punk is dad

This made me chuckle 

This made me frown 

Still enough of a believer to consider it defilement to have a version of "Sex Pistols" tread the boards without Johnny Rotten....  

Other bands that go the prosthetic singer route, I'm not so bothered.

Well, there's one and half others on the same Glasgow punkstalgia lineup that are doing that - The Stranglers, sans Hugh Cornwell, with a younger-than-the-others singer (younger-than-the-others - what am I saying? Only Jean-Jacques Burnel remains from the original line-up, what with Jet Black and Dave Greenfield now dead).  

And then Buzzcocks are the 'half' -  insofar as Diggle (I assume) is singing the Shelley-sung songs as well as the smaller number of numbers he originally sang. 

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Talking of "punk is dad", I had a "rave is dad" experience the other night - went to see Orbital in LA. They were playing the first two albums - with an intermission in between! - and so, if you think about it ,that would necessarily largely draw a crowd who remembered those records from the early '90s - thirty years ago. So we are talking fiftysomethings for the most part.

Wasn't quite Cruel World levels of haggard, but yes a lot of baldness, bellies, and time-creased faces on show.  You sensed a lot of memory-rushes were being triggered in the assembled, but that was not quite enough to galvanize manic dancing in the old style.  

Some of the bar staff and the sound guy behind the mixing desk seemed on the grizzled, elderly side too. Perhaps veteran promoters and rave-scene people?

Surely now in their early sixties themselves, the brothers Hartnoll were great. Well, some of the material on those albums was a tad middling, but the killer tunes - fantastic. Triffic lights 'n' lasers 'n' projections too - that's something that has advanced in leaps and bounds since back-in-the-day. They got a very warm reception and they seemed to be quite touched by it. 

This must be the fourth - or possibly fifth - time I've seen Orbital live, but the last time would have been way back in the mid-90s.  

The very first time - when they were then almost alone in being able to play techno live - was the late 1991 rave conversion experience I describe in the intro to Energy Flash. Well, the whole night really was that - as opposed to any specific deejay or group that played - and above it, it was the audience's dancing 'n' demeanor as much as the music 'n' lights that blew my eyes. But Orbital certainly were a crucial component of this baptismal immersion in a new culture. 

Then the following year, I traipsed down to Sevenoaks for an interview and they gave me my very first glimpse of the Silver Box - I don't think they let me twiddle the knobs myself but they showed how the 303 makes those wibbly-wibbly acid sounds.  

Phil and Paul then - and now.

Come to think of it, it was probably this very cubbyhole in which they showed me the 303 in '92.

Also come to think of it - Orbital were punk-is-dad before they were rave-is-dad. If I recall right they had been into anarcho-punk and Crass and stuff like that before getting swept up in acid house.

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Punk-gets-parental is not really news - I can remember when we were still in NYC and Kieran was little (so early 2000s), some of his pre-school friends's mums had a hobby band, all-female, playing punk rock. And then a few years later, at my brother's kids's elementary school in Silverlake, at a school fair or fund-raiser, there was this band of dads entertaining the assembled with punk cover versions. 

And of course there's that thing of parents buying tiny T-shirts with the Pistols or Ramones or Clash logo on for their kiddies to wear.  (We did that, I confess - before it was completely played out, honest!)

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(A) punk is (grand)dad...

Just watched Blitz (ooh but it's clunky) and there was the surprise of Paul Weller playing the little evacuee boy's grandfather - silvery hair swept back in the 1940s style, face lined with ridges. He looks distinguished, though, as an old gent.

the (band)body without (original) organs

Michael Hann at the Graun on bands still touring and recording but with no original members left - among them Molly Hatchet, Napalm Death, Soft Machine, Yes (debatable but strictly-speaking correct) and Odyssey.

The current incarnation of Gong is another example. 

It's a bit like organ replacement and limb transplants taken to the extreme, such that there's no original body left.

