The latest in a series where I write about cult acts, the stuff of
which is known only to the very smart and sophisticated, in such a
way to reveal I know very little about any of it. We start with...
THE
RESIDENTS
Barbican,
London, Sat 18th May
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“Holding
up the underground since 1972, the Residents celebrate four decades
of unbridled creativity, sex, shrugs and anti-rock 'n' roll.”
...which
is the way this outfit get described by the Barbican brochure. And
not so bad an attempt, though they came up with something snappier
themselves, in the classic track 'Saw Song' -
“Sugar melts and goes away/ But vinegar lasts
forever.”
Perhaps
the cult act beyond all cult acts, the Residents have a selective and
highly dedicated fanbase. Of which I'm not really a member. Truth to
tell, I only really know their lengthy output through snapshots. So
please bear in mind that if what follows appears to be a partial
picture... well there's a reason for that.
When
they finally come to write the history of music, the Residents will
require a double entry. They're featured pride of place in Simon
Reyolds' 'Rip It Up And Start Again' - as
post-punk before there was post punk, one of the
stem cells from which everything grew. They worked within the body of
rock 'n' roll like cancer cells, mutating their host to their own
nefarious ends with the ultimate aim of killing it off. They'd insist
on it's links with the wider entertainment industry, and with
corporate control in general. They'd concoct music like the
distorted reflections of pop tunes or advertising jingles. Their mood
was pitched at the point where clowns turn sinister.
The
signature of that approach was their most iconic image – the
eyeball in the top hat, music hall performance given a surrealist
make-over. (Over a third of the audience must have had that emblem on
their T-shirt.) Though as they mention during the gig, they first
intended a new look and concept for each release. The eyeball just
stuck - like the Doctor's Tardis stayed a Police
box.
And,
as that anecdote might suggest, they also acted as a Babbage engine
for multi-media. Their music didn't exist to represent their
personalities (to this day their true identities remain an official
secret), but as an element in the service of an overall concept –
alongside the packaging, the performance and (at times) accompanying
computer games and comics. Wikipedia
describe them, less snappily but perhaps more accurately,
as “an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works.”
On stage, they make a running joke of their tendency to pioneer
technologies which just as soon became obsolete, and stage lavish
stage spectacles which won them much in the way of audience acolades
and letters of final demand.
The
band themselves toyed with the ultra-conceptual notion that you
shouldn't hear them, but only hear of them. If the
schtick of many a band is legend-as-concept, with the group
themselves merely a peg on which to pin tales, the Residents
formalised the notion into their Theory of Obscurity. If the promise
is almost always better than the prize, why not just go with that?
They have only explicitly devoted one recording to this theory
('Not Available', which is... oh, you guessed).
But by implication it applies to all of them.
But
I also had less philosophical concerns. I have sometimes suspected
that their second approach came to over-ride their first,
more-than-music replacing anti-music, which at times led to the music
becoming no more than a neutral delivery system. There were points
where they resorted to flat, repeated musical lines – the
equivalent of blank verse in an epic poem. I also feared that this
fortieth anniversary gig might tip the balance from 'cult' to
'insider', like everyone else was on episode 37 of a series and I'd
be struggling to catch up.
As
it was, the occasion led to a retrospective 'greatest misses' set,
which even started with a film show. (Like the “previously” intro
on running TV shows.) Being the Residents, just
as we were finally reaching summer, they gave the show an Xmas
special theme, with inflatable Santas and styrofoam snow. (Ostensibly
to celebrate their first single 'Santa Dog'.)
Beyond this, it was a surprisingly straightforward in structure, with
the trio (as the anti-fab four now are) mostly playing from a
career-spanning set-list.
Probably
the main exception to this was front-man Randy's recurrent
impersonation of a down-at-heel has-been. You could see the intention
- to sabotage both rock theatrics and their own cult status, by
suggesting that was just a consolation prize for being unsuccessful.
And it was at points genuinely funny, such as his showing the front
row pictures of his cat from his phone. But in truth it did get
over-laboured before the night was through.
Musically
it was in some ways reminiscent of Tom Waits; a gruff lead vocalist,
intoning over beats seemingly hewn by troglodites. But, perhaps due
to the lack of a live drummer, there's also something mechanised to
the sound – like one of those sideshow machines which spark up at
the klunk of a penny. There were outbreaks of guitar heroics, though
ironically the two instrumental pieces were much more inventive.
