TrainFan73
Frothy
Prince definitely did it with Camille and all the various characters he did. Jamie Starr and TAFKAP were more about being able to do what he wanted than doing anything as a different person/character.
Hot Take/ Musical Confession Thread!
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avecigrec
Well-Known Member
But DOOM is not just DOOM. He's also Zev Love X, King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn and Metal Fingers.
Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
I think singing a song whose lyrics are narrated by a character is different from pretending to be that character.
Cave's stage persona is definitely a character. The intensity of his performance is markedly different from who he is off stage, and who he is while he's singing a song is different from who he is when he's doing audience Q&A. But it's not a character that is consciously built around, or tailored to, a specific album or tour. The thing Nick Cave & Weird Al have in common is that they're the same character across decades. Bowie & Madonna were acclaimed for their ability to "reinvent" themselves with varying degrees of success. I think what @Bull Shannon is rightly identifying here are the artists who try to emulate that, but with the distinct difference that notoriety/capitalism seems to be driving it more than the artistic integrity that the project does or does not demand. And I don't mean that to say that Bowie and Madonna weren't driven by financial considerations; they very well may have been, but they pulled it off in a manner that seemed organic to who they are at their core, and not as a result of marketing triangulation (at least I would have said that for Madonna in the past; I honestly don't know what the hell she's up to in the post-Kabbalah, post-Guy Ritchie, post-disfigurement phase of her life).
There's an overlap here between the idea of a musician doing a character, and the idea of a concept album in general. Concept albums can be thematic, such as with Murder Ballads, or they can be these somewhat silly quasi-film projects that signal the musician actually just wants fame and fortune.
Tortured Diaper Baby Dept
Well-Known Member
100! I'm also unapologetically biased.
TAFKAP was not a persona like a Ziggy Stardust, etc. Sure, it was presented to the public but as an act of protest more than a commercial pivot.
Jamie Starr was not presented to the public at all. Die hard fans knew the name, but it was more of a way to create and work in anonymity.
Even Camille was not some big arc for him or presentation. It was a tool he used in his arsenal to present a different face (voice) of his sound.
Again, totally biased here. But also totally correct.
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Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
I don't think this one is a particularly good example, since it was a genuine statement about the politics of the music industry and how others profit off of/own the products of musicians' labor. The fact that it was coopted and turned into a joke by so many people diluted the impact of the message and led people to the incorrect conclusion that it was an act of ego-driven celebrity mania.
Bull Shannon
Well-Known Member
And those are all treated as separate projects; whether you declare King Geedorah is "DOOM as King Geedorah" or "Daniel Dumille as King Geedorah," we can all agree Take Me to Your Leader is a King Geedorah project.
Tortured Diaper Baby Dept
Well-Known Member
This makes me think of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. This phenomena of intense artistic performance in juxtaposition to the "off stage" persona would be suitable to look at through the lens of Dionysian frenzy, transcendence, and the ultimate tearing apart of one's self in artistic revelry.
Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
Right; that's akin to a musician recording as a band as opposed to being a solo artist. It signals a different artistic approach, not just a character. Although, to get somewhat meta, you could probably make an argument along the lines that Viktor Vaughn was a character that DOOM was portraying, not that Daniel Dumille was temporarily adopting.
TrainFan73
Frothy
That was his own fault though. He was in charge of the whole operation at that point and very much wanted it viewed as if he was a different artist. The Jam of the Year tour was going to retire all the old Prince Songs. The Vault and Come albums were presented as the death of Prince and obligations to WB. Those were very self inflicted wounds.
TrainFan73
Frothy
Would love to hear @TenderLovingKiller® and @Indymisanthrope ’s thoughts on FJM in this light. His stage persona makes him unbearable to me.
Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
If you've ever stood a few feet away from Nick Cave while he's on stage, I think you'd already be convinced of this idea. He's *extremely* effective at wielding his stage presence to generate a...I don't know, an "emotional field" that envelops the audience.
TrainFan73
Frothy
Also are there any artists putting on a persona to be more commercially successful? Like is that a thing? Sia is the only example where I think I could make an argument for that.
Tortured Diaper Baby Dept
Well-Known Member
Yes, I've no disagreement regarding your assertion. Rather, it sparked musings of my own regarding Nietzsche's own thoughts on the creation of art. It could easily be applied to many musical artists.
Bull Shannon
Well-Known Member
I'm loving this discussion, and as is typical any time I lob a hot take bomb into a room I find myself immediately amending, hemming and hawing, and otherwise realizing all the grey areas on the margins of surety.
