Skip to main content

10. Alan Vega - It (Fader) ... SPEW'S Top 10 countdown.

Image
(Steven J Wilson)


If you know who Alan Vega is we can move along. 
Alan Vega with one of his installations.

But maybe some of you don’t. 
Alan Vega was part rockabilly hiccup, part electronic futurist. He was a poetic minimalist. Whether as musician, either with his partner Martin Rev in the band Suicide or solo, or as visual artist (his gallery shows were infrequent, but legendary), Vega was uncompromising and unwilling to play the game. He was interested in energy, in process, not in creating a portfolio. One romanticizes artists at one's peril, but Alan Vega didn't have time for bullshit, and his work shows it. 

Alan Vega died in 2016; he was seventy-eight years old. Much of his life he’d been a bit cat and mouse about his age, not wanting to let his Seventies “punk” peers at Max's and CBGB's know he was fifteen years older than them. He needn’t have worried. Nothing dated Alan Vega. 

His posthumous swan song It i(the back half of a New York 'exit' sign) is as abrasive and aggressive as his first record with Suicide, the album that introduced us to "Frankie Teardrop" (a Bruce Springsteen favorite), "Cheree," and "Ghost Rider.' Forty years on from that testimonial debut, It is just as charged and challenging. 
"Dukes God Bar"

"Stars"
 Recorded over a six-year period, much of it in ill health, with his wife and collaborator, Liz Lamere (who supplies the stark, pulsing electronic buzz of cheap keyboards and dime store effects), It is both a raging farewell and a prayer for his teenage son, Dante. 

 Vega’s avant-shrieks and rockabilly boy from hell vocals remain fierce. His minimal poetic scorn for big money America is sharp - he’s the kind of artist who get so much from a minimum of materials, the kind that a fool might be tempted to say “hell, I could do that” about. They said the same of Jackson Pollock; and were wrong. 
From the opening salvo "D.T.M. (Dead to Me)," an admonition  to those who'd impose oppressive authority over individuality and the creative impulse, to "Stars," a tough, solemn prayer for Dante, and a blessing to all who create in this uncertain future - "do what you want ... anything ... the power is given,," It is a eulogy for the New York of diner, dingy bars and cheap lofts, and a last rage at the dying of the light. 

One helluva will and testament. 
An interesting piece from the New York Times: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/arts/design/alan-vega-ignored-the-art-world-it-wont-return-the-favor.html?_r=0
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

The people have spoken.

Cancer Rising, Goodnight Grant, So Long Jessi

(Steven J Wilson)
A few weeks back my urologist cut something out of my bladder. A papillary carcinoma, I think it is called. One more box to tick off on my Medical History, one more reason I’ll never buy life insurance: Cancer. Oh, I’m alright. Doc’s pretty sure they “got it.” Of course, having a cam and a cutter crammed up my prick may be a little more frequent feature of my life. But, so it goes. It goes, that is, until you’re gone. Grant Hart is gone. 56, cancer. Jessi Zazu is gone. 28, cancer. I scroll through my Facebook friends – Jesus, lots of gone ones. Most gone to cancer. Devin, Greg – hell, so many. Shit’s in my family, too. My in-laws and my sister-in-law have had their battles with the stuff. My mom was lost to cancer, at 73. She’d be 100 in October. My dad followed her three years later; he was 87. He would have been 109 yesterday if he was from the Caucasus Mountains and ate lots of yogurt. Cancer? Nope. Heartbreak. It happens. Saul Bellow understood. Oh,...
1 comment
Read more

2019 - Six months in. These records don't suck.

(Steven J Wilson)
In the first six months of 2019, these sixty-six recordings impressed me favorably. Some of them I'll rarely listen to again. Some will become old friends. The ten in bold stand out a bit from the rest of the pack. I haven't been of a mind to write record reviews for some time now. However, if you want my spontaneous two cent's worth on any of these titles, I'll be happy to give you a quick take to affirm, bolster my support. In no particular order: 21 Savage – I am > I was Kel Assouf – Black Tenere Deerhunter – Why Hasn’t Everything Disappeared Divine Comedy – Office Politics Stella Donnelly – Beware of the Dogs Dream Syndicate – These Times Du Blonde – Lung Bread for Daddy Willie Farmer – The Man from the Hill Felice Brothers – Undress Flesheaters – I Used to be Pretty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppn_T5b_Lo Fontaines D.C. – Dogrel Fleshtones – Budget Buster Robert Forster – Inferno Better Oblivion Community Center – s/t B...
Post a Comment
Read more

There is a town in Arkansas called Elaine.

(Steven J Wilson)
Elaine, Arkansas is in Phillips County, one of the poorest counties in the United States, a flat expanse of deprivation where your Google Maps won’t keep you from getting lost. Elaine is lost. It looks like a place where nothing good has happened in a very long time.  That's, at least in part, because something terrible happened there. Something a majority of Americans don't know about.  I'm educated as a historian, but I lack the imprimatur of an advanced degree. I will do my best to offer a concise history lesson.  The facts are straightforward. To escape destitution and indentured servitude, black sharecroppers in the Arkansas delta organized under the banner of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. On the 30th of September 1919, a prominent, white attorney named Ulysses Bratton traveled the three hours from Little Rock to meet with the workers to discuss strategy. They met at a small church on the outskirts of Elaine at a place called Hoo...
Post a Comment
Read more