Alexander Carpenter

The “Ground Zero” of Goth: Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi's Dead” and the Origins of Gothic Rock

This paper examines the early history of gothic rock, focusing on the British band Bauhaus and its 1979 single “Bela Lugosis Dead” as the putative origins of gothic rock. Bauhaus was by no means the first band to be associated with a gothic sound/style; however, an investigation of the musico-cultural and historical context of the song, the critical discourse that developed around it, the aesthetic-philosophic influences that informed Bauhauss style, and the sonic palette of “Bela Lugosis Dead” locates the song as the launching point of gothic rock and the genres sine qua non.1

“Die Young”: On Pop Music, Social Violence, Self-Censorship, and Apology Rituals

Abstract This article examines the response of musicians to social violence, focusing specifically on the phenomenon of hybridized corporate/self-censorship by pop musicians in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, at the end of 2012. Immediately following the shooting, several popular songs with putatively inflammatory titles and lyrics—most notably, Ke

Super Duper Alice Cooper; Welcome To His Nightmare dir. by Reginald Harkema, Scot McFadyen, and Sam Dunn (review)

ha’s “Die Young” and Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks”—were pulled from the airwaves, largely in the name of a generalized sensitivity to the emotional needs of the listening public. This action received the vociferous support of the artists themselves, who issued concomitant pro forma apologies for their work. The tacit acknowledgment of the connections between music and acts of violence, the complicity of artists in the censorship or suppression of their own work, and their a posteriori participation in apology rituals are the focus here, with comparisons also drawn between similar acts of social violence—the Columbine school shooting of 1999 in particular—and the calls for and responses to the music censorship that followed.

Live at Montreux by Stan Getz (review)

Alice Cooper was, through much of the 1970s, one of the biggest rock stars in the world. His fame hinged largely on the theatrical excesses of his concert performances—which featured stage blood; mock hangings, electrocutions and beheadings; live snakes; and chopped up baby dolls—and on the persona of Alice Cooper, a mentally unstable, ghoulish vision in drag and bondage gear who sang about insanity, nightmares, and violence. Cooper, whose real name is Vince Furnier, is heralded as an early influence on many musical genres, and his imprint is readily seen in punk, in the glam metal and goth rock movements of the 1980s, and latterly in the emergence of darkly-themed contemporary industrial rock acts like Marilyn Manson. Super Duper Alice Cooper bills itself as “the definitive, extraordinary story of the man and the myth that is uniquely Alice Cooper.” The film certainly is about as definitive as a rock documentary—it claims to be a “doc opera”—gets: the majority of the generous voice-over narration (there are virtually no “talking head” interviews) is provided by Alice Cooper himself, along with all of the major players in the story— bandmates, managers, family members— plus a laundry list of rock royalty, offering ringing endorsements of Cooper’s influence and legacy. In addition to being informative, the film also visually very appealing, comprising a nearly seamless blend of photo montages, archival film and television footage, clips from classic horror cinema, and animated sequences in support of the narrative. The film is focused mainly on the period during which Alice Cooper reached the heights of fame (roughly from the early 1970s into the early 80s) but along the way fell victim to decadence and excess: the line between the man and his wild stage persona—it really is a Jekyll and Hyde story—became nearly fatally blurred. It is revelatory in many ways, providing insight into the music industry in the 1960s and 70s, and examining some unusual interconnections both within the rock music world (Cooper modeling his approach to making a hit record on the Guess Who, for instance) and between rock and other cultural spheres (between Cooper and Salva dor Dali, or Cooper and Andy Warhol). The voice-over narration includes some fascinating commentary from a wide range of rock luminaries, including Elton John, John Lydon of the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, testifying to Cooper’s contributions to the notion of rock as spectacle, and to his influence on rock, pop, punk and glam metal. This documentary is essential for any fan of the Rolling Stones as well as any student of popular music history. It has a good narrative flow. The story is told by talking-head music journalists and a voiceover narrator who fills in the gaps. Journalists include Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone Magazine ; writer Paul Gambaccini; Mark Paytress, Mojo Magazine ; Barney Hoskyns, Rock’s Back Pages; and Robert Christgau, Village Voice and Rolling Stone Magazine. The producers weave additional comments into the narrative from vintage TV interviews. The music clips are taken mostly from live performances rather than from the recordings that the narrators are talking about at the moment. Maybe that has something to do with securing rights for the recordings, maybe it’s for the visual interest. The filmmakers do not interview the Stones, though they do include snippets of other people’s televised interviews with the band members. The Rolling Stones’ most creative years may have been behind them by the end of the 1970s but they soldiered on in fits and starts, experimenting—sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing, as true artists must—until they eventually found their stride again as a rock and roll juggernaut that still sells out stadiums. As one music journalist said, “Their craft got them through.”

