lord, to take your breath away
Over the past week, I keep thinking of this question and my possible answers to it: if you could bring any musician back from the dead, which one would you pick?
Which, ha, considering the abundance of musicians I love who are either long dead or have just died, yeah it's a bit of a dilemma. And my apologies to Chilton and Michael --- Syd wouldn't want to come back, anyway --- but yeah, it'd have to be Tim and Jeff. I can't have just one of them on their own, it'd have to be both together.
It's that sense of possibilities lost, you know? Michael, all right he was about to embark on a whole new phase and maybe that would have been brilliant and maybe an unmitigated disaster, depending on which conspiracy theory you believe. Chilton would have gone his own merry way as he always had. But both of them had long fruitful careers, whether in obscurity or in the painful spotlight.
Tim and Jeff? No. Definitely not Jeff. Same old cliche everyone trots out about him, cut off before he could realise his potential. It's a cliche but fuck, it's horrifically true.
And Timothy? Well, boy, I know nine albums in a ten year period is a fucking brilliant accomplishment but there was so many more ways you could have gone, developed even more. Reacted to the vast terrible fabulous ways the world has changed since you were here.
And I confess I want to know how Tim would have reacted to the changing music scene, the new technologies, the emerging media cultures. I think he would have loved the Internet. He would have hated the Eighties, he was already saying how soulless he found some of the electronic music in the late Seventies. Soul. That's why I love him and that's why I wonder if he'd react the same way to the things I love and loathe about the presence and lack of soul in music and books and films and culture in general.
He would have loved the Internet, the emergence of MySpace. He prolly even would have vehemently supported Napster even if it damaged his own royalties. I can see him being a lot like Anton, making his music available for free online. Only I doubt Tim had the foresight or the knowledge or the cynicism of Anton to retain copyright and distribution rights to his music. And I doubt Tim would make himself as accessible as Anton does. No, too much the aloof Aquarian for that. You couldn't email Timothy and even if you did track down his email by some fascinating intricate network of people who know people who know people, he wouldn't reply. Whether you were fulsome or antagonistic. Anton's just unique that way, I reckon. :p
I'm reading Lester Bangs at the moment, this collection of his reviews of nothing I'm interested in or know of, and I knew even before I ordered it that Les and I would have nothing in common aside from our adoration of Timothy. Lester loves punk, I fucking hate punk. Lester adores the Clash, I am utterly ignorant of the Clash. Lester rates Iggy and the Stooges, I like Iggy but have no interest in either his music or the Stooges. Lester fucking worships the Velvet Underground, I fucking loathe Lou Reed so much just the mention of his name makes me want to throttle his tuneless throat. And if Lester says one good word about Dylan, I might scream and shake the book.
But oh the way he writes. The hilarity of him, the fact that we both love Burroughs and it shows. And most importantly, that passion for music binds us. I adore him for every fervent word he says, whether it's vitriol or adulation because you can feel the passion and the love that fuels every word. See, here:
They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it's not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but if anything's going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record.
I missed my bus stop because I was reading and re-reading that bit, feeling it reverberate through me with pure gladness and recognition. Yes. Yes, Lester, that's how I feel too.
And then a couple of pages later: I may not have played Happy Jack more than five times since that day I bought it, even though I never got rid of it (those Class albums that you just don't get any kicks out of will all reveal their worth and essential appeal someday, you always reason --- perhaps you yourself must become worthy of them) ...
*squawks and points and flails* Jesus, how many fucking times have I said that over the past two decades?! And proved it to myself with Joseph Arthur and fuck, Tim Buckley! Which is why I still can't bring myself to throw out my Spacemen3 albums and even that stupid Philip Glass album.
So even if Les says that with some irony, I take it as sincere on some level. And there's this interview which got me thinking how right Les has been proven about the increasing artificiality of popular music. How much he'd fucking loathe the manufactured shit and the celebrity cult thing. It's quite chilling, really.
