Tag: book

True Star

On January 7, 2011

In books, interviews, music, popular culture

I first met Paul Myers when I interviewed him for CIUT’s morning show back in 2007. He and I spoke about his incredible book on the life and times of Long John Baldry, an under-appreciated musician who cast a long shadow over popular music.

Myers is a true music afficionado. As well as being a musician and songwriter, he’s a damn great music journalist, and has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Guardian, the Georgia Straight, and the Globe and Mail, among others, keeps a very fine blog where he offers a mix of observation, wit, insight, and just plain love for the hybrid beast that is rock and roll.

Paul’s latest work is called A Wizard, A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio (Jawbone Press), and it documents the incredible, incredibly under-appreciated legacy of musician and studio magician Todd Rundgren. The title is based on Rundgren’s much-loved 1973 album of the same name. Now, I admit that I knew precious little about Rundgren when I began this book, but by its end, I was more convinced than ever of his large, vital footprint on popular music. Most people only know his name from the Liv Tyler connection, or from his producing (and playing on) Meat Loaf’s monster hit album, Bat Out Of Hell.

Rundgren is a multi-faceted, multi-talented person who’s difficult to get a handle on. He produced albums by The Pursuit Of Happiness, Steve Hillage, the New York Dolls, Grand Funk Railroad, The Band, Cheap Trick, The Tubes, as well as Hall and Oates’ War Babies and XTC’s Skylarking (which features their mega-hit, “Dear God”). He released a ton of his own material including Something / Anything? , which contained his best-known work like “Hello It’s Me” and the classic-rock-radio staple”I Saw The Light“. He revolutionized studio technologies and instrumentation. He appeared on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s with Prince. His anthemic, catchy “Bang The Drum All Day” is used widely in commercials. People know his work, but they don’t know him.

Myers’ work gets no closer to really knowing him or plumbing the depths, but it does dig (deep) into his methodologies and techniques within a studio context -an approach that illuminates the hard work that goes on in the rock and roll world, past the boring media stories of drugs and debauchery. Mind you, this video, with Rundgren sporting theatrical costuming and makeup, implies a kind of gritty-glam debauchery that has a direct connection to none other than Lady Gaga herself. Rundgren, influential? Durrrr.

Fabulousness aside, it was the chapter detailing the making of Patti Smith’s Wave that I found most enthralling. Featuring interviews with group members Lenny Kaye, Iva Kral, Richard Sohl, Jay Dee Daugherty, plus producer Rundgren, and the lady herself, it’s a fascinating portrait the ties that bind people, creatively, personally and professionally. Myers’ approach is very detailed and thorough here, as through the entire book; his examination of tunes I’ve long loved -like “Frederick” and “Dancing Barefoot” -were fussy, yes, but they were also genuinely thrilling, and shot through with a musician’s instinctual understanding of the finer points of sonic creation. A Wizard, A True Star is a mix of clinician and musician, mixing the creative and the technical into one fascinating, heady mix.

Paul was kind enough to offer up his own insights into his latest work, and its subject.

Describe Todd’s ultimate role in rock and roll in one line.

My whole book kind of makes the case that Todd Rundgren’s best instrument is the recording studio itself. Sure he’s a great vocal arranger and powerful singer, not to mention a flash guitarist and serviceable drummer, but if you look deeply at his entire 40 year career, there’s a very identifiable way in which he sculpts and blends performances (his own and his clients’) together into something that sounds, for better or worse, like a ‘Todd Rundgren Production’. Oops that’s more than one line!

Why do you think Todd isn’t in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame?

The Rock And Roll Hall is a very political body, a lot of great rock artists don’t (or didn’t) have the political capital to grease their nomination into Cleveland. And, of course, Todd has a kind of Orson Welles reputation; there’s much respect for his craft but on a personal level he has been known to bend a few noses out of joint over the years. Maybe Jann Wenner, who has a lot of pull on the RRHOF board, doesn’t like him. Who knows? Also, Todd has often exuded a kind of “who cares” attitude about the whole thing, so maybe they’re put off by that and would rather induct ABBA, whom I love, but can’t see as “rock and roll”.

