Image Bands and their Discontents

OK, let's do this.

Starting with the caveat that *all* bands have images, even being anti-image is an image (refusing to show your face, a la Burial, or The Knife and their masks, this is still a pose). Though it might still be interesting to think about it would mean to really *not* have an image. (I think this only happens by accident, e.g. mysterious 12" from 20 years ago, where any hope of finding visuals to go with the artist has been lost.)

But I want to get at what I (or you, or we? This is a thread to figure it out!) mean by an "Image Band". Is it merely a band that has carefully constructed a strong visual image which forms an inherent part of the package and the message of the artist? Is it more of a dismissive thing, where "image band" means that a band's image or looks are seen to be more important than, or totally subsuming the artist's music? (This has been a common accusation thrown at Duran Duran, for example, and other bands that ~gurls~ like, as discussed on the Repetitive Listening thread.)

Duran Duran are p much my quintessential idea of an "Image Band" - perfectly positioned as they were to break through, right as MTV and videos became the new dominant force in music. The much-discussed Interpol are also a total "Image Band" AFAIC. But what about Guns N Roses? Does the overlap between "glam band" and "image band" and their status as "boyband" make them an Image Band? How about the White Stripes? How about Prince and the Revolution? (And has Prince had other groups that are not "Image Bands"?) Who invented "The Image Band"? Bowie? The Velvet Underground? "Would You Let Your Daughter Go With" era Rolling Stones?

1) If you "don't care what bands look like" or don't think that image *matters*, this is probably not really a thread for you. The fundamental starting point of this thread is that image *does* matter, and it is just as worthwhile addressing and discussing image and style and artwork and clothes as aesthetic choices, as it is discussing music.

2) Because this is ~a Branwell thread~, please think carefully about your gender assumptions before you post. I'm going to ask you to be super-careful when talking about image and female artists. Although, yes, I would categorically argue that Lady Gaga and Janelle Monae totally fall under the banner "image bands", female artists have so often been judged by their looks and nothing more, that it is not acceptable to use "men like to look at them" as justifying "X is an image band" if you're talking about e.g. Grimes or Warpaint.

Let's talk about Image Bands!

Firstly, on Looks: having "good looks" (in the sense of being physically attractive, as well as having "a good look" or individual style) is a pretty important part of "being an image band", however "good looks" alone is not enough to justify "being an image band."

Secondly, thinking about costumes, matching outfits and uniforms: Wearing costumes or uniforms may be part of it (Kraftwerk: Ur-Image Band, and also KISS) but at the same time, having such a strong *look* that the band don't *have* to wear uniforms is just as "Image". Of course Death Metal band in corpse paint are "Image Bands" - but then again, what about the standard "heavy metal uniform"? One of the reasons people were laughing at Deafheaven is that all of them were dressed in standard "metalhead" uniform, while one was dressed like a maths professor, which really showed up the theatricality of the "no uniform uniform" of metalheads for the pose it is.

(this will probably be my least successful thread ever, but I have been thinking about this so much, I had to start it)

in the sense of being physically attractive

this is a broooooad, knotty thing, and whilst i agree i wd want to expand on the ways that being distinctive-looking or unconventionally attractive or however we define that gets glommed onto the mechanics of charisma or even fame without obvious charisma - they play off and into each other, to the point where the looks can't be seen without the starpower perhaps

that's a long way of saying "it's hard to say that the SEXAY-ness precedes the celebrity, however small and localized the latter is"

This is kinda not really the direction that I want this thread to go in, because I really want this thread to be about *aesthetic decisions* and, for the most part, people do not choose their looks.

"Physically odd yet striking looking" can definitely be a shortcut to "star quality" (c.f. one Mr Yorke and one Mr Bowie) but at the same time, there are many, many people who are blandly good looking and yet don't have the slightest bit of star quality of physical presence that is required for an "Image Band".

Physical looks definitely go into this pot, but it's neither the principle ingredient, nor the most interesting, to me? Feel free to interrogate it, though, if you have new things to say about it.

nah i was gonna say it probably needed bracketing elsewhere but "image requires strikingness" makes me wonder the extent to which your proto-image artists were building on the clay god gave them, i.e. image as a response to not having matinee idol looks. seem to recall Kiss half-jokingly talking about the make-up being a cover for them being less than aesthetically pleasing dudes

like, do the Stones in 64 have more of an "image" than the Beatles because the Beatles were blandly prettier?

I think there's a line that separates the Duran Duran types who really embrace the fashion of the day from others where it's a more deeply-set conceptual thing, like corpsepaint metal or Kraftwerk or whatever. most interesting when you can see the divide between different artists from similar scenes - a boring example is in 2001 when the Strokes were the fashionable side, the White Stripes the conceptual side of whatever 'garage rock' was.

have a feeling that glam is the fault line where this stuff cracks open and goes one way or the other.

I like the idea of image bands being a way for odd looking people who have not been blessed with god-given natural good looks to achieve glamour.

there's always been a certain mistrust of image bands here in Aus, to the point where 'fashion band' is a putdown I've heard in the past.

almost all popular music is performative so in a real sense all pop artists are image artists - so what makes a capital Image Artist? is it something to do with the image being intended to alienate in some way - even if by alienation we include ideas like glamour?

also consider the way Image gets blurred when fans start to adopt the look of their idols - did typical Punk or Metal costumery originate with artists rather than audience, and then become something different because the fans' adoption of the look meant that artists started to look like the fans?

feel like their must've been "Goths" to some extent before a Bauhaus or Alien Sex Fiend or Sisters were influencing that image

The Who, at least early on, used to copy the look of certain members of their mod audience.

Stanley Cohen talks about these feedback loops in Folk Devils and Moral Panics, altho as i remember he's thinking about the way Mods wd see themselves depicted in the media and this wd influence the ways they presented themselves and so on, rather than directly between band and artist

tho i saw Roger Daltrey on TV the other day describing the Who becoming a "Mod band" by just going in and out of the barber's one Friday afternoon, he was talking about them responding to a vacuum for a British group to represent the subculture which was listening to American music, boom! the Who becomes an Image Band

xp just typed that before snoball chipped in

are image bands generally a young person's game (in terms of the bands themselves and also the fanbase)?

Thought about this a little im one of those that "doesnt think so much about the image" though of course i realize things like overt anonymity are highly stylized images in themselves and i find that a bit silly

I think i like it when people look like theyre enjoying themselves or are having a genial time

I dont like it so much when people are in black and white - noticing DJs doing this on soundcloud

i think black and white is a too-easy signifier, but it can work if you put the effort in. would be intersting to work against it, since it feels like a signifier of "i are serious business" unless you're Morrissey or Belle and Sebastian in which case it signifies "i are 1962"

there is a TERRIFIC tv interview with Adam Faith from the early 60s in which a very of-the-period plummy BBC type discusses Adam's image with him, and Faith is articulate and insightful about positioning himself as a different type of pop star, a moodier more thoughtful Image

frantically Youtubing to try and find this

struggling at work because Youtube doesn't work but this is also v relevant in terms of the roots of modernity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCjTWYoRTzM

I don't think I've ever used the term 'image band' when talking about music but it's an interesting topic to think about.

Is it merely a band that has carefully constructed a strong visual image which forms an inherent part of the package and the message of the artist?

I think I'd say 'yes' to this, basically my (admittedly simplistic) definition would be "any band you could do as fancy dress".

Johnnie Ray came to mind because - my dad saw him in Wolverhampton at some point in the 50s/60s and told me the place was so packed they had to put chairs out on the stage, and i remembered this because of discussing Adam Faith with him, and he sort of agreeing that Adam Faith had an image that was more okay for young men to be into, he was less of a clown/fop than comparable pop stars of the era, which ties into what Faith was saying about himself - this is right at the beginning of the Rock era and clearly there are already artists (and their managers no doubt) thinking HARD about the Whole Package

I have enjoyed watching this documentary on Iasos and in one way i don't think of him having an image as such but on the other side the positive energy he radiates and transmits definitely adds more vibe especially in the way he speaks and actually maybe i enjoy that part as much as the music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ktDzQp0aU8

sometimes when an image band from the 80s gets back together I'm disappointed that they just look like a bunch of boring middle aged men now, and worry if that's a bad thing to think, and to what extent the disappointment is because they are unavoidably fatter/balder/whatever than they were 25 yrs ago or because they are no longer making the same effort with their image, I generally think it's the latter which seems more justifiable, but I guess it's a fine line?

oh! Oh! Oh! So! Many! Thoughts! I am trying to scrape together into a coherent line of thinking, but all of this discussion has been very very thought-provoking and now there are a million x-posts

I've deliberately used "style" or "image" rather than "fashion band" for a specific reason - to me, although I know "Fashion" is shorthand for the whole style industry, "Fashion", to me, indicates a changeable, weathervane kind of approach, both to clothing and to music. That "Fashion band" = "Oh, Grunge is in right now, let's all wear flannel and record grunge songs. Wait, no, 60s revival is in now, let's wear mod suits and reference the Who. Oops, wind has shifted again, we're a Suit Band referencing post-punk in our riffs." Like, The Soup Dragons are the quintessential laughably Fashion Band.

It was Suzy who taught me the hugely important difference between "Style" and "Fashion". "Style" or "Image" is much more about personal aesthetics and using clothes and haircuts and the like for personal expression. There is an endless tension and dialogue between Style and Fashion, both in clothing and in music. It's not a simple or one-way street, even though the received wisdom is that Style "sets trends" while Fashion "follows them". Knowing the "latest fashion" to the point of seeming 5 minutes ahead enough to seem like a trend-setter is as much an Image Band thing, as "invent a whole new vocabulary and wardrobe which all the kids will be copying in 6 months time". Get either wrong and you look ridiculous, get it right and you look visionary.

The whole "The Who as Mods" thing is absolutely typical of this. (Really tempted to read that book now, NV) Also the relationship between "goth" and "media depiction of goth."

I don't know that "image bands" are solely the province of The Young; the continued careers of Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Madonna, Prince, Suede etc seem to suggest that they are not. In some cases this may be "established a reputation as 'image band' early enough on that people continue to respond to it" and in other cases it may be "perpetual style chameleon who is really really good at continually reinventing new images"?

I think I'd say 'yes' to this, basically my (admittedly simplistic) definition would be "any band you could do as fancy dress".

(I don't want to talk about how much of my youth I spent effectively cosplaying Bauhaus.)

I dont like it so much when people are in black and white - noticing DJs doing this on soundcloud

― cog, Wednesday, February 12, 2014 10:22 AM

i think black and white is a too-easy signifier, but it can work if you put the effort in. would be intersting to work against it, since it feels like a signifier of "i are serious business" unless you're Morrissey or Belle and Sebastian in which case it signifies "i are 1962"

― the undersea world of jacques kernow (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 10:24 AM

I agree that B&W is a lazy, bad signifier, and if I see one more moody B&W photo of a DJ, seriously, I will break something.

But on the other hand, people who use B&W effectively, it has so, so, so many different signifiers than "I are serious business" or "I are 1962" - thinking about Bauhaus, whose spectre is going to hang all over this thread, I can remember the first time I saw a colour photo of Bauhaus, and I was actually *shocked* to discover that, for example, David J was a ginger? They were a band that seemed to *live* in B&W, even in their stage shows, and the effect was "we are characters in a German art school cabaret or a 1920s silent film".

when you listen to a band at home do you visualise them in your head? I discovered Momus in 2003 and whenever I listen to Momus I tend to picture a 2003 early 40s eyepatch wearing Momus even if I'm listening to something he recorded ten years earlier, maybe this is different for bands who radically change their image though?

feel like there's a qualitative shift with Bowie/Roxy 71/72 - something dialectic to it maybe – the image band gets rocket-fuel from existing alongside the 'honest' or 'authentic' band, a tradition of plod to be rejected, or offset Bowie/Roxy leaping out at you - the more strongly the 'real' presses, the more effective or powerful cutting loose can be, the self-conscious embrace of the artificial becomes supercharged, & the image-band can load it with theory (which… once broached becomes implicit in the tradition of the image band?).

this seems important in image bands, the idea that their photos look like they are stills from a film, like they create their own world, this seems important to the Whole Package idea.

re Bauhaus and B&W, which feels v. true, which raises a question - how has the socialization of media impacted the Image Band? in an age where everybody follows their Friends how have the rules of image control changed. feel like a Gaga lets the mask slip much more now than 70s Bowie wd ever have done

also woof articulating something about knowingness that i hadn't quite grasped yet

and soref bringing in Momus is funny because i wanted to mention El Records but know very little beyond some of their 80s press photos which were things of wonder to teenage me

Depends on the band? (x-post to soref's first question now)

Like, it's impossible for me to listen to Bauhaus without imagining what they look like, how they dress, how they *move* to the music, but this is because I have literally watched Shadow of Light and Archive so many damn times that those images are irrevocably burned into my brain.

Whether Momus is an image band or not is an interesting question (my sources say... yes?) but when I listen to his music, I do quite clearly picture him. But I think that's more how the records of his that I own are produced, in that his vocals are foregrounded, a lot, and his tone of voice is very "let me have a confidential whisper in your ear of this wicked and spiteful thought!" That's what makes me picture Momus when I listen to him, not having an image of a guy in functionally engineered Japanese fashion and an eyepatch.

and that's attractive to young people, at that stage where you are fantasising about what your adult life could be like, they create these worlds you imagine could be the lifestyle that you could take on

kind of like a syllabus band

(It's also weird to me that you guys are picking "Bowie/Roxy" as ground zero, when to me "Ground Zero" is so clearly the Velvet Underground, I mean, getting Andy Warhol to not just design your album cover, but "produce" your record, those ~Iconic~ shots with Nico, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable - I suppose it's because they backtracked so much from IMAGE BAND on the first two record to "srz musicans" with their later albums.)

kind of like a syllabus band

― I R Jones (soref), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 11:01 AM

I think Image Bands are probably just a certain *kind* of Syllabus Band, just a *Visual* Syllabus Band.

(Have we got this far and no one has mentioned Visual Kei? I know next to nothing about Visual Kei is why I haven't, but I'd love for someone who knows what they're talking about to address it itt.)

do bands from the past kind of become image bands by default? Like a band from the 60s will seem to have that unified aesthetic, all of their photos and clothes and record covers will scream 1964 (or whatever), even if it may not have appeared styalised and unified in that way at the time?

am pondering a thread or thread within thread about the Non-Image Band tbh, the unconscious of this - amongst other things, the way that notions of masculinity could be attached to the lack of image, despite Being a Pop Musician being essentially an effete occupation...standard 1950s codes wd make being any kind of performer a suspect activity on the queer-meter, yet by the 80s peeps like Sham are reveling in their salt-of-the-earthity...this process feels like the underbelly of the Image

like the Non-Image is the most weirdly constructed Image of them all?

Can't you look at a band from the near present, and see it "scream 2012" or the like? Like, when I see bands with pyramids and galaxies in their artwork, I think "Jesus Christ, early 00s Tumblr band"?

I get what you're saying, in that bands from 1964 start to "look like 1964" whether they looked like 1964 at the time or not, but the thing is, when you listen to a lot of garage rock/freak beat compilations and the like with endless tiny photos of local groups, you get an eye for who "looks like 1964" and who doesn't.

x-post GO FOR IT, NV. I'd love a sub-context on who gets to be perceived as "not an image" because indeed, that *is* the most constructed image of them all.

