From there, things fall together pretty easily. I don’t know if the similarity to the name “Paul McCartney” had anything to do with their building a mythos early in their career that they either hated or, alternately, actually were the Beatles, but I expect so. He didn’t tell me I could repeat what he said, but he didn’t tell me I couldn’t. He played guitar, banjo, and piano on some of their early albums and contributed to the songwriting, though he was careful to tell me that he was never the primary creative force. He, too, was a member of the band at one time and he told me over drinks one night all about his involvement. One of my fellow co-hosts there is a monologist who goes by the name “Hearty White”. I do a weekly show at the radio station WFMU. While other musicians have come and gone, sculptor, filmmaker, and installation artist Paul McCarthy has been the only consistent member of the Residents. It won’t inhibit the work he does as a painter or a musician, so I’ll just put it in print. I guess I shouldn’t say it except that I don’t see how it matters. And as it happens it is a name people know and once you know it, it just seems obvious. After all, that singing voice has been pretty consistent throughout the band’s 40-year recording history, if deepening with age. That should not come as a surprise to people who have followed the group. There is only one original member of the band remaining in the current lineup. In the parlance of the day, I should first say: OK, I’m sorry about the thing with the boxes above. Are their names, away from the work, any more important than the names of Banksy, Cost, and Revs, or Alan Smithee? What if I asked you this: Which is more important, to discuss who the Residents are or to discuss their work? The work of a group of artists who made their way from swampy Louisiana into the San Franciscan Summer of Love and within a few years time were donning masks, making films, and emblazoning a local record store with swastikas.
What if I told you that I am going to reveal the truth because someday it will come out, and if I seize it now, I will be something of a star, infamous at least, a pariah perhaps, but a well-known one in the annals of music journalism? What if I told you that I have met the Residents and I was not even sworn to secrecy about their identities? And what if I said there is sort of an unspoken understanding that there’s no reason to ruin the fun, a sort of unspoken honor system, like the way all the rock mags had photos of KISS without their makeup in the ‘70s but nobody printed them because they didn’t want to spoil the party.
0 kommentar(er)