Why did you decide to do a studio-focused book?

Todd has two parallel careers, as an artist and as a producer of other artists, so once I decided that the studio was his milieu, if you will, it seemed like that was the best setting to tell this incredible story of album after album, and I knew I had to get both Todd AND the artists he produced to tell their story incredible stories. I’m reminded of Hollywood producer Robert Evans’s autobiography and film “The Kid Stays In The Picture”, which opens with a great quote: “There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth.”

You go into a lot of detail in the studio in terms of production and instrumentation; for instance, when I read the chapter on Patti Smith’s ‘Wave’, I came away with a whole new appreciation of her work and the dynamic within her band. How does this kind of detail help the average music fan get to know Todd’s art?
I make no secret that I am a musician who has also produced recordings, but I am married to a woman who is not a musician but who loves a good story. So I write a little bit for her, as a test “layman”. I tend to split the difference, conversationally, when I tell music stories to her and that’s what I wanted to do here. I don’t make movies, but I love hearing how “green screen” and CG effects are done. My goal is to give the layman just enough information to understand the significance of what is being discussing. Having said that, one of my favourite passages is where Todd describes the effect on Grand Funk (Railroad) singer Don Brewer’s voice on “We’re An American Band”, the Cooper Time Cube. It’s a delay effect that I’d never heard of before, and Todd had to Google it during the interview to see if he even had the name right.

You explore the role Todd played in music / studio technology; how much do you see his influence in things like Autotune, and even something like GarageBand?

I say in the book that over the last decade Todd became less involved with bands, probably due to the fact that the technology for self-recording (some of which he either designed or requested) is so advanced that it has reduced the ‘perceived value’ of a producer. I say ‘perceived’ because I think, just as a bunch of great actors can read surely read a bunch of great lines from a great script without a director, in the end a good director is always welcome. I don’t think Todd had much to do with Autotune, but definitely the spirit of Todd’s original experiments with multi-tracking lives in digital recording software of today. A band like Pomplamoose, who openly film themselves overdubbing all the instruments might appeal to Todd, I’ll have to ask him.

What do you think Todd’s legacy will be 100 years from now?

I would hope that Todd’s legacy will fall into the pantheon of similarly adventurous recording pioneers such as Les Paul, Brian Wilson and the later artists such as Trent Reznor and Prince (both of whom have cited Todd as an early influence). Musically, I think his piano based ballads on Something/Anything? and Hermit Of Mink Hollow will be re-appreciated by the coming crop of bedroom musicians.

Feel / Reveal

By Catherine Kustanczy

On December 5, 2010

In art, writing

Watching pieces of the movie Frida recently, amidst bites of crostini, answering emails, and half-sketching, was a strange experience -and not just because of the multi-tasking.

When I saw it in the cinema in 2002 I was bowled over by the mix of images, plot, and music within Julie Taymor‘s vision of the Mexican painter’s life. My initial viewing was at an early point in my own personal explorations into drawing and painting; after years of photography, including nearly two years spent in Ireland and England with an ancient, beloved manual-forward SLR camera, I thought it might be a good idea to strip the technology away to get to the heart of art-making. And so the drawing/painting/sketching odyssey began, and photography, however slowly, fell by the wayside, paralleling the dwindling of film stock and the rise of mobile (and, for that matter, internet) technology.

It was during a recent dinner party at my home that I felt a deep twinge of nostalgia for my old snapping days. I brought out the old Minolta at the request of one of my guests, a photo enthusiast. The weight of the camera, the ka-chunk of the shutter, the cylindrical beauty of the lens, the quasi-surprise of the prints… it was all magical to behold after so long away from it. Yet spying the light meter again created a small panic, a palpable sense of, what am I doing?! It was a curious mix of panic and passion.