I was trying to think of who would be the definition of Non-Image Band, but it seems a lot harder that identifying Image Band, as soon as look directly at it, it disappears

I was trying to think of who would be the definition of Non-Image Band, but it seems a lot harder that identifying Image Band, as soon as look directly at it, it disappears

― I R Jones (soref), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 11:09 AM

EXACTLY!!! I was trying to think of this a couple of days ago, trying to come up with an antidote to Interpol, trying to find a band that had no image at all in order to cleanse my palate. I could not find one! (But that's probably because I don't have things like... Maroon 5 in my record collection.)

here's Jeremy Deller to illustrate a fantastical moment in the construction of popular working class masculinity

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/13/artist-industrial-revolution-popular-culture

because altho this is a sidetrack for somewehre else i want to acknowledge whoever talked about the chaos bomb that = Glam Rock upthread, which i feel is v. important towards explaining this:

http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1904545.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Robby-Baron-Adrian-Street-Bruno-Elrington-Mick-McManus-Johnny-Kwango-and-Mike-Marino-wrestlers-recording-song-Tip-1904545.jpg

Can anyone think of a band *without* an image? Because the only thing I can think of is artists where there is, literally, no image, like Gareth's weird anonymous techno records from the 80s where any information at all about the artist has been lost - except that has now become such an image in itself that people are now trying to ape it.

think of Oasis as an anti-image band, how badly Noel wants us to think of him as a builder manqué when really he belongs to Peter Noone and David Cassidy's progeny

OASIS ARE TOTALLY AN IMAGE BAND! OASIS ARE A UNION JACK GIBSON HOLLOWBODY SMASHING ON YOUR FACE FOREVER!!!!

was it haitch who talked about aussie resistance to this up there? AC/DC, Cold Chisel, Rose Tattoo, "we are ordinary blokes who appreciate the simple blokey joys of playing musical instruments like some medieval minstrel. with beer."

I have an old issue of the NME from about '94 where they were taking the piss out of Noel's insistence that they didn't care about image and it was all about the music, versus how big an element their haircuts and shoes etc were in their success

...while wearing schoolboy uniforms? AC/DC automatically disqualified.

well quite but how hard Noel wants to be imageless, the dichotomy almost splits between the two brothers

BB i agree the velvets are right there at the proper ground zero of this - but like their other ideas I think it took a while to filter through more widely, hence glam as the point where it became more widespread.

plus maybe not having access to THE key 20th century art/media figure changes the nature of how the image gets manifested in the work of their later followers - iconic Bowie image from Ziggy era probably fellating Ronson's guitar on stage or the red spiky mullet, velvets' iconic image unquestionably the Warhol cover for the first record. (that starts sucking some of the velvets' power away in Warhol's direction, IMO.)

and YES it's ridiculous to be a 60 year-old schoolboy in a non-imagie band...what mental twists are going on in here tho? if you think of DC's blokeish W.C. presentation it's undermined all over the place by wee Jimmy Krankie and a dead singer whose sexuality has routinely been scrutinized for reasons unclear

If one of you has dated a model or television presenter, YOU ARE AN IMAGE BAND
If one of you has started your own fashion label, YOU ARE AN IMAGE BAND
If one of you has talked about how "it's all about the music, maaaan", you know, being "aaaalll about the music, maaaaaaaan" IS A FUCKING IMAGE

x-post

is the fundamental image dichotomy "we are just like you" vs "we are nothing like you" ?

massive xps

totally, yes, I see that on the VU, but Bowie/Roxy feel to me like ground zero because of their success maybe? Like here is where the image band takes over, runs the charts, etc. There are some other distinctions – the visual drive feels more internal, intrinsic or permanent for B/R (art students v roaming avant-garders?) – but they seem to define the field in Britain for a pop generation or two.

I don't think that acknowledging the debt to Warhol invalidates the Velvets' power in any way - in fact, being aware enough to know that they should work with Warhol, and when to leave, shows the Velvets to be way smarter than "throwing power away".

OK, I see the point now - Velvets were never on Top of the Pops; Bowie/Roxy etc were.

That whole dichotomy of "like you" / "not like you" involves an inherent *assumption* about who "you" is, though?

I feel a fuck of a lot more affinity with "genderqueer alien from planet bowie" than I will ever feel with "authentic, northern working class bloke" because of who I am.

And that old dichotomy, of Oasis = authentic working class blokes therefore "real" / Blur = soft southern art school ponces therefore "fake" - you know, I am soft, I am southern, I went to an art school during the brief time I managed tertiary education...

The association of "art school" with "Image Band" is pretty strong, from The Who on, like, I can't discuss Blur without bringing up Goldsmiths like I can't discuss Interpol without bringing up NYU (and anyone who tries to tell me "NYU is not an art school," come on, it's like Goldsmiths. The fact that you can major in French literature or whatever does not make it Not An Art School.) But this is what brings class into it - NYU was "art school for rich kids" where "art school" in the UK implies a mixing of classes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDKF8KkD7rE

thinking about Oasis and image, I find it hard to draw the line between stuff that was self consciously affected, and stuff like their mancunian accents that were legit but became part of their image (and I guess there more general 'northerness' which was real but surely self conscious to some extent as well?)

their more general

when i say "like you" i'm thinking of the fanbase - the "like you" Image is about reassuring fans of your "normality", your connection to them, the same clothes, the same attitudes. and of course this likeness becomes another feedback loop, no doubt public school Oasis fans morphing into their idols to some extent as much as any other fan-relationship

as i said before, the huge irony of Oasis' "northern working class" shtick is that a generation before them ANYBODY playing in a pop group wd be identified as the ponciest of the poncey in northern working class terms

when i say "like you" i'm thinking of the fanbase - the "like you" Image is about reassuring fans of your "normality"

But STILL, who is the fanbase? This is already assuming a fanbase with an idea of what "normal" comprises! And "normal" varies wildly.

sure. which wd bring us into the whole realm of "reading against", i think, which wd be very interesting. fans who get into an artist despite the artist's Image being strongly "not aimed at you or about you"

Oasis's fanbase included both authentic, northern working class blokes and middle class southern student types and they presumably processed to the "like you" / "not like you" thing in different ways?

i guess i started down this road because i'm wondering who Bowie/Roxy/Velvets were defining themselves against? and i thought about early Fleetwood Mac and their dress code being like "camouflaged amongst their audience" and why that might be the case

my initial inclination is to say, "all bands are image bands" (all artists are image artist, w/e), but i realize that such a response doesn't add much to the conversation. thing is, i think all people are "image people", that everyone's in drag all the time, in their clothes, persona, communication, etc. i pretty much have to start from there.

in the 80s, proto-indie punk & hc bands like the minutemen and husker du were often praised for their lack of image. they played and were photographed in worn, shabby, everyday casual & work wear, nothing fancy or otherwise attention-grabbing. this styling, as deliberate as any despite its dgaf trappings, was taken by fans as a badge of authenticity, a symbol of the artists' opposition and superiority to what was often labeled something like "prefabricated, soulless, commercial pop culture". the UK press seemed at leas as interested in the hair and dress of the first sub pop seattle bands as they were with the music. charles peterson's photos helped cement and sell a very specific image of the scene. a few years later, grunge style had become a risible fashion cliché: hideous thrift store sweaters, artfully ripped jeans, bedhead, mangy flannels & dr. martins.

maybe we classify bands as image bands based on our sense of how much emphasis they place on their image, the curatorial care taken. by that standard, i'd say that the white stripes and strokes were image bands in much the same way. the difference, i suppose, is as bb notes, the white stripes seemed to have constructed their image from within a rather personal field of interests & references, while the strokes were more engaged with the mainstream urban fashion of their day. doesn't incline me to think of the latter less in terms of their image. were duran duran more "imagey" than devo? no, just different. they both obviously invested a great deal of care and thought into curating their presentation. i get that dd were trying to look cool & sexy by then-current fashion standards, while devo were just being deliberately weird, but i nevertheless think of them both as image bands.

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-376907-1235055164.jpeg

^ image band

like by the time Bowie is a big thing loads of his fans are dressing in ways he has inspired but when he came up with Ziggy Stardust i doubt it was because he wanted to reflect his fans back at themselves

(It's also weird to me that you guys are picking "Bowie/Roxy" as ground zero, when to me "Ground Zero" is so clearly the Velvet Underground

ground zero is waaaaay before the velvets. the beatles were very carefully crafted images/styles/etc, and, hell, they made what were basically art house movies about theselves to make sure everyone got it. elvis was an ever-changing series of carefully crafted images. go back another couple generations and you will land on the carter family, who were carefully dressed, and carefully posed in photographs, to project "hillbilly," which is something they were not. i'm sure someone better steeped in history could take it back centuries before that.

and i know you don't want to focus too much on innate beauty in this thread, but good looks have mattered to all kinds of artistic success since the beginning of time. singers, actors, painters, poets -- as a group, they tend to look better than the rest of us, regardless of their gender. looks are an absolute advantage to popular success in every genre of music, from classical to jazz to pop and beyond. studies have shown that even in the corporate world, better looking people, both male and female, tend to have more success. looks are a part of image, and they are unavoidable.

contenderizer makes many good points.

wow so many x-posts

sure. which wd bring us into the whole realm of "reading against", i think, which wd be very interesting. fans who get into an artist despite the artist's Image being strongly "not aimed at you or about you"

This kind of gets at the nub of Image Bands and what drives their popularity. Because when it comes down to it, Duran Duran - the bulk of their fanbase were not male; were not from The Midlands, in fact not even British; were certainly not fashionable, we were actually totally uncool teenage bands.

And yet that "aimed at" was in terms of DD being portrayed as objects of desire for the female gaze, even while they wrote entire damn songs about The Male Gaze.

This is where it gets complicated by gender, because (straight) men looking at men, it's considered to be "you can be like this" while with (straight women) and gay men looking at men, there's always that weird double identification/arousal of "do you want to *be* like this" (like you) versus "do you want to *fuck* this?" (totally unlike you). This is why I can't look at this without bringing gender into it. Because the perceived "you" in the "you" of Oasis's fanbase that they are supposed to be "like" has an inherent image of masculinity attached which is just not attainable to many fans.

we were actually totally uncool teenage bands GIRLS.

i do suspect that wholehearted, live-it-breathe-it dedication to a single TOWERINGLY COOL IMAGE that seems emblematic of the exact right place to be in the larger cultural moment might be the sole property of the young (or naïve). as you get older, your field of references widens and you, as a necessary consequence, fall out of step with culture as it is being invented and perceived as "NEW!" within freshly-minted minds.

so perhaps only young artists and fans can invest passionately enough in the fashionable image to really be "of the image", hence "image bands". just thinking aloud...

I can't even count the number of girls I personally know that started playing bass or forming bands or whatever, because of Duran Duran, so it's an understandable mistake.

But identifying with "the people onstage" is complex and takes many different forms.

yeah BB i have been coming from a distinctly homosocial position throughout this morning's thought process

many xps to bramwell - not throwing their power away, just that some would still probably shorthand the velvets as 'the Warhol band', just because he's such a huge figure. Roxy heads would know, say Anthony Price's role in their look but he doesn't dominate in the same way.

the Aussie thing NV mentioned many posts up - AC/DC absolutely not a part of it for reasons mentioned, plus Bon quite campy for a front man of that era here. (Robert Forster wrote well on how Angus is stuck with the school kid outfit for all time a few years back.) but the sound they codified got adopted by the following generation, so they influenced it. also comes from local mistrust of UK music press hype machine, earliest manifestation probably the Saints' experience when they went to england - "we were better, but weren't wearing the 'right' clothes."

http://www.dexys.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/coming_to_town.jpg.w300h367.jpg

probly my favourite Image Band

Contendo, this is something I wrote about Suit Bands while discussing Interpol last night, but moved on because mh hadn't even bothered to notice the phrase "suit bands". But the thing you wrote on grunge bands and anti-style as "authenticity" just reminded me of it, and I had it still open in another tab, so:

Suit Bands: OK, in the mid 90s, Grunge was huge and inescapable, and just flattened the musical landscape, in New York City as everywhere else. There was a "Grunge Boutique" at Macy's, selling pre-ripped jeans for hundreds of dollars, and you could not go to a show without seeing just a sea of flannel.

It originally started with the mod boys, who wore suits because they rode scooters and listened to Blur. But it spread outside the mod/60s garage/Minds Eye scene, as a reaction against Grunge. If you want to stand out at a gig at Brownie's where everyone is wearing flannel and ripped jeans, you turn up wearing a three-button suit, even if it's a shitty second hand suit from Dompsey's Warehouse, you get attention. It was deliberately turning away from all that Pacific Northwest stuff, and turning your eye instead to British groups and European fashion and caring about style. I remember one of my bands playing this ridiculous art school party around NYU, and turning up, and it was like something out of "Sophisticated Boom Boom" - the girls were wearing formals, the boys were wearing ties, and it was like an anti-grunge costume party. It was about suits, and drinking cocktails at places that were called "Lounges" instead of Bars.

I have no idea if these were the same people, who hung around the same places, who eventually coalesced into a "scene" or if it was just a general cultural shift. But "suit bands" in the late 90s, were totally a thing

I do have to say, that in my personal experience, playing a lot of shitty shows at the Pyramid Club in the early 90s, while there were drag revues going on downstairs, really shaped a lot of both my attitudes around "dressing up to go onstage as a performance" as well as shaping my awareness that *all* image was an image, including "going onstage in the clothes we wear in the street" (but what if you dressed like a suit band On The Street*, as it were?) as well as the idea that all gender was a performance, even "default gender".

*This is the last I'm going to say about my brother or Interpol, or anything, but I found the interview I posted on the other thread so funny, because in the early 90s, when my brother was "majoring in neo-Fascism at Columbia", he used to put on a suit and tie every day in class as a gesture of "solidarity with the Leisure Class", and then he'd come downtown and stick out like a sore thumb at one of my gigs, even though I was also wearing a suit and tie. (He would tut at this and tell me "you know what they say about girls who wear ties?" and when he told me they were all lesbians, hmmmm, yes, do you think I'm trying to tell people anything? *goes and snogs my band's singer's girlfriend just to show who has the real pulling power in the band*)

Anyway, sorry, total derail. No more.

lol i used to do gigs in a jacket and tie because i'd been at work at the Inland Rev during the day

but also because i hated indie grebos tbf

many xps to bramwell - not throwing their power away, just that some would still probably shorthand the velvets as 'the Warhol band', just because he's such a huge figure. Roxy heads would know, say Anthony Price's role in their look but he doesn't dominate in the same way

N, please!

But also thinking about this, I was drawing the connections between Blur -> Goldsmiths and Interpol -> NYU and thinking "now I just know that Bowie, also went to art school, didn't he...?" but being unable to name the school. So I guess, yeah, Bowie/Roxy seemed more self-driven, and not linked to a specific artist or school or movement.

did typical Punk or Metal costumery originate with artists rather than audience,

there were so many paths. richard hell's ripped t-shirts were the doing of a guy who was kind of simutaneously artist and fan. whereas by the time ripped t-shirs and safety pins and graffiti fashion got to the sex pistols and their contemporaries, aspiring couture designers (who would eventually become actual couture designers) were deliberately influencing the mix. as for metal, I've always loved the story that rob halford's influential leather get-up was basically a way for a closeted gay man to project his true identity in broad daylight.

was thinking about Rob Halford when i wrote that and it seems so obviously at least a part truth to me

I've never thought of Duran Duran as an image band in terms of their look (the Rio videos are a different matter) - they had a style, certainly but I always thought they just dressed in the fashions of the time rather than having an image in the way that, say, Adam and the Ants did (I wasn't 'around' at the time though so I might have got this completely wrong).

massive xps again

yes - Dexys are fascinating to me in this context because they are such a deliberate, self-conscious and dramatic image band, but collapse much of what's sketched above - not art school, strong appeal to a kind of bloke that one expects to be repelled from the image-band proper, constantly and explicitly hammering towards the sort of 'truth' that isn't an easy fit here.

