, but I think I tend to go to concerts now with a different perception and that is the performance aspect of it. An art form, which is the presentation of music in concert. Certainly I’m still going to them, in fact, as I’ve gotten older, one of the things that has happened is that I’ve become a more frequent traveler to shows. I just came back from Montreal, and the reason I had gone there was to see Nick Cave perform, and that was fascinating for me because I’d first seen him in ’83. And I’d seen a lot of him in the 80’s when he toured more frequently. The first time I saw Nick Cave was the birthday party show. But it was very interesting because Nick has just turned 50 I believe, and nothing could have stopped me from going to that show. I had to see where he was you know I’ve followed his released work and recorded for him, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him physically, publicly, you know, not since the 90s.
Although if you had asked me though at the age of 15 or 16 if I would ever go see Bob Dylan, I would have dismissed that as not really a probable concert that I would see, possibly because I associated him with the 1960s and having much less to do with my time. Now however? I will travel to go see him, in fact just last year I traveled to go see him. Often the people I will travel to go see are people with whom I’ve had a long history with, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but I’ve actually now seen Bob Dylan in a hockey rink in Rochester, MN. I drove to Missouri, maybe 7 or 8 hours, to see the Fall perform in a strip mall, simply because they weren’t going to be performing where I was. Maybe part of it too Steve, is that some of these artists will not be performing in the future, that some of them are getting up there. But part of it is still that excitement of the concert experience that each one is going to be totally different and some of them have just been epic.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Performance Ethnography Essay
As I waited for the blue-robed clan to ascend the Holy Mountain, I could feel the cold sweat run down the back of my neck, balance to the hot pulse in my ringing ears. The cacophonous noise, optic saturation, blindly inebriated surrender to all things synesthetic—a one-night amalgam of sensory overload was the fortuitous result of the most unusual elements. Together, a gay club, noise rock and surrealist film provided equilibrium between two widely variant cultures for a performance both entertaining and enlightening.
Walking down to the White Mice show, I really only expected to have my ears blown. I heard the Providence noise scene was a force to be reckoned with, that its fans took the music as seriously as its bands did, and that earplugs were strongly advised. Yet this fervor, if nothing else, implied to me a vibrant subculture with lively shows and passionate members. The night was far more than this, to say the least. Even just walking up to the venue, visible septum piercings, jagged Mohawks and overwhelming body odor alerted me to the authenticity of the hardcore fans, emphasized by their cryptic cant and insouciant candor. Pushing my way through a sea of Marlboros to the door, I quickly broke eye contact with the shadowy doorman, and quicker hid my notebook in pocket. Ultimately friendly, at face the crowd at the Dark Lady did not appear too welcoming.
But this would be the first of many surprises throughout the night. Despite glares from bystanders outside, the women at the desk were warm and friendly, or so I thought until I met the effeminate, affectionate bartenders. This was the first major contrast during the night, and the first large question about the event: how did a notoriously homosexual club and hardcore noise scene come to coexist in an evening’s performance? Why these cultures? Why here? Why now? All the staff, most all the audience, were all smiles, jokes, and spirit. What in theory sounded like an absurd combination presented itself to be a natural partnership of kindred subcultures, weakly linked in the Providence periphery.
For me, culturally enforced gender stereotypes portray most gay clubs in urban America commonplace for disco revivals and Cher karaoke. One certainly imagines late nights of drinking and dancing, perhaps even pride nights and drag shows. At great distance from this stereotypical culture I thought to find Providence noise shows, but I was mistaken. In recent months, the Dark Lady has collaborated with local noise rock, hardcore and underground indie bands to present a series called Paint It Pink, a loosely curated series whose MySpace profile boasts the motto: “Paint It Pink wants to book the gayest show you’ll ever play.” Sure, gay club: gay music: okay, I get it. But the puzzling pairing with noise rock seemed unfitting for the Dark Lady, whose crystalline chandeliers were adorned with pink feather boas, whose bar featured a dozen brightly colored liqueurs. Moreover, for the first hour waiting for the show to start, I found myself sipping drinks rather quickly to offset the collective tension of concertgoers viewing two wall-size screenings of midgets and transsexuals fellating enormous, enormous dicks. Even some of the most metallic punks in the room seemed slightly off put.
Soon as the music started, the porn stopped—the atmosphere even stranger. The first act, Suffering Bastard, tore through a set of 20 one-minute songs, pausing their aural assault for momentary introductions like: “This one’s about shit!” or “This one is for the Fonz, heyyy.” Ever-shifting from half time to triple time, the band nearly destroyed their two basses, grinding them between pelvis and amplifier for distorted effects while the lead singer bit his own arm repeatedly, drawing blood.
