Evening of June 4, 2011 (still before I saw Mötley
the first time)
I just realized today that I have probably always thought never mind was one word because of Nirvana. I'm currently listening to their 1991 release, Nevermind, which I have never actually listened to in its entirety. The only Nirvana album I'm actually quite familiar with isNirvana, a compilation of their greatest hits or best known songs or something, four of which come from Nevermind. I think I listened to it in junior high when I vaguely cared about music (and then in high school I got distracted by theatre or something).
A thunderstorm is currently raging outside my bedroom, rain banging on the windows and sliding down blurry glass. Thunder is rumbling aggressively across the empty fields of Illinois, and I saw a few cracks of lightning earlier. It's a good afternoon for reading, and I just finished a second read of Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City, a book I last read in the summer of 2009 (which, I think, is when I read everything he'd ever written with the exception of his one novel that I read last summer). This time through, I thought more and more about my affinity for 80s rock music - or, more specifically, metal. This genre is slangily and less-than-lovingly referred to as cock rock. The point, which I can't really argue with, is that all the music, and more importantly, the persona, the aesthetic of metal was about getting girls. Lots and lots of girls. Motley Crue in fact released an album entitled Girls, Girls, Girls. (The title song is still played on classic rock stations - at least the ones that lean more towards Van Halen and less towards Bruce Springsteen.)
Anyone who's met me knows I'm a feminist. I don't even really actively try to be, I just am. In the meeting I had with faculty after my first directing project, one of my teachers said it was definitely a "feminist take" on the play. I didn't do that on purpose, it just happened. So logic would dictate that I wouldn't be so into a genre that is almost exclusively about the masculine power to attract sexy playmates (and doing drugs).
But it's my favorite kind of music.
Klosterman argues that metal wasn't really about the song lyrics but the attitude. And while that may still have been about masculine power and attracting fuck buddies, it was also about being loud and fast and 100% whatever you were. Glam metal was the height of the constructed artistic image, but whatever a band was, if they were successful, it was because they were completely and utterly their aesthetic. And in the 80s, fans tended to hate it when their favorite bands strayed from whatever the expected image was. All this tangent is to say is I like loud, I like fast, and I'm all about being 100% whatever you are. That may seem a little off coming from someone who calls herself an actor/designer/director (not always in that order) but I'm 100% invested in doing anything that fulfills me artistically and allows me to create a gift for the audience, as big and bold as possible. I haven't figured out how to totally succeed yet, but I try as best I can.
I don't know much about music. I haven't taken any classes or studied music theory. All I really know about music I've learned from reading Klosterman's books and talking to my musically-oriented friends. Not much of it ever seems to stick, but I know what I like, even if I can't very articulately explain why. Recently I've done a lot of driving by myself in our 1996 used car which got renovated with a pretty decent sound system before we bought it. All week I've been listening to rock music really loudly. Louder than I ever can in my house or my dorm room or when I have headphones actually in my ears, because I sort of need my hearing. Car listening is awesome though, because you can feel the music while cruising down the highway. I don't think you're supposed to amp up the bass when listening to hard rock, but I do, because I went to a high school that only listened to R&B and rap, and I need bass in my system. Music sounds completely different when it's really loud. And I don't just mean it sounds louder. It sounds fiercer, stronger, meaner, more serious.
For the last several years, I've much preferred listening to music from before I was born to anything from the last decade. The first nine most-played songs on my iTunes are all 80s gems, starting with "Cum on Feel the Noize," "Any Way You Want It," and "Talk Dirty to Me." I'm unsure how "Don't Stop Believing" is only at number six. In any case, my musical tastes create the interesting game any time we're on a road trip of trying to find a good rock station as we drive across the country and in and out of range of major cities. Once you get out of range of Chicago, it's hard to find a good station anywhere in Indiana, eastern Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Georgia, or northern Florida. There's actually a good rock station that broadcasts out of somewhere near my grandma's house in southern Florida. Stations out of Cleveland and Akron, OH are not bad. The entirety of PA is a disaster because of mountains; we have to find a new station every twenty minutes, inevitably as soon as a Bon Jovi song comes on (which is almost always "Living on a Prayer" or "Wanted Dead or Alive"). Around home we've got the Drive, which is alright, but on the lighter side of "classic rock," and the Loop, which is my station of choice now that Jack FM is gone. Jack played almost exclusively songs I know and love, so of course it became an oldies station sometime between January and March. The Loop plays a fair amount of early 70s stuff I don't know, but also a lot of Pink Floyd, Van Halen, and Poison, so I don't complain.
