Before I start talking about the subject of this article, I’d like to say a few things about my approach to rock and roll, life, and, and how I reckon the two. Let’s hope I make my point, because I’d much prefer to be understood and dismissed, rather than misunderstood and supported.

My opinion is that if you’re going to talk about rock and roll, do it.  The words about music and the music go hand in hand.

If you choose only to hold rock at a distance and make safe little observations about this and that, rock will respond by disassociating itself with the commentary.  Rock and roll doesn’t like to be categorized, and it sure as hell doesn’t like to be patronized by those who will not swim in the muck that they speak about.

Rock and roll is not Major League Baseball.  It is art.  It is also more than art.  It is a force that supports rebellion and fun, and wherever rock and roll exists in human history, it will take you off guard.  If you weren’t, it wouldn’t be rock.

Rock often has guitars and hard rhythms.  It often has cussing.  It often has drug use and violence involved with it.  It sometimes even advocates drugs and violence.  Rock and roll both speaks about sex and is accompanied by sex.  Rock and roll intimidates on one side of the coin, while on the other, it protects.  Rock and roll is here to make you question whether or not you mean what you say you mean.

Anyone who has forgotten any of these things is no longer talking about rock music. They are classifying plant species.   I can sit and talk about this band or that band all day.  Then, I can throw in a genre name, and a band name.  I can inject a list of three influences, I can collect quotes from lyrics, I can talk about critical reception, but these factors, as FUCKING UBIQUITOUS as they might be nowadays, don’t really make a rock review.  It is merely the formula for a surface level categorization, which I believe should be avoided if possible.

If I want to read about rock music, I don’t want it to be decreed to me from above by someone who in real life can’t prove to me that they know what they’re talking about, outside of names, dates, and facts that I could find on Wikipedia in a 3 minute web session at home.

Do you know how easy it is to get an amateur rock review printed?  It takes a computer and an Ethernet connection.  Sometimes, believe it or not, rock reviews are written by misguided hipsters who are just good at talking shit.  Shit sells, it doesn’t matter if it’s true.  Doesn’t matter if it’s reckless.  People read that crap and assume there’s real information in there.

Rock and roll is such an abstract subject, and it’s such a glamorous taboo.  It’s so easy to blabber about it publicly and get paid, and any questions that may arise as a result are moot.  It’s all up for interpretation, and all shitty rock journalists know that at the end of the day they’re not writing for rock fans. They’re trying to impersonate rock fans.

Real rock fans are out there, but they don’t always get the forum that they deserve.  Hell, you yourself are probably one of the good ones. In which case, rock on.  At any rate, I’m just gonna go ahead and move forward with this review.

I do in fact believe that it’s a good idea to get some facts on a page. So that people can see the facts. We all like facts. Facts are good. Facts help people when they need facts to have.

So let’s get some facts on the page:

EVENT: SWANS, in performance

OPENERS:  Wooden Wand

CITY: Tulsa, Oklahoma

VENUE: The Marquee

DATE: Feb 20, 2011

SIGNIFICANCE:  reappearance from mysterious band hiatus, important band to underground rock history, influential band to mainstream rock history, devoted fan-base excited to see beloved band on fans’ home turf, glamorous front-man personality, dangerous band image, reputation for loud and confrontational performances

Now, a few of my personal, SUPERFICIAL, notes, in a handy bullet point format:

WOODEN WAND:

• Good show, a little odd compared to the band they were warming the crowd up for, but good.

• If you would have squinted hard enough at the band AND the crowd, and had been a little inebriated, and someone told you that you were watching a red dirt band at a club in OKC, it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch for you to have gone along with, believe it or not.

• But yeah, you weren’t missing much if you didn’t see the openers.  As I’ve said before, that’s probably what Wooden Wand is aiming for.  Check.

SWANS:

• Loud.  Although not as loud as I’d been warned to expect.  When I saw My Bloody Valentine the fluid in my eyeballs oscillated, and I could feel the air setting up standing waves in front of my face.  SWANS wasn’t as loud as that, but it did the trick.  It was loud enough to grip the crowd, and inasmuch…. Right-o.