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by Kurt Weill, and: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny by Kurt Weill (review)

While I consider myself to be a fan of the great tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, before reviewing this DVD, my familiarity with his work—and I suspect this may be the case Stan Getz. Live at Montreux, 1972. DVD. [New York]: Eagle Eye Media, 2013, 1972. EE392689.

Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality through Music (review)

14.98. misleading nonetheless. That said, the Hodson restoration of The Rite of Spring is a thrill to watch. The Rite of Spring is the story of a group of ancient Slavs and their yearly ritual to appease the god of spring, during which they choose a sacrificial maiden and she dances herself to death as an offering. The dancers represent our primitive ancestors, in direct contact with the energies of the natural world, trying to satisfy the gods so that life can flourish once again in the spring. The dance and music follow a clear narrative; the story is easy to follow, especially given the episode titles such as “Ritual of Abduc tion” and “Procession of the Sage.” Groups of dancers interact with other groups in a ritual call-and-response. There is no centralized action; it is spread all over the stage. At times, the dance is jarring. There are many “What the . . . ?” moments. Rigid dancers pound their feet on the floor, they hop, they stutter-step, they thud, their turned-in toes “rooting” them to the earth. They punch the air and flail their arms. Bodies quake and spasm with spiritual possession. The frenzy peaks in “The Dance of the Earth” when all hell breaks loose – harmonically and rhythmically – and every dancer becomes a frantic soloist, simultaneously going berserk. The DVD was recorded in 2008 at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, where Nijinsky studied. The dancers are the Corps de Ballets de Theater Mariinsky and the conductor is the Mariinsky’s artistic director, Valery Gergiev. The camera mainly shows a stationary wide shot of the whole stage, the better for choosing which action you want to follow. An occasional overheard camera shots shows the corps dancing a patterned motion, Busby Berkeley style. The camera also shoots close ups of the Chosen One’s face, but since her expressions are Noh-play slow to the point of being frozen, I am not sure the close-ups added any value. After being pounded by The Rite of Spring, the other ballet on this DVD — Stravinsky’s The Firebird with choreography by Michel Fokine – seems more like a lush, traditional ballet. It is a treat to be able to savor more of Stravinsky’s distinctive character-rich musical language from this period (The Firebird – 1910, Petrushka – 1911 and The Rite of Spring – 1913). The technical production of the DVD itself could have been just a little better. I watched it on a DVD player and on a few different computers and, though both The Firebird and the Rite of Spring have descriptive episode titles such as “The Dance of the Firebird” and “Games of the Rival Tribes,” the DVD menu displays the episodes only as generic chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and so on. It is difficult to tell where you are unless you consult the DVD booklet. The commentary by Hodson and Archer is an extremely valuable addition to the DVD. They explain, in great detail, their reconstruction process and they comment on aspects of the dance and the story. It deepens our appreciation of the performance. I especially enjoyed Hodson’s descriptions of her conversations with Marie Rambert (1888–1982), Nijinsky’s assistant, who added choreographic notations to The Rite of Spring score. Other choreographers have brought their vision and interpretation to The Rite of Spring, such as Leonide Massine, Sasha Waltz, Yuri Possokhov and Kenneth MacMillan. Hodson and Archer’s reconstruction stands out as unique among choreographers’ works because it rescues chunks of Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring vision from oblivion. “By our intention, we are as close as we could get,” said Hodson. “What more can we do?” However you characterize Hodson and Archer’s work, it contains elements of Nijinsky unique ideas that are still vital, ideas that others could build upon. Hodson said, “With Le Sacre du printemps, (Nijinsky) created a primer of possibilities which haven’t begun to be exhausted.”