Before
the gig I was filled with a strange slosh of fears and expectations,
combined with an absence of knowing quite what was afoot. I'm not
completely sure I left feeling very much different. I was glad to be
there and see for my own eyes that vinegar really does
last forever. And there was much to enjoy along the way. But I
suspect if I was to ever try to catch up with their output I'd start
at the beginning rather than forty years in.
'Hanging
By His Hair'...
...followed
by a half-hour chunk of their New York gig (which inevitably enough
starts with the same track)...
THE
FLAMING LIPS
Brighton
Dome, Wed 22nd May
...and
on the subject of long-lasting cult acts I know of
more than I know, here's a younger sibling that
have clocked up thirty years. Though I've pretty much always enjoyed
their music when I've heard it, like many before what enticed me to
see the Flaming Lips was the tales of their great stage show. Indeed,
they're popularly cited as a band to see before you die. (In a list
which seems to have originated in 'Q' magazine, but don't
let that deter you.)
...which
indeed it is. The stage set resembles that famous still from 'Evil
Of The Daleks', to the point where I'm not even sure which
illo it is I'm pasting here. It's a cross between an eye-candy
fairground attraction and Dr. Frankenstein's lab; flickering cables
are strewn across the stage, like live wires pulsing with energy.
Front man Wayne Coyne stands in some futuristic jumpsuit atop a
glittering dome, looking like a spaceship commander.
Virtually
every track is given its own visual signature, including light shows
so bright and inventive that at
times I felt I was back at the Hayward's 'Light Show' exhibition.
Twice, cannons threw a welter of black confetti up to the ceiling. As
the Dome is... well, domed of ceiling this flew so high the band
exulted in how long it took to fall. The subsequent night, back to
the same venue to see the Tiger Lillies, I swear I saw a single piece
of it still fluttering.
However,
unlike
a band like Bellowhead I never felt the Flaming Lips to be
a show with a band attached. The inventive visual effects
enhance the music, not plaster themselves over it
like the special effects from some Hollywood blockbuster. Besides,
there's the inherent connection between pop music and pop art. Pop
music isn't there to enable chin-stroking on 'Late
Review', it's role in life is to be absurd, spectacular and
attention-grabbing. Asked if his stage moves weren't gimmicks,
Hendrix replied “it's all gimmicks, man. Napalm's a gimmick.” He
was right.
Pressed
for a label for their music, I might plump for psychedelic pop. Songs
tend to be pulsing beats fronted by pop hooks or else slow, sumptuous
and almost orchestral in arrangement – grandiose and self-avowedly
absurd in equal measure. The high-register vocals can make them sound
like the Bee Gees for Futurists. Their references are Sixties
psychedelic classics like 'Sergeant Pepper' and
'Forever Changes'. A key element of that music's
appeal is the blending of musical sophistication with a sense of
childlike innocence, to the point where you stop being able to tell
whether it was made by someone very smart or someone very simple.
Most of their imitators fail to capture this juxtaposition, but play
with the plasticine until it all goes one colour. (Think of the
insipidity of a biteless band like ELO.)
But
it's all here. Their sound is almost perfectly captured by the SF
pulp art that adorns many of their album covers – check out
'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' below. The
cityscapes are gleaming but also have an endearingly naïve quality.
While such imagery is often airbrushed, here you can even pick out
the paint strokes.
Except
there's a twist. Actually, it's more of a de-twist. Both
'Sergeant Pepper' and 'Forever
Changes' give their psychedelia a sinister underbelly. They
come complete with their own shadows, like Woodstock cut with
Altamont. The Flaming Lips, meanwhile, are in just about every sense
based around light. A key moment comes when they cover Pink Floyd's
'Breathe'. Though rooted in Sixties psychedelia,
Floyd had by that point stopped even a nodding acquaintance with
optimism. Yet when Coyne presents us with his positive spin on the
lyrics (“seize the day, motherfuckers!”), it sounds almost
convincing. This euphoric sense the band convey is perhaps best
summed up by the lyric “do you realise that happiness makes you
cry?”
If the
form of their music is Sixties psychedelia, this uplifting feel seems
to have more in common with Nineties music. The nearest band in tone
I've seen of late is perhaps Orbital. (Though the band formed in '83 and their classic trilogy, 'Soft
Bulletin', 'Yoshimi' and 'At War With the
Mystics', almost entirely post-date the Nineties, 1999/2006.
