Dan Deacon: A Genius, Among Many Other Things

A few months ago, Dan Deacon quickly started becoming one of my favorite musicians. At the same time, he was also becoming one of the most talked-about electronic musicians around, and with good reason. But while it’s been noted how good a composer Deacon is, and plenty has been said about how frenetic his music is, and that it’s “weird” and “wacky” (Deacon’s music is at times all these things), no one talks about how fucking beautiful it is. Granted, it’s not the kind of music my mother would call beautiful. But the more I listen to “Woody Woodpecker,” the more overwhelmed I am.

Deacon also gets a lot of attention for his live performances. He’s known for riotous live shows, playing in the middle of dance floors, leading his crowds in things like calisthenics and other group activities. Then, one Sunday night in August, I got to see him. Deacon played on a bill with Deerhunter and No Age, two bands I was interested in but knew very little about. The show was at the Logan Square Auditorium, a fairly big room consisting mostly of open floor space. The main stage was in the front of the room, but Deacon had of course set up his own stage down on the floor, against the right wall. As I arrived, most people were crowding around the main stage; I went straight for Deacon’s setup. His “stage” consisted of a small platform upon which he had set up a table, upon which were about a million electronics, most of which were used to distort his voice, and a lighting setup he described as “my little bullshit lights.” Behind the table was a large arrangement of speakers and amps; he also had several props on stage relating to titles of his songs, such as a green skull (“Trippy Green Skull”) and a large stuffed snake (“Snake Mistakes”).

There were three opening performers, each of which played a 20 minute set, and each of which were…ok. A full marching band then took the floor, and were really sweet. The audience (at this point completely filling the room) really began to get into it. The band turned out to be the What Cheer Marching Band from Providence, RI, and were also there as Dan Deacon’s backing band. They finished playing, and it was on.

Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, and No Age all took the stage at the same time (Deerhunter and No Age sharing the main stage, Deacon on his own). Throughout the night, they would alternate between mini-sets, one band playing a few songs and then taking a break while the other two played. No Age opened with the first mini-set, and then Deacon was up. For his first set, he performed alone, without his marching band. “Red F” kicked in, and man it was difficult to be there. Those of us up against the stage were holding onto Deacon’s table for dear life. After another song by Deacon, Deerhunter and No Age each played a mini-set, and then Deacon was up again. This time, he was joined on his tiny stage by the entire What Cheer Marching Band. Several members sat on Deacon’s pile of amps; others crowded around Deacon, and a few remained on the floor next to the stage. Deacon led them in a deafening rendition of “Woof Woof,” and again everyone went crazy. “Dan Deacon, you’re a genius,” said Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox when the song was over, and they and No Age played a few more songs each.

Then things really got nuts.

Deacon instructed the audience to form a large circle in the center of the floor, and brought out one of the opening performers, Ed Schrader, to lead the crowd in an interpretive dance. “Everyone watch Ed; anything Ed does, you do,” Deacon instructed. “Every move Ed makes, you make.” The song began; Ed began dancing, and everyone in the room followed in the bizarre ritual. As the song began to pick up, the dancing got wilder, and the circle around Ed closed in further and further; eventually, the full mania of the song kicked in, and it was a free-for-all. As Deacon transitioned into “The Crystal Cat,” probably his best-known track, I got caught a few feet off from the stage, and if it was difficult to be up against the stage, it was damn near impossible to be in the swarm just behind it. This was also probably the most riotous moment of the show. It was a mass of bodies crashing into each other; one moment everyone was nearly falling over to the left, the next moment everyone was nearly falling over to the right. It was a violent, chaotic expression of pure joy.

After this madness, Deerhunter played a song, giving the audience a much-needed respite from the preceding insanity. People danced gently or swayed slightly to the music, depending on how tired they were. (I was swaying slightly.) No Age played a couple of songs. Dan Deacon passed out water bottles to the crowd.

Deacon then played one final set. His band left the stage once more, and he performed his epic “Wham City” by himself. “Wham City” is one of Deacon’s grandest statements, a marathon-length track that builds for several minutes to its climax, and it was a fitting conclusion to the grand statement Deacon had been making all night.

After this, Deacon went up to the main stage for one final song, performed by every member of the tour. But for me, this was more of an epilogue; the true finale was “Wham City.” This was Dan Deacon’s night. While I thoroughly enjoyed both Deerhunter and No Age, it has to be said that it’s just unfair for any band to have to share a bill with Dan Deacon. Something about his music, and his performance of it, is undeniable in its energy; everyone in the auditorium was brought to an elevated state by his music. It certainly seems to be Deacon’s goal to involve his audience in his music, for them to get lost in it and be part of it; on this night he robustly succeeded.

Love - The Beatles

To true music fans there can hardly be a more controversial album than the remix of The Beatles' unofficial greatest-hits catalogue into the 2006 album, Love. Remixed by George Martin, the Beatles' former arrangement manager, and his son Giles Martin, the album was created for a Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas. The father-son team digitally mastered the original tracks to stitch together a rich musical tapestry. The end result of their hard work is an hour and eighteen minutes of pure joy, distilled down and processed into pure Soma.

Yeah, its kind of like tearing apart da Vinci's notebooks in order to make the world's best paper-airplane.

Okay, now you're with me.

I love this album, and the reason I love it is because I don't love The Beatles. Don't get me wrong, I like them and I've never heard a song of theirs that I disliked, but I have no infatuation for the mop-headed early songs or the virulent late catalogue. It's all great stuff, but I don't ever actually want to listen to it, and until I first heard Love I didn't understand why. Now I do.