Suit Bands: OK, in the mid 90s, Grunge was huge and inescapable, and just flattened the musical landscape, in New York City as everywhere else. There was a "Grunge Boutique" at Macy's, selling pre-ripped jeans for hundreds of dollars, and you could not go to a show without seeing just a sea of flannel.

It originally started with the mod boys, who wore suits because they rode scooters and listened to Blur. But it spread outside the mod/60s garage/Minds Eye scene, as a reaction against Grunge. If you want to stand out at a gig at Brownie's where everyone is wearing flannel and ripped jeans, you turn up wearing a three-button suit, even if it's a shitty second hand suit from Dompsey's Warehouse, you get attention. It was deliberately turning away from all that Pacific Northwest stuff, and turning your eye instead to British groups and European fashion and caring about style.

― "righteous indignation shit" (Branwell Bell), last nigh

i suppose this sort of thing is always push-pulling back and forth. new wave stylishness replaces freedom rock sideburns, is overturned by slacker chic, which falls to the cocktail revival, and so on. "suit bands" come in and go periodically.

there is something suspect about treating "ordinary" dress as a badge of authenticity. this approach seems to devalue created/creative identity, to consider heteronormativity (especially supposedly "styleless" masculinity within that) as more real and respectable than other forms of self-presentation.

huge x-posts bcz I've been to the shops, but BOOM!

lol i used to do gigs in a jacket and tie because i'd been at work at the Inland Rev during the day

― the undersea world of jacques kernow (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 12:03 PM

This got me thinking about how much of early Joy Division's "shirt and tie" image was down to their dayjobs. Which got me thinking about Kim Deal and her "turn up and play gigs wearing her secretary's skirts" which got me to: BOOM!

The ultimate Non-Image band, in my mind: Pixies.

Because the Pixies never ever registered as anything other than "generic slacker dude college bro jeans and t-shirt and flannels band" and their Non-Image Image seemed almost deliberately in counterpoint to the weirdness of their music and extremity of their lyrics. But that is the *thing* - Pixies were Gay Dude, Racially Ambiguous Dude, Female Dude and Drummer Dude - and yet somehow, even though all of those ways of Being Other would be The Issue, in any other band, their deliberate coding as "Utterly Generic Dude" was this brilliant way of casting their Other status(es) into negative space.

Which made me start thinking about Husker Du again - Husker Dudes, more like - and wondering how much of that beflannelled, down to earth "we don't have an image" was about coding as Straight Acting (Butch) Gay Dudes in the hyper-masculine hardcore scene out of which they grew. Husker Du's workmanlike clothes stop seeming to be about being "authentic" but about another kind of *passing*.

And it's weird that these two seminal (LOL) bands of the whole grunge aesthetic came from this place which got overwhelmed by a sea of cis-het ex-metal dudes in flannel. (OK, I'm willing to contest Kurt as "cis-het" but the whole Grunge Explosion and Grunge Boutiques in Macys? Come on.)

as for metal, I've always loved the story that rob halford's influential leather get-up was basically a way for a closeted gay man to project his true identity in broad daylight

Yeah, good point, this should be on the Image Band 101 syllabus course, here, definitely.

(Do you know how tempting it was to tell teenage metal dudes affecting the styles of their heroes "um, you do know you're wearing a cock ring there, right?" Oh, precarious masculinity, thy name is str8 boy youth.)

And no, I think that history has written the image of the 80s so completely that Duran read as "following fashion" when they were the ones that set the style?

Not so much talking about the original romo, but that kind of "Nagel prints come to life" white trousers and pastels thing - they predated Miami Vice with that look, though that look has come to read "80s" through Miami Vice. That's my memory of it, and I was around them.

yes - Dexys are fascinating to me in this context because they are such a deliberate, self-conscious and dramatic image band, but collapse much of what's sketched above - not art school, strong appeal to a kind of bloke that one expects to be repelled from the image-band proper, constantly and explicitly hammering towards the sort of 'truth' that isn't an easy fit here.

And then you end up onstage at Reading wearing a negligee and suspenders? My eyes may never recover.

Husker Du's workmanlike clothes stop seeming to be about being "authentic" but about another kind of *passing*.

interesting idea, but hard to say. mould's dress sense hasn't changed much over the years.

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/26640591/Bob+Mould+Mould2009.jpg

Another thing I'm trying hard not to think about because: Carlos D is the whole overlap between the Goth/Industrial scene and the Fetish scene?

And then you end up onstage at Reading wearing a negligee and suspenders? My eyes may never recover.

(After I typed this, I realised that with its jokey sentiment, it might seem hypocritical, or even gender-queering-phobic, but I just wanted to say that my discomfort was not with a man dressed in lingerie. It was with Kevin Rowland dressed in lingerie, and very specifically, Kevin Rowland simulating rimming with two women dressed as sex workers at 2pm in a field in Reading. Stuff plays differently in different settings, and that was something that just really came off as tacky and gross, rather than intriguing or provocative or interesting or naughty.)

interesting idea, but hard to say. mould's dress sense hasn't changed much over the years.

Why would Mould's dress sense change? What would that have to do with it?

::really resisting going in on a massive spree of ~the semiotics of suits~ right now::

And no, I think that history has written the image of the 80s so completely that Duran read as "following fashion" when they were the ones that set the style?

Not so much talking about the original romo, but that kind of "Nagel prints come to life" white trousers and pastels thing - they predated Miami Vice with that look, though that look has come to read "80s" through Miami Vice. That's my memory of it, and I was around them.

Ah ok right, I hadn't realised that, I always thought it was just an extension of the new romantic thing.

Why would Mould's dress sense change? What would that have to do with it?

― "righteous indignation shit" (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 5:16 AM (6 minutes ago)

less reason to suppose he's still trying to pass, more to think that's just his style. calls himself a bear, etc.

I think that history has written the image of the 80s so completely that Duran read as "following fashion" when they were the ones that set the style?

― "righteous indignation shit" (Branwell Bell)

yeah, i'd be more inclined to say they were "engaged with" than "following" the fashion of their moment. but inhabiting it from the center either way.

Feel like there is a history of "the gay scene in the 80s" and "the hardcore punk scene in the 80s" and how they intersected and didn't, and how signifiers evolve, that could be written, but neither of us are experts enough to do it, so should probably drop it. The evolution of the term "bear" and "bear" gender presentation could probably be a whole book in and of itself.

Feel like talking about uniforms for a bit, and "flirting with fascism" but trying to think of way to do this without posting 8000 photos of Interpol.

Hmmmmm.

Like, the whole 80s psuedo-military regalia thing that a *lot* of bands went through, kinda like post-Falklands jingoism collides with commentary on Thatcher's sabre rattling or "dealing with the fallout mess of the British Empire".

Like, the punk era "played for shock value" Sex Pistols' swastikas and Joy Divisions flirtation with the imagery felt like a very deliberate "fuck you" to both the Greatest Generation and swinging 60s iconography, deliberately doing the thing that would be most offensive to their parents and the Bill Grundys of the world.

But, the way Echo & the Bunnymen did military gear, and the way Duran Duran did military gear were miles apart, but part of the same general fashion. Part of it was post-apocalyptic Mad Max iconography, but Duran's uniforms were... different. Part leather boy fascist, but always positioning themselves as "the good guys in the resistance" (New Moon On Monday video?) and the handsome, smiling troops in the Is There Something I Should Know video? Like, they were playing both sides?

Is There Something I Should Know...

http://www.vobvip.com/v7/svcs0907/04.jpg

what are you doing with your life? Searching for a picture of Simon LeBon's epaulettes...

http://www.xtcian.com/lebon.jpg

This is just before they took the turn off to Billy Burroughs Boot Boys...

Is it a million miles from that to this?

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Jan-Feb-05-Urb-Carlos-Article-interpol-151180_700_886.jpg

Feel like talking about uniforms for a bit, and "flirting with fascism" but trying to think of way to do this without posting 8000 photos of Interpol

Was just coming here to mention Death In June actually, Douglas P's obsession with uniforms seems relevant here. Actually the early DIJ (when it was a proper band, not just him) didn't wear uniforms but dressed all in black and had a nice line in symbolism, iconography and anonymous photo shoots – very seductive

feel like mentioning Test Dept and their Stakhanovite image as well – all vests, sweat and industrial hammering

Feel like there is a history of "the gay scene in the 80s" and "the hardcore punk scene in the 80s" and how they intersected and didn't, and how signifiers evolve, that could be written

― "righteous indignation shit" (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 6:07 AM (9 minutes ago)

otm - 80s american hardcore seemed repellently jock-bro masculine to the me at the time, which kept me away from the genre's mainsream, especially when it came to the east coast scene. the stuff i dug was generally less musclebound aggro and formally constrained. then again, extreme performance of masculine stereotypes is no more intrinsically representative of straight than gay culture. there are a few regular ILM posters who seem like they'd be able to comment on the bleed between the two in 80s hc, but sure, that's not really my area.

The jump from this:

http://www.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/duranduran-e1339162343321.jpg

to this:

http://www.todayonline.com/sites/default/files/blogs/duran-duran_2011_show_2683.jpg

(At what point did someone just start taking too many of the wrong drugs?)

Wanna come back to Death in June and Test Dept and loads of early proto-industrial bands and their iconography. Because one of the things that irritated me about that Carlos D interview was him talking about how his leather... thing was supposed to be a homage to Blixa Bargeld, and I wanted to shout... but Blixa's iconography actually *meant* something in the context of divided Berlin, you're just using this as a fucking *accessory*, an affectation, a knowing ~reference~ not to the thing itself, but to someone else's representation of the thing?

This is halfway between "we won the Falklands War" shoulder pads, and the full Mad Max, and this is a fucking bizarre, semi-fascist leather boy image:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/39107313/Duran+Duran+PNG+Cropped+Version.png

but Blixa's iconography actually *meant* something in the context of divided Berlin, you're just using this as a fucking *accessory*, an affectation, a knowing ~reference~ not to the thing itself, but to someone else's representation of the thing?

but isn't this precisely where the privileging of the Image leads? a very Baudrillardy state of nothing but decontextualized images?

maybe not so much decontextualized as endlessly referring to other images, i mean

NV, I L U. "The Baudrillardisation of Blixa Bargeld" is possibly the most ~ILX~ thing anyone has ever said here, and yet... yeah.

But, I have to agree. The ultimate expression of the privileging of The Image, endless reflection and no significance to the signifier. This is why I *love* Image Bands.

(You don't understand, Blixa Bargeld was the name of my cat.)

I think it was a member of Yo La Tengo who said "There's a difference between playing a gig looking like you just walked in in your street clothes and actually playing a gig in your street clothes."

Which made me start thinking about Husker Du again - Husker Dudes, more like - and wondering how much of that beflannelled, down to earth "we don't have an image" was about coding as Straight Acting (Butch) Gay Dudes in the hyper-masculine hardcore scene out of which they grew. Husker Du's workmanlike clothes stop seeming to be about being "authentic" but about another kind of *passing*.

honestly i think ppl not from MN read a lot into how the Replacements and Husker Du dressed and a lot of it was just like, i dunno everyone wore lots of flannels shirts, my dad, grandpa, whoever, they are warm shirts....I'm not sure that a whole lot of concept went into it. I see those dudes just as Minnesota type dudes from that era. The older guys who were in my little farming town high school wore shitty jeans and t-shirts with flannels over them, way before grunge.

also like all those guys were South Mpls or working class St Paul dudes at the end of the day. I know ppl from that era and it was arty in a sense but still very much "dudes" still very much midwestern beer drinking shit too

also there wasn't really that much of a true macho hardcore scene in minneapolis, and it certainly wasn't dominant, the mpls "punk" scene godfathers were the suicide commandos, who were really more of a 60s band, and there was also guys like curtiss A who was still basically a 60s pop guy....and the nascent post punk stuff that was prefiguring chicago like rifle sport, NNB, etc

in reference to this:

Which made me start thinking about Husker Du again - Husker Dudes, more like - and wondering how much of that beflannelled, down to earth "we don't have an image" was about coding as Straight Acting (Butch) Gay Dudes in the hyper-masculine hardcore scene out of which they grew. Husker Du's workmanlike clothes stop seeming to be about being "authentic" but about another kind of *passing*.

Sorry, my mistake. Regular, ordinary "just dudes" masculinity is never constructed, in any sense at all, it just *is*.

well no shit

Straight Acting (Butch) Gay Dudes in the hyper-masculine hardcore scene out of which they grew.

^the mpls punk scene wasn't really like that. you're wrong.

I have no idea what the Minneapolis punk scene was like, I was only comparing it to the NY hardcore scene in which I grew up, which was very butch, and full of constructed masculinity, and was often really, really unfriendly to girls and queer kids, of which I was both.

But the idea that "regular guy" masculinity, flannel shirts and all, is somehow not *constructed* is just straight up bullshit of the highest order.

Straight Acting (Butch) Gay Dudes in the hyper-masculine hardcore scene

^also p sure being masculine isn't "acting straight" as far as i know.

also no shit everything is constructed but why does it have shit to do with husker du having 2 gay members? how did the way they dress differ from how the replacements dressed? hint: it didn't.

Can I just ask, Upper Mississippi Shakedown, are you gay? I honestly don't know, and I'm trying to establish your angle here.

Because, you're right. I know jack shit about the Minneapolis scene, from the inside.

But I know a lot, from personal experience, about existing as a queer kid in a small city music scene, and dressing and acting in a way that coded just "straight" enough not to get beaten up at a VFW show, but also just "queer" enough to signify interest to potential romantic/sexual partners.

The Replacements, to my eyes, did dress quite differently from Husker Du; Tommy Stinson was a bit of a dandy. I have no idea if Tommy Stinson is gay or straight. I do know that dressing foppishly codes differently for straight men and gay men.

from the man who traded a target t shirt for a boiler suit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S3LklS1PiY

(Friendly reminder, please - if you're using YouTube links as examples, it's really helpful if you state artist/title you're talking about? Thanks!)

a more unsettling piece of glam-rock gender-bending history: according to Charles Connor, Little Richard's band dressed up in pseudo-drag so they could play to white crowds in the South without being perceived as a sexual threat to women in the audience.

Wow, yeah, OK, that's kinda fucked. I was actually going to bring up Little Richard as an image innovator much earlier on this thread, but got distracted by something else, so thank you for raising that.

(the irony being that, as many bands have later found out, a certain amount of "pseudo-drag" can actually heighten the sexual *appeal* to women in the audience.)

Military garb goes back before punk too and was used in a way that was equally, if not more provocative at the time.

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080810184218/woodstock/images/9/98/Country_Joe_McDonald04.gif

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0dmxoApnlpo/TgDYvBwFFiI/AAAAAAAAEjA/_dIKfFo_sIs/s1600/JOHNNY%2BKIDD%2B%2526%2BTHE%2BPIRATES_1.tif.jpg

rare shot of the last time dressing like a pirate was cool

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0dmxoApnlpo/TgDYvBwFFiI/AAAAAAAAEjA/_dIKfFo_sIs/s1600/JOHNNY%2BKIDD%2B%2526%2BTHE%2BPIRATES_1.tif.jpg

Oh yeah, totally. Deconstructed Military garb in the 60s as being anti-Vietnam War statement.

It's just interesting how it got slanted from "anti-war" in the 60s to... more complicated and "flirting with fascism" in the late 70s early 80s.

(The Clash's use of military chic was much more in line with the 60s, though. The whole "Sandinista" thing.)

x-post

The hippy scene may have been the first time that musicians and the audience started self-consciously using image as a form of play and intentional "dress-up" (victorian clothes, cowboys and indians, military surplus, mixing and matching different styles and eras). I would imagine that previous youth style movements like mods and rockers just thought they were being cool and fashionable and the other side wasn't, in a much less knowing way than what we're talking about in this thread.