Perhaps it's not so odd... You could see a band as an institution (like a school or hospital) or a commercial entity (a shop, a company). Why shouldn't it perpetuate itself after the resignation, retirement, or decease of the founders and original staff?

Then again, in rock and pop, so much of what makes a band is the players as individual instrumental voices and the almost-instantly-identifiable composite of their playing as the band's sound. 

Likewise the voice of the singer -  and in some cases how the lead voice meshes with the harmonies of other members. 

(E.g. the way Fleetwood Mac got increasingly ersatz in certain phases when most of the principals had left). 

(Conversely, you could take Fleetwood Mac's journey - with original central figure Peter Green long gone, the arrival of a wholly new creative engine in Buckingham-Nicks - as a good example of evolving longevity in a band-as-institution....  That said, they always had the continuity of the rhythm section, which was also the source of the band's name)

Given that rock and pop are audio-visual hybrid forms, you could further say that the physical appearance - the face, body, expressions, gestures, mannerisms - of the performers are part of what makes a band a band. 

In fact, given that rock and pop are audio-visual-verbal-textual hybrids,  you could further-further argue that a particular way with words, an imagination, the personality and  humour of a band - expressed in lyrics but also interviews, stage banter - is what makes a band a band. (Oasis isn't just the songs, the recordings and the concerts, it's the interviews, the ongoing saga of Liam versus Noel... )

In rock and pop, you are consuming audio-visual products but you are also consuming identities. 

If a band is both the personalities in it and the collective personality of the group, how can that still be said to exist in the absence of all the original persons that constituted its make-up?

In the arc of ersatz, at what point does a band where all the originating members have left effectively morph into a tribute band? 

Some members are more integral and identity-constitutive than others. Ergo, they should have disbanded after Moon died... like Zep did after Bonham.

retrotalk2023: "reunited and it pays so good"

" Your Fave Band Is Reuniting – But Not For the Reasons You Think" - an attempted marshalling of rationales for the legacy act festival / reunion boom, by Danny Wright at Vice. 

I must say I don't disapprove of this kind of thing nearly as much as I did when I wrote Retromania. "Disapproval" isn't quite the right term, anyway - "distaste" is more like it.  I could empathize with the reasons bands did this kind of thing. What else are they supposed to do with themselves?). Money - you can't blame 'em really, mortgage payments to keep up. Plus there's that resolution of interband conflicts/ friends reconciled / writing a happier end to the story than the probably messy and bitter split-up.  The distaste was more about the idea of me being at one of these events, what it would feel like, and also the sense of being a target demographic. 

But, having gone to a couple of these elder-laden festervals in the last few years, I acquired a teensy bit of taste for this kind of thing (a certain queasiness lingers, though). The events are an intriguing mixture of amusement and bemusement. Simply as a sociological phenomenon, there's stuff to observe and to consider. What happens when a youth culture ages out? How weird does it get when subcultural types valiantly persist with the look, despite the attrition of the years. A mass elegy for one's bygone identifications and intensities. 

There's something salutary about being shoved amidst your own (approximate) kind. Seeing how everybody's grappling with decrepitude. 

Also, occasionally, there'll be some actually entertaining performances. Bands you never quite managed to see in their (and your) prime, but they can still pull it off. They might even be better on some level -  musicianship, having the experience and/or the budget to put on a great show.  

Hey, as I'm about to click post on this, the missus alerts to me an upcoming festerval that is trying to out-Cruel World Cruel World - Darker Waves.  Although the lineup isn't that Gothy in fact. 

I suppose what I wonder about is not the top three ranks of the line-up, but below that.... sub-legends (Clan of Xymox, Chameleons etc).  It can't be that rewarding, financially or in terms of ego, reconnecting with the compact following, having to play in the mid-afternoon. 

Also wonder about the musicians who join legends that have suffered personnel erosion... whose function is prosthetic.  (Like, are they any other original band members in "Psychedelic Furs" now, apart from Butler Rep?). I suppose it's a gig. You get to ply your trade. Maybe you were a fan of the leg in question.