The second band, Pygmy Shrews, was rhythmically more consistent yet lacked the hardcore potency of Suffering Bastard, sticking to a more accessible post-hardcore featuring female vocals, astutely observed by one unseen audience member to sound like “a really fucked-up Bratmobile.” This appeal was not lost on the gen(d)erally indifferent audience who seemed drawn to the vocalist’s defined androgyny and masculine presence, I noted as a few Dark Lady regulars took their fingers from their ears.
After the first two bands played in rapid succession, the headliners of the bill, White Mice, delayed performance for a seemingly endless stint at the bar with a whiskey bottle. As the lights dimmed a large man, dressed in garb befitting a tyrannical Russian czar took center stage, shouting introductions from blank pages, wearing a turban made of film rolls. And then… well I’d never experienced anything quite like it. Three white mice, eyes glowing red from heads torn and mangled, assailing their instruments into a jarring din, enrapturing an audience of dozens into a swaying, sweating, submissive frenzy. Half moshing, half meditating, the audience reacted to White Mice’s every note; one could watch the faces of those closest to the stage, contorting with every shift in the endless drone of distortion. To say there was interaction between White Mice and their audience might be a stretch—they said virtually nothing from stage, had no discernable lyrics to sing along with, and rarely fell into any regular beat suited for dance of any kind. Nevertheless, the audience loved it and applauded enthusiastically at the conclusion of a 45 minute set.
Strangely enough, the most obvious link between these two cultures was the visual presentation during the musical performances. A muted showing of “The Holy Mountain,” 1972 Lennon/Ono-sponsored, Jodorowsky-directed cult classic cum mescaline trip transported the audience from the Dark Lady to a post-Dadaist dreamland, at some points tracking the screaming vocal lines to protest portrayals, doves bursting forth from peoples’ chests, and at other points underscoring deep bass drones with shot after shot of clans climbing mountains, shaving their heads, and partaking in sacrificial rituals. The juxtaposition offered little explanation of the scene the audience found themselves in, yet seemed to provide a subtle reconciliation.
It then became clear—the answer to all those “why” questions I had asked myself when I first entered. As I watched factory clones model manufactured anatomical parts, I began tying together the possible connections between these two cultures—noise rock and gay nightclub—only to discover that the overlaps were as innumerable as they were remote. A penchant for self-indulgence, affinity for a trancelike state, the idea of public display as a projected self-image, populating a real environment in which things could be both simulated yet honestly exaggerated—the cultures awkwardly fit together by melding performance into space by means of clever curation. While the show was certainly anamolous in the larger music scene, it certainly worked well this night and emphasized the not-so-impervious barriers between oft relegated subcultures, perhaps even foreshadowed future cross-cultural exchange.
What struck me most about the night was that both subcultures existed so strongly before the new series Paint It Pink. It was not the case where one dominant culture advocates another, nor where both collaborate for mutual survival. Rather, the collaboration seemed purely creative and succeeded in achieving a artistic synthesis in which the audience was shown but a greater glimpse at the underlying nature of both cultures, their small shared essence, in the shared glorification of real performance.
Word count: 1202
Walking down to the White Mice show, I really only expected to have my ears blown. I heard the Providence noise scene was a force to be reckoned with, that its fans took the music as seriously as its bands did, and that earplugs were strongly advised. Yet this fervor, if nothing else, implied to me a vibrant subculture with lively shows and passionate members. The night was far more than this, to say the least. Even just walking up to the venue, visible septum piercings, jagged Mohawks and overwhelming body odor alerted me to the authenticity of the hardcore fans, emphasized by their cryptic cant and insouciant candor. Pushing my way through a sea of Marlboros to the door, I quickly broke eye contact with the shadowy doorman, and quicker hid my notebook in pocket. Ultimately friendly, at face the crowd at the Dark Lady did not appear too welcoming.
But this would be the first of many surprises throughout the night. Despite glares from bystanders outside, the women at the desk were warm and friendly, or so I thought until I met the effeminate, affectionate bartenders. This was the first major contrast during the night, and the first large question about the event: how did a notoriously homosexual club and hardcore noise scene come to coexist in an evening’s performance? Why these cultures? Why here? Why now? All the staff, most all the audience, were all smiles, jokes, and spirit. What in theory sounded like an absurd combination presented itself to be a natural partnership of kindred subcultures, weakly linked in the Providence periphery.
