Bideodromage
Titans of the Indie music display their awesome gifts. Featuring Neutral Milk Hotel, The Shins, Beta Band, John Vanderslice, Luke Haines, The Mekons, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
Addendum: Vandaveer, Richard Hawley, Iron and Wine, The Postal Service, Darden Smith, Cats on Fire, Hot Hot Heat, Gledhill, Western States Motels, Decemberists, and Robbers on High Street. And Mercury Rev. And Flaming Lips. And M. Ward.
Hailing from Sheffield, Pulp’s Jarvis Branson Cocker remains a titan and figurehead of the British music world. The “Erotic Coathanger”‘s quirky, enigmatic ways make him a source of immense curiosity to millions. Then, there are his hand-antics, the likes of which are unprecedented in the annals of such things.
The angry, but smartly suited, young men of The Jam, featuring vocalist and “Modfather Paul Weller, combined briskly tempoed rock with Motown R&B to exceptional effect. Weller went on to further fine doings with The Style Council before launching a solo career.
A modest collection of brilliant live performances by Mr. David Bowie, with some studio tracks, plus a wondrous, pared-down demo thrown in for good measure. The constantly auto-reinventing, quasi-androgynous David Robert Jones pioneered his way through the music world, leaving the landscape forever altered—with new worlds and vistas previously undream’t of—in his wake.
Titans of improvised music display their immense powers.
Dwight Yoakam can simply do the impossible with his voice. See North to Alaska, among many others, for evidence. He steps into the very large shoes of legend Johnny Horton, and…whoa. A transcendent, jaw-dropping, awe-inducing performance. And, the same can be said of his live 2013 reading of the Red Simpson-penned Close Up The Honky Tonks. Even a young, inexperienced Yoakam—in his 1985 performance above, he shyly asks the audience if they like the show—kills it. A not-many-times-in-an-epoch talent.
The Boomtown Rats, led by Bob Geldof, perform three of their best, plus a nod to the great Syd Barrett. Geldof might be using a very large python for a microphone, at times. At other times, he strikes a Nixonian pose. On still other occasions, he does neither.
“Sir” Bob {as he is an Irish citizen, he cannot officially/correctly be referred to as “Sir”…} is deeply committed as an activist, particularly to famine relief in Africa.
Few are in the class, charisma-wise, of The Steven Patrick Morrissey. The mononymous one, co-founder of The Smiths, with guitarist Johnny Marr, ventured out on his own, diary in hand, to great fanfare in 1987. As it turns out, he did rather well.
To quote the great man: “I don’t recognise such terms as heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and I think it’s important that there’s someone in pop music who’s like that. These words do great damage, they confuse people and they make people feel unhappy, so I want to do away with them.”
In a 1989 interview, he said that he was “always attracted to men and women who were never attracted to me” and thus he did not have “relationships at all”. In 2013, he released a statement that said, “Unfortunately, I am not homosexual. In technical fact, I am humasexual. I am attracted to humans. But, of course . . . not many.”
The Clash formed in 1976, led by the charismatic/titanically intense vocalist/guitarist/composer Joe Strummer. The group cut a swath through the burgeoning punk rock scene, with furiously kinetic performances that whipped all and sundry into a frenzy. World domination quickly ensued.
Let ∰ = “The High Priest of quasi-androgynous Synth-Pop/Electronica, the Impassive Alien Deity, The Gary Numan.” What heretofore had been used to calculate Flux Densities, and whatnot, now is more—much more—much, much more.
He created aural landscapes which allowed access to the unfathomable. His performances have been described in so many ways. Strikingly “robotic”. Otherworldly. Mesmerizing. And moreover, there’s an unease, a disquiet, accompanying his trenchant intelligence; a wariness. Aware of a certain danger we cannot grasp. The ritual held out in the open, hauntingly obvious, yet impenetrable. A language we’ve forgotten; mind-argot beyond our ken.
Bideodromage 