One of my friends on Facebook is doing the 30 days music meme thing. It's been about two weeks now, I think, and at first I thought "Oh that's so cool, I know that song." Then it was, "Ha, boy, you're totally showing how young you are." And then "Heh, you are such a Nineties kid." Now it's gotten to the point where he posted Oasis' Wonderwall yesterday and I just had to send him a message of "Jesus fucking christ, boy, what is with your taste in music?!" That's not what I said but that's what I meant and I said I really hoped that one of these days he'd have to post a song nobody's ever heard of. He replied saying he was a product of popular culture and I was struck by the utter irony of it considering my last post was a link to Michael performing Human Nature.
Don't talk to me about being a product of popular culture. Don't you dare use that as an excuse for a lack of musical integrity. I quite like popular culture, I quite like pop music. It's one of the things I always admire about filthygorgeous, how she quite proudly celebrates her love of Kylie and Scissor Sisters and Robbie and pop music in general. It was either her or Robbie Williams or both of them who said words to the effect of, "Do you know fucking hard it is to write a good pop song?" A song that will appeal to everyone on a melodic and lyrical level, across the board, across the radio waves and hopefully appeal to the critics too. That's how it translates in my head. That's part of the reason I love Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson and Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles. It takes fucking skill and insight and a good healthy dose of luck to nail a song that hits the charts and stays there and stays in people's memories for decades to come. It takes fucking genius to keep doing it.
But jesus, there's a difference between embracing pop culture, absorbing it into your own personal musical culture - and being an utter slave to it. There's something so abhorrent about only being defined by what's played on the radio, be it commercial or alternative. Radio's an invaluable starting point, of course. I only listen to the radio for an hour three days out of five but believe me when I say I'm listening hard for every minute of that hour. Sometimes I wish I did listen more but I can't take that invasion of people talking at me and playing unfamiliar music for very long. It fragments my mind. My music and my silence unifies me, develops me along whichever path I choose.
And that's the thing. I use the radio to be aware of the paths out there and I choose the one I like. I choose and I follow that path even if it takes me way off into the wilderness and away from glittery civilisation, even if it takes me right into the cacophony of the charts. I think that's what most music fans do. Prolly how I started off with Muse and have ended up at Android Lust now, colliding with Nine Inch Nails and Gary Numan along the way ... with a little help from kandielei. :p
Personal evolution, that's what I'm talking about. How can you just limit yourself to what someone else decides you should be listening to? Sure, it may be great pop music but can't you also decide what's great pop music? Great music, full stop.
God, can you say Aquarian individualist much? *lol*
Which is why even though I posted a song by Michael Jackson, uber example of popular music, the actual song I posted is one that the general public don't know. And it happens to be one of the two songs that alternate as my favourite out of all his songs ever.
I think Tim would have appreciated Michael for the mindboggling vocal talent they share. Certainly - oh god, I just realised this - Tim would have seen the Ed Sullivan show, would have witnessed the Jackson 5's meteoric rise to fame. I haven't come across anything he might have thought or said about them but I'm going to trust that Tim would have approved of Michael's preternaturally confident and soulful vocals.
I've been thinking about how much of my favourite music is rooted in vocal melody. And then how quite a lot of my favourite music is a reaction against that, eliminates the voice and words entirely in favour of pure music that needs only the note to communicate emotion, be it Nine Inch Nails or Spiritualized or Howard Shore's The Cell. And yeah, I owe all of that, for and against, to Michael, that I grew up with his voice and took that vocal sensibility entirely for granted. Him and, latently, the Beatles, I guess. Perhaps you could point to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon for the wordless sensibility although I do remember loving the songs with actual lyrics so much more than the other stuff. I even remember complaining to my mum once about that. "Why aren't there any words in this song? Why do you always listen to music that have no words?!"
Even now I will react to the voice first of all. Like that fucking godawful Chris Brown single that hijacks the melody from Human Nature. I hated his voice, it was so inferior, so puerile, it grated against me, even though something in me was totally responding to the melody I recognised and loved. Tim was on in the background last night and while I was doing something else, commenting or playing or something, I had this absent thought of how much I love the warmth in his voice. The night before I was re-listening to my favourite St Vincent songs and again I was struck by how much I like the timbre of her voice, the tenderness and the private lushness of it.