I feel like you could make some kind of weird matrix of band, audience, and awareness. Like there are scenes where the bands and audience all dress alike and everyone seems completely unaware of it being a constructed image (we're just a bunch of midwest dudes). And then there are scenes where bands and audiences all dress up in a knowing way (as in some retro revival scenes). Then there are scenes where the bands are possibly more self-aware about what they're doing with their image than some of the fans who simply try to mimic their style (early punk maybe? glam?). And then there are bands who achieve a look that nobody in the audience would ever try to attempt.

is there a distinction between "image band" and its japanese connotation? this is the first time i've heard it used in a western context.

I don't know enough about Visual Kei to even begin to answer that question! But I would LOVE if anyone with any knowledge of the Japanese scene addressed it?

i have no idea if this has been discussed upthread or not but my friend who lived in japan is really into this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarazuka_Revue

^^^ wow, that's amazing! Just looking at the productions they've adapted: Books (Zorro), musicals (Guys and Dolls), films (JFK... wait, what?!)

I know the sharp drop-off of posting on this thread probably had more to do with NV going home than anything else, but still, I did suspect that the thread was probably going to die when it went over to American hours, haha.

Because despite that reference to "image band" and its Japanese connotations, the (not counter) examples in this thread are overwhelmingly British (well, European, since Germany has made several appearances, and jeez, you have only to watch Eurovision to think about image and presentation in pop music!) artists. And talk is about American and Australian *resistance* to Image Bands, in which the exceptions prove the rule?

Are "Image Bands" just a decadent European thing? (In which case, where do Prince and the White Stripes and Marilyn Manson come from?) Or is it that thing that someone brought up above (sorry, I've forgotten who), about "bands that look like they are from 1964" that American culture is so overwhelming seen as default that anything that looks even slightly "British" or "German" or whatever, is seen as "An Image"?

(I don't think the latter is true at all, FWIW, I think that there is some odd quirk of both British and Japanese cultures which actively encourages Image-Making, though I am not awake enough to work out what it is. Anyone? Noodle?)

there's a wealth of historical literature wherein commentators identify "the English" as being peculiarly addicted to novelty btw

sorta trying to find some examples here but gd work etc

Adam and the Ants were prob the first band I was ever really interested in when I was a pre-teen. The image thing was probably what drew me in and I remember the Stand and Deliver video being the first MV that I ever really noticed. I didn't know that they'd ever started as a punk thing. I didn't have any clue what they were.

It strikes me that most of the obvious US examples (at least within rock) are bands whose image was kind of cartoonish/trashy/'lowbrow', like they intentionally set out to define themselves against bands who made Serious Art - thinking of people like KISS, the Ramones, New York Dolls, The Cramps.

Are "Image Bands" just a decadent European thing?

nope.

http://originalmattress.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ThePolyphonicSpree_V_large-1.jpg

you could even say with their normal robe attire that this lot are an 'image' band.

plus devo, the b-52's, the locust, alice cooper, blue oyster cult, the white stripes, motley crue, slayer, etc. but "image band" isn't limited to white guy rock music, is it? thinking of james brown's crews, natty jazz tailoring, prince, p-funk, public enemy's stage show & dress, TLC, bikini kill, the runaways, abba, fleetwood mac, etc.

sunnO))) (lol, but only kinda)

female or female-fronted punk bands too: Siouxsie Soux, The Slits, X-Ray Spex etc.

blondie, the cars, the go-go's, talking heads - lotta 80s bands, really

err, 70s/80s...

new wave in general

female or female-fronted punk bands too: Siouxsie Soux, The Slits, X-Ray Spex etc.

― Kim Wrong-un (Neil S), Thursday, February 13, 2014 11:53 AM

Wait, wait, what is this in response to? Because all of these bands were British!

And also, were Siouxsie and the Banshees really more of an image band than The Cure? Were The Slits more of an image band than the Sex Pistols? Really? I don't get what you're trying to say here.

hah sorry got the wrong end of the stick, just listing some women fronted punk bands I guess, following up contenderizer! I suppose they are interesting insofar as they set the aesthetic agenda so far as punk was concerned, along with Malcolm McLaren of course.

But yeah... agree, Contendo with both the first post that US bands tended towards image as a reaction *against* SRS ART (while UK bands posited the image AS "srs art")

Oh wait, now I see what that was an answer to: but "image band" isn't limited to white guy rock music, is it? <- OK, the Siouxsie/Slits stuff makes sense now. Sure! Yeah!

punk without Siouxsie would arguably have been the much more functional "long grey coat" look of lots of the Manchester bands, though that of course is an image of "we are the young men, the weight on our shoulders"

"projecting an image of..." above

Feel like there's a lot that could be said about "natty dressing" in Black music whether that's jazz dudes in suits, or the deliberate ostentatious competitive dressing of hiphop acts and "GucciGucciGucci" but that's a HUGE massive blind spot for me, because jesus christ, how have I got this far into this thread without bringing up Parliment/Funkadelic. Who are one of the most image image bands of all time, but I didn't think of them as an "image band", I just thought of them as aliens from the planet Funk?

Wow, that was a seriously bad omission on my part and a blind spot I have to acknowledge.

pfunk was a whole package not just limited to image.

Death Metal band in corpse paint

wait did no one point out something here? (i think you mean Black Metal)

http://www.thenation.com/article/p-funk-politics

trying to find an article with Clinton's involvement with that crazy sect that I momentarily have forgotten the name of.

but before i say anything else

SUN RA

Process Church of the Final Judgement is what I was thinking of re Clinton

the process church of the final judgment

dagnit

such a creepy name, even just "the process church"

like something grant morrisson would come up with

teaching mark s a *LESSON* response three: FUNKADELIC

read that for a further explanation of clinton and Process Church of the Final Judgement

Should note btw that Clinton was never actually a part of that sect though he did use quotes for the early album sleevenotes

yay! This is the best *BURSTS ONTO THREAD LIKE KOOL AID MAN* entrance ever.

I'm going to come back and read the links, but in the shower, I was thinking through this, about P-Funk, but mostly about this whole thread of "glam" that had nothing at all to do with Bowie/Roxy (or did it? I don't know. Afrika Bambaataa being influenced by Kraftwerk, it's not impossible) and wondering where it came from - Afro-Futurism, Sun-Ra, what?

And realising how my "blind spot" is just another example of white privilege, like, when I see a white Britishes band dressing up, I assume that's about Art and Image, but when I see an African-American band dressing up, I think that "Bling" is about class and race positioning, but it can't be an aesthetic decision, too? That's capital B Bullshit, BB.

Sun Ra, Sly Stone, Hendrix amongst other things yeah. Clinton was a hairdresser and a very well read man so he was up to date on fashion and could combine it with his other knowledge and developed something really amazing.

ps got no idea what kool aid man is!

oh an um yeah lots and lots of acid

(Kool aid man:

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/0/7666/1099409-koolaidman.jpg

I feel like such a weird sometimes that I get both Kool Aid Man jokes and Beano jokes :-/)

the motherpage is gone but it appears to be available here
http://archive.is/nFt0

xp. see i'd get beano jokes!

Discussing "Image Bands" without Hendrix = ???????? but then again, Hendrix had to go to the UK for his thing to take off so, like, hmmmm.

The English consuming cartoons of other cultures, too.

which leads to the pfunk pedro bell cartoons!

FWIW, I think that there is some odd quirk of both British and Japanese cultures which actively encourages Image-Making, though I am not awake enough to work out what it is.

England-wise it feels like a long & deep social tradition to me - 1660s (at least) afaik - the image-provocateur has one of those liminal relationships to authority & the establishment - a figure of fun but also close to seats of social & political power (since they're often mates with the King or regent or whoever) - often an arriviste - & reaching one ultra-self-conscious & intellectual terminus (=starting point for the 20th too) with Wilde. The cause… something to do with the rigidity and complexity of British class-coding (& signalling) making that a playground for the imaginative self-maker? I dunno, that feels a bit a simplistic, turning things to class. Early development of the press in London? The theatre may come into it.

(I know nothing about Japanese culture, so I'll ignore that bit of the q)

that is a fucked up kool-aid man. normal kool-aid man does not involve corpse rubble. he is just a normal guy on packet beverage.

http://84d1f3.medialib.glogster.com/media/1d/1db0b92e8e29ad2b87fde09bdd0fe3cb565d867cfee9d0c2595ccb0f9ec7fa50/kool-aid-man.png

he does belong to the weird category of food being offering itself to be enjoyed by man

Kool-aid man bursts through walls! This is what Kool-aid man does! This was one of the most distressing aspects of American children's television in the late 70s/early 80s, when I first moved to the US. Like, I could just be at some normal kids' party and someone would just say "Hey, Kool aid!" and then this terrifying creature would burst through a wall. American was a TERRIFYING place to a 9 year old Brit.

(Sorry - thank you, Woof, that is an excellent post and something I'd love to dig deeper into.)

Back to previous subject, like, I should have been thinking of this - I was re-watching Dreamgirls recently, and although I assumed it had been brushed up for Broadway/Hollywood, the whole manufacturing of Image, and toning down of Image, was so centrally placed at the *heart* of that narrative. Both in the flamboyant Little Richard/James Brown character, and in the Supremes characters.

it's true, wall-bursting was totally his thing, though he seemed pretty careful abt bursting through in a manner that wouldn't squash babies or w/e, at least not on camera. along with the hawaiian punch guy (who lived only to sock people in the face and may actually have been named "hawaiian punch"), it was a dark time for powdered children's beverages.

as well as discussing what in certain cultures encourages self-as-image play, we might look at it from the other direction. what is it about american culture that sometimes seems to discourage (or at least constrain) that sort of thing? residual puritanism? homophobia?

without wishhing further derailment here's an awesome Peter Bagge Kool-Aid Man comic: http://www.againwiththecomics.com/2008/07/alan-moore-peter-bagge-and-kool-aid-man.html

oh shit it's Alan Moore too, I never realised that!

Think it's p obvious why White American culture doesn't do it. The horror of being scene as effeminate, the policing of masculinity. But also the terror that dressing up, being a Dandy is fey and foppish and European and contrary to the Frontier Mythos. In the 20th Century, fear of Black culture, fear of the Other.

The connection of English + theatre is an interesting one. Because of the whole "women not allowed onstage" thing, there was a longstanding tradition of men dressing as women without it reading as a *homosexual* thing to be doing. Plus, the origins of British Theatre - spent last semester reading Cornish passion plays, which are some of the last surviving remnants of Cornish (late Medieval) and there is some *fantastical* stuff in there, about appearances being deceptive (never trust The English), world turned upside down, men as women, women as men stuff in there.

Think it's p obvious why White American culture doesn't do it.

why is say New York different to the rest of the USA then?

But also the terror that dressing up, being a Dandy is fey and foppish and European

pretty funny when so many like to boast of their euro roots!

Though I guess Scots/Irish tend to be very non-dandy so its acceptable to them.

every bands that make music videos presents an image. moneyfornothing.mp3 and when i am interested in a song i often care what the band looks like , mainly for the singer's visual performance, their "acting", because some emotions invested in the song may not come across strictly in audio, or differently than i imagined. many artists say that it doesn't really matter what the song is about, the fans can make it theirs and invest the meaning they want into it, or variations of this, and i am fine with this, but i also like to see how some lyrics are delivered to have a better understanding of the meaning / complexity of the emotion/humour/and what not.

1) NYC is way more like a European city than an American one; for much of the US's history it was the point of entry for many, many immigrants and it has still retained that flavour

2) Because of the boundary constraints of being located on (2 or 3?) tiny island(s) (where the rest of the US is so far flung apart) I think that historically, races were able to mix and cultures rub up against one another more freely. That happens more easily in a constrained space than in deliberately segregated neighbourhoods, which dominate much of the US.

Feel like there's a lot that could be said about "natty dressing" in Black music whether that's jazz dudes in suits, or the deliberate ostentatious competitive dressing of hiphop acts and "GucciGucciGucci"

in college, i took time out from my normal pursuit of punk and indie bands to see a show by the spinners. my friend peter and i dressed the way we normally did for concerts: jeans, t-shirts, whatever. we get there, and every single person in the theater is dressed either in suits -- nice suits! -- or dresses. we felt like party-crashing drunk assholes. (and yet we were treated great by everyone around us, totally welcomed, never made to feel the slightest bit out of place.)

Think it's p obvious why White American culture doesn't do it. The horror of being scene as effeminate, the policing of masculinity. But also the terror that dressing up, being a Dandy is fey and foppish and European and contrary to the Frontier Mythos.

the entire histories of hair metal, new wave and of course steven tyler may choose to disagree with you on this.

I'm guessing Sigue Sigue Sputnik belong here? Tony James called them a 'fantasy band', iirc.

One thing I kind of regret about my band years is not giving more thought to how both I and the rest of the band dressed. "Just about the music" seems like a bullshit posture when you're playing a live show, given that a big part of people's experience in a live show is WATCHING you play. I think the mere idea of suggesting to my bandmate dudes that we give more thought to our clothes probably seemed too embarrassing to even occur to me to bring up. I mean not that we were playing relax-fit jeans and rockports or anything, but we could have put more effort into it.

the entire histories of hair metal, new wave and of course steven tyler may choose to disagree with you on this

Not to mention those tiny cult acts beloved solely of rock critic nerds: Kiss, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson...

I want to respond to something way upthread, though:

I don't know that "image bands" are solely the province of The Young; the continued careers of Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Madonna, Prince, Suede etc seem to suggest that they are not.

Bowie's current image is very much about being old, though; where his personae used to be in some way built around sexual desirability (up to you whether you want to fuck an alien or not), since re-emerging he's become Cool Artist Dad and is about as dressed-down as he's ever been. Ferry, on the other hand, seems to be playing the role of rich bored hobbyist making music to amuse himself - he's the Roger Sterling of pop, or something. And Madonna isn't so much an image as a collage of increasingly poorly chosen signifiers. I'm posting from the US, so as far as I'm concerned Suede never had a career to continue. And Prince, I think, is managing to stay relevant only in that he continues to fascinate music critics. The general public could give a fuck, is my impression, and I think the charts bear that out.

in this bullshit world the more someone's image gets trashed the more i respect them

the entire histories of hair metal, new wave and of course steven tyler may choose to disagree with you on this.

Look, the whole premise of this line of questioning was "why is it so much rarer in the US than the UK" not "why does it not exist in the US at all" which would be absurd, because we've discussed many examples from the US.

Yes but an entire decade of bands topping the charts, selling out arena concert tours, etc. doesn't exactly scream "rare."

It kind of seems like you're just starting from your conclusion here Branwell

The subgenre of "hair metal" is still a tiny subsection of "metal" which is a tiny subsection of "rock music" which, although I know it looks like the whole world to some people, still, really isn't.

And hair metal bands are kind of a weird area to start with, because they were the rare image band subculture which came out of LA rather than NYC (I suppose that's fitting, Hollywood "glamour" etc, but it's still curious.)

you mean like Kiss?

I get that you're from England, BB, but are you really gonna posit that the whole lineage from Kiss to Bon Jovi, Poison, Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses et al. are somehow less important in the global pop culture scheme of things than David Bowie and Bryan fucking Ferry?

No, I place Kiss in first wave glam. I mean, like, Motley Crue, Poison, LA Guns, GNR, classic hair metal.

I mean, I do not argue that there have never been image bands in the States. I just think that e.g. the per capita number of members of Image Bands in the UK or Japan per general population, vs per general population in the US. Yes, you have Aerosmith and hair metal, but it's really nothing like on the same scale.