• Compelling.  Kind of a you-had-to-be-there experience, but, if you weren’t there, uh, let’s see…

• Imagine a pig had been slaughtered in a club just before you arrived. The tension and confusion is in the air already, and then the show comes on, consisting of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser opera, played on vinyl at Led Zeppelin volumes over the loudspeakers.  A guy is operating a chainsaw onstage, and he’s got a real foul mood.  You can see that he’s yelling at people in the crowd, but you can’t figure out why.  No one can.

[None of this happened, but you can see where I’m pointing, right?]

• Refreshing.  I don’t get out to bigger concerts much these days, but I get out to enough.  I’ve been to a lot of memorable shows in Tulsa since I was a youngin’, and this harkened back to those good old days.  Haven’t seen a big-name Tulsa concert this good in awhile.

• Off-putting? Gira spit on a dude, and folks in the audience were all buzzing about it.  I was thrilled when I learned about it, but I know some people have criticisms of Mr. Gira that have to do in part with this very type of thing.  Two of my friends who are long-time Swans fans expressed to me disappointment with Gira’s performance in SWANS lately.  They claim his band functions too much as an auxiliary to The Gira Show.  It’s a shame that he works so hard to eclipse the others, they point out, because, for example, several people I talked to after the show thought that one of the best parts of the whole performance was the drummer, Thor’s, AWESOME, PUMMELING BADASSNESS.

Can’t say that I can knock that last criticism off the table.  Gira leads the show like a symphony conductor, directly giving bodily and verbal cues to the other musicians throughout the show, at times shouting sternly at them to get louder, or to quit doing something he doesn’t like.  Gets pretty uncomfortable watching it at times.

I was pretty impressed with Gira’s performance style, though.  I remember standing in the audience, vibing on the effect of one dude controlling the sound of a whole band so subtly, but, like those friends of mine, I can’t help but wonder how the sound would have changed had Gira given up executive command of it.  I also can’t help but wonder if Gira might actually dig the result!

I also understand Gira’s mellower, prettier project, Angels of Light, isn’t as draconian as SWANS.  Apparently, it’s a nice, pleasant trip.

Which to me, gotta say it, seems like evidence that SWANS is a obviously a deeply important vision for the dude.  Can’t say that if the shoes were on my feet I wouldn’t wanna let any urgency slip by me either.  The guy’s built a good part of his reputation on fucking with people’s sensibilities in art, music, and writing, so I’m guessing he’s still intentionally working that angle with SWANS, even if, worst (or best) case scenario, the guy comes across as a harsh dictator.

Now, maybe here I can dig a little deeper into my personal thoughts about the whole shebang?

There’s a level of experience in rock that some bands play to.  It’s not a requirement, in my opinion, but it can be the thing that makes a band spectacular, instead of just totally awesome.  If I had to call it something I’d call it Conscious Synchronization Of Band Mythology With The Real World.  Aka, making the myth real.

It takes two things:  a savvy artist, and a willing participant.

Let’s take the Smiths for instance.  I’m one of those Smiths fans that care about the music, and Morrissey’s literary character, almost equally.  I try and figure the guy out, and when I hear the lyrics, not only do I ponder the meanings, but also why that one particular guy said them.  Morrissey’s a tricky guy, he’s got a sick wit, and I’m invested in the fact that he’s a real guy, out there in the real world.

Morrissey is both a character in his songs (either directly or indirectly,  if you read between the lines), and he’s a real guy like myself.  I’ve felt plenty of the feelings he’s talked about, and he expresses them like few other writers in music or text.  He’s built a mythos around himself that is so elegant you can’t just be a prick and say, “That guy’s a crybaby. He’s just making that shit up.  He’s just got a vivid imagination.”  Not if you want anyone to give a shit about your trip anyway.

But the point in this Smiths sidebar is only that the music, the words, the characters, the real people, my own experiences, and the relationships between all of the above, are real.  Like it or not, the Smiths move me, and they reach farther than a metal band that solely beats the crap out of me with chug riffs and aggression.  Because the latter is one-sided, and in the end, it’s Morrissey’s songs that have a greater power to REALLY knock the shit out of me.

[That’s not to say that metal doesn’t a) pwn the Smiths, and b) pwn in general. I don’t even think most Smiths fans could argue otherwise.]