I think there's always some inherent artifice in being a performer. Even a musician who is going onstage by their legal name, singing songs directly taken from experience and asserted as truth; that person is still presenting themselves through some manner of filter and making choices in the image they wish to convey. And a shifting image is part of being a performer and evolving your art, be that minor equipment/recording changes or straight-up image overhauls. There's a push-pull, a sort of Alan-Alda-inCrime-And-Punishment "bend vs. break" scale which varies from artist to artist, from reinvention to reinvention. Madonna or Dylan can go through drastic image changes which feel like a natural extension of the unknowability at their core, but it took Weird Al (construct as he may be) twenty years to shave the stache and put in contacts.
It's a form of "ick," and for me the ick creeps in when the presentation of a character/persona takes precedence over the musical product itself.
I think there's always some inherent artifice in being a performer. Even a musician who is going onstage by their legal name, singing songs directly taken from experience and asserted as truth; that person is still presenting themselves through some manner of filter and making choices in the image they wish to convey. And a shifting image is part of being a performer and evolving your art, be that minor equipment/recording changes or straight-up image overhauls. There's a push-pull, a sort of Alan-Alda-inCrime-And-Punishment "bend vs. break" scale which varies from artist to artist, from reinvention to reinvention. Madonna or Dylan can go through drastic image changes which feel like a natural extension of the unknowability at their core, but it took Weird Al (construct as he may be) twenty years to shave the stache and put in contacts.
It's a form of "ick," and for me the ick creeps in when the presentation of a character/persona takes precedence over the musical product itself.
avecigrec
Well-Known Member
Gotcha! I see I meandered off the trail a little bit here. The perils of juggling an infant and a discussion thread. My bad.
An immediate thought for me, then, would he Saul Williams with Niggy Tardust and Neptune Frost (for MartyrLoserKing, Encrypted & Vulnerable, both of which led to his directing a Neptune Frost movie that others portraying the Neptune)
Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
He's so unbearable to me that I refuse to learn enough about him to be able to articulate an informed opinion.
Yes & no; he was also a weird little guy that lived in Minnesota and wore purple and was effete and hypersexual, and when you're that person already, changing your name to an unpronounceable symbol is a risky move that, once initiated, you may not be able to control. I mean...think about the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. That was a case of serious injury, and reasonable conditions for a settlement. But the narrative was stolen for the sake of punchlines.
If Prince had done that in the internet age, people would have had better access to his reasons, and would have had a more sophisticated view of what he was trying to achieve. For people like me who were kids at the time, my only exposure to it was the jokes on the school bus and what I heard secondhand that Jay Leno or whoever had done to mock it on TV the night before.
TrainFan73
Frothy
The best way to do the hot take thread is to lob a nuclear bomb and then put the thread on ignore for a few weeks.
Something along the lines of Beyoncé’s Country Album is clearly a cash grab meant to dupe the dumb country music fans into buying her album.
Hypothetically, you do this and then ghost the thread for a month.
Bull Shannon
Well-Known Member
Sorry to butt in where uninvited but FJM is in back of mind when I think of this topic. I think he remains relatively unchanged as a persona (haircut for the most recent album nonwithstanding), and the reinventions are more apparent in the music (apocalypse album, divorce album, jazzy crooner album).
That's the pop world in a nutshell (non-derogatory), isn't it? Rap, too. You're deliberately putting on an image in order to sell a mystique or represent something larger for people to buy into when they choose to stan.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
I tried to avoid bringing him up but it was really FJM that had me initially think about the idea of rock star personas. When I first heard of what he was doing it turned me off, but after hearing the music and reflecting on the nature of rock stars as performance artist, I realized what he was doing was no different than Dylan, Bowie, Many rappers, Kiss, Etc... Its all part of the performance FJM just overtly acknowledged that it was all a facade up front instead of being coy about it.
Indymisanthrope
Well-Known Member
Consciously? Yes, I think there are almost certainly some that do. But I think it's also likely the case that industry norms assert themselves in a manner that this is "how things are done," you know?
What's the color scheme for this album? Okay, so how does that translate to the album art? Okay, so how are you going to communicate that on stage? Will any of the music video costumes be carried over to the concerts? What will the background dancers be wearing? What will be on the screen behind you? What are the talking points you'll be taking into interviews about the album and its significance and why people should listen to it? What will your appearance be in the photoshoots that will make people pay attention and understand this is you in the present as opposed to the hundred photoshoots you've done in the last decade? And so on. Is that the artist dreaming up a character specifically because characters = money? Not at all. But it's still all in service of selling something.