At some point this all might have been leading to some philosophical point, given that Nirvana isn't even a metal band, but I got distracted by the rain for a while and forgot where I was going. In fact I think I might have even intended to talk about my brother's graduation (another post, I suppose), but maybe I just really wanted to talk about rock music. Probably. My love of major league baseball, specifically the White Sox, and my affinity for glam rock are the only things even slightly out of line with the rest of my personality. And I'll grant that the glam part makes sense. I blame Hedwig, but what else is new?
Back to December:
All of my top 25 most played songs are now 80s songs, only 9 of which are Mötley Crüe. There are songs on my iPod that have somehow been played almost 2000 times since June. I'm starting to think that my love of glam rock is totally in line with my personality and may in fact be becoming my personality. And now that I've been to the show (twice), I'm becoming obsessed with the theatricality of the constructed image. I could write a paper about that... Too bad that has nothing to do with Spanish Renaissance art. Anyway. Pictures with nerdy commentary below:
I just realized today that I have probably always thought never mind was one word because of Nirvana. I'm currently listening to their 1991 release, Nevermind, which I have never actually listened to in its entirety. The only Nirvana album I'm actually quite familiar with isNirvana, a compilation of their greatest hits or best known songs or something, four of which come from Nevermind. I think I listened to it in junior high when I vaguely cared about music (and then in high school I got distracted by theatre or something).
A thunderstorm is currently raging outside my bedroom, rain banging on the windows and sliding down blurry glass. Thunder is rumbling aggressively across the empty fields of Illinois, and I saw a few cracks of lightning earlier. It's a good afternoon for reading, and I just finished a second read of Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City, a book I last read in the summer of 2009 (which, I think, is when I read everything he'd ever written with the exception of his one novel that I read last summer). This time through, I thought more and more about my affinity for 80s rock music - or, more specifically, metal. This genre is slangily and less-than-lovingly referred to as cock rock. The point, which I can't really argue with, is that all the music, and more importantly, the persona, the aesthetic of metal was about getting girls. Lots and lots of girls. Motley Crue in fact released an album entitled Girls, Girls, Girls. (The title song is still played on classic rock stations - at least the ones that lean more towards Van Halen and less towards Bruce Springsteen.)
Anyone who's met me knows I'm a feminist. I don't even really actively try to be, I just am. In the meeting I had with faculty after my first directing project, one of my teachers said it was definitely a "feminist take" on the play. I didn't do that on purpose, it just happened. So logic would dictate that I wouldn't be so into a genre that is almost exclusively about the masculine power to attract sexy playmates (and doing drugs).
But it's my favorite kind of music.
Klosterman argues that metal wasn't really about the song lyrics but the attitude. And while that may still have been about masculine power and attracting fuck buddies, it was also about being loud and fast and 100% whatever you were. Glam metal was the height of the constructed artistic image, but whatever a band was, if they were successful, it was because they were completely and utterly their aesthetic. And in the 80s, fans tended to hate it when their favorite bands strayed from whatever the expected image was. All this tangent is to say is I like loud, I like fast, and I'm all about being 100% whatever you are. That may seem a little off coming from someone who calls herself an actor/designer/director (not always in that order) but I'm 100% invested in doing anything that fulfills me artistically and allows me to create a gift for the audience, as big and bold as possible. I haven't figured out how to totally succeed yet, but I try as best I can.
I don't know much about music. I haven't taken any classes or studied music theory. All I really know about music I've learned from reading Klosterman's books and talking to my musically-oriented friends. Not much of it ever seems to stick, but I know what I like, even if I can't very articulately explain why. Recently I've done a lot of driving by myself in our 1996 used car which got renovated with a pretty decent sound system before we bought it. All week I've been listening to rock music really loudly. Louder than I ever can in my house or my dorm room or when I have headphones actually in my ears, because I sort of need my hearing. Car listening is awesome though, because you can feel the music while cruising down the highway. I don't think you're supposed to amp up the bass when listening to hard rock, but I do, because I went to a high school that only listened to R&B and rap, and I need bass in my system. Music sounds completely different when it's really loud. And I don't just mean it sounds louder. It sounds fiercer, stronger, meaner, more serious.