A beautiful warm intimate voice. That's Michael again. And Billy Corgan. And Nina Simone. And Stevie at her best. And Kate Bush. And Alison Goldfrapp. Jason Pierce. Lindsey Buckingham. Matthew Tow of the Lovetones. Rob Snarski of the Blackeyed Susans. Jed Kurzel of the Mess Hall. Daniel Poulter of the Dolly Rocker Movement. Joseph Arthur. Alex Chilton at his best. Syd. Alicia Keys although I have yet to actually buy an album. Roland Orzabal.
But the curious thing is I always think I can spot the fakes. The ones who are trying too hard to tap into that same quality. Like Norah Jones and Lior -- whatever the fuck happened to him? --- and John Mayer --- god, I wish he would go off and just make weird music like I'm sure he can --- and Dido and some of Christina Aguilera's stuff although I quite like her persona and that raw vocal talent.
And I think that's why I fucking loathe people like Regina Spektor who do that babydoll sweetness, like a squeaky voice is going to make up for the lack of soul and really feeling the notes, letting your voice really envelop the notes. Those false high notes drive me nuts. Every time some new ass on the radio starts a song and skids up in the melody, I want to ding them around the earhole. Use the melody, you fool. Shape it, move it with your voice, feel the progression, don't just lurch from note to fucking note like a retard.
God, no wonder I hate punk.
"I practise the discipline of the narrative." That applies to writing, yes, and I can't remember who said it now, it's a quote in my Jack Bickham book about writing and selling your novel but it's always stuck with me and yeah, look at how it applies to so much more than just writing. The discipline of the melody.
It's Tim who's really taught me to appreciate the vocal virtuoso. Not because of the weird Starsailor stuff but really that quality is the one thing that unifies his entire discography. The sureness of his voice, the way he carries the melody in his voice and shapes it. He really tried his hardest to break that discipline on Starsailor but oddly when I do listen to that album, I can hear the discipline even there. It's just its form is so wildly distorted but the form is still there. Hawk from a handsaw. And it's him who's made me go back to Michael and almost listen with new ears, how he does the same thing.
Aquarians are such catalysts, man.
I really wish I could find Lester's whole review of Starsailor or whatever he's written about Timothy. As it is, there's this:
Similarly, Mick Jagger gets immediate pie-ority as a fake moneybags revolutionary, and in general acting smarter and hipper and like more of a cultural and fashion arbiter than he really is. If Jesus had been at Altamont, they would have crucified him, but if Mick Jagger makes me wait forty-five minutes while he primps and stones up in his dressing room one more time and then blames it on some poor menial instrument mover, then me and the corps are goin' stageward with both tins blazing when he does show his fish-eyed mug.
Yes, that would be me going off into fits of glee.
I imagine Lester would be half-scornful and half-admiring of Michael's roaring success in the Eighties, of the very clever harnessing of the publicity machine to the music. As it is, Les just missed Thriller. He died 30 April 1982. Thriller came out 30 November 1982.
I really can't imagine what Lester Bangs would have said about the album itself. *boggles* Or Tim.
But god, I can totally see Timothy going his own way like Alex Chilton did, possibly in the exact same degree of obscurity. But I'd like to think the momentary resurgences of interest in Tim that have happened over the last two decades would have been more powerful, bigger in momentum if he was actually alive, if he could capitalise on them to go around and perform and win even more people over. Because there's Tim on the albums and then there's Tim in concert mode and oh my fucking god, the powerhouse of brilliance he unleashes.
Somebody would bring him over to Sydney and he'd perform first at the Vanguard like Joe did. And then with some more popularity, maybe the Gaelic. And then the Metro. And thanks, I'd like him to stop just there and not go any further. Although perhap City Recital Hall and the Opera Theatre.