So now, all the foreplay above was put there so I could build up the skeleton of the case for explaining my actual, serious interpretation of MY SWANS CONCERT EXPERIENCE, from the perspective of a rock fan, and someone who gives a shit about rock concerts, for the record, seeing how this is supposed to be the entire effing point of the article….

Assuming Gira’s spearheading of SWANS is effective enough to manipulate the mythos of the band, while simultaneously marching forward with the complex path it and its fans have taken over the years, you’re gonna have to take into account the dissolution of what SWANS began as, and that he takes that into account, too.

SWANS hatched with help from the same scene that Sonic Youth, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the Glenn Branca Ensemble all sprung from.  In other words, high art.  High art as punk rock and vice versa, with that little bit of “something else” thrown in, too.

Michael Gira is an accomplished writer.  Let’s not deny this fact.  We don’t have to agree on whether or not his writing is “good” (I think it is), but Gira has a literary style, and he rocks it.  If you need evidence, do a google search!  You could also just lighten up and continue to indulge me.

Michael Gira is proficient in other media, too.  Like him or not, he’s got a voice, and it’s specifically Gira’s voice.  There are other intense dudes out in the world, to be sure, but Gira’s particular brand of defiance and articulation are unique in rock music.

Now, why would SWANS be anything less than a dying beast, at this point in history?  Such a legendary band, such gorgeous albums, at moments so unforgettable, such a juggernaut in the world of post-1980 art.  “Disinterred” from the grave, as Gira vaguely explains, unexpectedly, years after the band’s formal death?  Doesn’t compute, not at the surface anyhow, not if you ask me.

No two eyes see art the same way, but from mine I value the hugeness of the weird world that punk and post-punk kept alive.  Can you imagine a world without punk?  GROSS!  Don’t try!

Can you imagine ever hearing about Bob Marley if it weren’t for college radio stations to help carry the flame to you?  Can you picture how much less cool society would be than it already is, without there being gutter shit-kickers and aggressive rabble-rousers?  Wouldn’t you prefer those rabble-rousers to have guitars and mohawks?  Sure you would!  For fuck sake, man, be reasonable!

So, if it weren’t for punk, then the No Wave bands, then Sonic Youth specifically, the course of my life would have surely sucked.  Even some of the lame bands you take for granted today would have never gotten past Bing Fucking Crosby, had not there been something rotten in the world to foul up the fruit cake a little.  Do you know how good rotten fruitcake is?

IT’S THE ONLY TYPE OF FRUITCAKE ANYONE SHOULD EAT.

So, the effect of this perfect type of underground art, i.e., sick and twisted rock and roll, is now dying off.  Yep, oh sure, it’ll come back full force one day, but there’s a finiteness to any given band’s lifeline.  The Beatles got it right when they packed up and called it a day before they started to suck.  But the Beatles were the biggest things the world had ever seen at the time.

SWANS has an immense legacy, and that legacy is fated to end in ugly death throes: overcritical reviews, mean-spirited rumors, ridicule, dismissal, and eventually, ambivalence.

But how the fuck WOULD that great band end, if any other way than this?  A band that’s spent its entire career pissing off and scaring audiences, all the while posturing grotesquely and torturing itself.  SWANS has been ridiculing itself for years, it’s been saying that it is shit for years, that’s one of the things that makes it SWANS.

The one thing you can’t say is that it hasn’t all been according to plan.  Michael Gira seems to revel in a sort of reality that exists past the conventions of valuing long life, public praise, discovering truths of human existence, love conquering all.  If this has been the direction all along, you are watching the endgame.  You are watching Gira put his money where his mouth is.

There will be no closing curtain.  There will be no closing credits.  There will be the legacy of a truly great band falling apart before your very eyes, there will be ugliness, for YOU to see.  There will be SWANS the way you really want them to be.

If you want the whole story of SWANS to be and end real, start to finish, so far you’re still in good shape, and if you have the good fortune to be able to see them live in concert, you don’t have to be happy with what you see, but you can at least see something very real crumbling before your eyes, and watch Gira try and land this insane beast.

[Oh, and for the record I’m predicting the Smiths story is going to end in Morrissey moving to L.A. and Johnny Marr joining Modest Mouse.]

-B. Whisenhunt [March 3rd , 2011]