Cuz when we rock a mic, we rock the mic right
I woke up this morning to find this hilarious blog post that extrapolated insight on American Idol contestants Bo Bice and Clay Aiken by comparing and contrasting the relationship each singer has with their respective microphone stands. Thanks to Renée for her original article and for inspiring my follow-up.
Renée's post struck me because I remember thinking when I lived in NYC that you can tell a lot about an artist from what they do with the mic stand. New York artists embody their personas better than anyone, and always do it with a healthy dose of confidence. Any text book used at the College of Cocky Prop Rockin was written in the clubs of the Big Apple. Constantine Maroulis is no exception.
New York artists have either contributed or advanced several other common mic stand relationships, which I'll define by attitude, instead of a single artist.
1.
"The mic is my wingman. Together we're too cool for school, but warm enough for you."
The solid, New York technique of using the microphone as Cameron to the singer's Ferris Bueller - the more-accessible buddy that can bring you closer by keeping you just at arm's length. God, you just love and adore Ferris, but sometime's Cameron's the only one you can really talk to. This technique is remarkably resilient and adaptable; it worked for Sinatra, Dean Martin, Brian McKnight and especially for Constantine Maroulis on American Idol, in whom Bobby Darin would be proud. The best never force the cool. They know a little goes a long way: all bandwidth on the musician's network of cool belongs to David Bowie - the rest are just squatting on his signal.
Photo: prayforthesoulofbetty.net
2.
"The mic stand is my bartender/hangover toilet."
Eyelids drooped, one hand draped on the mic, barely keeping the singer standing cuz it doesn't matter anyway and it's all crap and we're all wasted and it's hot outside and I was sick of your white iPod-earbud wearin' ass on the L and I'm sick of you now. In the morning this technique often becomes "The mic stand is my father confessor." Widely employed by singers from New Jersey or Long Island who now live in the East Village and still don't realize that the guy from New York Dolls and Buster Poindexter are the same person. They're often spotted, cracked-out on Sunday mornings at the hamburger shop next to the parking garage on Astor Place asking their navels, "is this it?"
The Strokes personify this style today, but I don't mean to pick on them. They're carrying on a tradition, and I would say that New York needs a band like this at any given time. There are many more inebriated, four-piece bittersweet symphonies running around the city with far less talant and musical facility than Casablancas and Company.
Photo: nme.com
3.
"The mic stand is my cross-dressing doyenne."
Back before Details 'n Maxim made metrosexuality okay for the american male, sexually ambiguous New York rockers would essentially turn their mic stand into venuses in furs, scarves, and boas - anything that kept the singer from being the gayest-looking thing on stage. Although Steven Tyler of Aerosmith didn't invent this technique, he perfected it and made it famous. Tyler's mic stand is *still* being mistaken for Stevie Nicks even today.
Photo: omelete.com.br
4.
"The mic stand is the easel, I am the opus."
In other words, it's distracting, purely functional infrastructure, the musical equivalent of reader's theater podia. The prototype is the Velvet Underground, who started off as an easel for Andy Warhol installations. Punk sidelined the technique until the rise of the Shoegazers in England, where it could have falled into obcurity if it hadn't been retooled by They Might Be Giants in Brooklyn and then coopted by geeks from Boston in the late 1980's. Today these bands are still make the music found on the soundtrack to your gay teenage honor student's so-called life. In NYC: Talking Heads, Television, Klaus Nomi. In Boston: Pixies, Weezer.
Photo: Ebet Roberts
5.
"The mic stand is the terrified, tear-streamed, bound-and-gagged body of [sitting president], and the mic is his head."
Punk's in-house style and legacy, of which Patti Smith is the queen supreme. You *know* in short order that head's comin' off and that mic-stand's going down. Nixon had that effect on people. This is why Carrie Underwood should never kick a mic stand ever again. They have people who do that for you, sweetie.
Angry punk style is still in use, but in New York it also evolved and subdivided into...
Photo: pattismith.net
6.
"The mic stand is a bourgeois relic of the elite, racist, Americorporate power structure and A) has no place in our ego-free utopian/militant music collective, or B) functions largely as a third hand so we can wave our other hands in air like we just don't care."
These were two direct and influential responses to the crass commercialism of 80's Manhattan. We'll call them the confrontationists and the idealists. The confontationists get pissed off, bum rush the show, and start fighting for their right to party: Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan, Beastie Boys, and the Fugees (Yo, L-Boogie, where you at? I'm just adjustin' my mic.)