I am NOT arguing that they don't exist, FFS!

now too many x-posts and you guys are just being silly

What I'm arguing here is that while we may have fewer "Image Bands" as a percentage of total bands in the US, they (largely by virtue of being from America) are more culturally influential on a global scale than their UK equivalents. And forget about the Japanese acts, which have virtually no presence outside Japan.

(BTW, I reviewed a concert by Japanese band L'Arc-en-Ciel for the Village Voice in 2012; here's my review, and here are some photos I took.)

Actually, on second thought, one of the biggest instigators of my impression of "WAAAAAAYYYY more Image Bands in the UK than in the US" may be because for many years, the UK had a functioning weekly music press, which the US never really had. More space to parade and represent your Image, much quicker turnover of bands and music micro-scenes = more Image.

Key paragraph from that Voice review, my description of L'Arc's lead singer:

hyde has to be the single most androgynous frontman I've ever seen—he makes Antony Hegarty look like Henry Rollins. He wore a waist-length black blazer with shoulder pads over a black tank top, pants baggy enough to hold a spare microphone or two, and his hair was in blond cornrows, dangling loose for better whipping. His primary stage move (other than sticking his tongue out at the audience) is a version of Axl Rose's snake-hips dance, but with added twirls and what can only be described as flouncing. Oh, and five songs or so into the set, he donned a floppy, wide-brimmed hat Alicia Keys would envy, making him look like a '90s R&B diva having a rock moment.

more culturally influential on a global scale than their UK equivalents.

...Americans always over-stating the effect of their ~cultural influence~ on the rest of the world... pfffftttt

You're bigger. That's about it. Now go wave your flag somewhere else, unless you're going to do it like the New York Dolls. :-P

for many years, the UK had a functioning weekly music press, which the US never really had. More space to parade and represent your Image, much quicker turnover of bands and music micro-scenes = more Image

This is related to a crucial difference between how the US and UK music industries function, I think. The US music industry, at least where rock is concerned, has always played a long game, signing bands to multi-album deals with the intention of building a years-long career for them. The UK industry is, I think, much more singles- and quick-hit-oriented, not so much worried about five - or even two - years down the road. I doubt the majority of UK bands plan a two-year touring cycle when they release an album, but that's pretty much standard practice, at least where I work.

Yeah, this is the thing I'm trying to get at, when I talk about "Image Bands in the UK" and why it's so different from the States.

Because we are a country whose entire landmass and population could fit inside just *one* of your 50 states (OK maybe not Delaware or Rhode Island?) and yet for a significant period of the late 20th Century, we somehow supported 2, sometimes 3 weekly music papers, and a dozen monthlies. That's a lot of pages to fill.

And when I was trying to express why I did not think Kiss or Bon Jovi or "hair metal" compares, is that, during the "golden era" of that music press, it wasn't just one or two Image Bands or even one or two Movements. During the course of a decade it went, like: Glam, Bay City Rollers style teeny bop, Punk, Classic Long Grey Overcoat Post-Punk, Romo, Goth, Blue-Eyed Soul, Synth-Pop and on and on and on. I could draw you a recognisable cartoon of a musician or fan of any one of those "styles". And probably any British person who obsessively read the music press between 1980 and whenever Melody Maker folded, could do you a similar (probably expanded, because my memory is poor) list, and similar cartoons.

We have a *ton* of stylistic churn, because of our music press, because of our shorter cycle. To stand out in that churn, "Image" is one of the ways to get column space. I'm not saying this is better or worse than the US, it's just different. I was looking for *why* we were different, and there's probably a host of reasons why, including the ones I touched on above. But this stuff is definitely the *how*.

(And I've been thinking about the steady parade of US bands from Nirvana Pixies onwards, who came over to the UK to "break" first in the UK press, then sell themselves back to the US on the strength of that success. But I'm tired, and if anyone wants me I'l be in my bunk with my £3 Interpol CDs...)

i've been reading bits of the svenonius supernatural rock strategies book and one of the chapters makes the point that whereas actors and such can take off their makeup and personas at home, bands are expected to be the bands all the time, so in that sense maybe what it means to be an image band is to be more on the actor side of the equation. dee snider takes off the makeup at home but slash and buckethead wear those bucket hats all the time.

when i brought up hair metal and steven tyler, i wasn't trying to argue that the US is or isn't better than the UK at this. rather, i was trying to offer a counter-argument to this...

Think it's p obvious why White American culture doesn't do it. The horror of being scene as effeminate, the policing of masculinity.

...which i don't think is true at all. the founding fathers of american rock and roll -- little richard, elvis,, all those guys -- were very effeminate. or, more to the point, they were SEEN as effeminate. and white american culture completely embraced them. and this was in the '50s. you might also have noticed that all those macho, beer-swigging, denim-clad southern rockers like lynyrd skynyrd -- maybe the epitome of white american masculine music culture -- all had long, completely feminine hair.

i admit i had never actually heard the phrase "image band" before this thread, but if there is such a thing, lynyrd skynyrd are just as much of an image band as duran duran are. different image, though, obviously.

another way to look at the question, which may well have something to do with the UK weekly music press as well as the general UK tabloid culture, may be to ask not why the UK has more image bands but rather why the UK press spends so much more time talking about it. and even then, i think any answer would be quite complicated. because it may also be that the UK press and the US press tend to talk about different aspects of image, and they tend to talk about it in different ways.

The US has plenty of "image bands" but maybe they get overshadowed by, you know, the actual music. Whereas the UK seems to be great at churning out bands that are pure image.

I love when a guy starts reciting arguments that you and other people have made, yourself, and discussed up thread, as if he is trying to score points against you. And by "love" I mean "roll my eyes and move on".

(Maybe it wasn't actually this thread, but I can't even remember what thread it was at this point, I'm tired and there's no milk to have tea. But the whole "Long Hair = Feminine" thing is one of the quickest things to get me to roll my eyes and move on.)

But, y'know, talking of haircuts. I was thinking this over this morning, and thinking about other aspects of "Image Band" and whether that means having a strong, defined image that does not change, but then thinking that many of the bands I think of as "Image Bands" are actually bands that have had fairly lengthy careers, but, if you look at a photo of them, you can tell *exactly* what album they're promoting, or at least, what era.

I probably wouldn't call Radiohead an "Image Band" (though yes, they are obviously a band that cares hugely about image and presentation) per se, but Thom Yorke is very definitely part of the Image Band trope because of this. (They would be an "Image Band" if all of the band behaved like Thom, but the rest of them dress like History Professors and p much always have. Then again, "Oxford History Professor" is also an image?) But if you look at a photo of Radiohead, you can tell instantly, are they promoting Pablo Honey or The Bends or OKC or HTTT or TKOL based solely on Thom's clothes and haircut.

And all of the bands that I think of as "my" Image Bands (Duran Duran, Blur, I'm starting to be able to do this with Interpol now) you can do that, you can instantly tell not just "This is Blur" but you can tell which album they're promoting based on haircuts, even while presenting a strong image of *Blur*-ness.

I'm not sure you can do that with Kiss (not counting "Unmasked") or Aerosmith? Maybe a ~real fan~ could? Which doesn't make them Not Image Bands, just, a different kind of image band than the kind I tend to go for.

I love when a guy starts reciting arguments that you and other people have made, yourself, and discussed up thread, as if he is trying to score points against you. And by "love" I mean "roll my eyes and move on".

and i love when someone assumes that because he or she has already discussed something, sometime before, on some thread or other, that the argument is now closed.

i don't think long hair equals feminine anymore than short hair equals whatever short hair equals, but i do think there have been many eras, and many corners, of the US (and no doubt some other countries) , where hair lengths have been PERCEIVED as such. "the policing of masculinity," as you yourself put it. and if a longhaired male walked into a bar in one of those corners in one of those eras (for example, large swaths of the american south in the not-too-distant past), assumptions were very likely being made about him. that's all i was saying.

i am NOT asking you or anyone to re-argue something you've argued extensively elsewhere. i am just letting you know where i'm coming from.

i could look at any photo of bruce springsteen, based solely on clothes and haircut, and tell you exactly what album he was promoting (at least through the first 20 years of his career, when he truly mattered from a pop standpoint).

Aw, BOOM! Perfect example, like, *textbook* example, of an American image band! Bruce Springsteen! Thank you for that.

Because Springsteen has long irritated me on that level, that this is a guy who has spent decades carefully constructing and changing and working with Images, specifically of images of Working Class American Masculinity (whether that's messing with beards and biker chic or clean shaven with the American flag and Levis 501s) but it's like this elephant in the room, of everyone (well, especially British people who fetishise Springsteen) going on about how AUTHENTIC and how ANTITHESIS OF IMAGE BAND he is, when he is an ARCHETYPICAL IMAGE BAND, but somehow read as "not image" because white American male is so "default".

(Sorry, I hate Springsteen, but he is a pitch perfect example, and I'm super-glad you raised him.)

And I don't want to pick this scab, but it's not that the argument is *closed*, it's that this is a discussion I've been having for weeks now (across the 22 Listens thread, across the Men With Long Hair thread, across all 8 billion of the gender threads, which means it's actually more like 14 years now, but this specific argument has been going over this thread and 22 listens) and you pick one sentence out of a 2-week argument of going back and forth and considering one side and then the other and argue like *that* is my whole position, which needs to be debunked. American and European conceptions of masculinity are different. (And there are myriad conceptions of masculinity within "american" and "european" as well as between.) I do think that stereotypical American masculine views of European men as "sophisticated and metrosexual, therefore suspect" is still a valid point. (But English men have similar views about "European men" and French men probably have similar views about "decadent English men" so it's probably about being "other" within masculinity, rather than specifically US/UK, but the US can never really seem to get over its rugged frontier masculinity schtick.)

The whole dance of "long hair on men = rugged and masculine" swinging back and forth with "short hair on men = rugged and masculine" is a dance that has been going on way, way, waaaaaayyyyy longer than even "bands in suits" swinging back and forth with "bands in jeans and t-shirts" in terms of fashions in masculinity. Because most of us grew up in the 20th Century, we have absorbed 20th Century mores about "long hair on men" and what it means. "Policing of Masculinity" is the point; hair length is incidental. Lynyrd Skynyrd wearing their hair long were them coding as masculine as fuck because Civil War Generals of the Deep South wore their hair longer than The Beatles. It's an image.

springsteen is absolutely an image guy, who spends an awful lot of time thinking about this stuff. spend any time in asbury park, and you will hear stories, to take one silly example, of springsteen employees who were paid to wear his jeans to properly break them in for him. everything about how he presents himself is calculated. i'm a fan 'cause i like the music and i like the way he says what he has to say and i like his guitar playing and i think a lot of those looks were damn good looks. i tend to tune out all those people who go on about his authenticity and whatnot because -- if you want to know what i've been ranting about since the beginning of ILM time -- i don't believe authenticity exists in any music of any type by anybody.

(singular exception to the above: the lifers group, a hip-hop group consisting of guys serving life sentences at rahway, released a song called "let me out." that was an authentic moment.)

specifically of images of Working Class American Masculinity (whether that's messing with beards and biker chic or clean shaven with the American flag and Levis 501s)

it's perhaps not surprising that a lot of ILMers' fave springsteen album is the one where he tried something else. for tunnel of love, he switched to sport jackets and bolo ties, suggesting something more like American Man on a Date.

If it weren't for Nicky Wire, I'd be tempted to put late doors Manic Street Preachers down as the ultimate non-image band - not one of the albums when they're trying to recapture their, ahem, punk rock roots, but one of the Q magazine-friendly ones when the lyrics are just collections of bland signifiers and they're standing there looking like they've just been shopping in BHS. It's not even a kind of ostentatious everybloke look it's just plain half-arsedness.

Obviously the Manics up to a point are pretty much the ultimate image band.

The band that first sprung to mind as an 'anti-image band' was The Chameleons but that's purely because I once watched a YouTube clip of some live TV performance where the singer was wearing a really horrible jumper.

Going back to the hair metal thing, I think in defining 'image bands' I'd want to differentiate somehow between bands who adopted a standard hair metal look (though obviously there were those who defined it in the first place - I'm not sure who, it's not a genre I really know anything about) and those with a distinctive look that is unique to them. For example re: Soref's point about garage bands, from our point of view lots of bands do look like '1964' whereas The Who looked like The Who (albeit in a '1964' way). Obviously there's a huge grey area here, fans of a genre will notice differences in style that might not be apparent to non-fans, just as their would be with the music.

xp Well that Everything Must Go/This Is My Truth period was a deliberate anti-image to make a clean break with the Richey period. They explained it at the time and it wasn't half-arsed at all. It was a decision.

I don't think Wire's lyrics are ever close to being bland signifiers btw but that's for a different thread.

i won't be able to think about this properly today because I have to work hard but i am getting tangled up in passing in the dialectic of innovation and correctness in image-bands and their followers - are there distinctions between kinds of image bands that generate a 'be marvellous, be spectacular' culture, and those that generate principles that that are more 'your trousers must have n inch bottoms and break exactly here; your shoes should be brand y', or does one degenerate or harden into the other? I feel like there are distinctions between dress-up and aestheticism drifting around in this somewhere. Anyway, work!

Oh, Woof, don't work; talk to us instead. Some really great posts itt at the moment!

But need lunch right now.

"'Authenticity' is a Construct" is one of those basic level ideas that has been printed on cards and handed out to new ILM-ers since 2000. Or, rather.. *should* be. But hey.

still caused outrage on the post-fahey thread a while back vis-a-vis porches, checked shirts & mountain men

Yeah, I mean, ppl who have a hissy-fit when you suggest that, y'know... those flannel shirts, those deliberately square-tailored, plaid, in bold masculine colours, modelled in the LL Bean catalogue by rugged dudes with beards flannel shirts just, like grow on trees or something. But whatevs.

i won't be able to think about this properly today because I have to work hard but i am getting tangled up in passing in the dialectic of innovation and correctness in image-bands and their followers - are there distinctions between kinds of image bands that generate a 'be marvellous, be spectacular' culture, and those that generate principles that that are more 'your trousers must have n inch bottoms and break exactly here; your shoes should be brand y', or does one degenerate or harden into the other? I feel like there are distinctions between dress-up and aestheticism drifting around in this somewhere. Anyway, work!

― woof, Friday, February 14, 2014 11:08 AM

I've been thinking about this, and I think this is much more about "First Gen" versus "Second Gen" in terms of a music scene.

The originals will just be doing their wild, wacky thing, being marvellous and spectacular. But when you get a group of people being marvellous and spectacular together, group think and hive mind takes over. And people who are just dressing up together to go to the same parties/clubs together end up attracting a secondary group of people around them who think that instead of being marvellous and spectacular, the trick to acceptance in that scene which has coalesced around those originators is to wear their trouser cuffs at exactly n inches and their shoes must be y brand.

This is the role of the British music press in hyper-accelerated scenes: that once it's been put down on paper as "this is the X scene" suddenly you get kids across the country who have never been to X club, suddenly dressing that way, from having seen pictures of it, rather than being in on the scene. (But this is also the place where the most interesting mutations take place, to drive it forward to the *next* micro-scene.)

Music scene politics just fascinates me, it always has. Whether it was seeing it in the local scene, or reading about it in the NME.

I was at a conference last week all about marketing in HE, and one of the last plenaries started with someone playing "Anarchy in the UK". They asked us if we knew why we were playing it (their reason was that UK HE is basically anarchy at the moment because of govt policy) and I was the only person to pipe up and say "because Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren are oustanding marketers", and explain that everything I knew about branding and image and loyalty and emotional investment I new from being into music and following bands.

