Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [25]
When most people get ready to make with the R-C Fusion they generally approach it by way of “upgrading” rock. Whereas, I said, I get the feeling that ELP are after just the opposite. And I admire the piss outa them for it! What could be more fun than tromping up and down Mussorgsky's spine for 45 minutes or so?
No go. Mr. Lake: “To be serious it's not necessary to be miserable. We don’t sit there with long faces, but we’re serious about the work we do. And you’d probably be inclined to get a more conservative vibe off a band like ours than somebody like the Who perhaps.”
You guys are simply not cooperating at all. What is all this brick-walled orthodoxy?
“We’ve tried to play things like ‘Pictures’ in the way we play our music, more snappy and dynamic than it could have ever been conceived; Mussorgsky didn’t have electronic instruments.”
Better, but still hardly the stuff of legend. I’m glad you got the gonads to claim improvingthe old dead geek, yet you speak in tones of such pope-sucking reverence. Don’t you realize that the traditional and still unchallenged viewpoint among the real Mentholatum classical fans is that the one thing which totally destroys the sensitivity and signification of any piece of classical music is loud amplification?
Greg: “That's often true. Depends, doesn’t it, how well the adaptation is done. I’ve heard lousy orchestras, too; that's my answer to that.”
Yeah, but you’re doing all this stuff on your terms, on your ground. With an audience fulla ravenoid Quaalude freaks or worse. Something's gotta be compromised.
Lake holds the floor: “It depends what your criteria of judgment is. If they can enjoy ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ by us, it's just as good as them enjoying ‘Pictures’ by Mussorgsky. In fact, a lot of people get to hear it that never would otherwise. So for the little bit you compromise, you also open the door for a lot of people.” I never in my mottled career saw anybody walk the line between utter insult to established canons and incongruous regard for those same canons so ingenuously.
You must have gotten a lot of flak from purists, though. For “disrespecting” the classics, I mean. You know what I mean.
Palmer slices the guppy again: “Not really. I played the piece to a professor at the Guild Hall in London. He told me that for three people, having to deal with electronics and things, he admired it. We’ve had that happen other times. There was a piece called ‘Toccata,’ by Alberto Ginastera, he's a Brazilian composer, and his was the greatest credit we’ve ever had. We recorded it, and took the tape to Brazil to ask him to hear what we’ve done with his music before we released it, because you have to have the guy's approval. And he said: ‘That's the way it should have sounded.’”
This is getting more disgusting by the second. So you got patted on the head, so what? How in the name of all that's crass can you possibly sit there and tell me that while stabbing your pianos and wiping your ass with theremins you’re simultaneously on a goodytwoshoes mission to bring Good Music to the rabble?
The most insufferable snob, the most hateful patronization, is the one that's unaware, the guileless shiv. “We hope if anything we’re encouraging the kids to listen to music that has more quality.” Carl, if it makes a difference at this point. These guys have been android gang-brainbanged by their very axes. “We don’t come along to educate them. We come along to entertain them, and if they’re ready for it, they take it.”
A lot of musicians, I say, (thinking I’m drowning them in irony) have a condescending attitude. Zappa, say.
“Most bands have a condescending attitude,” sez Carl, “because when you’re playing something you believe in anyway, you’re trying to make everyone else believe in it. American musicians seem to have that attitude. Every American jazz musician I’ve met has been arrogant, maybe a little big-headed. It's just the nature of your country that makes you this way. I don’t think jazz musicians in this country have presented their music any different in the last 30 years. They