The idealists (or the escapists, as the red-states call them) threw on costumes, makeup, and take a holiday in their decade's Studio 54 surrogate because life is a cabaret ol' chum and disco never really dies. The idealists, fleeing the wholesale social trama of the AIDS crisis and economic depression created a technicolor universe of pansexualism, racial harmony, and 4/4 time. But, as history repeats, these kids became the spiritual parents from back at Studio 54. They brought new drugs and imported the brutal Brooklyn drag ball caste-system that quickly took on fascist overtones. The bills came due, the glitter fell off, and all those fabulous club kids turned once more to Sunday's clowns and cried behind the door. The scene effectively ended as a result of a murder so lurid and brutal that they had to go out and find Macaulay Culkin to play the killer in the movie. If the groove is in the heart, you might want to lay off the blow.
How do you say...de-pressing?
See: early Madonna, Deee-Lite, C+C Music Factory, B-52's (post-Athens, pre-Vegan militancy) and thousands of other anonymous club track singers.
I would speculate and suggest that the recent New York trends - toward a colder sound that plays up the connection to Weimar-Berliner decadance, is a evolutionary commentary on the Twilo years. The Dresden Dolls do this quite literally, but the fact that the Scissor Sisters' first single was a cover of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb was both a clever editorial and an unsually honest mission statement.
8.
"The mic stand is just another brick in the wall."
This last technique is squarely a British import, but it's become common enough to warrant inclusion here. Besides, it best describes me.
There's the kid who loves making music but doesn't play well with others; bands always stall or fall apart. British electronic artists appeal to him: not only the sound, but also the collective roadmap they laid out for how to mix creativity with a British passion for enforced humility and embarassment aversion. The best ideas come when he's alone to tinker in private. He doesn't like to show works-in-progress.
Inexpensive computers and software made it possible for an average person to do things never dreamt of with a four-track. Suddenly, musicians could do what Phil Spector couldn't: transform the textures of the psyche into sound without hiring and directing a bunch of tempremental, unionized musicians.
After Brian Wilson stopped touring with The Beach Boys to stay at home and produce music, The Beach Boys efectively transformed from a band to a brand that stood for Brian Wilson plus the orchestras and musicians and singers. Nine Inch Nails is another example of a brand that's a synonym for Trent Reznor and the name of everything that surrounds his projects, including the band that plays the music live in concert. Artists like these helped me to understood the ineffible, holistic totality of branding. Just as Brian Wilson and Phil Spector placed emphasis on the entire "recording" above live performance quality, these artists placed the larger experience of their music above personal identity and outdated notions of what makes a song a song and a band a band.
By doing so, they liberated themselves to a comfortable, creative space where the music is good and the artist is happy. It is possible now for an introvert to make music for the masses without the crushing, unexpected consequences of living in defiance of one's nature. I would love to be alone in a room with 5,000 screaming fans too exalted to pay much attention to the man behind the curtain. See: The Prodigy, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Squarepusher, The Magnetic Fields.
And the beat goes on.
Renée's post struck me because I remember thinking when I lived in NYC that you can tell a lot about an artist from what they do with the mic stand. New York artists embody their personas better than anyone, and always do it with a healthy dose of confidence. Any text book used at the College of Cocky Prop Rockin was written in the clubs of the Big Apple. Constantine Maroulis is no exception.
New York artists have either contributed or advanced several other common mic stand relationships, which I'll define by attitude, instead of a single artist.
1.
"The mic is my wingman. Together we're too cool for school, but warm enough for you."
The solid, New York technique of using the microphone as Cameron to the singer's Ferris Bueller - the more-accessible buddy that can bring you closer by keeping you just at arm's length. God, you just love and adore Ferris, but sometime's Cameron's the only one you can really talk to. This technique is remarkably resilient and adaptable; it worked for Sinatra, Dean Martin, Brian McKnight and especially for Constantine Maroulis on American Idol, in whom Bobby Darin would be proud. The best never force the cool. They know a little goes a long way: all bandwidth on the musician's network of cool belongs to David Bowie - the rest are just squatting on his signal.Photo: prayforthesoulofbetty.net
2.
"The mic stand is my bartender/hangover toilet."
Eyelids drooped, one hand draped on the mic, barely keeping the singer standing cuz it doesn't matter anyway and it's all crap and we're all wasted and it's hot outside and I was sick of your white iPod-earbud wearin' ass on the L and I'm sick of you now. In the morning this technique often becomes "The mic stand is my father confessor." Widely employed by singers from New Jersey or Long Island who now live in the East Village and still don't realize that the guy from New York Dolls and Buster Poindexter are the same person. They're often spotted, cracked-out on Sunday mornings at the hamburger shop next to the parking garage on Astor Place asking their navels, "is this it?"The Strokes personify this style today, but I don't mean to pick on them. They're carrying on a tradition, and I would say that New York needs a band like this at any given time. There are many more inebriated, four-piece bittersweet symphonies running around the city with far less talant and musical facility than Casablancas and Company.
Photo: nme.com
3.
"The mic stand is my cross-dressing doyenne."
