Sadchester
Showing posts with label REENACTMENTS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label REENACTMENTS. Show all posts
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Thursday, September 19, 2013
this is the time for reenaction
A piece at The Quietus on reenactments in art and in music.
With Jo Mitchell and Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard interviewed, it's something of a reenactment of the last third of the first chapter of Retromania.
Which is sort of, kinda, not really, acknowledged in this paragraph:
"Simon Reynolds covers art reenactments of musical events in his book Retromania, and rather sniffily he concludes that "no matter how much research and preparation goes into reenactment, it is doomed to be an absurd ghost, a travesty of the original". And yet the motivation of the conceptual artists themselves doesn't appear to be about nostalgia at all. The ultimate goal is surely failure, because the attempt to recreate a carbon copy of an event is - and will always be - a futile one."
What's particularly amusing about this is that the third sentence is more or less a reenactment of the Retromania quote from the first sentence -- but with the alleged "sniffiness" removed.
There is much talk about "failure" as an explicit aim with reenactments (again, rather familiar if you've read, or indeed written, Retromania).
Of more interest is the stuff on The Musical Box who reenact The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway with Genesis's blessing. The Quebec quintet managed to get hold of the original slideshow used on the 1974 concert, which suffered from technical problems and poor ticket sales. They also faithfully recreate the costumes, the choreography ("the show was less spontaneous gig than scripted rock opera so most moves were choreographed"), and the stage positions of the musicians in Genesis.
Jeremy Allen writes that "the motivation to re-enact a concert that so famously floundered is unusual enough to grab one's attention, but then the mind boggles when you start to consider the complete immersion required, the effort researching equipment and learning the parts and the untold hours spent assiduously perfecting what is essentially an illusion. The players in The Musical Box would have had no memory of the show on account of being too young to have seen it, so any charge of sentimental yearning for halcyon days must surely be a false one."
This warding-off of the spectre of nostalgia recurs repeatedly through the piece, gets almost frenzied in the final stretch.
But surely even if not part of the mindset of the artists, it feeds into the bottom-line viability of these event in terms of their ability to draw audiences? Not just with the rock audience ones like The Musical Box's, but the art world ones too. Getting bums on seats, selling tickets.
And you can of course be nostalgic for something you didn't witness or experience. That vicarious, second-hand nostalgia is one of the most interesting syndromes to me, and I say that as one who has succumbed to it at times. It blurs into but it not the same as an interest in History or antiquarianism. It has a much more wistful / wishful tinge to it.
To me though the most revealing thing about the reenactment trend is that it is a distilled form of the essence of the wider, sprawling retromania phenomenon:
Once, music made history.
Now, music comments on that history; or it's a replica of that history-making sound.
In the process, it forgoes the possibility of even connecting with current history-in-the-making, let alone intervening in it.
With Jo Mitchell and Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard interviewed, it's something of a reenactment of the last third of the first chapter of Retromania.
Which is sort of, kinda, not really, acknowledged in this paragraph:
"Simon Reynolds covers art reenactments of musical events in his book Retromania, and rather sniffily he concludes that "no matter how much research and preparation goes into reenactment, it is doomed to be an absurd ghost, a travesty of the original". And yet the motivation of the conceptual artists themselves doesn't appear to be about nostalgia at all. The ultimate goal is surely failure, because the attempt to recreate a carbon copy of an event is - and will always be - a futile one."
What's particularly amusing about this is that the third sentence is more or less a reenactment of the Retromania quote from the first sentence -- but with the alleged "sniffiness" removed.
There is much talk about "failure" as an explicit aim with reenactments (again, rather familiar if you've read, or indeed written, Retromania).
Of more interest is the stuff on The Musical Box who reenact The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway with Genesis's blessing. The Quebec quintet managed to get hold of the original slideshow used on the 1974 concert, which suffered from technical problems and poor ticket sales. They also faithfully recreate the costumes, the choreography ("the show was less spontaneous gig than scripted rock opera so most moves were choreographed"), and the stage positions of the musicians in Genesis.