My parents grew up in the era of The Beatles, but neither were actually music-lovers, and as such I grew up in a house mostly devoid of music, with the exception of the ever-present background noise of our television. By the time I actually came into my own, I was listening to music that was either inspired by The Beatles, or, more likely, inspired by music which was itself inspired by The Beatles. Elliot Smith, The White Stripes, even Ben Folds, all owe something to the boys from Liverpool.

Which brings me back to the matter at hand. Love is not so much a Beatles album as it is an album inspired by The Beatles. When the Martins "modernized" The Beatles' music, they were adding into it a series of rhythms and progressions that have, at their root, the same music they are effecting. It's difficult to describe because this is either an act of full-circle completionism, or simple incest, depending on how one looks at it.

While The Beatles' enduring influence allows for this modernization to be completed farily easily, since it is really just a matter of turning it all back in on itself, there is still a question of ethics for the purist. None of the sound effects heard in Love come from outside of The Beatles' catalogue. Every sound, including the wailing organ solo halfway through the trip, comes either from the songs themselves or from the extensive unpublished catalogue of cutting-room-floor scraps. But it is not the music as Lennon intended, and this raises a question. Since all of the techniques are just evolutionarily removed from the original music, are the tracks actually improved by this tampering? Would an Orangutan be made better by cross-breeding with a human?

I say yes, and I say it for everyone who thinks The Beatles are cool, but couldn't care less about actually owning any of their songs.

Love is all I need to get into The Beatles. (1) It isn't the same music and that's the point. If I am going to care about the original catalogue, I need to have it prepared for me, translated out of Middle English into something that I can understand and relate to. I don't feel bad about it; I'm not dissing the great all-fathers. I just don't like it. It's old. It sounds like shag carpet and lava lamps. When I listen to Abby Road I can feel the callouses on my feet toughen and I crave sandalwood. It's old, and I don't like things that are old.

But Love is new, wonderful, and exciting. And it's all I need. At least, from The Beatles.

(1) See what I did there?

Bill Callahan at Bottom Lounge, 6/19/2009

Photo by Kirstie Shanley

This show happened awhile ago, but it’s worth talking about, so now that I’ve got this blog up I’m going to talk about it. Bill Callahan is an indie singer-songwriter, and in my view is one of the most underrated musicians of his generation. Callahan writes songs that are simple but intelligent, and often incredibly moving, both lyrically and musically, and it’s all carried by his voice; his sing-speak style baritone is the anchor of his music.

Callahan recorded for many years under the alias Smog, dropping that name in favor of his own in 2007. He began his career making experimental lo-fi; his first full length, 1990’s Sewn to the Sky, and other early recordings are dissonant, staticky, and abrasive. His music has changed greatly since then; his later recordings are of higher sound quality, and are more melodically and harmonically developed than his early experiments. And while his lyrics have always been complex and important to his music, they’ve become progressively less cryptic as the years have gone on.

I saw him at the Bottom Lounge, a venue I feel like is suited more to a metal show, but the sound in the room is pretty good, and I was near the front, so I can’t complain. He was backed by a fantastic band, consisting of a cellist, violinist, drummer, and electric guitarist; Callahan sang, and on most songs played electric guitar as well. Predictably, he played tracks primarily from his latest LP, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. There were certainly some Smog songs mixed in (“Bathysphere” and “Let Me See the Colts” were highlights, as was his classic “Cold Blooded Old Times”), and while I would have liked to have heard a bit more from his Smog catalog, it’s hard to nitpick because Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle is such a good album, and he and his band played such fantastic versions of its songs, particularly the brooding “All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast,” perhaps the hardest-rocking moment of the night. Callahan is not necessarily known for being a hard rocker, but make no mistake: this band was kicking ass and taking names. Callahan’s songs, without losing their subtlety and precision, were given a harder edge than they possess on record; there was a certain underlying drive beneath it all. And this, I think, is what made the show so exciting; a performance consisting entirely of Callahan’s songs played exactly as they were played on record would have made for a very good concert, but this band pushed a little further. Hell yeah, Bill.

Current State of Affairs

So it's funny that 3 days after I vowed to myself that i'd start writing again David calls me and asks me to be a part of this blog. "What IS a blog?" I asked myself. The word itself seems scary and quite nondescript, so my cinematic mind immediately pictured the Attack of the Giant Blob. I assumed the blog wasn't going to attack me, and worst that could happen was that random people would judge my grammar/spelling/punctuation, ect, let a lone content. I never really saw myself writing any kind of blog, but perhaps the vaguely therapeutic aspects will outweigh the awkward realization that i'm writing to no one in particular.

I suppose music is a suitable topic to begin my life as a blogger (I believe that's what the kids are calling it these days). I've always been a technological minimalist, and that fact has really left me in the musical dust. I can't tell you who is the number one download on Itunes is (although I pray it's not lady gaga). I also can't give you a list of the hottest new indie bands to come out of southern Arkansas. Here is what i'm working with: My cd player from 8th grade (with skip protection), a handful of cd's from artists like: MIA, Jack Johnson, Del Mcoury, Jimi Hendrix, Bone Thugs n' Harmony, Bob Marley, Christiaan Oyens, The Kooks, various rap mix cd's that i've stolen from my girlfriend, and the usual radio stations playing: DC rap, Baltimore Rap, Classic Rock, and (god help me) Pop.

I know, it's pathetic.

I do feel like this blog will provide me with some sort of redemption in regards to giving music its long over-due attention. In fair warning, I will not be divulging my latest and greatest musical finds that you MUST listen to. I will simply be providing an admittedly random analysis of the way I view music and its components.

Cheers,
KB

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