For the last several years, I've much preferred listening to music from before I was born to anything from the last decade. The first nine most-played songs on my iTunes are all 80s gems, starting with "Cum on Feel the Noize," "Any Way You Want It," and "Talk Dirty to Me." I'm unsure how "Don't Stop Believing" is only at number six. In any case, my musical tastes create the interesting game any time we're on a road trip of trying to find a good rock station as we drive across the country and in and out of range of major cities. Once you get out of range of Chicago, it's hard to find a good station anywhere in Indiana, eastern Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Georgia, or northern Florida. There's actually a good rock station that broadcasts out of somewhere near my grandma's house in southern Florida. Stations out of Cleveland and Akron, OH are not bad. The entirety of PA is a disaster because of mountains; we have to find a new station every twenty minutes, inevitably as soon as a Bon Jovi song comes on (which is almost always "Living on a Prayer" or "Wanted Dead or Alive"). Around home we've got the Drive, which is alright, but on the lighter side of "classic rock," and the Loop, which is my station of choice now that Jack FM is gone. Jack played almost exclusively songs I know and love, so of course it became an oldies station sometime between January and March. The Loop plays a fair amount of early 70s stuff I don't know, but also a lot of Pink Floyd, Van Halen, and Poison, so I don't complain.
At some point this all might have been leading to some philosophical point, given that Nirvana isn't even a metal band, but I got distracted by the rain for a while and forgot where I was going. In fact I think I might have even intended to talk about my brother's graduation (another post, I suppose), but maybe I just really wanted to talk about rock music. Probably. My love of major league baseball, specifically the White Sox, and my affinity for glam rock are the only things even slightly out of line with the rest of my personality. And I'll grant that the glam part makes sense. I blame Hedwig, but what else is new?
Back to December:
All of my top 25 most played songs are now 80s songs, only 9 of which are Mötley Crüe. There are songs on my iPod that have somehow been played almost 2000 times since June. I'm starting to think that my love of glam rock is totally in line with my personality and may in fact be becoming my personality. And now that I've been to the show (twice), I'm becoming obsessed with the theatricality of the constructed image. I could write a paper about that... Too bad that has nothing to do with Spanish Renaissance art. Anyway. Pictures with nerdy commentary below:
During Wild Side. One of my favorite things about glam rock lighting is that they're not afraid of pink.
A magazine should pay me for this photo. Or Vince Neil could; that would be even better. Over 30 years he has perfected the well known "wide-legged lead singer rock stance," seen here accompanied by "aggressive arm."
Probably saying one of his favorite phrases, "make some ******* noise tonight." (Bleeped for my grandparents, in case they're reading. Hi, grandparents.)
Also, backlight! Shiny things! Silver pants?
Mick is short and old and wearing platform shoes so his wide-legged stance is less wide but he makes up for it in creepy makeup and epic hat.
(Nikki is taller than everyone and his hair still makes him taller.)
Every once in a while they let Vince play guitar. But look at the pretty row of orange lights!
This picture is not zoomed in. If I were taller, my eye level would have been around their knees instead of their feet. But still. Rock stars in my face. (Featuring Vince's guitar, which is featuring the Too Fast For Love album cover from 1981.)
Mick Mars looking epic and dark as usual. Lighting contrast!
Nikki Sixx has perfected the well-known "epic guitar playing face" though he plays bass. Because he talks the most out of anyone in the band he comes up front a lot. Please note the magical smoky darkness and publish this photo.
Contrast! Angles! Nikki Sixx playing bass! And looking at me! Depth! Colors! Editorial.
Tommy Lee plays drums so he's far away. Then he plays a disco ball piano for a second and he's closer but that was as close as he got. Still he's awful pretty for almost 50.
I think learning how to be a lighting designer is a lot like going to photography school. Hello, Mick Mars.
Sixx salute, playing bass one-handed, as he does.
Vince making an impressive singing face. (And lots of backlight at lots of angles!)
Tommy Lee upside down. Backlight and media and all that jazz.
Case in point why Mötley puts on a better live show than everybody else and should always headline, because things like this make Def Leppard look lame, even though their music is great.
This is mostly just because I love Nikki Sixx too much. (He got a haircut before this show and Vince kept trying to tousle it, which is kind of funny since the whole point is that it's spiky and messy.)
Hi we are a hard rock band. I am a lead singer with impressive center stage power. These are my America pants. Yes I want you to look there. Love, Vince Neil.
Nikki Sixx directly in front of me and directly in front of bright lights.
Again with the lights and the angles and the glowing and Mick Mars being epic and hiding his eyes even when he's five feet from my face.
Boys. Mick close enough that I can see how old his arms look, since he's actually 60 and you know, did some drugs or something. (And was born in Indiana and is a Taurus like me!)
This is the end of the show. And it's still epic and they're not even playing music, they're just standing there. Yeah, I could work for them. Rock show lights! Weee!
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