This thread is totally about bands as brands - some of which (Kiss) remain pretty much the same, and some of which (Thom) subtly change and evolve over time.

Really interesting and good stuff.

xp
yes, that sounds v right & reminds me of the recent ian penman piece on mod from the LRB, a great essay & i think relevant here.

I was the only person to pipe up and say "because Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren are oustanding marketers", and explain that everything I knew about branding and image and loyalty and emotional investment I new from being into music and following bands.

Heee heeee heeeeeee this just reminds me of last year, when Tumblr partnered with Yahoo and started talking about how great this would be for ~promoting brands~ and my dashboard got filled with reblogs of A Certain ILX0r basically throwing a hissy and saying that he didn't join Tumblr to follow "~brands~" followed by a good thick wad of take-down notes going "actually, my dashboard is filled with Brands - Brand Radiohead or Brand Doctor Who or Brand One Direction or whatever, in fact I did very much join Tumblr to follow brands, but we call them hashtags now" and said ILX0r stropping out going "TAKE THAT BACK TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW JOAN DIDION IS NOT A BRAND!!! ALPINE STOATS ARE NOT A BRAND!!!1111eleven" and sorry, dude, but, I got news for you... #brand

I mean, to be serious and non-meow for a moment, I'm sure there is a difference between an Image and a Brand, but I'm not sure where it is.

Well marketing theory would say that 'image' is part of 'brand', but exactly how you delineate that is gonna vary.

Get the font slightly wrong on the CD spine of your b-sides competition = alienate your die-hard fans (who notice shit like this, consciously or not), make them feel like it's a bootleg or inauthentic product, and see it bomb.

Faintly off-topic, sorry!

It's just funny how so many of us think about this. And not at all accidental, given ILX was founded by someone who went on to work... in branding/marketing due to a fascination brought about by a love of pop.

(I was working at a marketing agency when ILX was founded, seems like it's kind of an ILX thing. At least it was in the early days.)

Yeah I was wondering where things like album/single artwork fitted into this - I definitely see it as part of a band's brand, not sure about image (maybe it depends whether or not the cover features a picture of the artist?).

"Putting your picture on the album cover" = pretty good sign that You Are An Image Band.

But then again, some of the strongest image bands I can think of never put themselves on their album covers. It's another not-thing of thingness.

But "having a strong image" often translates into expressing that aesthetic in visual ways that aren't photos - the Nagel painting on the cover of Rio says just as much about who Duran are and what they aspire to as any of the other albums with photos of them on the front. It's still part of "Image Band".

Obviously it's been discussed a lot, but have we ever had a specific "bands as brands" thread? Can't find one. I'd love to broaden the discussion beyond just image, but am loathe to do it on this thread (for sake of future revives as much as anything else).

xpost - Stone Roses using John Squire's paintings. Absolute apotheosis of that.

Yeah that's a good way of putting it (xpost). I used to be really into the Chemical Brothers and I definitely associated their music with the look of their covers (at least up to the second album) rather than what they looked like as people. I remember them saying they made a point of choosing images that didn't look like typical techno/dance covers.

Stone Roses basically turned themselves into a giant John Squire painting for a set of promo photos, so it's all linked together.

I dunno; I feel like "bands as brands" is getting a bit beyond the remit of this thread, because that all starts to go a bit "OMG, artist X wore a t-shirt of a totally inappropriate artist Y!" after a while. I kinda feel like... "what band X chooses to put on their t-shirt" is within the remit of this thread, but "what it means when a fan wears a t-shirt of band X" is kinda not? If that makes sense?

i am impressed we've gone this long w/out mentioning carles

xpost - Yeah I agree with that. I think what I'm interested in is the way bands brand themselves (which is often about image, and thus totally about what they put on their t-shirts, album sleeves, etc), and how cognitive dissonance can result when fans buy-in to something only to have it contravened by things they view as being off-brand.

Brand is a clumsy term given to misuse but it seems to make the most sense here.

Like, a lot of people use it when they mean 'company' or 'corporation', when actually brand is the interface of how something (company, corporation, band, football club, whatever) presents itself and how its audience perceives it.

What's a carles?

Oh, do you mean Hipster Runoff? Because I'm all.. argh, is this some obscure French cultural theorist I've never heard of?

haha, yes, he did have a good eye & an ability to make his own writing palatable & catchy that obscure French cultural theorists lack ime

thinking of image bands or their opposite I'd wonder where the Ramones, early Pretty Things r the Birthday Party would lie on there.
I think all 3 might be viewed as anti-image by some but also think that at least some members in all 3 worked consciously on the way they looked.
I haven't read the thread through so don't know if there has been any comment on the look the Ramones consciously developed prior to them getting mass exposure. That mismatched uniform has been covered in a couple of articles I've read. Possibly even going as far as intentionally ripping jeans knees to ape what I think was originally a rent boy look which is what the song 53rd and 3rd is about from what I've read.

("Roland Carles was a butcher, he had 16 knives..." brane what are you even doing)

the sort of sub-tom waits Serious Spooky Man shteez of nick cave/massive attack is one of my least fav things.

I always get the sense that the ramones would look and sound exactly the same if they were a pee wee baseball team except for that one ramone who became an investment banker

WOW. This piece is like the apotheosis of ~Image Band~

And as I was reading it, I my head was tilting further and further to the side, going "wow, this shit is more fucked up than my heights-of-mania thoughtworms" to the point where I actually started believing it was a parody.

Then I saw the byline at the bottom, and I think I actually woke up my upstairs neighbours with my fit of hysterical laughter. Oh, ILX, what have you done to me.

http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/carlos-d-leaves-interpol-three-

Misogyny in My Friends Told Me About You is an effusion of imagination that results from the catatonic rupture occurring in the psyche of the famed -ego from the onset of celebrity. It is a component of the epic complex of suspicion and paranoia that constitutes the empirical tableau exhibited across the photographic slideshow of then film’s display case. The failure to establish a reliable temporal axis of linearity and the excursiveness of the event horizon of the film’s narrative are necessarily symptomatic narrative structures emanating from this epic complex, of which misogyny is but one component.

Morbs.... is that *you*?

thinking of image bands or their opposite I'd wonder where the Ramones, early Pretty Things r the Birthday Party would lie on there.
I think all 3 might be viewed as anti-image by some but also think that at least some members in all 3 worked consciously on the way they looked.

dunno much about no pretty fings, but the ramones and birthday party strike me as textbook image bands, the former almost the platonic ideal

Pretty Things invented the Concept Album. Therefore, *canonical* Image Band.

Also, if your members have been used as background decoration in any kind of indie or arthouse film, you are almost certainly an Image Band (covers both Ramones and Birthday Party tbh, as well as every person who has ever been in an Alan Cox film (looking at you, The Clash and Courtney Love))

xpost - Yeah I agree with that. I think what I'm interested in is the way bands brand themselves (which is often about image, and thus totally about what they put on their t-shirts, album sleeves, etc), and how cognitive dissonance can result when fans buy-in to something only to have it contravened by things they view as being off-brand.

...Brand is a clumsy term given to misuse but it seems to make the most sense here.

― the drummer is a monster (Scik Mouthy), Friday, February 14, 2014 5:34 AM (2 days ago)

yeah, no, bands as brands is the perfect way to phrase the idea. as you suggest, it's especially apt as frame for dissonance between an audience's perceptions and expectations. boringly obv example = dylan going electric and fucking up the program for many of his folk fans. they'd bought into an existing image and felt betrayed by the rebranding. thinking about nicki minaj in the present moment. i want to invest in nicki the rapper, but get thrown by nicki the popstar.

yes, for Birthday Party, i think Cave has always thought v hard about his image, plus

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/76280302/The%2BBirthday%2BParty%2B%2B%2BTracy%2BPew.jpg

circling back round to pick at Roxy - what's the distinction between Roxy dress-up and Prog dress-up? I don't know if they can be pulled apart (because I know little about Prog) - Roxy/Bowie cut the image freer from meaning?

The horror of being scene as effeminate

Nice work btw

Perhaps Roxy dress-up (in relation to prog) coded itself more strongly as self-consciously artificial rather than fantasist, and worked more explicitly in relation to the celebration of fashion-as-artifice in their album art?

I watched a prog on iPlayer just now called something like "danny baker rocks the 70s" (not to be confused with another, longer prog on there called something like "danny baker and the rockin 70s", which is apparently sth different) and it was basically THIS THREAD, the show: extraordinary clips of Vivian stanshall, the who, eno (doing 7 deadly Finns!), Kate bush, the damned, nick lowe, Gabriel's genesis, the specials, all of whom were doing amazing things with how they were presenting themselves (in v v different ways) and all introduced by this bespectacled, quintessential Unassuming Bloke in an awful print shirt. A welcome transmission on a hungover Sunday

there's a fake-but-handy distinction that's tempting me between Theatrical image band (drawn to narrative, meaning) and Art image band (enjoying free play of image, autotelic fabulosity)

Given that distinction, I'd put Bowie on the theatrical side and Roxy on the art side. Bowie's still playing with characters, narratives, and stories. The worlds he creates feel a lot more solipsistic and illusory than Roxy's, which have a feeling of real-world community.

Hmmm. See that's coming a bit close to what NV and I were talking about on the other thread, with regard to Weighted Semiotics and Weightless Semiotics.

That the theatrical band are looking at the meaning and the narrative (and if they are dressed as Renaissance princes it is because they are doing a concept album about Machiavelli) which are weighted semiotics, and the "art" band are weightless semiotics, signifiers pointing at nothing, just for the sake of playing with image, pointing only at a reference to a reference, like Carlos D's empty gun holsters.

But the problem is, I don't see a hard and fast distinction between them. What do you do with bands who are both and neither? When everything is an image or a role, where do you say "this band are lounge lizards" or "this band are playing lounge lizards for a role, while simultaneously being lounge lizards"? Or bands that start with weightless semiotics, but then because that look now signifies *that* band and their oeuvre, it becomes weighted semiotics by association?

Semi-weighted semiotics?

The more I think about it, I don't know where the line between "doing characters and narratives in songs" and "autotelic free play of imagery" really can be drawn.

I don't even know that I *believe* in weightless semiotics at this point. Maybe it's a paradox or inherent contradiction (oh noes GEB's strange loops oh noes!)

I was complaining upthread about Carlos D and his empty gun holsters and how he said that his look was *referencing* Blixa from Neubauten, and getting frothingly angry because the imagery that Neubauten played with *meant* something, in the context of post-War Germany, while D was using empty signifiers. However, I could also argue that in the construction and then destruction of D's image, and the whole narrative that became attached to that, to go onstage now wearing that get-up would be "Signifying Carlos D" with its own complex raft of associations and meanings and god it's too tempting to call that meme the perfect viral here heehee. Weighted semiotics become weightless semiotics become weighted again, in this recursive loop of imagery.

Is it even possible to create an "original" (ha!) Image these days, or do all Images eventually collapse under the weight of too many signifiers? Would we even recognise a new original Image Band today if we saw one? Have Image Bands just been reduced to PSY-like memes in the absence of a UK weekly press for performers to peacock in, or has the endless 24 hour cycle of the internet ramped up Image Bands to the point of ubiquity?

yes, it's definitely a tricky distinction to draw - not least because as you say meaning accretes around the (puportedly) weightless, & it becomes its own new narrative (so in the most straightforward/ trad example Pistols/Maclaren/Westwood would = Art-image-disruption then signifiers harden rapidly into Punk - a reprise, of sorts of the fabulosity -> strict rules about shoe brand stuff from upthread?); I think you have to let intention in to make it make sense, tho i think the distinction between internal-to-the-work narrative & the external narrative is always prone to collapse (maybe the refusal to let it collapse is why I don't find dress-up-as-characters bands interesting?).

I think in some (if not all) cases it's about what audience you're aiming for, and perhaps counting on historical ignorance on that audience's part. Half the trick/fun of image is making fun of old people who take it too seriously. "Come on, man - don't get so worked up, it's just a jacket!" If you are angered by the weight of the signifiers, that's the clearest possible sign that you are not the intended audience.

One of the strange things about Now is that, living in a large city in the UK, I often find myself overhearing people with (say) feathers in their hair, or an arm full of prominent tattoos, talking about how they don't like pop music in general or some band in particular ... because it's 'too image-conscious', in more or less words.

Sure, that's a stock critique and we shouldn't be surprised to hear it made, but, you know, isn't it interesting to hear it from people who themselves 'dress up'. But who might not see themselves as dressing up. It feels like a situation that could only arise after a lot of pop-cultural deck-shuffling and re-shuffling.

There's a famous and probably apocryphal story about an NYPD officer entering a Frank Zappa concert sometime in the early 70s and some heckler shouting something along the lines of "Take off your uniform!" to which Zappa replied "Everyone in here is wearing a uniform and don't kid yourself."

My mistake: a quick Google search reveals that it happened in London, and was actually recorded and preserved on the album Burnt Weeny Sandwich. So there you go.

it's 50/50 when i agree with Zappa but he was otm there

I think in some (if not all) cases it's about what audience you're aiming for, and perhaps counting on historical ignorance on that audience's part. Half the trick/fun of image is making fun of old people who take it too seriously. "Come on, man - don't get so worked up, it's just a jacket!" If you are angered by the weight of the signifiers, that's the clearest possible sign that you are not the intended audience.

Hmmmm.

Although this is certainly the case in many, many examples, and the *anger* is the sign (I am thinking here of the frothing hatred which the Old Men Of ILX are riled to, every time LiLo wears a Motorhead t-shirt or Lorde wears a Cramps t-shirt) I do also think that it is possible for signifiers to fail, or at least fail to reach even their *intended* audience.

(I am sorry to keep going on about Interpol, but I am kind of OCD obsessed with this band and their imagery at the moment.) But I don't think it's overly flattering myself to think that I probably *was* within Interpol's target audience in the early 00s. If I'm too old to "get it", it's only slightly too old, as 3 of that band were at high school during the same years as me. I guess what I've been curious about the whole time, is the *failure* of Interpol's image to move me, despite their image being so completely blatantly marketed towards "me" (and indeed hit a large portion of ILM in 2002) that I might as well have been walking around with a giant target on my back. Granted, that was probably way more about *hype* (which is different from "Image" and would probably require its own thread, and has indeed had many threads) than the cut of their suits or fetish gear writing cheques that their guitar tone couldn't cash.

When girls with blue hair and boys with full sleeve tattoos make comments about pop bands being "too much about image" of course they don't *mean* "too much" but "the wrong kind" or "image that appeals to the wrong people". Zappa's uniform comment being a rare example of Zappa being OTM.

(This is definitely a thing that I *do* - being as allergic to "music biz hype" as a character in a William Gibson novel, and being impossible to even begin to *digest* a band while the hype is still going on. Then, once the hype has completely disappeared, and years after the band has stopped being even unfashionably naff, I become *obsessed* with the band, and with viewing the hype like a historical document and trying to piece together how it all happened, how it worked, why people went so nuts for this. Like an archeological dig of the recent past.)

((I can actually remember the first time I did this, I was still a teenager, so this was about 86/87 or so. I went through the periodicals index of the local public library, and looked up every newspaper or magazine reference for "punk" or "sex pistols" or "the clash" or related people and topics in every year between 1976 and 1979, then went upstairs and sat in the stacks, tracing the history of the music and the people through old reviews in yellowing copies of Rolling Stone or Creem or even Time Magazine or whatever. That was my favourite thing in the world, when I was a teenager, trying to figure out music scenes and explosions that had happened just out of reach of my personal memory. And it's kind of a shock to think that in 1986, reading reviews from 1977 seemed almost impossibly ancient, such a long time previous it was almost unimaginable. While, in 2014, digging up Interpol relics from 2002 with the same glee, Interpol feels like it happened *yesterday*, when it was further ago in time than the Sex Pistols were from my 16 year old self.))