Aside from the heart-stopping, beautiful viuals, what I love so much about Taymor’s film is that Frida’s struggles and doubts over her own artistic voice aren’t ever glossed over; in one scene, when she and husband Diego Rivera go to New York City so the latter can complete a commission for the Rockefellers, a reporter asks her, “Are you an artist too?” She demures -and keeps on stabbing her brush at the canvas. Yes, no, maybe. I don’t know. Keep on keepin’ on. Even when bed-ridden, she continued her output, never labelling herself or her work. Just doing it.

I’m a longtime admirer of Frida’s work -“admirer”, actually, feels too mild, but “fan” feels too slavish. She takes her place, like Patti Smith, in my mental curio cabinet of beautifully imperfect heroes: shriekingly female but defying categorization, always personal but ever-cryptic, physical but very heady, hugely experimental but deeply traditional. A mass of genius in contradiction, Frida’s work, like Patti’s, has the power to bring me to tears, and frequently has.

The timing of Taymor’s movie on television was curious on a personal level (never mind Taymor’s directing Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark, opening next month on Broadway. More on that in a future post.). I’d been berating myself for not being productive enough artistically lately. I should be drawing/painting/etc is a frequent mental mantra. It’s feels like a hard thing to go off and do, and yet it shouldn’t be. That old want-to-be-doing vs should-be-doing battle is raging. The other reason productivity falls away is that I have a genuine sense of not knowing what I’m doing, that it’s all for naught, that it’s all horribly amateur and pointless and stupid. That voice of doubt is sometimes louder than the calm, quiet one that asks me to keep going.

And so, it was appropos that, looking through a bookshelf for something else entirely, Peter London’s No More Secondhand Art (Shambhala Publications, 1989) popped out at me. I opened it, as if my magic, to a page with the following header: “Am I Good Enough?” That would be my other mantra, a much older one that applies to several areas and pursuits. But I was fascinated by London’s dissection of this question to self as applied to art-making, one that works whether you love drawing, painting, photography or performance:

We can never win the encounter with such a question, because the very underlying assumption of “Am I —— enough?” is a faulty appraisal of the human condition and a false understanding of what it does take to engage in creative enterprises… Rather than paralyzing ourselves with the existential bone-crusher “Am I good enough?” we would do better to ask ourselves question that invoke no comparisons. Instead, we could become interested in describing the new terrain being uncovered or invented.

I dream of the day that voice stops -or at least softens. I dream of the day I’ll have the most precious things any artist could ask for -time, space, resources -to do what I want most to do, when my heroes smile and say, see? It wasn’t so hard after all. Because really, it’s not.

Dear Katherine

By Catherine Kustanczy

On December 1, 2010

In books, popular culture

Two things struck me looking through The Tattoo Chronicles, by famed tattoo artist Kat Von D (with Sandra Bark): first, this girl can draw, and second, she’s so much a twenty-something woman of the 21st century.

The first observation might seem a bit idiotic at the outset; after all, Kat rose to fame based on the wildly popular television series LA Ink, chronicling her life in the City of Angels, inking up the not-so-rich and infamous. But she’s also a genuinely good artist in her own right.

I’ve been returning to drawing in a big way the last little while, and while it’s rewarding, it’s also incredibly hard, time-consuming, and frustrating. Kat has an incredible faculty to be able to draw both what’s in front of her as well as from her considerable imagination. She shares drawings, stories, and photographs in this gorgeous red hardcover book; its pages are designed like a scrapbook, with snatches of tattoo sketches (and the finished work), highly stylized photographs, letters, and doodles. It’s a fascinating chronicle of memories and experiences, and adheres closely to Kat’s high-wire act of balancing relenteless self-promotion with genuine twin passions for art and human connection.

