Experience vs. Evidence

In the next ten years, the entire experience of seeing a concert will have changed. Forever.

These things and infants are everywhere, and you complain about guns?

Hunter S. Thompson claimed that no Doors recording existed that captured the grandeur of Jim Morrison and company on stage. I believe this, although I never bore witness to the spectacle myself. Regardless, the only real evidence will always be the albums the Doors released. Thompson’s historic experience either died with him, or ended up on the wall behind his office chair. This is, needless to say, unfortunate.

The ways in which people currently communicate did not exist in any form when Woodstock happened. The experience of being there has been memorialized in two ways; a documentary film with companion album, and the stories from people who were actually there.

Like it or not, this is the sole historical document for a sizable percentage of people.

My earliest concert experiences were VHS tapes of The Police. It’s the first time I can clearly recall cringing, due to the behavior of the performers. There were long sequences where Sting made me feel embarrassed to be watching it. This is key.

It’s something that happened more and more frequently, after the dawn of MTV. Bands and singers would go confrontational with makeup and costumes, and sing directly into the camera. You know, something I have never, ever been comfortable with, and the default mode of every YouTube vlogger. 

The famous Woodstock shot. Everyone is in the moment. Only the photographer is taking pictures.

It’s like someone is getting right in your face. Fuck that shit. How many concerts have you enjoyed, where you thought “wow, the best part was how the singer got right in my face, gazing unblinking into my eyes like Hannibal Lecter”? The answer is none. None concerts.

As a rule, I won’t watch anything that employs this mode. There’s no logical reason for it. It’s masturbatory. I’ve never seen The Blair Witch Project, and you know what? I don’t consider it a movie, either. It heralded a truly odious form of viral marketing (among others), where a jump-scare movie would use night-vision cameras to catch the audience jumping at the scares. That’s just evidence of what is literally the easiest way to frighten someone.

From a test screening of FISH IN A BARREL!

With evidence, one can look back and think, “what was so scary about this?” With experience, the scare always remains.

When a concert is filmed, it moves outside the “concert experience”. It becomes about making the band or performer look as good as possible, and adding cameras to capture the size of the audience. Politics emerge based on the relative attractiveness of the band members, and the resultant real estate they enjoy on the video. If there’s a woman, and she’s even slightly toothsome, she gets the giant magnifying glass, until she burns up like an ant in the sun. If there are two men of similar talents and egos, they will be goaded to fight like Peruvian gamecocks. It’s all shit.

Except for the Dead Kennedys Live videotape. And Zappa’s Baby Snakes. That’s the greatest “concert film” ever made. (The Last Waltz is a Scorcese movie, come on.)

Now, think a moment, if you’ve experienced both live concerts and concerts recorded on video.

Which do you speak of more passionately?

The live shows. Ergo, that’s more important. More historic.

People hold up smartphones at concerts now, ruining the experience by making a bad recording they’ll never replay. Meanwhile, if I’m there, I’m living in the moment. Listening to the music, suffering fools, trying to get up the guts to hit on some unsuspecting nymph. Making mental notes for comics and articles, about what I experienced. 

What if all I did was snap unflattering pictures of bands in concert that I no longer like, and post them on a blog with negative comments, for ad revenue? Wasn’t there an execrable subhuman a few years back who found fame doing that with celebrities? You remember; he had a similar name to a hotel heiress, and the most punchable face in the world? (I’m not hosting that goblin’s image, you know who I’m talking about.)

Two of the hugest influences upon the creation of the Bands I Useta Like strip were:

1. A strip in Motorbooty by Lloyd Dangle about seeing Iggy Pop

I got my hands on that magazine sometime in the early 90s. It was a treasure trove of Detroit musical madness. That’s where I learned that Iggy Pop was considered as a replacement for The Doors after Jim Morrison died, until record executives saw Iggy circumcise himself onstage with a broken Stroh’s bottle. Motorbooty introduced me to MC5, with insane firsthand tales far more interesting than their actual music.

I mentioned this in the interview from last year. Lloyd Dangle’s comic strip about being pressed against a support beam at an Iggy show made an indelible imprint on me; the idea that personal experiences could sustain a strip.

Then these guys cemented it:

2. Instant Piano, by Evan Dorkin and Kyle Baker

This strip is contained almost entirely in an early issue of DORK!. Full pagers, lettered and mostly drawn by Baker with assists from Dorkin, about the two of them enduring concerts amongst the most annoying people imaginable. 

From Evan Dorkin’s Milk & Cheese.

I’ve known Evan since the Before Times. He used to gracefully critique issues of Drop Dead that I sent him, and even gave it a plug in DORK!. We used to bump into each other at conventions, and the sole reason I haven’t mentioned him before now is because he deserves his own lengthy article here. There’s funny, and then there’s Evan Dorkin funny; doubled over, eyes bulging, gasping for breath, how-can-a-comic-strip-make-me-laugh-this-hard funny. Since the 1980s.

Evan has penned comics about fanboys, ’90s trends, and playground rhymes that went on to become the high standard of humor for those topics. (Plus Bill & Ted.) Nothing I can draw about the 1990s can top what Dorkin has already done. He pounded the nails in the 90s’ coffin himself, with his incisive illustrations for Generation Ecch. All the while, he defined cartoon dichotomy with the relentlessly brutal Milk & Cheese. 

And he used to go to live shows with Kyle Baker.

OH HOW I ADORED Kyle Baker’s expansion of 1990’s Dick Tracy. Legends say that Warren Beatty was impossible regarding his portrayal here.

I don’t talk much about Kyle Baker because, as a cartoonist, I weary of the taste of a gun’s barrel.

When another artist does lettering so well that I can’t tell if it’s a font, you better believe I’m emerald with envy. Kyle Baker hates Saturn because it rivals the size of his talent.

Anyway, Evan and Kyle would rant and burn on everyone present, and it was absolutely side-splitting. (A dude with a Dr. Seuss hat approaches, thinking “I am sweaty and shirtless. I must rub my body all over Kyle.”) It was merciless, too, which is part of what attracted me to it. Often when I voice a negative opinion about a rock star, I discover that a lot of other people felt the same. Or, they disagree, based on their experiences. 

That’s why nobody wants to watch that video you took with your phone of that show the other night. That’s why you don’t even care about it.

That’s the difference.

©Evan Dorkin.

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