My god, he'd love Sydney. I just know he'd feel the Aquarianness of this city, the harmony of water and city, the quirkiness of the Opera House and the natural lushness of the Botanic Gardens. And the fans from MySpace and Last.FM and FasterLouder would congregate, from bulletin boards and Yahoo groups and maybe even from here on LJ. We'd find each other online and then amass at the gigs and it would just be --- oh god.
He'd be jaded, yes. But he'd also be wiser and sweeter like Bowie was. He's always known how to give to an audience and he wouldn't lose that, I'd hope and pray. His voice would have matured even more but he'd still retain that youthful beauty of tone. And hopefully he would have developed and perfected the falsetto he'd started on Look At The Fool.
Would he collaborate with Antony Johnson? Maybe as producer. He'd kick Rufus Wainwright to the wall. And him and Jeff ... oh god. Him and Jeff would circle warily around each other for years, maybe reference each other in their songs like Lindsey and Stevie. But ultimately, ultimately they would come together and make an album, maybe like Leon Russell and Elton John (which I have yet to hear, the Aunt's got it) ---
But no, I'm wrong, aren't I? It wouldn't be like that at all. Because if Tim had lived beyond 1975, Jeff would have seen him more and more. And god, maybe he even would have left Mary at some point to go and live with his father and learn more immediately from him. Maybe that would give him more stability? And there would be a reaction, I'm sure. They'd fall out --- an Aquarian and a Scorpio? father and son? fuck, yes --- and make up and fall out again and maybe it would be quite vile if it was played out in the music magazines and blogs and maybe turn them both into cariacatures, a horrible soap opera.
But I'd like to think that by then Tim would know how to handle it, how to be a bigger man and a better father than his father was directly to him. I theenk he was a good dad to Taylor, I don't know for sure, I haven't read anything from Taylor aside from the thing about the gong and I do like that bit. I have hope he was growing into a wonderful man. He was only twenty-eight after all.
But if I could bring Tim and Jeff back to here and now? Well, first I'd give Tim a right wallop and send him to some sort of counselling. But he'd hate that and he'd hate the whole rehab culture of music. I'd just hug Jeff and tell him gently to please take his fucking boots off and learn a river before he jumps in. And then they'd just go into shock at everything. Jeff already hated the Internet and the whole stalking mentality back then. But hopefully he'd see that things are different now, that he can take control of the fannish activity on the Internet and use it to his advantage. Teach Tim how to use this newfangled box thing and watch them both thumb their noses at the record companies and take to distributing their music online.
I'd hope Tim wouldn't be as far out weird and slightly offputting like Genesis P'Orridge and considering the more popular sensibilities of Greetings and Sefronia and Look At The Fool, I don't think he would be. I have a horrible feeling he would have loved grunge and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all those dirty mournful bastards with bad hair. But he would also love Corgan, prolly Siamese Dream more than Mellon Collie, I would think. He'd hate techno but he'd prolly use it a bit, lay his vocals over it and give it some soul. He'd definitely see the worth in industrial, maybe go a bit that way and make his own version of Metal Machine Music or whatever that album's called which I suspect is prolly the only Lou Reed album I could tolerate.
And he'd write and score films and maybe make some too and put them all on the Internet and be ever so Aquarian. And I could dream of elegantly wasted photoshoots and concerts on DVD and maybe a blog. And pictures of him and Jeff performing, in the studio together, of him and Jeff and Joan Wasser. And maybe - maybe one day I'd get to see Tim and Jeff and Joan all on the same stage. And I'd be in a state of utterly petrified transfixed bliss. Tim's voice, Jeff's voice and Joan's violin and her own voice. The three of them, beautiful people with beautiful talent. Hopefully not stoned, thanks Joan.
And maybe one day they'd ask Tim to curate Vivid and he'd bring all these crazy fabulous amazing musicians and artists over to Sydney and get them to do their thing all over my lovely city, everything from weird avant garde jazz to weird hybrid electronic operatic things to psychedelic fractals on the Opera House.
No, wait, Eno did all that, didn't he? But Tim would do it different and be his own brand of Aquarian catalyst. *nods*
And now, because of him and Lester Bangs going on about this dude, I'm going to see if I can find some Roland Kirk.
