The Lost Messiahs of Rock and also Roll

It's purely by coincidence that these two happened to drop by Dallas within a week of each other, and by obsession that I made sure that I saw both. These two men are both titans of a so-called "indie music scene," both often appearing in headlines on Pitchfork, both musicians with adoring fan bases, both Caucasian males.

And that is where the similarities end.

Jeff Mangum at one of his recent solo shows

Jeff Mangum is an enigma wrapped up in a mystery pancaked between a couple of Hardy Boys books, the kind of guy who writes lyrics such as, "Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies," and issues press releases with "from a thoracopagus dovecote of comets" in the closing line. He is a relic of the last decade in which larger-than-life personalities could grip the nation as a whole (at least as a perceived whole), a decade in which the mythic aspects of rock and roll was alive and well though threatening to follow Kurt Cobain into the grave. And it did. Eventually. In its wake, several years later, Ty Segall came on the scene, with his John Lennon-esc falsetto and his finger-blistering solos (shredding, if you will).

Yes, Rock 'n Roll is dead, and not in the way your grandfather or your father might say it's dead because they no longer play Zeppelin on the Top 40 stations and because kids these days wear pants that don't fit. Dead in the sense that it's principal philosophy no longer applies to those still touring the nation with guitars and drums in the back of their vans. Gone are the pervasive cultural icons of yesteryear, the titans of Rock who took the nation by storm and gripped the youth of that time so that they would grow up and write Rolling Stone articles celebrating the good ol' days.

Our cultural icons today don't seem to have the staying powers of those in the past. They appear to come in fads, fads that appeal to a certain demographic of people and very few outside of that target audience.

I don't mean to associate Segall and Mangum with that notion of "fads," but there is something ephemeral about the music they play.

Ty Segall

"We've come down with the plague," says a sick Segall, periodically squirting a bottle of cough syrup in his throat, "So let's get weird." And for one loose, loud hour we did get weird. Very weird. So weird, in fact, that one couple used the dance floor as a place to get their "freak" on, coming up mid-song having lost their shirts and their tact.

We all lost our tact for that brief hour, and when the last chord washed over the packed club, we staggered to our respective cars and lives, having jobs and obligations to tend to in the morning.

Mangum starts his set without words, launching straight into "Oh, Comely" after trotting onto the stage. "Are you going to sing with me?" he asks once the song is finished, knowing the answer before the rapturous applause sounds in reply. The crowd, at first reverent and silent, knows every word and bellows them out without hesitation. His voice seems untainted by the decade of reclusive-ness, perhaps even better. So much so, that as he roars through "Two-Headed Boy" you can watch the tears stream down the face of the person beside (though not yours truly, too manly to be moved).

These men attract adoring crowds, perhaps not The-Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan level of adoration, but from the crying spectators (again not yours truly) at Mangum to the boisterous crowd at Segall, there is no doubt they've garnered their own brand of affection. We're too close to these moments to judge their historical context and cultural perseverance (if they'll even have any). Still, they carry on a new breed of "rock 'n roll," and it just may follow us into the future if we bring it with us.

Yes, in a few years time, we may have our pants waist-high trying to force our children to listen to our Neutral Milk Hotel albums and scoffing when they don't appreciate it like we do. These are the things I dream of. As well as flying...

Basketball for the Heavy Set

He had this dream, this beautiful dream. In it, he and Dirk Nowitzki were paired in a 2v2 game against Mark Burrows, the boy who used to throw mashed potatoes at him during freshman lunch, and Michael West, the boy who used to supply Mark with the potato ammunition. The rules were simple: the first to twenty-one points won, and the winning team got to watch as the losers groveled at their feet before ritually committing suicide with the blade of their choice (this being a civilized society). Even in his dreams, he played the role of sidekick, choosing to take the backseat as Dirk leveled point after point onto the opposition. He could pass well enough that he felt his contribution adequate, though he wished he could nail a jump shot, could drive to the rim, could shoot threes with the confidence of a young Larry Bird, but that would never be the case, not even when his imagination was unhindered. Still, he delighted in the demise of his enemies. He took a devious sort of pleasure in watching Dirk do his bidding and even darker brand of pleasure in watching the blades protrude from the backs of those, to him, perpetually thirteen year old monstrosities.

Screamales: A Hazy Retrospective

Hello all. I've decided to try something new within the established Kittens in Ties format. The goal is to write reviews on things ... all sorts of things ... in the form of flash fiction based on my memories of said thing. This week's review is of a concert I recently experienced: Screaming Females at Queen City Hall. We'll see how this goes ... 

Power chords ran through his veins like demented gerbils psyched out on pharmaceuticals running through an infinite loop of tunnels encased in a glass cage. He could feel the dissonance of the guitar solo inching up his spine, and it was only 7:30, several hours before the show would even start. These were feelings drawn by expectations, already bobbing his head up and down amidst the rhythmless soundtrack of street noise. It would do for now. He knew the songs well enough that he didn't need musical accompaniment to get amped up. Instead, he needed only silence ... his mind would provide the rest.

Of course, now was not the time for premature headbanging. Now was a time for action.