The front cover, with Kat hugging a diary to her chest, sleeve-tattooed arms enfolded around her tiny frame, angular face, black hair, leather pants and super-high red sparkly shoes tells you that while she isn’t exactly the girl next door, she’s not the trampy, vampy hellraiser she might like to make her out as, either. This bears out within the pages of The Tattoo Chronicles (Harper Collins), particularly the more personal bits detailing Kat’s up-and-down roller coaster of a relationship with rock and roll bad boy, former Motley Crue bassist Nicki Sixx. The age difference between she and her paramour -Sixx’s 50th birthday party is chronicled, along with Kat’s 27th (with much frustration she tosses off a “so-the-hell-what?” at the age discrepancy at one point, the flippancy of the statement belying its worried underpinnings) -as well as the close relationship she shares with many women, including her sister Karoline, and Johnette Napolitano, who wrote the book’s compelling foreword.

The Concrete Blonde singer’s line that “I just do what I do and happen to be a woman” struck me, because so many of the artists I admire carry the exact same credo, and it’s one, I think, that applies equally to Kat, who has blazed a trail for women who tattoo, who love it, or are fascinated by its culture.

But that accomplishment doesn’t erase vulnerability or, indeed, humanity. For all her fetching style and tough-lady attitude, Kat very much comes off as an insecure, anxiety-prone twenty-something in the throes of forming identities amidst a barrage of external forces -ones that might a bit distant for some of us (TV shows, books, a Sephora make-up line) but nonetheless fascinating, and even familiar. Who can’t relate to the stress of being far away from a loved one? fights? a breakup? panic over losing your sense of self that makes you you? Her Alpine-esque ups and downs with Sixx are shared with searing honesty. In one entry, dated July 7th, 2008, 4:42am, she writes:

There’s no ignoring the physical distance between Nikki and I today -and it’s
only been a day -God, I miss him -can’t sleep. How am I gonna get through the
next two months? More importantly, how the hell did I become “that” girl? I feel
so damn clingy -needy almost … UGH. We start filming in the morning.

Never for a moment does Kat lose sight of the ultimate prize: further fame and notoriety. Her single-minded approach can be cloying at times, but it also gives way to some truly moving passages. Kat’s write-up about Glory Mkini, who comes to her for a tattoo that both pays homage to her home (Mkini is Tanzanian) and covers up a scar, is deeply moving. The personalities that dominate the book (along with their accompanying photographs) provide a fascinating hodge podge of humanity in all its confusing, contradictory, inked-up glory. And it’s in these passages, in Kat’s detailing her exchanges with these people and their journeys, that The Tattoo Chronicles really shines.

As to her own personal bits, Kat wallows the way any lovelorn, self-obsessed twenty-something might. It’s annoying at times, but it’s also related to an overall me-me-me-broadcast that defines so much Western cultural exchange within a young-celebrity context in the 21st century. Kat’s entries occasionally read like Facebook status updates -not a bad thing, but hardly introspective. We don’t get a true sense of why a veteran like Johnette Napolitano is her friend, and we get naive howlers like her relating her own relatively-short period of sobriety with Nikki’s decades-long process. They aren’t the same, Kat. They really, really aren’t. Stop comparing. Stop always bringing *you* in.

But that sense of ballsy narcissism, of take-on-the-world-ness, of shrieking arrogance-meets-naivete, is really the charm of it. Just when you think you could never have anything in common with someone like Kat Von D… the “someone like” part vanishes, and, past the shoes, the makeup, the spiffy clothing, the perfect lighting, the plastic surgery, and oodles of rock and roll/celeb connections, there’s this… lonely, wildly insecure, overwhelmed, for-all-her-success-hugely-naive, messed-up person… who happens to be hugely talented (and, um, rich), very curious about people, and unafraid to speak her mind. There’s something heartening about seeing someone so completely, unapologetically like the rest of us non-gothy-glam schlubs… make it, while bleeding all over everyone and not trying to be cutesy about it, but hauling out the mops and shouting for a TV camera. Kat feels so appropriate for here and now, and her latest book is proof of that.

The Tattoo Chronicles is a book that inspires curiosity, thought, and guffaws for sure -but within it is the unquenchable instinct to connect, cherish and accept everyone within this crazy little globe, no matter how mnch -or little -they may have lived, or how much they have to show for it, physically and otherwise. Everyone has a story. It’s nice to see them so creatively chronicled.