(((I don't know if this is because I am LOL old, or if music - or at least rock music - has completely stagnated. I would have to ask someone who is 16 right now, if an Interpol record feels like an ur-artefact from the dawn of time, before they were even born.)))

((((But then again, I wasn't shocked, in 1986, about how these 10 year old punk records sounded so ancient and decrepit, I was shocked that they *didn't*. When it was A Flock Of Seagulls records that sounded just embarrassingly old, y'know, older than your parents' hippie albums.))))

(((((Points to the fact, that time is eternal)))))

I think the Zappa incident was about army uniform not police.

Wonder if The Fall had a recognised image prior to the Brix era makeover.

jumpers

((I can actually remember the first time I did this, I was still a teenager, so this was about 86/87 or so. I went through the periodicals index of the local public library, and looked up every newspaper or magazine reference for "punk" or "sex pistols" or "the clash" or related people and topics in every year between 1976 and 1979, then went upstairs and sat in the stacks, tracing the history of the music and the people through old reviews in yellowing copies of Rolling Stone or Creem or even Time Magazine or whatever. That was my favourite thing in the world, when I was a teenager, trying to figure out music scenes and explosions that had happened just out of reach of my personal memory. And it's kind of a shock to think that in 1986, reading reviews from 1977 seemed almost impossibly ancient, such a long time previous it was almost unimaginable. While, in 2014, digging up Interpol relics from 2002 with the same glee, Interpol feels like it happened *yesterday*, when it was further ago in time than the Sex Pistols were from my 16 year old self.))

I did this, circa 1994/95, with CDROMS of all the broadsheet newspapers, in our school library, looking up stuff about The Stone Roses and such like from only 5-7 years previous, and that felt like a lifetime. Absolutely. And the Interpol debut feels two minutes ago.

Wow, that is so funny, and reminds me awkwardly of the age difference between us, because I can remember living through the Stone Roses and Madchester while it was happening (though obviously in another country, therefore "living through" the eyes of the press, a few weeks late because that was how long it took the NME and MM to be shipped to NY). And it's always earlier than I think, because I can remember it being a summer that I was in London on my way to a family visit. And my Dad and I spending our Heathrow stopover wandering around Soho looking at record shops and seeing kids queued up outside the Marquee or somewhere to see (oh I don't know, not one of the big bands, but, like, The High or someone) and I was still in my Glam-Goth clobber, and looking at these kids in 18" flares and thinking "OMG, I am 6 months behind, this is the ~future~!!!" and I came back from that visit having swapped bondage bracelets for lovebeads and paisley shirts and my friends were like WAHT and I was all "you'll see" and put on a Happy Mondays record haha.

And then in 1997 doing the same but for Ride and My Bloody Valentine, because Embrace talked about them, and moving (just about) from CDROMS to the internet.

Cos I was, what, 10 when The Stone Roses debut came out, and 11 or 12 when Nowhere came out (was it 1990 or 1991?).

OMG you are but a child!

BUT this also made me think about the importance of Age, and also timing.

Because this is probably straying a little off "Image Bands" and getting into Record Collection Rock (though Interpol are both, they are different things, because one is referencing visual cues and the other is referencing musical cues in exactly the same way.) In that there are individual Reference Eras during which most people will tolerate, or even *love* Record Collection Rock, and then Referenced Eras which will lead a person to *LOATHE* that Record Collection Band.

And the absolute prime era for "Referenced Era" is actually that period about 6 to 10 years Before Your Time, which isn't tainted with "this is old folks music, my parents listen to this shit" yet, but is old enough that you don't really remember it the first time round, so it doesn't seem unspeakably naff, in the way things that were big when you were 12 kinda do.

(Ironically, when I was in the shower, I was listening to the JAMC, and halfway though Tumbledown, BOOM, there's a Neubauten sample, and I was thinking "why is this OK? Why do I react to this with fondness, when I react to Dengler with eyerolling irritation?" Partly, it is because it a musical filch, partly it's because they just drop it; they don't announce "BEHOLD, A NEUBAUTEN LIFT!" the way that Dengler announces "MY CLOTHES ARE REFERENCING NEUBAUTEN" and you discover it on your own, as your Goth housemate comes flying across the flat screaming "Taaaaaaaaanz Debil!!!!!!")

The Jesus and Mary Chain are *totally* an Image Band. The Jesus and Mary Chain are *totally* Record Collection Rock. But they are also about 5, 10 years older than me, therefore their references are in the realm of "cool older sibling shit". So many musicians I love have described the experience of having a sibling several years older than them, who turned them onto stuff from that Mysterious Era just before their time. Like, it's easy to make fun of (and I'm going to get my ILM badge revoked for this) but literally, the first place I ever *heard* Can was on a JAMC b-side in 1987, and it blew my teenage mind. The people who turn you onto stuff for the first time seem cool. (And Tumblr shows me that there are certainly people who were 16 when TOTBL came out, who thought Dengler was cool for the same reason.)

People whose Reference Era is contemporary with your own individual era... it's really tricky. Tends to be either extreme love or hate. Thinking about bands I love *because* the Record Collection in their Record Collection Rock is in my personal sweet spot - School of Seven Bells. (Ironic to pick them, because yeah, Benjamin Curtis had an older brother the same age as me, who turned him onto all that stuff - who is now in Interpol, so go figure.) Get it right and it contributes to that "OMG, this is MYYYYY band, this was MADE FOR ME" feeling. Get it wrong, and it feels.. insulting. Dengler just comes across like the annoying hipster lightbulb joke, sidling up to you and going "Let me tell you about this band, they're really obscure, you might never have heard of them... they're called... Einsturzende Neubautan?" and you just want to give him a blank stare and say "Fuck off; my housemate named our cat Blixa when you were still in high school?" It feels patronising, because it's just outside of the right Reference Point range for me. Someone who was 6 to 8 years younger than him might well be as "wow!" as I was when the JAMC referenced Roadrunner or whatever.

It's not even like I'm privileging "dropping a sample" over "wearing a t-shirt" or the equivalent, because Interpol feel like they play this game with guitar tone, as well. (Hours of pleasure with this game. Hours. Like, their guitarist will drop 2 seconds of an exact lift of the guitar tone/intro to something before shifting and going into a standard Interpol song, like an easter egg, and it will drive me *nuts* until I have ripped apart mine own CD collection, listening to every single "clang" until I go "Foggy Notion! that's exactly the guitar tone on Foggy Notion!" or "Chrome Waves! Did you just do Chrome Waves, with the same reverb setting and everything? You little shit!")

I am now going to do a search for "record collection rock" because I am almost entirely certain that we have done "Record Collection Rock" on ILM before, and it ended with me categorically unable to explain why I am willing to put up with Primal Scream, but not put up with BRMC, and this phenomenon is exactly why.

the first place I ever *heard* Can was on a JAMC b-side in 1987

me too, except i heard it whenever that came out. "April Skies" or "Happy When It Rains" was it?

B-sides to April Skies. 1987. Same as me!

right yeah "April Skies", i had that double 7inch, it was 1987

well i dunno about you but i'd've been 18, i don't think you can get your cred card revoked for first hearing Can via the JAMC at 18

I think I was 16? I still hadn't heard *Can* - it took me another few years to hear the original. This was "heard of" rather than "heard".

16 year old kids of today who can just go on Spotify and hear Mushroom or Tanz Debil... THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW THEY'RE BOOOOOOOOORN!

(OK, enough of the "LOL olds" now.)

((I did not hear of Neubauten through JAMC, though. That was through my then-Goth Penpal who became my Goth housemate when I moved to NYC))

oh right...i think i knew who Can were by then. there used to be an amazing record shop in Stafford that i misused for getting Marillion imports when they had whole sections of Kraut/First Wave Industrial/New Age/NWW + List stuff - i was beginning to get intrigued but i was still getting my head around non-lyric-centred music by the time i moved away

then ACIIIIIEEEEEEEED happened and sent me into all that stuff from a whole different direction

it was all total image stuff, obv. i knew almost nothing about these guys except the fantastical descriptions in the shop catalogues, but they had a whole world-space in my head without me knowing anything about who made those records and what they looked like

Yeah, but for real, kids in the UK in the 80s DIDN'T KNOW THEY WERE BOOOOOORN because even in Hull or Stafford or whatever, there would still be a cool record shop 20 minutes away. But you try finding Test Dept records in Upstate NY in the 80s? Yeah... NOPE!

https://24.media.tumblr.com/5b8336f3f8b93a4840c944273dd5313e/tumblr_n0ezmrDnSJ1rjw8sqo1_400.jpg

weird to think we were better served for that stuff than huge chunks of the US. closer to the source, i guess

http://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/lotus-records.html

Lotus Records! i love you internet, i miss you 80s

i apologise if anybody in this picture stumbles across themself here, but rest assured you are all awesome

http://www.staffordremembered.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Outside-Lotus-Records.jpg

I first heard Can when I bought Ege Bamyasi, aged about 17 perhaps, because Fools Gold was meant to rip-off I'm So Green.

i knew almost nothing about these guys except the fantastical descriptions in the shop catalogues, but they had a whole world-space in my head without me knowing anything about who made those records and what they looked like

Yeah, I had pen-pals who would take pity upon me and make me mixtapes full of things I knew nothing about. (Like the Goth housemate above.) This music might as well have been *beamed* from outer space for all I knew about it. It was pretty obvious from listening to "Sex Gang Children" or "We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Going To Use It" or "The Virgin Prunes" that there was a whole image and a story there, but at age 15, I had absolutely no access to it. (The nearest record shop that even carried 3 month old copies of the NME was an hour away, in Albany, NY.)

But that thing, of seeing records in shops, and recognising the name and the image, and seeing written down descriptions like "sounds like Depeche Mode playing while being tortured..." OMG, so mysterious, so creating of a whole world-space.

I bought the first Spacemen 3 record because of the album cover and the description the record shop owner had pinned to a post-it note on the dust cover. And it was *so right*.

I first heard Can in 1989 or 1990, when my best friend (dead now) bought the CD of Ege Bamyasi; can't remember how or why he stumbled across it. When we first became friends, he knew almost nothing about music at all - all he listened to were The Cure and Metallica. I started handing him stuff that I liked and thought/knew he'd like - Ministry, Big Black, etc. - and even at one point started using him as a lab rat, talking him into buying things I thought we'd like and then listening to them at his house. That's how we discovered Diamanda Galás.

I discovered Einstürzende Neubauten around that same time, via Henry Rollins, who has their stickman tattooed on one of his arms. The first album I bought was Haus der Lüge, the newest one at that time; later that year I was in Los Angeles when they came through touring it and got to see them. They were fucking fantastic. I wound up seeing them at least three more times over the next six years or so, and interviewed Blixa for Alternative Press somewhere toward the end of that stretch.

my Dad and I spending our Heathrow stopover wandering around Soho looking at record shops and seeing kids queued up outside the Marquee or somewhere to see (oh I don't know, not one of the big bands, but, like, The High or someone) and I was still in my Glam-Goth clobber, and looking at these kids in 18" flares and thinking "OMG, I am 6 months behind, this is the ~future~!!!" and I came back from that visit having swapped bondage bracelets for lovebeads and paisley shirts and my friends were like WAHT and I was all "you'll see" and put on a Happy Mondays record haha.

This is something that I find so completely foreign - the changing of one's clothes to accomodate one's taste in music. I've just never done it. I used to joke with the same now-dead friend, during the peak of grunge style in the US (flannel shirts, ragged jeans, big work boots etc.) that I should get a T-shirt printed that read "I've Been Dressing Like This Since 1985." These days, of course, I hardly wear band merch or anything particularly fashionable at all, it's all button-down plaid shirts and clean jeans and non-ostentatious boots.

The more I think about it, the more I think that bands doing things 'off-brand' is the one thing most likely to alienate fans. I keep thinking of how much dog latin hates MPP by Animal Collective.

x-post now but...

I can't even *begin* to explain to you, how alien and how foreign the idea of "I've Been Dressing Like This Since 1985" is to me. The idea that you just dress in a received way, that you never try to express yourself or your sensibilities through your clothes, that is the same amount of o_0 to me as someone saying they "don't listen to any music except the radio" or they "never read novels" or anything else which is just advertising... I am an uncultured r00b in terms of foreignness to me.

But I fully admit, that my fascination with Image and dress and style is tempered and informed by three very crucial differences about me:

1) I spent 18 years of my life as "British person, raised by British parents, in the US"
2) I am read as a woman. Men act; women appear is a very powerful force, as is "male default"
3) I was/am, for much of my teens, queer. Learning to read and display covert signs and signifiers was crucial to survival.

All of these things sort of... predisposed me to be very aware of Image and clothing as a language. Just like the conditions of your circumstance have predisposed you to be suspicious of it.

That Neubauten stick-man is branding; it's image. It's a very powerful image, and it's a signifier that got all sorts of places. It was totally one of those codifiers of "this person will talk to you in an interesting way" while I was growing up.

I dunno; I just think "going through phases" is also an important part of establishing identity as a teenager. And music and tribal fashion is such a *huge* part of establishing "am I this kind of a person, or am I that kind of a person". To the point where I am kinda suspicious of people who haven't done it, because I just think.. this person has never thought about presenting their Self. They probably have no idea what their Self is, or that other people have different kinds of Selves.

And "branding" is a kind of corporate, late capitalist co-option of this idea which is why it comes across as so gross. But the idea that some people just take on a received Self without interrogating it, and other people have to search and quest and try on roles before finding their Self... I think it's a really important distinction to make that the latter is just as important and worthwhile as the former.

You may not be a Brand, but you do have a Self.

I can't even *begin* to explain to you, how alien and how foreign the idea of "I've Been Dressing Like This Since 1985" is to me. The idea that you just dress in a received way, that you never try to express yourself or your sensibilities through your clothes, that is the same amount of o_0 to me as someone saying they "don't listen to any music except the radio" or they "never read novels" or anything else which is just advertising... I am an uncultured r00b in terms of foreignness to me.

To me it was sort of like this: you ("you" being whoever I was talking to, or whoever might see me coming down the street) don't need to know what I like at a glance. You don't deserve that knowledge. My tastes are on the inside. If I decide you're an interesting enough person, we'll talk and you'll find out what I like. In some ways, it's even more narcissistic than being fashionable.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I spent years wearing band shirts everywhere. But they always covered such a gamut - I'd be the guy wearing a Neil Young shirt to a Neubauten show, for example. I always felt it was better to be at least slightly unreadable.

I think in terms of 'brand' because that's my dayjob set of tools I have for dealing with the concept, but yeah, the idea is older than that, and more existential.

I have about a dozen versions of the same t-shirt, in different colours (but mainly one 'colourway'; fuck me I hate that phrase). Very simple, very plain, very deliberately chosen. Brand Sick Mouthy. I need to buy a fresh set soon, actually.

after going thru a bunch of more or less dressy phases there was a definite point in my early 20s where i decided i was going to be in disguise. since then i've mostly rejected the vulgar display of dressing like a type, i've wanted to dress anonymously. but i'm coming round to recognizing the socializing love of teen cliques again, for reasons like you describe BB, but also because i am trying v hard to get over myself

Yeah, I get what you're saying. And I had a friend at art school who used to moan - completely rightly - that there was a whole gang of Cool Kids at uni who would talk to her when she had her mohawk up, and would ignore her when it was down and parted to look like normal hair. Which is completely valid - to care *only* about presentation at the expense of all else is completely shallow.

But to pretend like caring about presentation is *entirely* shallow, or ~just doesn't matter at all~ - that to me, that is a blunt exercise of privilege.

