On Weirdness, Part Two

Our musicians often lead the way

i.

The last post touched on the fact that the Democrats finally began to figure out how to effectively create—and stay on—a message, utilizing “weird” to describe, in no particular order, Donald Trump, JD Vance, MAGA, and just about every elected Republican official. Weird, as it relates to people wanting to be all up in your business (especially those who claim to want to keep the big bad government out of everything—except, apparently, other peoples’ business oh, and their healthcare and services if a disaster hits or fire starts, etc.).

But “weird” is not entirely, or only, possible to be used as pejorative. In fact, weird, particularly when it relates to art, is a good thing; it is, at times, everything. What work wasn’t considered weird when it first dropped (see: Ornette Coleman), or else created in order to, at the very least, subvert expectations, scoff at tradition, up the ante, push innovation? Weirdness has forever been an integral part of the avant guard; how art evolves and prods culture forward (progression, progressive) in all the right ways. This is quite powerful and often deeply beautiful. But also, weird.

For my money, nowhere in art (or culture) has weird been so consistently and satisfactorily deployed than with music. This includes the conditions of its creation, its reception—and how it contains the possibility of changing everything, overnight (just off the top of my head, consider Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, or Run D.M.C.’s purposeful appropriation of “Walk This Way”). Not for nothing, these examples all epitomize mainstream (if not influential) acts leaning into novelty or a purposeful departure with the express intent of transformation. Suffice it to say, the most profound permutations occur underground and on the margins (of which more, shortly).

Here’s something I wrote many years ago, and it still strikes me as true, a succinct distillation of my obsession with music:

Even though I write (for fun, for real and forever), I would still say that music has always been the central element of my existence. Or the elemental center. Writing is a compulsion, a hobby, a skill, a craft, an obsession, a mystery and at times a burden. Music simply is. For just about anyone, all you need is an ear (or two); that is all that’s required for it to work its magic. But, as many people come to realize, if you approach it with your mind, and your heart and, eventually (inevitably) your soul, it is capable of making you aware of other worlds, it can help you achieve the satisfaction material possessions are intended to inspire, it will help you feel the feelings drugs are designed to approximate. Et cetera.

ii.

Which artist best epitomizes weirdness, and its wonderful ways? Well, that’s a silly question that’s impossible to answer; some suggestions and contenders are offered up, respectfully, below, but if obliged to choose one single artist from the previous century who made “weird” the centrifugal force of his entire career (ravenously utilizing previous heroes and becoming a touchstone for countless imitators along the way) I’d probably choose David Bowie. From a much longer appreciation following his death in 2016, I wrote:

“ONLY THE BEATLES. That’s the sole comparison that comes to mind when compelled to name a musical act with similar impact and importance. The Beatles, as we all know, changed each year during their still indescribable run, effectively owning the ‘60s. David Bowie, on the other hand, built an entire career on changes, even as he became the peerless satellite so many others orbited around.

Also like The Beatles, Bowie put in his time before lifting off and then, once he really broke through, he kept on breaking, and changing, and winning. A great deal, understandably, has been said about these changes, with inevitable if ultimately reductive words like chameleon and shape shifter tossed into every encomium. David Bowie elevated reinvention to an art form; he was a genius of changing.

About these changes. They weren’t simply haircuts and costume changes (hello, Madonna); they were entirely new identities. And yet and of course, every new character was thoroughly and undeniably David Bowie. This, among so many other things, was what enabled him to remain an innovator who couldn’t be imitated (how can anyone imitate you if you never imitate yourself?). Nor were any of these characters cursory; Bowie transformed himself as well as his music. Although diminished by comparison, none of his better-known acolytes, from envelope-pushers like Eddie Izzard to opportunists like Bono, could have conceivably negotiated their alternately awkward and unabashed milieus without the example set by the Thin White Duke.

Champions of the avant-garde are often bored with, even incapable of conventional thinking. Bowie managed to be several steps ahead of the avant-garde, probably because even he couldn’t have imagined where he was headed next. The thing is, when most artists make profound, if indulgent changes (think Neil Young in the early ‘80s), it alienates fans and inexorably seems either forced or facile. Bowie? He changed the world and took everyone with him, and he did it year after year. Even someone unfamiliar with the music need only look at the cover art from album to album. That’s the same person? Well, yes. And no.

What was that all about? It seldom seemed calculated or strained; indeed, it’s as though he needed to jump-start his own peripatetic sensibility, and these often eccentric, always endearing identities were delivery devices for the brilliance bubbling beneath the pin-up pretense. Red, bleach blonde or brown, his hair—although forever awesome—was window dressing, his clothes more a nod to his impeccable fashion instincts. Make no mistake, it was always about the music.