Prince

By Catherine Kustanczy

On January 16, 2010

In art, poetry

Like many following the crisis in Haiti, I’m left with tremendous feelings of sadness. What can I do? How can I help? Is my donation enough? What else? As a journalist, it’s been interesting to observe the various ways stories from Port au Prince are being related; some are more positive than others, but there is an undeniable emphasis on loss, which is both fitting and yet discomforting. Surely we have to start focusing on the reconstruction stories soon. Energy goes where eyes go, after all. And eyes need to be on feeding, rebuilding, doctoring, and all-around aid.

Jean-Michel Basquiat understood this concept of energy. His paintings were full of question marks: who am I where do I belong? how do I define myself -as a black man, an artist, an American? His works, utterly shaped by graffiti and street art, have a rhythm and pulse that many painters work hard at capturing. They’re not meant to be soothing, polite, or elegant, but rather, raucous, loud, and confrontational. I frequently wonder if this is owing to Basquiat’s own mixed background and the sense I get that, in his 27 short years, he was on an urgent, stabbing quest to try to fit in -on artistic as well as socio-economic levels -with a society that he knew, to some extent, would never entirely welcome him as their own. Maybe this sense helped to fuel the rage I see (and love) in his works.

I came across a book featuring his work today and was forced to pause between floor cleanings. Leafing through Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, Basquiat’s shifting sense of power, vacillating between lost rebel and confident artiste, was both enthralling and challenging. His works are a loud, exuberant complement to Maya Angelou’s proud paean to resolve in the face of massive fear and overwhelming odds.

It may sound pretentious, but I found a new power in his many works exploring black identity in the light of the Haitian tragedy. Basquiat’s father was born in Haiti, while his mother was Puerto Rican. What would he think about the events of the last few days? How would he express the magnitude of the calamity that has befallen his father’s homeland? Would he look at UN efforts and proclaim SAMO? Or might he paint, in the spirit of Angelou’s words, a defiant, fortifying tribute to the indomitable spirit of Haiti’s citizens? We will never know. But seeing his works again have, in a strange way, given me a sort of hope the news hasn’t, and perhaps, won’t. That’s okay. Maybe that’s part of the beauty -and mystery -of art.

Don’t show me frogs and snakes

And listen for my scream,

If I’m afraid at all

It’s only in my dreams.

I’ve got a magic charm

That I keep up my sleeve

I can walk the ocean floor

And never have to breathe.

Life doesn’t frighten me at all

Not at all

Not at all.

Surgical Poetry

By Catherine Kustanczy

On April 15, 2009

In poetry

I’ve started reading a book called Direct Red, by Gabriel Weston. It’s about Weston’s experiences in the world of a hospital; the British author was an arts grad who decided to become a surgeon, so she took the requisite night classes, and years of medical training, to achieve her dream. Direct Red is her account of day-to-day life in her chosen field.

But reading the book, Weston has the beautiful, flowing wordplay of a poet:

At medical school, while studying pathology, I was charmed by the names of the colourful dyes used to stain tissues for clearer microscopic viewing. Crystalline as jewels, primary as food colourings used for cake icing and egg painting, the names of these elixirs seemed brighter in my mind than the substances themselves, the Platonic hues offset by their arcane prefixes. And through a process I cannot chart, every time I feel sick in theatre, I summon a rainbow collage of these names to mind. They stimulate my ebbing consciousness and usually call me back from that strange physiological precipice to normal function.

Somehow, this shimmering language describing hues, shapes, shadows, forms and memories reminds me so much of a favourite poet I’ve recently rediscovered: Seamus Heaney, who is currently being feted in fine style by the RTE (and beyond) on account of his 70th birthday. More about him, and his poetry, in a future post.

For now, I’m going to sit back and enjoy Weston’s beautiful, imagistic work; by bringing the poetical into the surgical, she marries the worlds of science and art in a way that hasn’t been properly explored since Da Vinci.