Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Johnny Stew
Gaius and I have had this discussion before, and there are times when I think experimentalism (is that a word?!) benefits the song, and brings it to even higher levels of greatness.
And then there are times when I think hitting a box of tissues is done just to do something "different," and doesn't aid the song itself in any way.
|
I guess one thing that still humours me a little here is that I don't even find Lindsey's Tusk material all that experimental. What I write now is the longer version (as usual
) of what David pointed out in the "Master Of Tusk" thread anyway.
Look at what was released in the year of Tusk and in the year preceding it. In 1978 we had Suicide's debut album which mainly consisted of cheap drum machine beats and keyboard drones. On the longest cut of the album, "Frankie Teardrop", Alan Vega gives us a bleak story of an industrial worker. In the middle of it he lets out two agonizing screams that symbolize Frankie killing his wife and himself. They are distorted and echoed to such a point that anyone would feel uncomfortable. After those screams the track descends into an aural hell where industrial noises collide with more ethereal ones.
Or take Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance, it opens with a feedback drone over which we get a traditional Chuck Berry riff, but also a squealing synthesizer and a bleating, totally demented vocal.
Looking into the United Kingdom of 1979, the closing track of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is "I Remember Nothing"; built on a repetitive drum beat, a scratchy guitar, keyboard drones and various synthesized noises, over which Ian Curtis sings lyrics like "violent, more violent/his hand cracks the chair/moves on reaction/then slumps in despair".
Public Image Ltd's "Careering" features modulated Oberheim synthesizer noises on top of a repetitive dub bass line and synth-drum crashes. Not forgetting John Lydon's wails (which certainly didn't resemble his Sex Pistols voice that much anymore): "I've been careering/across the border/is this living/both sides of the river/there is bacteria/armoured machinery mangled".
Or "A Touching Display" from Wire's 154 album that features hellish synthesizer, bass and guitar feedback for seven minutes while one of the coldest vocals known to man ruminates over a love affair gone bad (but again, it's the context that makes those lyrics perverted).
No, these albums didn't sell that much initially but some of them managed respectful chart positions in the bands' homelands (better than OOTC in USA or UK, anyway). And we are speaking of material that continues to inspire musicians to this day, and still attract new listeners in a way similar to Tusk, and perhaps in similar amounts to Tusk (after the initial burst of sales and hype died away, I mean).
Of course, there are a few more accessible tracks on these albums, but even then to me they do not appear to be any more inaccessible than Lindsey's most esoteric Tusk material.
And even then, I do not think the examples I gave are all that experimental. I mean, there's no intentional freakish noise all over the place like with Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle or the New York noise artists of the time. There's vocal tracks, there's good songwriting within traditional song structures, but the tracks in general are disturbing expressions directly from the human psyche.
But then I guess David was right with that description of his about the American mainstream of the time. Lindsey didn't even have to adopt the nihilism, inherent cynicism and coldness of the general post-punk environment (Tony Wilson's description: punk was about saying "F*ck you", post-punk was about saying "I'm f*cked") that had arrived to the underground after the first blast of punkish rage. A band like Talking Heads was generally approved of, though, they had the experimentalism of post-punk but lacked the "self-destructive" tendencies. And so does Lindsey's Tusk material; the overall atmosphere is nowhere near as off-putting as the underground acts could have it.
So to me it isn't really surprising that some people who have grown up with what's been played on the American radio for the last 30 years would find Lindsey's Tusk contributions off-putting and even experimental for the sake of being experimental. To be sure, they may have started to appreciate this material over time, but then that's a process that I think mainly fans have really gone through.
Personally I suppose some of these people (not necessarily you, Johnny) are not fond of the far more direct emotional communication that punk and new wave in general offered, as opposed to the layered, more virtuoso and professional approach of the rest of the '70s.
Because that is what Lindsey took as his ideological guideline for his tracks, yet I don't think the results are any less complex or sophisticated (or even worse!) than what the earlier professionalism of the '70s had given to us.
And still Johnny, I must point out that you're still thinking of Lindsey in terms of
songs. While I find that completely understandable, I can't do that myself. To me, when it comes to Buckingham and Nicks it's not as much as what they write than
how they present what they write to me. I agree partly with that short snippet from Head Heritage's review on Tusk that I quoted in this thread; I do not find Stevie a tremendously original lyricist. It's all about the way she sings those things to me, the way how she conveys the life she's lived through her voice and makes me understand her, even though I wouldn't know every detail of everything she's been through.
And Lindsey, what he lacks vocally and lyrically, he conveys through the means of instruments. I do not need songs myself when an aural collage can express powerful emotions all in itself. I actually believe that he doesn't necessarily always start studio work on a song that he's written beforehand; he might come up with a song structure of sorts in the studio around some experiment that he's been working on.
Lindsey's and Stevie's vulnerable sides are once again audible on Tusk, maybe the most audible they have ever been. And at its darkest, in spite of being influenced by it, the album never gives in to the pessimism of the underground of the time. Which is all fine and good. The war is over, remember?