Re: Adam Lambert and the vacuum

I want to backtrack a couple of weeks following a reader’s response to The Breakdown in which I compared the career trajectory, marketing and media treatment of former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert and the openly gay early-‘70s glam singer Jobriath (3 March 2010). One of the issues the letter-writer, a self-confessed Lambert fan, took up with my assessment was that (and I’m paraphrasing; sorry, Chris) Lambert’s sexuality was apparent, if not out, at the beginning of the Idol season, making it a non-issue and one he chose not to represent himself with – therefore, Lambert should be taken solely on his artistic merit and any comparison based on one aspect of his life is redundant.

While I wish the last part were true for any musician who doesn’t wish to make their sexuality a part of their product (not many when it comes to certain kinds of pop music and I’d argue not true of Lambert – after all, he did pretend to give a dancer a blowie on international television) and concede that the right of comparison between Jobriath and Lambert is contentious (but I made my case and I’m sticking by it), it’s the suggestion that any musician can be received in culture purely on their artistic merits that really jars.

It’s the age-old plea of anyone who’s ever had to defend their favourite pop star against slop-slinging detractors – “But East 17 have really great songs; I don’t just love them for the way Brian Harvey gazes at me through the television screen while trying to play the piano with those ridiculously large rings on,” or, “I don’t care what you say about Lady Gaga, her songs are what make her a great pop star – just listen to her voice,” spoken by someone wearing underpants over their tights and soft drink cans in their hair. It might be patronising to say that fans have to defend the music of an act they ‘like’ because, if they didn’t admit to liking the music first, their love wouldn’t be artistically pure and would make them appear shallow or easily manipulated, but truly, has anyone actually heard Pink’s latest album?

But it goes deeper than that, even. Deeper than pop stars or their marketed images. If we think about the first time we heard any of the music we like – or, indeed, dislike – the process by which that music was presented to us undoubtedly had some effect on the way we assessed it. It could have been a radio station whose programming you generally trust; a friend who shares similar tastes in music or cultural products other than music; a website or blog you connect with on any level. Alternatively, it might have been through someone or something you despise. Personally, I’ve always thought I’d probably like Animal Collective a whole lot more had I not heard about them through a self-important wanker at a party. Ditto a whole lot of ‘underground’ Australian rock music that seems to foster the kind of pretentious, holier-than-thou money-shot conversations that make me long for my parents’ lounge room at age 14, their rundown old record player and a lazy Sunday afternoon.

The extension of this, despite my own whiny criticisms of it, is: why is there anything wrong with it? Why do we ever feel that we have to separate a musician’s music from the cultural construct is comes to us via? Music is not created in a vacuum, so why should it be received in one?

It’s OK to like a musician because some part of their image or video or personality connects with us, or because it’s a way to connect to someone else in our lives. It’s even better, perhaps, to be able to like some parts of a musician and dislike others. I hereby admit that I like Pink because she seems, in the media, funny and smarter than the average pop singer and plays with gender constructs in her shows and videos. And she’s hot. And fuck, I hate Lady Gaga because she’s an arrogant twat buying her way into the art world and purporting to create something original, even though I admire her ability to self-market and enjoy some of her songs, despite their lyrics not being as interesting as I wish they were.

As for East 17 – please, it was always about Brian.

Hustling at SXSW

It’s taken a while, but Australians have finally latched onto the sport that is South By Southwest, which runs until the end of this week in Austin, Texas. In the media over the coming days, there’ll be commentary of which Australian bands are showcasing at which events; the bands who drew the biggest crowds, and rumours (or just fictionalised gossip) about the deals that have been brokered with touring agencies, management and labels. Within the Australian ‘music industry’, there’ll be talk of which international industry ‘career-makers’ showed their faces at Australian events and probably even more talk about which botoxed old bands’ gigs Australian attendees managed to blag their way into. (The top names on that hit-list this year seem to be Motörhead, playing tonight at 10.30pm, Hole at 1am on Friday and Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin and his band Bolts Of Melody on Saturday at 1am, though maybe that’s just my own personal fantasy week with the leather daddies, the tranny and the bear.)

Because of the realisation that a music conference can be turned into a competitive display of patriotism, SXSW now attracts coverage across mainstream media in Australia. It’s almost surprising that Eddie McGuire hasn’t been sent over this year to supply some ripping commentary on acts who haven’t left anything in the locker room. After all, the Scissor Sisters are headlining the Village Voice Media showcase.

This coverage, however, hasn’t transpired into much assistance in getting Australian bands over to Texas to represent our country. Aside from acts who can acquire government grants (the process of which, perhaps rightly, often has little to do with an act’s creative endeavours), there’s little monetary help for bands wishing to go sleep with international stars while high on crack. In other words, it’s nothing like the Olympics, the stars of which get help from income distribution from the Australian Olympic Committee, committed government grants and various corporate sponsorship and licensing deals (which Aussie SXSW showcases could certainly benefit from – there’s no doubt interest in televised coverage of the Aussie BBQ or of specific bands’ US showcase tours.)

