Mystique - a complex of quasi-mystical attitudes and feelings surrounding some person, institution, etc. (Webster's New World Dictionary)
"I gave you everything you ever wanted - it wasn't what you wanted". - U2, You're So Cruel
At the risk of seriously dating myself, I grew up in a small town that received a total of two TV station signals - the local affiliates of CBC and CTV. Whatever interests I picked up in pop and rock music had nothing to do with what I was exposed to on TV, and very little of what I heard on the local radio. I got my music almost exclusively from vinyl, which had either been recommended to me by a trusted friend, or belonged to the back-catalogs of bands I happened to like. I would occasionally see a rock music performance on TV - even then, it was hard not to run into footage of Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Guess Who/Burton Cummings, BTO or half a billion disco acts on TV - but very little of it was of interest to me. The Baby Boomers ruled the airwaves, and they tended to broadcast their favourites deep into their middle age.
The bands that were exciting me in my early youth - Kiss, Cheap Trick, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and AC/DC, for example - were roundly despised by the popular press, and there was therefore a strange dearth of footage of these acts. As a result, I had only still photos available to get a sense of what these bands looked like, and I generally felt starved for information about them. Anything we could glean from music magazines was gold-precious to me and my friends, and occasionally I stayed up ridiculously late in the hope of catching a minute or two of footage of a band I liked on TV...It thrilled me to my core if the band actually appeared - but then there were moments like the Lynda 'Wonder Woman' Carter Variety Special, which promised a Kiss performance...but which actually featured Wonder Woman herself singing 'I Was Made For Loving You' to the accompaniment of four male dancers dressed up like Kiss...That was the night I learned to swear.
In the case of Led Zeppelin, the mystique was semi-deliberate. Having been savaged in mainstream press such as Rolling Stone routinely in their early years, the Zep decided to talk to the press as little as possible, and to communicate to their fans only through live performance and those vinyl records. Most other bands would have prefered to have had far more exposure, but it was out of their control. The resulting strategy was pretty similar to that of Zeppelin, though - they ultimately reached a large number of fans through incessant touring and producing one or two records per year - and that was about all. The rest was left up to their fans' imaginations, and it could be argued that the press was actually doing the credibility of these bands a favour by not embracing them. I did notice that rock artists had a way of falling from popular favour soon after appearing on the cover of Time magazine.
MTV changed this situation radically. Suddenly, there was no shortage of motion-footage of nearly every current band out there, and most signed acts would get at least a spin or two on MTV or Much Music. Curiously, though, this was around the time I stopped caring. I enjoyed Van Halen's 1984 album, but the 'Jump' and 'Panama' videos, while entertaining, took my gods down from Olympia and put them in my living room on a daily basis. Kiss took off their make-up and started writing lyrics like 'baby let me put my log in your fireplace'. They also started getting a lot of video airplay. Result: I completely lost interest. I didn't even buy any more of their albums.
The irony is not lost on me that I see great value in fostering and maintaining mystique as an artist - yet here I am writing a regular blog that does a pretty good job of stripping off any shroud of mystery...but these are different times, and MLB doesn't exactly have a Zeppelin-sized following to mystify just yet. Just recently, the good folks at Bandzoogle published an advice blog that emphasized the importance of an artist's being on hand at the merch tables after performances in order to meet and thank supporters. It would also seem logical in the world of Indie bands to maintain a website full of music, videos, interviews, lyrics, blogs, stage plots, pics and more in order to entice web followers...but what of mystique? As an artist gains a following, is it wise to start slipping on a mask and keeping one's words circumspect? The 20teens are not the '70's, after all. Does mystique still have any power? Or is the music market such that an artist really is permanently out of listeners' minds as soon as they slip from view? I'd like to think not, but I must concede the bar is probably much higher now - in order to back off from being a complete media whore, you must first have a much bigger following than you would have needed in the 70's for a good silent-treatment. That, or some media genius has yet to find a way to restore the functionality of mystique in these online media-saturated times. Frankly, I hope someone - preferably me - manages to do it. While I'm too old to think of my musical heroes as gods anymore, I'd still much rather be hungry for an artist's music, words or videos than feeling overfed. To put it another way, I want to want a band's words and music more than I merely want a band's words and music. Am I alone in this? Perhaps...but who would admit to wanting to remain mostly unsatisfied, anyway? Perhaps I de-mystify myself completely by saying so - but at least I'm only one member of this band. What do you know of drummer Curtis Leippi? Mysteriously little...but watch for his TV variety special at 2 am on BCTV next week. Special guest: Lynda Carter. ;)
"I gave you everything you ever wanted - it wasn't what you wanted". - U2, You're So Cruel
At the risk of seriously dating myself, I grew up in a small town that received a total of two TV station signals - the local affiliates of CBC and CTV. Whatever interests I picked up in pop and rock music had nothing to do with what I was exposed to on TV, and very little of what I heard on the local radio. I got my music almost exclusively from vinyl, which had either been recommended to me by a trusted friend, or belonged to the back-catalogs of bands I happened to like. I would occasionally see a rock music performance on TV - even then, it was hard not to run into footage of Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Guess Who/Burton Cummings, BTO or half a billion disco acts on TV - but very little of it was of interest to me. The Baby Boomers ruled the airwaves, and they tended to broadcast their favourites deep into their middle age.