These things almost never work out neatly.)
Okay
having established 'Q' magazine were for once
right, and belatedly caught up with the Flaming Lips, what's the next
release to go for after the big trilogy mentioned above?
Their
cover of Bowie's 'Heroes' from the night...
...plus
the classic 'The WAND' from Jools Holland, adorned
by giant hands, aliens and an army of Father Christmases...
THE
TIGER LILLIES: THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
Brighton
Dome, Thurs 23rd May
”Now
in this land of ice
We
pay for every vice
Frozen
in the snow
Each
pleasure it goes”
For
the past two decades, the self-described “criminal
castrati and his accordion driven anarchic Brechtian street opera
trio” have donned the devil-clown make-up to serve cabaret music to
the punk generation - singing of debauchery and damnation (usually in
that order) with humour so black scientists were known to mistake it
for dark matter.
This
time, they've moved on from Brecht and Hoffmann to bring us the UK
premiere of Colderidge's ballad 'Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.' Cabaret songs are my nature diegetic; someone
stands up and sings you a story. (Normally starting with a line like
“shut up you rabble, I'm singing you a story.”) But this is a
song cycle, which instead draws you into a world, which in about
every sense takes you on a journey - and the musical palette is by
necessity drawn more widely.
Front-man
Martyn Jacques still employs his patented strangulated falsetto, but
there's as many numbers when he takes to the piano and positively
croons. I often found myself reminded, in a good way, of Anthony and
the Johnsons. Musical backing can vary as widely, for one number the
accompaniment is a theramin and the snipping of a pair of scissors.
The whole grand conceit sweeps you up and carries you onboard as
their ship of ruin sets sail.
It's
a maturation in style. The track 'Cabin Boys',
about doing unspeakable things to cabin boys and ending up in an
unspeakable place, is such a classic old-style number it almost feels
out of place. Maturations are often that way. Like watching children
grow, you welcome the greater sophistication but can't help miss the
old infant exuberance at the same time.
It's
not really clear how much of Coleridge's cosmology is in there, his
Death and the corollary Night-mare Life-in-Death have their vacancies
filled by a Goth queen of a Death Maiden. At times you suspect the
band are simply strip-mining the poem for imagery. But then again,
while I do feel a certain attachment to Coleridge's original schema,
why get hung up on it? Victoriana can be arcane and even if they are
strip-mining, they do seem to be coming up with rich seams of the
stuff...
The
performance is accompanied by animations by Mark Holthusen, who
should perhaps be regarded as a fourth member of the troupe. Though
these can include live actors, his scenes are deliberately kept
theatrical – as if modelled on theatre flats. The albatross soars
and clouds float on drawn-on-strings. This makes then appear almost
like ghost images, not presences on stage but moments conjured up by
the tale.
A
transparent gauze screen before the band allows for projections to
(if you'll forgive the nautical metaphor) their fore and aft. This
can make them appear as if embedded in an environment, such as
bobbing in a sea.
But
at a few points the fore-screens become a little too busy.
Particularly when they involve human figures, they can distract from
the band rather than accompany them. At such points, if Holthusen
appears a troupe member, it's one who's always insisting its time for
him to take his solo.
Perhaps
it's become almost too easy to take up this multimedia malarkey.
Where once every addition involved painstaking hours of expenditure,
nowadays the computer can just keep on with the embellishments and
the challenge has become to keep it sparing. Had, for example, the
fore-screens been held back on until the leviathan arrived to fill
them – that would have made for a breathtaking moment.
It
would seem almost damning with faint praise to call this the
highlight of this year's Brighton Festival. The SineadO'Connor and Flaming Lips gigs, part of ongoing tours, only
really seemed formal Festival events, and the rest of it made for
something of a fallow year.
But
then again – it was! Watching it, I got the same tingling sense of
lucking in, of being at a special event, as I'd
previously done at 'Live_Transmission'
and 'The
Passion of Joan of Arc.' An ambitious work which... sound-bite coming up... definitely
does not end up as the band's albatross!
A general intro...
...followed by 'Living Hell'...
Coming soon! More hopelessly late gig reviews. Shortly followed by some other hopelessly late stuff...
Coming soon! More hopelessly late gig reviews. Shortly followed by some other hopelessly late stuff...
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