For me, culturally enforced gender stereotypes portray most gay clubs in urban America commonplace for disco revivals and Cher karaoke. One certainly imagines late nights of drinking and dancing, perhaps even pride nights and drag shows. At great distance from this stereotypical culture I thought to find Providence noise shows, but I was mistaken. In recent months, the Dark Lady has collaborated with local noise rock, hardcore and underground indie bands to present a series called Paint It Pink, a loosely curated series whose MySpace profile boasts the motto: “Paint It Pink wants to book the gayest show you’ll ever play.” Sure, gay club: gay music: okay, I get it. But the puzzling pairing with noise rock seemed unfitting for the Dark Lady, whose crystalline chandeliers were adorned with pink feather boas, whose bar featured a dozen brightly colored liqueurs. Moreover, for the first hour waiting for the show to start, I found myself sipping drinks rather quickly to offset the collective tension of concertgoers viewing two wall-size screenings of midgets and transsexuals fellating enormous, enormous dicks. Even some of the most metallic punks in the room seemed slightly off put.
Soon as the music started, the porn stopped—the atmosphere even stranger. The first act, Suffering Bastard, tore through a set of 20 one-minute songs, pausing their aural assault for momentary introductions like: “This one’s about shit!” or “This one is for the Fonz, heyyy.” Ever-shifting from half time to triple time, the band nearly destroyed their two basses, grinding them between pelvis and amplifier for distorted effects while the lead singer bit his own arm repeatedly, drawing blood.
The second band, Pygmy Shrews, was rhythmically more consistent yet lacked the hardcore potency of Suffering Bastard, sticking to a more accessible post-hardcore featuring female vocals, astutely observed by one unseen audience member to sound like “a really fucked-up Bratmobile.” This appeal was not lost on the gen(d)erally indifferent audience who seemed drawn to the vocalist’s defined androgyny and masculine presence, I noted as a few Dark Lady regulars took their fingers from their ears.
After the first two bands played in rapid succession, the headliners of the bill, White Mice, delayed performance for a seemingly endless stint at the bar with a whiskey bottle. As the lights dimmed a large man, dressed in garb befitting a tyrannical Russian czar took center stage, shouting introductions from blank pages, wearing a turban made of film rolls. And then… well I’d never experienced anything quite like it. Three white mice, eyes glowing red from heads torn and mangled, assailing their instruments into a jarring din, enrapturing an audience of dozens into a swaying, sweating, submissive frenzy. Half moshing, half meditating, the audience reacted to White Mice’s every note; one could watch the faces of those closest to the stage, contorting with every shift in the endless drone of distortion. To say there was interaction between White Mice and their audience might be a stretch—they said virtually nothing from stage, had no discernable lyrics to sing along with, and rarely fell into any regular beat suited for dance of any kind. Nevertheless, the audience loved it and applauded enthusiastically at the conclusion of a 45 minute set.
Strangely enough, the most obvious link between these two cultures was the visual presentation during the musical performances. A muted showing of “The Holy Mountain,” 1972 Lennon/Ono-sponsored, Jodorowsky-directed cult classic cum mescaline trip transported the audience from the Dark Lady to a post-Dadaist dreamland, at some points tracking the screaming vocal lines to protest portrayals, doves bursting forth from peoples’ chests, and at other points underscoring deep bass drones with shot after shot of clans climbing mountains, shaving their heads, and partaking in sacrificial rituals. The juxtaposition offered little explanation of the scene the audience found themselves in, yet seemed to provide a subtle reconciliation.
It then became clear—the answer to all those “why” questions I had asked myself when I first entered. As I watched factory clones model manufactured anatomical parts, I began tying together the possible connections between these two cultures—noise rock and gay nightclub—only to discover that the overlaps were as innumerable as they were remote. A penchant for self-indulgence, affinity for a trancelike state, the idea of public display as a projected self-image, populating a real environment in which things could be both simulated yet honestly exaggerated—the cultures awkwardly fit together by melding performance into space by means of clever curation. While the show was certainly anamolous in the larger music scene, it certainly worked well this night and emphasized the not-so-impervious barriers between oft relegated subcultures, perhaps even foreshadowed future cross-cultural exchange.
What struck me most about the night was that both subcultures existed so strongly before the new series Paint It Pink. It was not the case where one dominant culture advocates another, nor where both collaborate for mutual survival. Rather, the collaboration seemed purely creative and succeeded in achieving a artistic synthesis in which the audience was shown but a greater glimpse at the underlying nature of both cultures, their small shared essence, in the shared glorification of real performance.
Word count: 1202
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
