SUBSPECIES: Live in Concert
by Benjamin Russell

I saw Suzanne Vega play the Lebanon Opera House a couple weekends back, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands. It must have been an awkward and uncomfortable situation that she was in, to stand onstage and sing while someone else was playing her music next to her.

Ms. Vega informed us that she had broken her arm riding a bicycle, and that the strength had not yet returned enough that she could play guitar for an entire concert. While she did play and sing for about five songs out of the twenty-one song set, she most frequently stood in front of the microphone, her hands hanging awkwardly at her sides. She would shove them in the pockets of her kimono, remove them, raise them to flutter on either side of the microphone, and then lower them back to her sides. Her fingers did not contort themselves into the chords of the songs, she did not play air guitar along with her guest guitarist. And so they flitted, not playing, not still.

It is not unusual for a musical artist to be faced with external variations on his or her creations. The transition from inspiration to publication is full to the brim with reinterpretation and compromise. The song begins with a key image and a catchy chord progression. Lyrics are spun and a melody line is constructed to compliment the tone and content of the finished lyrics. The song is tested: just the singer and the guitar. Refined as a hesitant new piece over a number of small-venue concerts, accompaniment is experimented with depending on whether the singer is performing solo or with back-up. Background harmony vocals are toyed with and discarded, a snare and a bass guitar line are finalized. Repeat audience members now recognize the song and request it.

The song then goes through another series of mutations upon recording. The producer, eager to use the amount of guest talent and varied instruments at his disposal, wishes to give the song layers of sound and accompaniment. A&R men from the artist’s label request that the song be recorded a little more up-tempo, as they’d like to have it as a possible second single in case the album does well upon release. The song is recorded piecemeal, starting with an electronic drum loop, adding bass, acoustic guitar, vocals, and then backing vocals. The drum loop is re-recorded with a real drummer, and a string ensemble is brought in and orchestrated for the final punch.

None of these studio musicians will accompany the artist on his or her album release tour, but a new set of musicians will do their best to reinterpret the recording producer’s reinterpretation of the road-tested variations on the artistic compromise of the original inspiration, in order to perform it in a feasible manner that will still be recognized by the radio audience.

If the artist is lucky he or she has actually had some input into these changes, and has actually agreed to them or become familiar enough with the current version that earlier version has been overwritten in his or her memory. In a radio station interview, the artist mentions he or she will be playing the song in an intimate, acoustic performance in the local Chain Bookstore cum Coffee Shop, and -- upon playing it -- flubs it a little bit, as it has become so unfamiliar.

I am assuming that most of the above description is familiar to Ms. Vega, but the last part is not common to her experience. Through it all, I assume that she keeps the core acoustic portrait of words and chords somewhere in her self, and no amount of studio permutations can alter that Uncarved Block. Which must have made it additionally odd to hear another guitarist play some of her most personal songs as she sang them, without the ability to alter tempo to accent a phrase or sculpt a refrain because she could not command both the words and the music. Even if she was used to the compromise of working with a band, of sacrificing some of the ability to put life and variation back into a song as it is being recreated as it is being performed, even if this has become part and parcel of performing after more than twenty years... her hands still didn’t know what to do with themselves.

I don’t have the patience to work through a transition, slowly shifting from my illustrative example into its application in the comics world. The issue irritates me enough to want to just blurt out the following:

If you didn’t create Spider-Man, don’t reinterpret him to serve your ends and tell the story you want to tell. Leave him alone, let him stop. Create characters of your own. Your great story about police corruption might sell easier if you can set it in Gotham and work Batman into it somehow, but it would work even better if you wrote it in a world of your own creation and with humans formed without the limitations or influence of years of continuity and a vocal fan-base.

Let the old characters cease with the departure of their original conceivers. Tell your own stories. Sing your own songs.

Benjamin Russell is feeling particularly cranky about extended corporate serial comics these days. He is also the Columns Editor of PopImage.


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