Back before Details 'n Maxim made metrosexuality okay for the american male, sexually ambiguous New York rockers would essentially turn their mic stand into venuses in furs, scarves, and boas - anything that kept the singer from being the gayest-looking thing on stage. Although Steven Tyler of Aerosmith didn't invent this technique, he perfected it and made it famous. Tyler's mic stand is *still* being mistaken for Stevie Nicks even today.Photo: omelete.com.br
4.
"The mic stand is the easel, I am the opus."
In other words, it's distracting, purely functional infrastructure, the musical equivalent of reader's theater podia. The prototype is the Velvet Underground, who started off as an easel for Andy Warhol installations. Punk sidelined the technique until the rise of the Shoegazers in England, where it could have falled into obcurity if it hadn't been retooled by They Might Be Giants in Brooklyn and then coopted by geeks from Boston in the late 1980's. Today these bands are still make the music found on the soundtrack to your gay teenage honor student's so-called life. In NYC: Talking Heads, Television, Klaus Nomi. In Boston: Pixies, Weezer.Photo: Ebet Roberts
5.
"The mic stand is the terrified, tear-streamed, bound-and-gagged body of [sitting president], and the mic is his head."
Punk's in-house style and legacy, of which Patti Smith is the queen supreme. You *know* in short order that head's comin' off and that mic-stand's going down. Nixon had that effect on people. This is why Carrie Underwood should never kick a mic stand ever again. They have people who do that for you, sweetie.Angry punk style is still in use, but in New York it also evolved and subdivided into...
Photo: pattismith.net
6.
"The mic stand is a bourgeois relic of the elite, racist, Americorporate power structure and A) has no place in our ego-free utopian/militant music collective, or B) functions largely as a third hand so we can wave our other hands in air like we just don't care."
These were two direct and influential responses to the crass commercialism of 80's Manhattan. We'll call them the confrontationists and the idealists. The confontationists get pissed off, bum rush the show, and start fighting for their right to party: Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan, Beastie Boys, and the Fugees (Yo, L-Boogie, where you at? I'm just adjustin' my mic.)The idealists (or the escapists, as the red-states call them) threw on costumes, makeup, and take a holiday in their decade's Studio 54 surrogate because life is a cabaret ol' chum and disco never really dies. The idealists, fleeing the wholesale social trama of the AIDS crisis and economic depression created a technicolor universe of pansexualism, racial harmony, and 4/4 time. But, as history repeats, these kids became the spiritual parents from back at Studio 54. They brought new drugs and imported the brutal Brooklyn drag ball caste-system that quickly took on fascist overtones. The bills came due, the glitter fell off, and all those fabulous club kids turned once more to Sunday's clowns and cried behind the door. The scene effectively ended as a result of a murder so lurid and brutal that they had to go out and find Macaulay Culkin to play the killer in the movie. If the groove is in the heart, you might want to lay off the blow.How do you say...de-pressing?
See: early Madonna, Deee-Lite, C+C Music Factory, B-52's (post-Athens, pre-Vegan militancy) and thousands of other anonymous club track singers.
I would speculate and suggest that the recent New York trends - toward a colder sound that plays up the connection to Weimar-Berliner decadance, is a evolutionary commentary on the Twilo years. The Dresden Dolls do this quite literally, but the fact that the Scissor Sisters' first single was a cover of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb was both a clever editorial and an unsually honest mission statement.
8.
"The mic stand is just another brick in the wall."
This last technique is squarely a British import, but it's become common enough to warrant inclusion here. Besides, it best describes me.
There's the kid who loves making music but doesn't play well with others; bands always stall or fall apart. British electronic artists appeal to him: not only the sound, but also the collective roadmap they laid out for how to mix creativity with a British passion for enforced humility and embarassment aversion. The best ideas come when he's alone to tinker in private. He doesn't like to show works-in-progress.Inexpensive computers and software made it possible for an average person to do things never dreamt of with a four-track. Suddenly, musicians could do what Phil Spector couldn't: transform the textures of the psyche into sound without hiring and directing a bunch of tempremental, unionized musicians.
After Brian Wilson stopped touring with The Beach Boys to stay at home and produce music, The Beach Boys efectively transformed from a band to a brand that stood for Brian Wilson plus the orchestras and musicians and singers. Nine Inch Nails is another example of a brand that's a synonym for Trent Reznor and the name of everything that surrounds his projects, including the band that plays the music live in concert. Artists like these helped me to understood the ineffible, holistic totality of branding. Just as Brian Wilson and Phil Spector placed emphasis on the entire "recording" above live performance quality, these artists placed the larger experience of their music above personal identity and outdated notions of what makes a song a song and a band a band.
By doing so, they liberated themselves to a comfortable, creative space where the music is good and the artist is happy. It is possible now for an introvert to make music for the masses without the crushing, unexpected consequences of living in defiance of one's nature. I would love to be alone in a room with 5,000 screaming fans too exalted to pay much attention to the man behind the curtain. See: The Prodigy, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Squarepusher, The Magnetic Fields.
And the beat goes on.
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