The Subject of Music as Subject of Excess and Emergence: Resonances and Divergences between Slavoj Žižek and Björk Guðmundsdóttir

Composed in 1929, with a libretto by Berthold Brecht, the opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny numbers among Kurt Weill’s most important works for the stage, though as Jürgen Schebera has remarked, it may also be considered “the great antithesis of traditional opera.” Even as the work uses many of the trappings of opera—overture, bel canto arias, ensembles and chorus—it also employs jazz and cabaret tunes, some spoken dialogue, and eschews some of the narrative flow of traditional opera in favor of a sequence of twenty-one closed scenes. Moreover, courtesy of Brecht, Mahagonny also serves as a work of socio-political satire: an uncompromisingly severe critique of the contemporary bourgeoisie and capitalism, it offers a bleak and unironic portrayal of modern life and the self-interested pursuit of wealth. Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is set somewhere in the American west, and tells the story of an opportunistic trio of fugitives who build a city in the desert, in the hopes of attracting nearby gold prospectors and their money. The city soon draws the disenfranchised and disaffected: “sharks,” including prostitutes like Jenny Smith and her girls, along with lumberjacks like Jimmy Mahoney and his friends. Mahoney soon begins to rail against the city’s strictures, advocating instead a philosophy of indulgence and permissiveness. After days of fighting, drinking, cavorting and gambling, he runs out of money, cannot pay his bills and is locked in jail. Following a farciannoying. A grand piano, taking the place, presumably, of the golden throne of the libretto is hoisted upside down in the first scene and hangs above the action for the rest of the work – I’m still trying to work that one out! In scene two, Danae’s recollection of a dream of being showered with gold, initiating Jupiter’s attempt to woo her, is portrayed as sheets of music drifting down which she gathers up and clutches possessively. And so on. The sound of the voices is a little recessed, which makes one more aware of the often dense orchestration and Littons‘s direction, which is well-shaped. This may be the fault of microphone placement rather than heavy-handedness on the conductor’s part. Of the singers, all act well. Klink projects both the power and disillusionment of Jupiter. As Midas, alias Chrysopher, Mark Delavan combines pleasing tone with a convincing portrayal as the reluctant servitor of Jupiter and a passionate lover of Danae. I was less happy with Manuela Uhl, no Leontyne Price, whose fine acting is marred by vocal production that is often unfocused and wobbly. The four queens (this work’s Rhinemaidens) were very convincing vocally, though their “business” (including a pillow fight), was extremely bizarre. For the most part, the camera work is sensitive and unobtrusive with a good sense of continuity. There are a few flubs as might be expected in a telecast misguided close ups as, for example, when we see the heaving chest and blinking eyelids of Danae ostensibly turned into lifeless gold. For people accepting of this Regietheater approach this DVD may prove a stimulating and rewarding experience; traditionalists may agree with me that this was a missed opportunity to present this obscure piece in a more favorable light.

Inside Metal: Pioneers of L.A. Hard Rock and Metal (review)

narrative analysis is true only for the listener who is willing to step into the musical framework in order to associate some musical elements with “extramusical” ones. I was left, however, wanting to know more about how that listener is able to connect the musical to the extramusical through historic and systematic factors. In short, the delightful embrace of meaning as fluid turned into a maddening attempt to glean some kind of explanation of the connection between sign and object within the given range of musical responses available. Agawu opens the book with this delightful understatement: “The nonverbal essence of music has proved resistant to facile domestication within a verbal economy” (p. 4). While Music as Discourse opens up a number of interesting and fruitful means of discovering musical logic and creating opportunities for the analyst to dive deeper into the realm of the “fictional narrative” that is analysis, the book is ultimately a demonstration of how difficult it is to transplant “musical meaning” into the foreign sign system of scholarly language.