Which, ha, considering the abundance of musicians I love who are either long dead or have just died, yeah it's a bit of a dilemma. And my apologies to Chilton and Michael --- Syd wouldn't want to come back, anyway --- but yeah, it'd have to be Tim and Jeff. I can't have just one of them on their own, it'd have to be both together.
It's that sense of possibilities lost, you know? Michael, all right he was about to embark on a whole new phase and maybe that would have been brilliant and maybe an unmitigated disaster, depending on which conspiracy theory you believe. Chilton would have gone his own merry way as he always had. But both of them had long fruitful careers, whether in obscurity or in the painful spotlight.
Tim and Jeff? No. Definitely not Jeff. Same old cliche everyone trots out about him, cut off before he could realise his potential. It's a cliche but fuck, it's horrifically true.
And Timothy? Well, boy, I know nine albums in a ten year period is a fucking brilliant accomplishment but there was so many more ways you could have gone, developed even more. Reacted to the vast terrible fabulous ways the world has changed since you were here.
And I confess I want to know how Tim would have reacted to the changing music scene, the new technologies, the emerging media cultures. I think he would have loved the Internet. He would have hated the Eighties, he was already saying how soulless he found some of the electronic music in the late Seventies. Soul. That's why I love him and that's why I wonder if he'd react the same way to the things I love and loathe about the presence and lack of soul in music and books and films and culture in general.
He would have loved the Internet, the emergence of MySpace. He prolly even would have vehemently supported Napster even if it damaged his own royalties. I can see him being a lot like Anton, making his music available for free online. Only I doubt Tim had the foresight or the knowledge or the cynicism of Anton to retain copyright and distribution rights to his music. And I doubt Tim would make himself as accessible as Anton does. No, too much the aloof Aquarian for that. You couldn't email Timothy and even if you did track down his email by some fascinating intricate network of people who know people who know people, he wouldn't reply. Whether you were fulsome or antagonistic. Anton's just unique that way, I reckon. :p
I'm reading Lester Bangs at the moment, this collection of his reviews of nothing I'm interested in or know of, and I knew even before I ordered it that Les and I would have nothing in common aside from our adoration of Timothy. Lester loves punk, I fucking hate punk. Lester adores the Clash, I am utterly ignorant of the Clash. Lester rates Iggy and the Stooges, I like Iggy but have no interest in either his music or the Stooges. Lester fucking worships the Velvet Underground, I fucking loathe Lou Reed so much just the mention of his name makes me want to throttle his tuneless throat. And if Lester says one good word about Dylan, I might scream and shake the book.
But oh the way he writes. The hilarity of him, the fact that we both love Burroughs and it shows. And most importantly, that passion for music binds us. I adore him for every fervent word he says, whether it's vitriol or adulation because you can feel the passion and the love that fuels every word. See, here:
They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it's not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but if anything's going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record.
I missed my bus stop because I was reading and re-reading that bit, feeling it reverberate through me with pure gladness and recognition. Yes. Yes, Lester, that's how I feel too.
And then a couple of pages later: I may not have played Happy Jack more than five times since that day I bought it, even though I never got rid of it (those Class albums that you just don't get any kicks out of will all reveal their worth and essential appeal someday, you always reason --- perhaps you yourself must become worthy of them) ...
*squawks and points and flails* Jesus, how many fucking times have I said that over the past two decades?! And proved it to myself with Joseph Arthur and fuck, Tim Buckley! Which is why I still can't bring myself to throw out my Spacemen3 albums and even that stupid Philip Glass album.
So even if Les says that with some irony, I take it as sincere on some level. And there's this interview which got me thinking how right Les has been proven about the increasing artificiality of popular music. How much he'd fucking loathe the manufactured shit and the celebrity cult thing. It's quite chilling, really.