All this means that, of the Australian acts who get officially invited (as acts must) to play at SXSW, there are still many who can’t attend. And if you’re wondering how much it costs for a band to go over and showcase in Austin, as well as the necessary East and West Coast showcase follow-ups, a known Aussie trio a couple of years ago borrowed upwards of $40,000 from their record label to do so, and they got something tangible out of the experience, which is more than can be said for many bands who make the trip.

Without this kind of funding, however, there are still largely unexplored platforms for Australian acts to get the dosh they need to get to the conference. One of these platforms is, in fact, the topic of discussion at one of the many music panels taking place at this year’s SXSW, titled Crowdfunding Music: Raising Money From Your Fans. The panel is being presented by a panel of folk well versed in digital marketing and licensing, perhaps the most interesting being Yancey Strickler, who co-founded the Brooklyn-based KickStarter site.

KickStarter allows people involved in all sorts of creative ventures to float their ideas on the site and ask for fans, friends and other interested parties to donate money to aid the venture’s development and execution. A monetary target must be set and when the donations reach that target, all those who’ve donated must pony up the dough. Another presenter on the panel is a songwriter named Allison Weiss, who through KickStarter successfully gained over $7,000 to record an EP. (Though, in my opinion, the greatest project asking for funding through the site is a film exploring the cultural impact of Calvin & Hobbes, which has already received $22,000 in donations.)

It’s a user-pays system, the concept of which many in the ‘music industry’ are pretty down-mouthed about in the current climate, but I think the general premise could have legs, especially when it comes to backing a band going overseas to represent the country. It would be like betting on sport, and who in our pie-groping nation doesn’t like that?

The pay-off could be exclusive content packages delivered by the band from their tour, progress updates, personalised messages or, as Santa Cruz band Camper Van Beethoven are doing at SXSW this year, getting a derby girl to continuously roller skate across the stage with placards bearing the name of the people or companies who donated money to get them there.

Adam Lambert VS Jobriath

Or: Lambert, The (Not So) Sheepish (Any More) Gay Lion

In the first week of August 2009, American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert was in the midst of an intensive tour of the States with the rest of the show’s finalists, appeasing the viewer’s of the talent quest and, hopefully, winning some over enough to anticipate his forthcoming November debut album. At that point, of course, Lambert wasn’t singing any of the originals that would appear on his own For Your Entertainment release. It was a set of hits taken from his time on the show, including the most popular, the Gary Jules arrangement of Tears For Fears’ Mad World, and a medley of songs by David Bowie – Life On Mars, Fame and Let’s Dance – an artist Lambert had identified as an influence on his own glam rock style.

Over his time on Idol, and seemingly with quite a push from Perez Hilton’s blog (who later commented with a snarky “took you long enough”), Lambert had gone from talented singer with a penchant for a rock falsetto and a dramatised arrangement of pop standards, to openly gay glam superstar. His ‘journey’, at least in the media, had been to ‘come out’, embrace his new position as a ‘gay singer’ (with public appearances with boyfriends and a Rolling Stone cover story) and turn the whole scenario into an all-singing, all-costumed spectacular that would overshadow any attempt to pigeonhole him into a lesser-selling niche market.

Come November and following a small ‘controversy’ in which Lambert simulated fellatio on a dancer in a performance at the American Music Awards, the press were declaring For Your Entertainment a relative success, comparable to many of the more successful releases by American Idol discoveries. The album has now gone gold, selling over half a million copies in the US, and was released last week in Australia.

In the first week of August a quarter of a century earlier, in 1983 (though the exact date, and sometimes month, changes source to source), the body of 37-year-old Bruce Campbell was found in the rooftop room of the Hotel Chelsea. Campbell had died alone of AIDS-related causes, but not a decade earlier, at the same age as Lambert, he was being spruiked as the next major pop star in the United States as Jobriath, the American brand of Bowie at a time when glam rock was the next musical phenomenon to sweep the western world’s largest market.

Jobriath was an openly gay former hustler and theatre performer who, under the wing of ambitious manager Jerry Brandt, was sold to Elektra Records, his debut album backed with an expensive marketing campaign that included a 40-foot billboard in New York City’s Times Square. Where Bowie’s – and others’, including Lou Reed’s – image at the time had a lot to do with the veiling of gender and sexuality to create an otherworldly creature, an unknown quantity, Jobriath’s homosexuality was slathered onto his marketing like shock-value icing, drawing snide comments from press and many audiences, and the widespread observation, later, that no one was ready for such a thing.

