During our seminar over the past few weeks, it has been suggested that authenticity plays a role in why listeners identify with particular musical artists. Increasingly, the word seems to have no fixed meaning when it comes to rock music. One listener’s definition of the authentic artist may be totally different from another. While this seems to be essentially problematic, it actually opens up a different notion: is there actually one type of authenticity at work in rock music, or are there several? If we accept that there are several types of authenticity that people use to qualify artists, we can then stop fixating on finding one actual definition for authenticity and shift the conversation to what finding out what kind of authenticity is being displayed by a particular artist.
Two weeks ago, Professor Solis posed the rather simple question: “Why Beefheart?” Indeed, what is it about Captain Beefheart that appeals to listeners and critics? Surely it’s something besides the pure enjoyment of his music. I grant that someone may reply to this post and say “I love the music of Captain Beefheart because it moves me on an extraordinarily deep level and that’s the only reason.” This statement would be totally valid, but I venture to say that in the majority of cases, there is something else at work here in relation to why a listener would be drawn to Captain Beefheart. This something else is a type of authenticity I’ll refer to as the genuine article.
Here I’ll turn to Christgau: “Zappa’s distance from his audience is a calculated means of bullying it into respectful cash-on-the-line attention. Beefheart really doesn’t give a shit. Zappa plays the avant-gardist and Beefheart is the real thing. He does perform, but for once performance and self expression are almost identical: his detachment is in some sense pure and even innocent, and at the same time he is arrogant as only the pure heart can be arrogant.” (from Any Old Way You Choose It) In other words, both Zappa and Beefheart are weird, but Zappa is being weird. Beefheart is weird. Thus Zappa is a poser and Beefheart is the authentic artist, worthy of reverence and whatever else. To Christgau, it would seem that if Beefheart were playing music in his living room, he would be playing it exactly the way he was on stage that evening. There is no seperation between Beefheart the person and Beefheart the performer, and he is thus the genuine article.
So how does Christgau (and countless others I presume) know that Beefheart isn’t simply acting the part? Here’s where I’ll draw a parallel to another artist who exhibits similar qualities, Daniel Johnston. (If you haven’t experienced him, rent the film The Devil and Daniel Johnston.) On stage, both Beefheart and Johnston are weird, but there’s something about their persona that projects more…they’re almost like idiot savants, and they clearly don’t just play that on stage. Because of this quality, it would seem that they are immune from posturing, from record companies, from the corruption of big time rock, and they are in fact genuine artists.
It is this “purity” that draws people to Beefheart and Johnston. I don’t deny that their music speaks to people, but it’s the feeling of authenticity that creates a substantial part of their lure. Because of their idiot savant like nature, they project the image of the genuine article, and thus serve as an example of authenticity that many listeners look for in their artists.
Brian, I agree with your post. Authenticity really is in the eyes and ears of the listener and a certain place in time. I think Springsteen’s performance of Thunder Road was inauthentic, but maybe that’s because I know that he performed the same schtick night after night. Who knows though, maybe he really did feel that song each time he played it. I don’t believe it, but who cares about me? Wouldn’t it be enough that one fan probably went home at the end of the night with ears buzzing, mind humming, and the feeling that she knew just what the Boss was there for? Isn’t that rock?
I especially liked the bit about idiot savants. For me, I regard true authenticity as the point where a performer sheds any sense of self and simply expresses –a solo, a vocal phrasing, a fuckup with good intention, or any sense where I feel the performer getting so inside the music that inhibition and judgment and forethought fade into ecstasy and release. Little cheeseball, I know. The second solo in “Crossroads” does it for me. I feel like Clapton is finally bringing Hurrah Torpedo’s weight down. I guess my comment probably has more to do with what I consider individual moments of authenticity within a work, but that is one of many ways in which I judge a musician as being the genuine article or not.
I saw Zappa about six or seven times and I don’t remember any examples of him ‘being weird’. This Christgau guy needs to think through his argument.
SNIP
I saw Zappa about six or seven times and I don’t remember any examples of him ‘being weird’.
SNIP
Really? Naturally, wierdness is in the eye of the beholder and frankly all relative, but still. I just watched the Zappa appearance on Steve Allen’s show (one of his first national appearances), and it was self-consciously wierd; a mix of straight man and Groucho Marx, with a touch of absurdist theater thrown in. It was clear that part of the schtick was Allen playing up Zappa’s wierdness-reputation and Zappa saying, “what, me, wierd?” Likewise the Zappa appearance on the Monkees (available on you tube). Likewise _Uncle Meat_. The key here is that Zappa looks like he’s doing absurdist theater, not like he’s just wierd and flaunting it on stage.
GS
Given the rehearsals his bands went through, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if a Beefheart performance in Christgau’s living room were the same as one up on a stage.
The idea that any of Beefheart’s music production comes from an “idiot savant like nature” is a long-enduring myth, but false—John French, aka Drumbo, has occasionally written about this, and if it were savanty stuff, it would make inclusions like “come out to show them” in “Moonlight on Vermont” a bit harder to explain.
I actually don’t really get the post. People like “Hair Pie” or “One Red Rose That I Mean” because Beefheart is authentically weird? That wouldn’t explain why they actually, you know, listen to the music. There seems to be a dichotomy being set up between responding to the performer qua performer as authentic, and being moved “on an extraordinarily deep level” by the music in all its purity. Those are different dimensions of response, and the latter’s a rather extreme one, at that.
Of course, all of my contact with Beefheart has been mediated through CDs (& CD album art, so I got to see some sixtiesish clothing and funny pseudonyms on the Trout Mask Replica liners). Never seen one live performance of his, in person or recorded.
You could also ask why people are willing to tolerate complexity in Beefheart’s music but not Zappa’s. Why not “Approximate”? Must one go rushing off to the stage persona? Why not, say, Beefheart’s doesn’t wear its complexity on its sleeve, Beefheart has a deeper, gruffer voice (stolen from Howlin’ Wolf, as everyone knows), Beefheart’s not as clever. (Where names are used metonymically.)
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