One of my friends on Facebook is doing the 30 days music meme thing. It's been about two weeks now, I think, and at first I thought "Oh that's so cool, I know that song." Then it was, "Ha, boy, you're totally showing how young you are." And then "Heh, you are such a Nineties kid." Now it's gotten to the point where he posted Oasis' Wonderwall yesterday and I just had to send him a message of "Jesus fucking christ, boy, what is with your taste in music?!" That's not what I said but that's what I meant and I said I really hoped that one of these days he'd have to post a song nobody's ever heard of. He replied saying he was a product of popular culture and I was struck by the utter irony of it considering my last post was a link to Michael performing Human Nature.
Don't talk to me about being a product of popular culture. Don't you dare use that as an excuse for a lack of musical integrity. I quite like popular culture, I quite like pop music. It's one of the things I always admire about filthygorgeous, how she quite proudly celebrates her love of Kylie and Scissor Sisters and Robbie and pop music in general. It was either her or Robbie Williams or both of them who said words to the effect of, "Do you know fucking hard it is to write a good pop song?" A song that will appeal to everyone on a melodic and lyrical level, across the board, across the radio waves and hopefully appeal to the critics too. That's how it translates in my head. That's part of the reason I love Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson and Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles. It takes fucking skill and insight and a good healthy dose of luck to nail a song that hits the charts and stays there and stays in people's memories for decades to come. It takes fucking genius to keep doing it.
But jesus, there's a difference between embracing pop culture, absorbing it into your own personal musical culture - and being an utter slave to it. There's something so abhorrent about only being defined by what's played on the radio, be it commercial or alternative. Radio's an invaluable starting point, of course. I only listen to the radio for an hour three days out of five but believe me when I say I'm listening hard for every minute of that hour. Sometimes I wish I did listen more but I can't take that invasion of people talking at me and playing unfamiliar music for very long. It fragments my mind. My music and my silence unifies me, develops me along whichever path I choose.
And that's the thing. I use the radio to be aware of the paths out there and I choose the one I like. I choose and I follow that path even if it takes me way off into the wilderness and away from glittery civilisation, even if it takes me right into the cacophony of the charts. I think that's what most music fans do. Prolly how I started off with Muse and have ended up at Android Lust now, colliding with Nine Inch Nails and Gary Numan along the way ... with a little help from kandielei. :p
Personal evolution, that's what I'm talking about. How can you just limit yourself to what someone else decides you should be listening to? Sure, it may be great pop music but can't you also decide what's great pop music? Great music, full stop.
God, can you say Aquarian individualist much? *lol*
Which is why even though I posted a song by Michael Jackson, uber example of popular music, the actual song I posted is one that the general public don't know. And it happens to be one of the two songs that alternate as my favourite out of all his songs ever.
I think Tim would have appreciated Michael for the mindboggling vocal talent they share. Certainly - oh god, I just realised this - Tim would have seen the Ed Sullivan show, would have witnessed the Jackson 5's meteoric rise to fame. I haven't come across anything he might have thought or said about them but I'm going to trust that Tim would have approved of Michael's preternaturally confident and soulful vocals.
I've been thinking about how much of my favourite music is rooted in vocal melody. And then how quite a lot of my favourite music is a reaction against that, eliminates the voice and words entirely in favour of pure music that needs only the note to communicate emotion, be it Nine Inch Nails or Spiritualized or Howard Shore's The Cell. And yeah, I owe all of that, for and against, to Michael, that I grew up with his voice and took that vocal sensibility entirely for granted. Him and, latently, the Beatles, I guess. Perhaps you could point to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon for the wordless sensibility although I do remember loving the songs with actual lyrics so much more than the other stuff. I even remember complaining to my mum once about that. "Why aren't there any words in this song? Why do you always listen to music that have no words?!"
Even now I will react to the voice first of all. Like that fucking godawful Chris Brown single that hijacks the melody from Human Nature. I hated his voice, it was so inferior, so puerile, it grated against me, even though something in me was totally responding to the melody I recognised and loved. Tim was on in the background last night and while I was doing something else, commenting or playing or something, I had this absent thought of how much I love the warmth in his voice. The night before I was re-listening to my favourite St Vincent songs and again I was struck by how much I like the timbre of her voice, the tenderness and the private lushness of it.