Jeremy Allen writes that "the motivation to re-enact a concert that so famously floundered is unusual enough to grab one's attention, but then the mind boggles when you start to consider the complete immersion required, the effort researching equipment and learning the parts and the untold hours spent assiduously perfecting what is essentially an illusion. The players in The Musical Box would have had no memory of the show on account of being too young to have seen it, so any charge of sentimental yearning for halcyon days must surely be a false one."
This warding-off of the spectre of nostalgia recurs repeatedly through the piece, gets almost frenzied in the final stretch.
But surely even if not part of the mindset of the artists, it feeds into the bottom-line viability of these event in terms of their ability to draw audiences? Not just with the rock audience ones like The Musical Box's, but the art world ones too. Getting bums on seats, selling tickets.
And you can of course be nostalgic for something you didn't witness or experience. That vicarious, second-hand nostalgia is one of the most interesting syndromes to me, and I say that as one who has succumbed to it at times. It blurs into but it not the same as an interest in History or antiquarianism. It has a much more wistful / wishful tinge to it.
To me though the most revealing thing about the reenactment trend is that it is a distilled form of the essence of the wider, sprawling retromania phenomenon:
Once, music made history.
Now, music comments on that history; or it's a replica of that history-making sound.
In the process, it forgoes the possibility of even connecting with current history-in-the-making, let alone intervening in it.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Reenactment of The Last Waltz, the Band's Farewell all-star-friends-and-heroes Concert of 1976
from Benjy Eisen's Rolling Stone story:
"On Saturday, an all-star lineup of mostly indie musicians will come together at San Francisco's Warfield Theater to perform "The Complete Last Waltz," a tribute to the Band's marathon farewell concert. The players will include Nels Cline of Wilco, Dave Dreiwitz of Ween, Joe Russo of Furthur, Erick Slick and Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog, Ira Elliot of Nada Surf, Jason Abraham Roberts of Norah Jones' band, Cass McCombs, Trixie Whitley and Marco Benevento.
"The original Last Waltz was held just across town at the now-defunct Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving night, 1976. That affair began in the late afternoon with a turkey dinner and ended well past 2 a.m., some 41 songs later. By the end of the night, the Band had welcomed more than a dozen special guests to help them go out with a bang, among them Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan and Neil Young... "
Wilco's Nels Cline to play the role of Eric Clapton
"All the musicians who spoke to Rolling Stone during a recent rehearsal day emphasized that the show will be a tribute – but not an exact replica – of the original Last Waltz. "This is not going to be some totally archival thing," Cline says. "It's going to actually be a living thing."
yeah, right.... sure it is, sure it is....
"On Saturday, an all-star lineup of mostly indie musicians will come together at San Francisco's Warfield Theater to perform "The Complete Last Waltz," a tribute to the Band's marathon farewell concert. The players will include Nels Cline of Wilco, Dave Dreiwitz of Ween, Joe Russo of Furthur, Erick Slick and Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog, Ira Elliot of Nada Surf, Jason Abraham Roberts of Norah Jones' band, Cass McCombs, Trixie Whitley and Marco Benevento.
"The original Last Waltz was held just across town at the now-defunct Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving night, 1976. That affair began in the late afternoon with a turkey dinner and ended well past 2 a.m., some 41 songs later. By the end of the night, the Band had welcomed more than a dozen special guests to help them go out with a bang, among them Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan and Neil Young... "
Wilco's Nels Cline to play the role of Eric Clapton
"All the musicians who spoke to Rolling Stone during a recent rehearsal day emphasized that the show will be a tribute – but not an exact replica – of the original Last Waltz. "This is not going to be some totally archival thing," Cline says. "It's going to actually be a living thing."
yeah, right.... sure it is, sure it is....
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