Image Bands and their Discontents

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"?