Image Bands and their Discontents

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!