A beautiful warm intimate voice. That's Michael again. And Billy Corgan. And Nina Simone. And Stevie at her best. And Kate Bush. And Alison Goldfrapp. Jason Pierce. Lindsey Buckingham. Matthew Tow of the Lovetones. Rob Snarski of the Blackeyed Susans. Jed Kurzel of the Mess Hall. Daniel Poulter of the Dolly Rocker Movement. Joseph Arthur. Alex Chilton at his best. Syd. Alicia Keys although I have yet to actually buy an album. Roland Orzabal.
But the curious thing is I always think I can spot the fakes. The ones who are trying too hard to tap into that same quality. Like Norah Jones and Lior -- whatever the fuck happened to him? --- and John Mayer --- god, I wish he would go off and just make weird music like I'm sure he can --- and Dido and some of Christina Aguilera's stuff although I quite like her persona and that raw vocal talent.
And I think that's why I fucking loathe people like Regina Spektor who do that babydoll sweetness, like a squeaky voice is going to make up for the lack of soul and really feeling the notes, letting your voice really envelop the notes. Those false high notes drive me nuts. Every time some new ass on the radio starts a song and skids up in the melody, I want to ding them around the earhole. Use the melody, you fool. Shape it, move it with your voice, feel the progression, don't just lurch from note to fucking note like a retard.
God, no wonder I hate punk.
"I practise the discipline of the narrative." That applies to writing, yes, and I can't remember who said it now, it's a quote in my Jack Bickham book about writing and selling your novel but it's always stuck with me and yeah, look at how it applies to so much more than just writing. The discipline of the melody.
It's Tim who's really taught me to appreciate the vocal virtuoso. Not because of the weird Starsailor stuff but really that quality is the one thing that unifies his entire discography. The sureness of his voice, the way he carries the melody in his voice and shapes it. He really tried his hardest to break that discipline on Starsailor but oddly when I do listen to that album, I can hear the discipline even there. It's just its form is so wildly distorted but the form is still there. Hawk from a handsaw. And it's him who's made me go back to Michael and almost listen with new ears, how he does the same thing.
Aquarians are such catalysts, man.
I really wish I could find Lester's whole review of Starsailor or whatever he's written about Timothy. As it is, there's this:
Similarly, Mick Jagger gets immediate pie-ority as a fake moneybags revolutionary, and in general acting smarter and hipper and like more of a cultural and fashion arbiter than he really is. If Jesus had been at Altamont, they would have crucified him, but if Mick Jagger makes me wait forty-five minutes while he primps and stones up in his dressing room one more time and then blames it on some poor menial instrument mover, then me and the corps are goin' stageward with both tins blazing when he does show his fish-eyed mug.
Yes, that would be me going off into fits of glee.
I imagine Lester would be half-scornful and half-admiring of Michael's roaring success in the Eighties, of the very clever harnessing of the publicity machine to the music. As it is, Les just missed Thriller. He died 30 April 1982. Thriller came out 30 November 1982.
I really can't imagine what Lester Bangs would have said about the album itself. *boggles* Or Tim.
But god, I can totally see Timothy going his own way like Alex Chilton did, possibly in the exact same degree of obscurity. But I'd like to think the momentary resurgences of interest in Tim that have happened over the last two decades would have been more powerful, bigger in momentum if he was actually alive, if he could capitalise on them to go around and perform and win even more people over. Because there's Tim on the albums and then there's Tim in concert mode and oh my fucking god, the powerhouse of brilliance he unleashes.
Somebody would bring him over to Sydney and he'd perform first at the Vanguard like Joe did. And then with some more popularity, maybe the Gaelic. And then the Metro. And thanks, I'd like him to stop just there and not go any further. Although perhap City Recital Hall and the Opera Theatre.
My god, he'd love Sydney. I just know he'd feel the Aquarianness of this city, the harmony of water and city, the quirkiness of the Opera House and the natural lushness of the Botanic Gardens. And the fans from MySpace and Last.FM and FasterLouder would congregate, from bulletin boards and Yahoo groups and maybe even from here on LJ. We'd find each other online and then amass at the gigs and it would just be --- oh god.