The bands that were exciting me in my early youth - Kiss, Cheap Trick, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and AC/DC, for example - were roundly despised by the popular press, and there was therefore a strange dearth of footage of these acts. As a result, I had only still photos available to get a sense of what these bands looked like, and I generally felt starved for information about them. Anything we could glean from music magazines was gold-precious to me and my friends, and occasionally I stayed up ridiculously late in the hope of catching a minute or two of footage of a band I liked on TV...It thrilled me to my core if the band actually appeared - but then there were moments like the Lynda 'Wonder Woman' Carter Variety Special, which promised a Kiss performance...but which actually featured Wonder Woman herself singing 'I Was Made For Loving You' to the accompaniment of four male dancers dressed up like Kiss...That was the night I learned to swear.
In the case of Led Zeppelin, the mystique was semi-deliberate. Having been savaged in mainstream press such as Rolling Stone routinely in their early years, the Zep decided to talk to the press as little as possible, and to communicate to their fans only through live performance and those vinyl records. Most other bands would have prefered to have had far more exposure, but it was out of their control. The resulting strategy was pretty similar to that of Zeppelin, though - they ultimately reached a large number of fans through incessant touring and producing one or two records per year - and that was about all. The rest was left up to their fans' imaginations, and it could be argued that the press was actually doing the credibility of these bands a favour by not embracing them. I did notice that rock artists had a way of falling from popular favour soon after appearing on the cover of Time magazine.
MTV changed this situation radically. Suddenly, there was no shortage of motion-footage of nearly every current band out there, and most signed acts would get at least a spin or two on MTV or Much Music. Curiously, though, this was around the time I stopped caring. I enjoyed Van Halen's 1984 album, but the 'Jump' and 'Panama' videos, while entertaining, took my gods down from Olympia and put them in my living room on a daily basis. Kiss took off their make-up and started writing lyrics like 'baby let me put my log in your fireplace'. They also started getting a lot of video airplay. Result: I completely lost interest. I didn't even buy any more of their albums.
The irony is not lost on me that I see great value in fostering and maintaining mystique as an artist - yet here I am writing a regular blog that does a pretty good job of stripping off any shroud of mystery...but these are different times, and MLB doesn't exactly have a Zeppelin-sized following to mystify just yet. Just recently, the good folks at Bandzoogle published an advice blog that emphasized the importance of an artist's being on hand at the merch tables after performances in order to meet and thank supporters. It would also seem logical in the world of Indie bands to maintain a website full of music, videos, interviews, lyrics, blogs, stage plots, pics and more in order to entice web followers...but what of mystique? As an artist gains a following, is it wise to start slipping on a mask and keeping one's words circumspect? The 20teens are not the '70's, after all. Does mystique still have any power? Or is the music market such that an artist really is permanently out of listeners' minds as soon as they slip from view? I'd like to think not, but I must concede the bar is probably much higher now - in order to back off from being a complete media whore, you must first have a much bigger following than you would have needed in the 70's for a good silent-treatment. That, or some media genius has yet to find a way to restore the functionality of mystique in these online media-saturated times. Frankly, I hope someone - preferably me - manages to do it. While I'm too old to think of my musical heroes as gods anymore, I'd still much rather be hungry for an artist's music, words or videos than feeling overfed. To put it another way, I want to want a band's words and music more than I merely want a band's words and music. Am I alone in this? Perhaps...but who would admit to wanting to remain mostly unsatisfied, anyway? Perhaps I de-mystify myself completely by saying so - but at least I'm only one member of this band. What do you know of drummer Curtis Leippi? Mysteriously little...but watch for his TV variety special at 2 am on BCTV next week. Special guest: Lynda Carter. ;)