It’s difficult to find any information about the sales of the record, which received generally good reviews, though much can be assumed by the fact that a follow-up, with far less press, was delivered six months later and a tour once planned as a big-budget extravanganza (complete with ejaculating Empire State Building and Jobriath dressed as Marlene Dietrich) was cancelled. Jobriath wasn’t heard from again until Morrissey began championing him and the two albums were re-released on CD last decade.

Now, Jobriath is widely known as the first completely ‘out’ rock star. Adam Lambert is by no means the second, though there are parallels to Jobriath’s story that haven’t been drawn by any other, and not just his choice of genre from which to launch his songs. Lambert was signed and publicised with his sexuality on the table, not up for negotiation, through a campaign not aiming him at any kind of ‘art’ crowd, as others in the past have been (even Scissor Sisters in the States). Without that ‘outsider’ marketing or performance angle, Lambert has, so far, been open to record and perform as any majorly-backed pop singers do, using sex, not social politics, to add a seductive quality to otherwise catchy (and pretty dreary, in Lambert’s case) dance pop.

It’s too early to see if his sexuality has any real impact on his career (and it may be too intangible a value to quantify anyway), but already Lambert is retelling the fate of Jobriath. And it only took a quarter of a decade.

Down Sounds: March 2010

Last month The Breakdown began a new tradition for the year in which, every four weeks, I’ll take a look at some of the more interesting or appealing releases or band ‘discoveries’ of the previous weeks. Not inappropriate this month considering the ongoing fight to preserve venues across our Footloose-hating land (and thanks to Brian Nankervis for doing his best Kevin Bacon last week at the Melbourne SLAM Rally).

To an act whose appearances here are always slightly shrouded in mystery thanks to his spontaneous approach to touring (and therefore won’t get the attention it deserves elsewhere in music press), this week Oakland, California’s one-man posi glitch-rap party Hawnay Troof will play headline shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Vice Cooler – HT’s protagonist – has just put out a new album through American label Retard Disco, titled Daggers At The Moon, which he’ll hopefully be bringing a few copies of to sell at the shows, but there’s also a free EP, Shed Skin, to download as of the weekend on his website. The EP features one unreleased track plus remixes by Leg Lifters, underrated-in-Aus duo from the Gold Coast The Death Set vs Zap! Pow! Die!, No Age and Kid606.

New York’s indie True Panther Sounds label (owned as of late last year by Matador) has put its name to three 12” releases, which will be launched simultaneously this week in the basement of Brooklyn’s Monster Island Recordings studio. Tanlines, a duo who make the kind of parading, tropical dance music that might occur if the percussionists taking part in Carnivale were given electronic snares, will be launching Settings. Sierra Leone via Philadelphia’s Janka Nabay will be launching Bubu King, his latest take on his homeland’s “bubu music” in which multiple bamboo pipes are used to whip up a rhythmic whirlwind. And Brooklyn’s Lemonade, who have been championed in these parts before, will be launching Pure Moods, an EP of their sample-heavy, tinkering, looping, building, atmospheric and generally awesome sunset pop. All three 12”s can be purchased as a bundle from the Matador Records store online.

The other week I picked up a little two-track CD from Sydney’s Southern Comfort, the core duo of which is made up of Angela Bermuda and Harriet Hudson, members of reason-number-836-why-Sydney’s-hype-machine-seems-to-be-a-bit-broken Circle Pit (the reason being they aren’t better known in other cities). Anyway, Southern Comfort are something of a lo-fi revelation (an oxymoron?): kind of old rock’n’roll structuring played with heavy distortion and enacted vocally with angelic but flippant harmonies. Good stuff. The duo will have a release out through the always excellent RIP Society Records this year, which also just put out the nicely power-punk new 7” from Sydney’s Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys, who Southern Comfort just toured with.

Heading out to launch the CD version of their Landlord album this month are Brisbane’s Scul Hazzards, who’ve changed a lot since they started years ago as the project of one of Brisbane’s favourite bass-playing sons, Lachlan Anderson, who then left to join and tour with Die! Die! Die!. These days, the Hazzards are more for those who like their dirty noise-rock on the mathy side, or those who like their math-rock as wide and brown as the shirts Steve Albini gets around in. Which is really just to say that they bring on the pug-face – always a good time.

On the more depressing side of things – and summer and summer-loving are over, so sure – two artists from opposite sides of the North American expanse have releases out in coming weeks that I’ve had the chance to hear early. Truly, if you’re in the mood to cry into your nangs, don’t miss Texan heart-wrench Micah P Hinson’s new covers album, All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers (POD/Inertia, 12 March), which sees him taking on Roy Orbison, Emmy The Great, Bob Dylan and others. Then there’s Montreal’s The Besnard Lakes, who build on their affectingly haunted fuzzy pop with The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night on 13 March (Jagjaguwar/Inertia).

Finally, if you like your indie doodles sprawling and big on hi-hat, check out Melbourne’s promising Hollow Everdaze, who’ve started picking up a good support or two and could probably use a few suggestions for a decent band name.