Solipsistic, rather than narcissistic, but same ballpark.

x-posts to Horse

...and even though I still own dozens of band, t-shirts, seriously, "wearing a band shirt" is such a *basic* way (with all the Sarf London disdain that particular usage can imbue) to express tastes or identity.

I understand exactly what it can signify (I like this band vs I have been to this band's concerts vs I want to be associated with the Kind Of Person That Listens To This Band) but there's a big part of me that thinks "why even bother" (heh).

While we are examining the semiotics of "Band Shirts", wellll... I leave this for your Derridian deconstuction laughter and piss-taking.

https://24.media.tumblr.com/d6289563957506af2fa77ce0a6f19d21/tumblr_n15dr8Cw911rjw8sqo1_500.jpg

I know the story behind this photo. Can you work it out?

The point at which, the readability of default American masculinity as "jeans and a band t-shirt" is revealed as just another Image to play with...

Oh, stupid tumblr. Here it is bigger if you need to see their faces to work out who those guys are, and why it's funny.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/d6289563957506af2fa77ce0a6f19d21/tumblr_n15dr8Cw911rjw8sqo1_1280.jpg

(should be obvious, at this point.)

I'm surprised we've gotten this far without mentioning Daft Punk. Their Image is an especially interesting one since it's the Image of (supposed) anonymity. For whatever reason, anonymity to me in this context reads as "powerful," and that's kind of the way DP present themselves, as these almost godlike powerful technicians controlling the world from behind a mixing desk.

I always assumed they started doing it as a riff on 'faceless techno duos'. Which is an image in itself.

Yeah, it seems like a riff on "faceless techno duos" with a side order of Kraftwerk's We Are The Robots. It's a cute image, it's kinda fun - and it's certainly instantly recognisable and perfectly memetic (last year, Thom and Nigel did an AfP DJ set in the robot masks, which was somehow hilarious and groan worthy?) But I don't know that "powerful" in the sense you imply is how I would describe it.

"Wearing masks" is totally an Image Band Meme. And so is "We Are Robots" (though obviously harder to pull off). But I find the intersection kind of a one-trick pony, I guess.

Still, interesting example.

space - magic fly

I guess the thing about Daft Punk that reads as "power" to me is the way that wearing the masks puts them at kind of a remove from their audience. It makes them kind of unreachable, as did that pyramid thing they toured around in back in 2007. So their image seems to place them *over and away* from their audience, which may not be their intent, but I'm sure it does affect how people interpret them.

"Over and away" from their audience? As opposed to artists who play "In The Round" like... erm... Secret Machines? I'm coming up blanks for any others, until you get to a stadium level.

http://www.capsule.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/lbk3.jpg

OK, fair point! "Sweaty VFW halls and coffee houses with no stage" level as well as stadium level.

But I also tend to think of "DJ booth not the focus, people dancing in the round" as something coming out of club culture - so maybe Daft Punk's "over and above" is a rejection of club culture and positioning as rock stars, instead? I have no idea. I know jack shit about Daft Punk in 2014, TBH, so I'll shut up now.

Fucking LOL! This is ridiculous:

OK, having gone through about 8000 pages of Tumblr, I still do not know the name of Paul Banks' solo band's drummer.

But I have, however, discovered that the lyric in question is actually "weightless, semi-erotic" pronounced with a non-rhotic accent, rather than "weightless semiotics".

Fuck it, I like my lyric better.

I dont think masks code as faceless at all - Masks and Costumes are pretty visual!

Well, it depends what it is a mask of!

I think Daft Punk just don't want to be seen!

It's funny how completely The Knife have owned that certain type of mask. Because I no longer think of them as "Black Death Doctor Masks" I now think of them as Knife masks.

Surely a mask of anything is pretty striking - if I walk down the street in a mask people gonna look.. whatever the mask is?

Unless you are a masked ball, in which case everyone will be wearing masks and it would be NBD.

Thinking about masks, I go to Montol every year, and most people are running about Penzance with masks on. And yes, it changes the dynamic, and you start to recognise people by their masks instead of their faces, then suddenly someone comes up to you without their mask later in the evening, and you're like "who are you?" and they're like "the person you were talking to and dancing with for an hour?"

Maybe I'm not understanding you. "Faceless" a la Burial, is an Image.

Wearing Masks, even though it is literally "Faceless" i.e. not showing one's face, is also a distinctive image. But it also means that anyone can put on the mask, and be that artist

But now I am thinking about PENGLAS!!!!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/Penglaz2.JPG/220px-Penglaz2.JPG

I dont really know anything about Burial, Im not sure if Ive ever even heard one of his records. I kind of have a preconception though, which must come from his image or at least what people write about

I'm beginning to wonder what wouldn't count as an image band. Almost every band has an image even if that image is "no image"

Yes, that was the conclusion that I reached and stated in the first post.

If newness is in the ears that hear and not in the sound that is made, then is image in the eyes that see and not in the sight?

Because everything has an image even regardless of whether we have seen that image - not because the image is hidden from us or presented to us as imageless, but because we havent seen it yet?

With Burial I know about the image but not about the music. With something else i know about the music but not about the artist.

But it isnt that Burial has no music, its just that I am unfamiliar with it

Well, the whole idea behind the thread was this:

Sure, all artists have "images", whether they deliberately plan them or not, whether you're aware of what the image is or not.

But yet, there is an idea in lots of people's heads that there are bands who are known or appreciated for their "image", and that this may have been planned and constructed as carefully as the music was constructed. And it's this latter thing that I wanted to get at.

well, all food is fast food if you think about how long food prep used to take.
but a restaurant in the fast food sector is a specific kind of fast food (and is sometimes a lot slower than other places!)

so maybe that is the same with "image band"?

penglaz is an excellent discovery

Insisting on anonymity is a surefire way of cultivating an image in dance music, where people by and large don't care what any of the producers look like or even who they are. Burial and Daft Punk have done that pretty much better than anyone.

andrew wk mentioned being influenced by the anonymity of dance culture but i don't see how that really translated into AWK unless he's actually not a real person.

[cue evil laughter]

I admit I haven't followed Andrew W.K.'s career since I Get Wet, but there was definitely a Happy Hardcore influence to his music, at least at that time. But yeah, the 'anonymity' part makes no sense to me.

In which case you need to catch up on Steev Mike and all the rest.

Then there's things like this:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19020-st-vincent-st-vincent/

Where, could someone please explain to me, how the *costumes* that Annie Clark wore during session work in her previous bands are somehow relevant to her current album?

Because I'm struggling with this.

Where, could someone please explain to me, how the *costumes* that Annie Clark wore during session work in her previous bands are somehow relevant to her current album?

It's kinda simplistic, but I think the idea is that it is interesting she was wearing someone else's uniforms yet now presents as fully herself. People are willing her into a sort of Bowie-life, so that to see her dressed in dated Polyphonic Spree robes is like looking at pictures of the Manish Boys: funny how slow the start was. I think the intention is to appreciate the leap, really.

People whose Reference Era is contemporary with your own individual era... it's really tricky. Tends to be either extreme love or hate.

Hmm.

There was a moment in the mid-2000s where lots of indie bands in the UK (Maximo Park and Editors and a bunch of others who merge into one) were supposed to sound like Joy Division and Gang of Four. New Wave and particularly JD had been a key phase for me.

Now here were a bunch of bands made up of ppl roughly my age, referencing records I'd listened to obsessively. Except what they were making was a kind of reverent pastiche, which took the New Wave canon's status as Serious Music for granted, and took pains to smugly position itself as 'anti-pop' whilst in fact providing the plodding soundtrack to countless boring student indie discos and festivals for stupid posh people.

I don't know if 'extreme hate' describes my reaction to that stuff but certainly apathy, boredom, coming close to hatred at points. TLDR ppl who insist on 'reviving' an aesthetic u have loved = dud

"took pains to smugly position itself as 'anti-pop' whilst in fact providing the plodding soundtrack to countless boring student indie discos and festivals" more or less describes Joy Division though doesn't it?

Semi. Less so than the mid-2000s stuff.

I think what you read as smug in jd I might read as weird

Springsteen and lots of image stuff in here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/30/120730fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all

What I was thinking of specifically:

A week after closing down rehearsals at Fort Monmouth, Springsteen and the band start rehearsing at the Sun National Bank Center, the home of the Trenton Titans, a minor-league hockey team. The theatre at Fort Monmouth was secluded and cheap, but not nearly large enough for the crew to set up the full travelling stage, with all the proper lights, risers, ramps, and sound system.

Inside the arena, Springsteen is walking around the empty seats, a microphone in his hand, giving stage directions. “We can’t see the singers from this angle,” he says. “One step to the right, Cindy!” The crew moves the riser. Cindy Mizelle, the most soulful voice in the new, seventeen-piece version of the E Street Band, takes one step to the right.

Springsteen lopes to another corner, and, as he sets his gaze on the horn section, a thought occurs to him. “Do we have some chairs for those guys when they aren’t playing?” he says. His voice ricochets around the empty seats. Chairs appear.

The band gets in position and starts to rip through the basic set list in preparation for the Apollo show. Lofgren plays the slippery opening riff of “We Take Care of Our Own”—a recession anthem in the key of G—and the band is off. Springsteen rehearses deliberately, working out all the spontaneous-seeming moves and postures: the solemn lowered head and raised fist, the hoisted talismanic Fender, the between-songs patter, the look of exultation in a single spotlight that he will enact in front of an audience. (“It’s theatre, you know,” he tells me later. “I’m a theatrical performer. I’m whispering in your ear, and you’re dreaming my dreams, and then I’m getting a feeling for yours. I’ve been doing that for forty years.”) Springsteen has to do so much—lead the band, pace the show, sing, play guitar, command the audience, project to every corner of the hall, including the seats behind the stage—that to wing it completely is asking for disaster.

In the midst of the fifth song in the set, he introduces the band. As they run through a vamp of “People Get Ready,” the old Curtis Mayfield tune, Springsteen grabs a mike and strolls across the stage. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he says to the empty arena. “I’m so glad to be here in your beautiful city tonight. The E Street Band has come back to bring the power, hour after hour, to put a whup-ass session on the recession. We got some old friends, and we got some new friends, and we’ve got a story to tell you . . .”

The tune, thick with horns and vocal harmonies, elides into “My City of Ruins,” one of the elegiac, gospel-tinged songs on the 9/11 album, “The Rising.” The voices sing “Rise up! Rise up!” and there comes a string of horn solos: trombone, trumpet, sax. Then back to the voices. Springsteen quickly introduces the E Street horns and the singing collective. Then he says, “Roll call!” And, with the music rising bit by churchly bit, he introduces the core of the band: “Professor Roy Bittan is in the house. . . . Charlie Giordano is in the house. . . .”

When he finishes the roll call, there is a long ellipsis. The band keeps vamping.

“Are we missing anybody?”

Two spotlights are now trained on the organ, where Federici once sat, and at the mike where Clemons once stood.

“Are we missing anybody?”

Then again: “Are we missing anybody? . . . That’s right. That’s right. We’re missing some. But the only thing I can guarantee tonight is that if you’re here and we’re here, then they’re here!” He repeats this over and over, the volume of the piano and the bass rising, the drums hastening, the voices rising, until finally the song overwhelms him, and, if Springsteen has calculated correctly, there will not be an unmoved soul in the house.

For the next hour and a half, the band plays through a set that alternates tales of economic pain with party-time escape. While the band plays the jolly opening riff of “Waiting on a Sunny Day,” Springsteen practices striding around the stage, beckoning the imaginary hordes everywhere in the arena to sing along. There is a swagger in his stride. He is the rare man of sixty-two who is not shy about showing his ass—an ass finely sausaged into a pair of alarmingly tight black jeans—to twenty thousand paying customers. “Go, Jakie!” he cries, and brings Jake Clemons downstage to solo. He practically has to kick him into the spotlight.

A bunch of songs later, after a run-through of the set-ending “Thunder Road,” Springsteen hops off the stage, drapes a towel around his neck, and sits down in the folding chair next to me.

who will be the first truly normcore image band? or do they exist already?

Normcore? As in, band who dress normally? Boringly? Modest Mouse. The Shins. Death Cab. Etc etcetera.

Thinking how there are bands with a look and then bands where their look becomes a one- or two-word way to describe them. I know Iron & Wine and Bonnie "Prince" Billie aren't bands per se, but both became "beard" if you wanted to sum them up in a word (vs. their counterparts playing similar music). "Mop-tops" -- there's your Beatles.

Normcore?

http://www.jenniferheller.com/v3/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/NORM.jpg

noamcore

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01672/noam-1_1672796c.jpg

Both of whom look like they could have been in Modest Mouse.

Thanks for the Springsteen link! Talking on this thread seems to have turned into writing a 180000 word LOLnovel about image bands and non-image-bands and their discontents so I'm hungrily sucking all of this up as "research".

I guess I know what that P4k link on Clark was *trying* to say, using her former bands' costumes as "look at the leap from session player wearing other people's costumes to fully informed auteur" but it just fed into my irritation with the way that men are usually described doing stuff and women are usually described wearing clothes and I've tried to spend the entire thread flipping that around, noting both that "men wear clothes too" and also, "wearing clothes" is not just a portable meme but means something, depending on what the clothes are.

Tim De Laughter's alumni have turned up in all sorts of other bands I rate, and I never saw anyone describe what Benjamin Curtis or Phil Karnats were doing as "wearing robes" as opposed to "playing drums/guitar/etc" so it does irk a bit. There are times when discussing an artist's aesthetics feels interesting and worthy, and times when it feels like a lazy shortcut. I don't know what the difference is, though, because Clark talking about her stage set and her album cover choices and her choreography in the Village Voice interview over on the other thread was actually extremely interesting and provided a view into her working methods that really went beyond "wearing clothes".

Mumble, grumble, typical Branwell complaints, I know.

OH MY GOD THIS HAS BEEN STARING ME IN THE FUCKING FACE HOW COULD I NOT HAVE SEEN THIS

That the theatrical band are looking at the meaning and the narrative (and if they are dressed as Renaissance princes it is because they are doing a concept album about Machiavelli) which are weighted semiotics, and the "art" band are weightless semiotics, signifiers pointing at nothing, just for the sake of playing with image, pointing only at a reference to a reference, like Carlos D's empty gun holsters.

...

I was complaining upthread about Carlos D and his empty gun holsters and how he said that his look was *referencing* Blixa from Neubauten, and getting frothingly angry because the imagery that Neubauten played with *meant* something, in the context of post-War Germany, while D was using empty signifiers. However, I could also argue that in the construction and then destruction of D's image, and the whole narrative that became attached to that, to go onstage now wearing that get-up would be "Signifying Carlos D" with its own complex raft of associations and meanings and god it's too tempting to call that meme the perfect viral here heehee. Weighted semiotics become weightless semiotics become weighted again, in this recursive loop of imagery.

And then in this comic book I'm reading about postmodernism, in the section on feminism, I find this:

Male theories of sexuality - Freud's or Lacan's - literally cannot think of a woman except as negatively imaginary, incomplete, an empty signifier (the vacant womb).

Empty holsters. The empty signifier. FFS, the latin word "vagina" literally means scabbard - in the modern sense of weaponry, a holster is a literal linguistic vagina. THIS BAND ARE WALKING AROUND WITH LITERAL AND SIGNIFIED VAGINAS HANGING ALL OVER THEM.

I think I just broke mine own head. *dies*

I'm not sure what the appropriate thread for this is important cultural artefact is, but I'm just going to leave this here:

https://24.media.tumblr.com/0345403877347715f85e36d741933a2d/tumblr_n4p8ebQoD71txg5hvo1_400.jpg