He'd be jaded, yes. But he'd also be wiser and sweeter like Bowie was. He's always known how to give to an audience and he wouldn't lose that, I'd hope and pray. His voice would have matured even more but he'd still retain that youthful beauty of tone. And hopefully he would have developed and perfected the falsetto he'd started on Look At The Fool.
Would he collaborate with Antony Johnson? Maybe as producer. He'd kick Rufus Wainwright to the wall. And him and Jeff ... oh god. Him and Jeff would circle warily around each other for years, maybe reference each other in their songs like Lindsey and Stevie. But ultimately, ultimately they would come together and make an album, maybe like Leon Russell and Elton John (which I have yet to hear, the Aunt's got it) ---
But no, I'm wrong, aren't I? It wouldn't be like that at all. Because if Tim had lived beyond 1975, Jeff would have seen him more and more. And god, maybe he even would have left Mary at some point to go and live with his father and learn more immediately from him. Maybe that would give him more stability? And there would be a reaction, I'm sure. They'd fall out --- an Aquarian and a Scorpio? father and son? fuck, yes --- and make up and fall out again and maybe it would be quite vile if it was played out in the music magazines and blogs and maybe turn them both into cariacatures, a horrible soap opera.
But I'd like to think that by then Tim would know how to handle it, how to be a bigger man and a better father than his father was directly to him. I theenk he was a good dad to Taylor, I don't know for sure, I haven't read anything from Taylor aside from the thing about the gong and I do like that bit. I have hope he was growing into a wonderful man. He was only twenty-eight after all.
But if I could bring Tim and Jeff back to here and now? Well, first I'd give Tim a right wallop and send him to some sort of counselling. But he'd hate that and he'd hate the whole rehab culture of music. I'd just hug Jeff and tell him gently to please take his fucking boots off and learn a river before he jumps in. And then they'd just go into shock at everything. Jeff already hated the Internet and the whole stalking mentality back then. But hopefully he'd see that things are different now, that he can take control of the fannish activity on the Internet and use it to his advantage. Teach Tim how to use this newfangled box thing and watch them both thumb their noses at the record companies and take to distributing their music online.
I'd hope Tim wouldn't be as far out weird and slightly offputting like Genesis P'Orridge and considering the more popular sensibilities of Greetings and Sefronia and Look At The Fool, I don't think he would be. I have a horrible feeling he would have loved grunge and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all those dirty mournful bastards with bad hair. But he would also love Corgan, prolly Siamese Dream more than Mellon Collie, I would think. He'd hate techno but he'd prolly use it a bit, lay his vocals over it and give it some soul. He'd definitely see the worth in industrial, maybe go a bit that way and make his own version of Metal Machine Music or whatever that album's called which I suspect is prolly the only Lou Reed album I could tolerate.
And he'd write and score films and maybe make some too and put them all on the Internet and be ever so Aquarian. And I could dream of elegantly wasted photoshoots and concerts on DVD and maybe a blog. And pictures of him and Jeff performing, in the studio together, of him and Jeff and Joan Wasser. And maybe - maybe one day I'd get to see Tim and Jeff and Joan all on the same stage. And I'd be in a state of utterly petrified transfixed bliss. Tim's voice, Jeff's voice and Joan's violin and her own voice. The three of them, beautiful people with beautiful talent. Hopefully not stoned, thanks Joan.
And maybe one day they'd ask Tim to curate Vivid and he'd bring all these crazy fabulous amazing musicians and artists over to Sydney and get them to do their thing all over my lovely city, everything from weird avant garde jazz to weird hybrid electronic operatic things to psychedelic fractals on the Opera House.
No, wait, Eno did all that, didn't he? But Tim would do it different and be his own brand of Aquarian catalyst. *nods*
And now, because of him and Lester Bangs going on about this dude, I'm going to see if I can find some Roland Kirk.