Welcome to my World
Is Bowie a Natural Performer?
Filed in Welcome to my World by Tom Artrocker at 15.21pm on 15 July 11Artrockers,
Just what is it that makes a great performer? Conversely, what makes us cringe about certain performances? There are people who command the stage, who only seem to exist when the limelight shines, for whom the stage is home. And then there those who don't seem quite at home, who try too hard to 'perform' when what we really want is an insight into the person - what we get is a carefully constructed shield, an elaborate pantomime designed to cover up a lack of confidence and a real fear that some truth about that person might leak out. It makes for uncomfortable viewing. Freddie Mercury was a case in point, an unconvincing performer who's stage persona was that of a guy who regretted ever pulling the top half of a mic stand away from the base, leaving him with a 3 foot metal rod to play with; walk to left side of stage, strike pose with metal rod, get bored with that, move stage right and strike a pose with metal rod, get bored with that, turn back on audience and raise metal rod above head for no apparent reason. The metal rod was Mercury's security blanket, he needed it to divert our attention from his lack of natural rhythm and his obvious lack of comfort in the live environment. And the funny thing is that many will tell you that Mercury was one of the great performers, well, not for me, he always seemed uncomfortable, at times you could almost see his brain working: 'I'll just do a spin here and then I'll jump onto the drum riser and thrust my metal rod from the groin' - and that's the big give-away, if you have to think about it you're not a natural performer, which doesn't make you a bad person but does indicate that you might have been better advised taking up the drums.
A great performer can stand stock still, can silence an audience with a look, can command a room with a finger. There aren't many around these days, not since Frank Sinatra popped his Guccis.
Which brings me to the subject of artrocker.tv's extended Bowie season ('Oh no, he's not going to have a pop at La Bowie, surely?'). Well, yes I am. For all the love I have for the thin one and his amazing recordings I've never got him 'live'. It always seemed too mannered, studied, self-aware, very much like Mercury. Whether he was feeling his way out of a box on the Ziggy Tour, or flying over the audience on an extending chair during the 'Stage' period, the artifice only served to underline Bowie's lack of confidence, seeking to hide a shortcoming beneath choreography and Glass Spiders. I blame Lindsay Kemp, the louche Marcel Marceau whose art was pure artifice. I blame mime. For everything.
Tom Artrocker
Robots of Brixton
Filed in Welcome to my World by Tom Artrocker at 14.34pm on 13 July 11If you know Brixton, or live there as I do, this wonderful animation will make you feel very much at home. By factoryfifteen.com
Pretentious? Moi?
Filed in Welcome to my World at 11.41am on 06 June 11Artrockers,
There’s a thin line between artistically valid experimentation and pretentiousness, a line so thin that some overstep it. Few things have disappointed me more in my life than the transformation of Alternative Television to The Good Missionaries, from Love Lies Limp to Vibing Up The Senile Man. Of course Mark Perry did it for all the right reasons, as a reaction to the Punk monster he’d helped create, but the results were, let’s be honest here, pretentious* almost to the point of unlistenability . There was a lot of pretentiousness about at the time, I’d cite PiL’s Metal Box as a good example, from its over the top packaging (Even ELP never went that far) to its jammed grooves that tried so hard to be Faust or Can but ended up sounding like...Jammed grooves. On the right drugs it was ‘interesting’, but in the cold light of day it was simply clunky. Lydon did it for the right reasons too, the same reasons as Perry, but the result was a bunch of people pretending to be something they weren’t. Metal Box is an album praised more in retrospect than it was at the time, I bought it, but only because the metal box looked groovy amongst my albums, like a reel of film, and because nobody I knew could stand to listen to the whole thing, which made me look like some kind of underground hero because I could. Actually I couldn’t, I never put the album on for my own pleasure, I only played it when people I wanted to impress were about, and pretty soon Metal Box would make way for Elvis Costello and the party would start.
And there’s a whole bunch of pretentiousness about right now, Arcade Fire and Factory Floor spring to mind. I guess it’s for the same reasons that punk gave way to This Heat; you can only do so much with three chords. But it doesn’t mean you have to turn into Bjork, simply add a fourth chord.
What defines pretentiousness for you? Send me your overblown, your downright silly. Always remember, and I’m talking to you PJ Harvey, it’s only rock’n’roll.
Tom Artrocker
*
Definition: 1. acting as though more important, valuable, or special than is warranted; 2. appearing to have an unrealistically high self-image
Synonyms: pompous, ostentatious, showy, inflated, bombastic, affected, self-important
Antonyms: unpretentious, humble
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You Say The Nicest Things – Your Responses
Last week Tom asked whether the riff should be copyrighted...
