IN THE BELLY OF THE TRENDY BEAST
I had a wee look around at the crowd as I squeezed through them down to about
five people from the front. It was an odd, interesting one. The benefits (and
drawbacks) of an artist hitting it big online is that any-and-everybody can
find their work at the same time and plug into it, if they so choose. And
tonight’s crowd was a testament to that new art democratisation, a strange
pick-and-mix of teens and twenties and middle aged all the way up to unexpected pensioner. From hip to hip replacement, in other words.
I think this is genuinely the first time I have ever been to see an artist I
have just randomly discovered on the net, and the difference in audience
demographics was stark. Normally an audience grows organically along with a
band, a few people finding them and a following slowly growing. But instantly here you
had a multi-generational still-expanding gathering. Which, quite apart from
demonstrating the net’s reach, also demonstrates the reach of Welles’s music,
how it resonates amongst all ages and sexes.
We have all been insta-spindoctrinated now to immediately see the same things in
the same public spaces and places. If you had told me a year ago I would be going
to see an American folk singer who was making his name by casting himself as
somebody converting the news into social commentary in songs on a daily basis,
I wouldn’t have believed you. Quite simply, I have never personally seen
anybody like this before. The only other artist I have personally ever
encountered musically who had constantly tried to turn headlines torn from the news into
patchwork lyrics, analogous to the cut-ups of William S Burroughs, was Richey
Edwards, the long-deceased member of the Manic Street Preachers, and it made me
think a bit.
It didn’t go so well for Edwards (who did have some other serious problems unrelated to creativity production rates), sadly, but that didn’t make his automatic writing transcriptions any less fascinating. I just wondered what piper price Welles would have to pay. I suppose that remains to be seen, in some ways; it has certainly catapulted him to the top of the media tree rapidowise. But that level of painful-news-reductive production isn’t something that could be kept up forever, so it’s just as well he’s out touring and taking a step back from the booster rocket style that got him attention, shooting him to the next phase of career escape velocity.
Constant references to current news items also
mean that songs will date rapidly, at least insofar as the transient names for
ancient corruption games come and go and come again. Plus it seemed pretty
unfair to saddle an entertainer with the ‘saviour/prophet’ label he seems to be
getting nailed to him. The album he is touring for, Middle, is actually quite
another beast altogether, away from the acoustic stuff that has made him
instantly infamous. It’s electric, and much more country and western-inflected,
southern vectors glistening in much more traditional easy listening pathways. So
it seemed difficult to pin the man down, which is no bad thing. How the aesthetic
patchwork will sit with the easily-bored-and-forgetful in the Disunited States
of Amnesia is something that, again, remains to be seen.
So all these weighty things were grinding through my mind as I waited for him
to come on. Well, not really; I was just idly people-watching and noting
bemusedly that the 1968 Jeannie C. Riley country song Harper Valley PTA was one
of the songs played over the PA. Made perfect sense, really. Welles’s output is
fairly whitebread in some ways, and that’s not an insult. He comes from Ozark,
Arkansas (I still want to know why ‘sas’ is pronounced ‘saw’ in that state’s name!),
a place that is 87% white. And the assembling puzzle pieces begin to form a
bigger picture as they slide unbidden into focussing revealing place. Or
something.
I
was dodging back and forth and left and right just before Welles took to the
stage as the lights went down, trying to see where I could stand that would not
have some big black-shadow-casting bastard in front of me. There were other
instruments onstage. I had seen a bit of one video where he was playing with a
band at a gig, so I knew he would not be solo for the whole evening. How it
would all kick off was answered momentarily when the disinformation-superhighway-mocking
troubadour took to the stage by himself, to the usual whoops and cheers and
whistles. He was wearing what almost looked like a hacked-down poncho, bleeding
Native American Indian colours, and what looked like a big medal necklace for
some unspecified sonic sporting win sitting astride his chest. A harmonica hung in front of his face waiting for breathy trouble. He stepped up to
the mike.
The crowd went silent.
And he kicked off with his acoustic guitar with his song The List, about the
Epstein list. The lyrics are funny and satiric and vicious and almost
rap-influenced: “But I know a list that don’t exist/and buddy so do you/it’s the
Epstein list/it’s a mystery list with a twist/with a twist/it’s a myth of a list
that we all just missed/be an optimist, not a pessimist/if you wish to
persist/you probably ought to forget that list.” A succinct summary of the
modern zeitgeist: the comedy and the fear and the paranoia and the patriotism
and the events broadcast round the world to the knowing sighing headshaking crowd
everywhere, at all times. People reacted to each harmonica blast like a guitar solo. I really liked that, and had never seen anything like it. Then again, I don't go to see any artists who play harmonica. And who does, these days? Except now, with this man, of course.
And that’s another thing. Thirty years ago nobody over here had heard of D----- T----, or Epstein, or all these American names that bombard us like senile injurious meteorites on a daily sneering basis. We have been conditioned to be interested in the political and media machinations of a rogue nation, giving it unearned credence and extra salvation chances because of the goodwill it gathered through its soft power pop cultural domination of the world since WWII. Everybody here in Scotland now knows the difference between the Republicans and Democrats, can do yankspeak in perfect storm glottal lockstep, talk like an American and obsess over their left and right and wrong scream-magnet podcasters, killing the Scottish character as we are subsumed to vomitous American corporate culture. But it also means we know who Jesse Welles is singing about, and whether or not that is a good thing apart from our shared comprehension stakes is entirely up to you.
The song finished, the crowd roared, the next song started. I stood watching Welles. He has rock star good looks, and his shaghairdo made him remind me of a young Bon Jovi. I could see how he would appeal to the young on an attraction level, and the older on a political level. Not to deny the young their own political engagement, but hotguy and hotgirl looks matter more when you’re young. After a few songs he stopped.
“I always wanted to come to Scotland,” he said, almost shyly, “I love it here.” That answered my own question as to whether this was the first time he had ever been here.
“WELCOME!” I shouted.
“FAGGOT!” shouted some halfwit guy from near the back moments later. I didn’t think he was shouting that at me for welcoming an American guest artist to Scotland, which meant he was shouting at the guy he had paid twenty-nine quid to see, for whatever lobotocrap reasons of his own he had. Deranged. What a fucking idiot! Welles did not register either my shout or the insult in any way, merely staring off into the distance. He had an odd demeanour onstage, seemingly not in the room half the time, with a thousand yard stare a million miles into anywhere but here and now. It was weirdly, interestingly disconnected. He did not engage very much with the audience at all. I wondered vaguely if he was slightly shy, or awestruck that he was walking the stage in a foreign country after being lifted here on a magic net carpet so quickly. Who knew.
The clownjaws homoroar reminded me of going to see Bad News, the Comic Strip Presents band with some of the guys from the Young Ones (Rik Mayall, Ade Edmonson, Nigel Planer, plus Peter Richardson) in the Edinburgh Playhouse back in 1987, when I was a teenager. During a break between songs, somebody shouted out from the audience “CUNT!” Ade Edmonson looked down at him, incredulous. “You paid six quid to call me a cunt? YOU’RE the cunt, mate!” he sneered. And he was right. What this said about our idiot screamer here and his self-projection is anybody’s guess. Maybe Welles awakened strange new feelings in him he just couldn’t handle. We will never know. Or care.
PART 3 OF 3 HERE:
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