About that music. “Space Oddity”, “Life on Mars”, “Changes”, “John, I’m Only Dancing”, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”, “Aladdin Sane”, “Diamond Dogs”, “Rebel Rebel”…these aren’t merely songs, or even (merely) anthems, they are cultural signifiers, queer escutcheons that at once shield and embolden the outcasts and “others”. Bowie, being the Alpha Outsider, was brave and brilliant, and adamant enough to become The Other, and the changes that followed changed others, allowing others to become something other than the others they might have otherwise been destined to be.”

iii.

I’ve created a playlist, below, that sticks to the 20th Century and attempts to cover multiple genres and styles, but of course any exercise with this becomes futile, the omissions (inevitable, unintentional, etc.) more glaring than the songs included (sigh). But these are all songs from recognizable names (if you don’t know some of them, rest assured that musicians you admire know them very well), and they reveal weirdness in all its influential, non-conformist, righteous glory.

From the Video or it Didn’t Happen Files.

*Bonus Commentary:

Based on the footage I’ve seen (never caught him in real time, in person, alas) Les Claypool is one certain example of a musician who sounds better live. His studio work, most of which I’ve enjoyed to degrees varying from extreme to moderate, has made me a happy listener. But compared to how he pulls it all together in front of an audience, it seems many times more effective and convincing.

The most obvious, and affecting, instance I can conjure up is the incendiary performance of his one-and-done (damn shame!) supergroup Oysterhead’s “Shadow of a Man.”

Special props to Stewart Copeland and his more-is-more sensibility, which surpasses OCD, but in a good way. The show is seconds old and he’s already sweating like a long-distance runner. He is all over that extensive and, we can assume, painstakingly assembled, kit, making all manner of wonderful noises. Then Trey Anastasio, whose work with Phish I’ve respected but never really loved, who is equal parts craftsman and mad scientist, showing the difference between one who makes music and one who is music. He is not playing his guitar (and associated effects) so much as expanding the possiblities of what it’s capable of doing. And then there is the maestro himself, wonderfully, refreshingly eccentric (as always) and tapped into the region –of art, of expression, of thinking– where only the most gifted and/or dedicated amongst us are capable of going.

Certainly the visuals augment this act of creative sharing, and they are indispensable (as Claypool is well aware, hence his glow-in-the-dark gear): hearing Copeland and Anastasio in action is sufficiently compelling and convincing, but watching them do what they are doing, how busy they are making every sound, and each second count, all in the service of a song that is a glorious, unsettling sum of its many parts.

*Bonus Commentary

Sordid details following. It’s all in here: summing up practically everything from the ‘70s and previewing so many trends to follow in the ‘80s. Everyone heard this, even if they weren’t listening. In this one song you have punk melting down prog and fermenting new wave, done, typically, without a safety net. One flash of light, but no smoking pistol. Nothing by anyone else before or since sounds anything like this. Bowie made being beyond scrutiny a career move, yet if any individual song could summarize (yeah right) what he was about, “Ashes to Ashes” showcases the elements that made him so inimitable: the esoteric conceptualizing, the wit, the irony, the humor (!) and the ways he savors the English language, less a poet than a word painter. (Want an axe to break the ice: There’s an image a young listener can really get his mind warped around. To discover, later, it’s a cheeky riff on Kafka’s famous dictum? Mind = Blown.) So what’s it about? Like much of Bowie’s best work, it’s obvious and impossible to pinpoint a meaning or message.

Strung out in heaven’s high hitting an all-time low: a line leaving little to the imagination; it could be the elevator pitch for the movie, it could encapsulate the willful contradictions of Bowie’s career, it could be a commentary on science, capitalism or Art Itself. For starters. Certainly autobiographical elements abound (Time and again I tell myself, I’ll stay clean tonight), and with the name-check of Major Tom, a brilliant case of art imitating life or vice versa.

I’ve heard a rumour from Ground Control: Where “Space Oddity” which, incidentally, closed out the previous decade, manages to balance discovery and despair, “Ashes to Ashes” is all about wizened desolation (The shrieking of nothing is killing). And could any artist aside from Bowie execute this burnt-out holler from Beyond and make it swing? Fun to funky, indeed. A barren soul, a heavy heart, scared eyes following those green wheels: the diary of a madman, the madcap laughs, you’d better not mess with Major Tom.

I’m stuck with a valuable friend: I never done good things (I never done good things), I never done bad things (I never done bad things), I never did anything out of the blue, woah-oh (woah-oh). That last echoed “woah-oh”: deadpan, droll, disturbing. (Did we even discuss the video? The more said about it, the better.) No heroes, here. Now he’s gone and our planet’s glowing. I’ve loved. All I’ve needed: love. Maybe that’s the message. Of the song, of his life, of any of our lives. I’m happy. Hope you’re happy, too. What he said.

**Extra Special Props to The Beastie Boys, for using the history of Weird like an aural encyclopedia (and this video for being a shout-out to this epic video):