Hi Tom,
Regarding your stolen riffs request, I wasn't going to bother emailing since its almost part-and-parcel for any successful rock band, even the Velvet Underground's There She Goes Again is pretty much lifted wholesale from Hitch Hike - which I think Marvin Gaye wrote (OK, some clever-clogs will probably tell me Lou Reed knocked it out as a jobbing staff writer). Anyway I wasn't going to email but then I remembered about Nirvana's monster album, Nevermind, which you could say really is a monster - a Frankenstein's monster of British bands. There was a time when I could pick out much of the stolen bits but I'm just too rusty these days, however I stuck the LP on, for amusement, and here's my findings (maybe you can fill in the gaps):
Smells Like Teen Spirit = Troggs - Wild Thing (opening riff, loud-quiet-loud structure to some extent, Pixies)
In Bloom = Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song (maybe, riff slowed down)
Come As You Are = Killing Joke - Eighties (slowed down)
Breed = Link Wray - Run Chicken Run (the riff part)
Lithium = (? picked guitar is familiar, but can’t pinpoint it)
Polly = Kinks - All Day And All Of The Night (almost)
Territorial Pissings = sounding too Killing Joke-like, the middle break is an exact rip from Wardance.
Drain You = (bog standard grunge stuff, but middle bit ventures into early Pink Floyd territory)
Lounge Act = Bowie (can't quite get it, Queen Bitch maybe, particularly as song progresses)
Stay Away = sounding too Rezillos-like, My Baby Does Good Sculptures re-jigged
On A Plain = (OK, just Nirvana grunge to my ears, though he does sing "Somewhere I have heard this before, in a dream or memories stored", appropriately, in fact most of the lyrics are appropriate, "know it’s wrong so what should I do", "one more special message to go then I'm done and I can go home")
Something in the Way = (?)
[Hidden Track] = more Killing Joke guitars, Firedances-period.
Maybe I'm just imagining it, but to me it’s just an LP of familiar 'good' bits that everyone bought, you could say in that respect that it’s just like the Grease soundtrack (which is a general rip-off of 60's and 50's song snippets) though not musically of course, maybe Nevermind is the 'Grease'-soundtrack of indie.
By the way I always thought that the first Strokes LP sounded a bit like obscure West Country band Chorchazade, but figured that any rip-off would be just too improbable. I do reckon, however, that everything The XX has done can be traced to The Past Seven Days, whose sole 7" single RainDance, great though it is, is essentially a dead end, one-off experiment.
Alb
PS Obvious one, The Jam - Start = The Beatles - Taxman
Copyrighting Riffs
Filed in Welcome to my World by Tom Artrocker at 12.35pm on 27 May 11Artrockers,
That Jonah and The Whale single I keep hearing on Radio Ga Ga, isn't that the riff from Bachman Turner Overdrive's 'You aint seen nothing yet'? I'm no expert on Jonah et al, in fact I couldn't give a big one about them, but weren't they supposed to be folky or something? And shouldn't riffs be copyrighted? If they were The Velvet Underground would be the richest band in rock history. And Led Zeppelin would still be paying off the many blues artists they stole their career from. The riff is, of course, the root of all rock music, get those three or four chords in the right order and the melody and lyrics become incidental, unimportant, which leads us back to Led Zep.
I've come up with a list of 20 well known tracks that have simply nicked a great riff from a great record. How about you? What, in your opinion, are the greatest examples of riff plundering? And, since the riff is what matters, how do you feel about them being copyrighted? It makes sense to me.
Tom ArtrockerGoing Gaga
Filed in Welcome to my World at 12.06pm on 20 May 11Artrockers,
So I watched Gaga on The Graham Norton Show last week, in fact I watch Norton every week simply because it tends to make me laugh, something Ross never managed when he had the spot. I'd imagine that many tuned in expecting, like myself, something revelatory, something amazing, the like of which had never been seen before, after all, there must be a reason for her massive success. Kitted out in an outfit she'd clearly borrowed from Nina Hagen or Lene Lovich she had nothing to say but 'I love you too' every time some dimwit shouted out - nothing interesting revealed. That's OK, nobody said she was Bertrand Russell, she'd let the music do the talking, so off she went to get into something a little less Cyndi Lauper only to reappear in something a little more Madonna. Here we go, this is going to knock my socks off...Not. What we got was warmed up Euro-Disco and the dance moves from a Sinita video, guys in vaguely S&M gear doing the dance moves Micheal Jackson rejected. I was zapped back to the late 80s, when every no-hope 'singer' had to surrounded by dancers, the better to distract attention from the paucity of talent on show. Another good place to spot this sad old phenomenon is the Eurovision Song Contest, which I sat through the following evening. And I enjoyed it. And I thought that Blue's song was by far the best of the bunch. And I thought that if Gaga was in the contest she wouldn't have made it past the semi-finals.
And I thought that maybe I had better things to do than watch TV. But I didn't.
Tom Artrocker
_thumb.jpg "Atari Teenage Riot")
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