Buttter and I have been bleeding the internet in the weeks following Cory Arcangel's glockensperform of the Boss's Born to Run and, having found but a paltry queef of response, it seems we're going to have to stuff one. And by "we're" I mean "I am" (as in "we sure used to/still do love throwing pencils into foam ceilings").
- Having only a minute's google worth of the disposition Arcangel would be bringing to the table, he presented himself as I would have expected: nonchalant, yet dorky and keen on what he was about to unload. This was to be his first performance of the album from start to finish. First performance, having not practiced this easy-to-master-in-an-hour work all the way through ever. Full stop. And he took it refreshingly seriously. Visibly counting (marginal notes included bars of rest i.e. "one mississippi, two mississippi…"), sweating and drinking (not enough), the few laughs he elicited at the beginning became absurd as the piece wore on. Note that he treated it as any orchestral percussion player might have, looking up rarely and taking every chance he could to sit down between movements
- The bootleg videos of Springsteen (though not all songs had accompanying video; one had still photos, another lyrics with Japanese translations…) showed the crowd a rare glimpse of what a Springsteen concert might actually feel like…energy, emotion, pitiful jock reunion piss…the video quality was shitty, the sound rarely less shitty, portrayed 10X10 behind and on Arcangel and his glock(enspiel).
- The Blemish (see the picture below) was the black horse of the night. Before the performance started it looked as if the projector had been knocked off-kilter and was exposing some sort of blue panties, the type that would surely be readjusted to cover come showtime. This wasn't the case, however, and to make matters fucking crazier the Blemish showed us its true power: after about seven or eight minutes of video it changed to white. Another interval would go by and, just when you would start to forget it was there, it would change color again (to pink, green, red, yellow, etc).
Taking these elements in concert gives us an interesting analysis. It should take pages (and it should take pages, really, but nobody fucking reads this shit) but for the sake of space I'll just give you a taste. If you want a true exegesis you can email Tip Tuddley at ilovepuppies@cuddlecradle.net.ca
First: Why Bruce? Any paratextual information (i.e. Arcangel's personal feelings) are only going to lead us to some sort of circular relativism. The Boss was, like him or not, the voice of the Jersey-centric proletariat for about twenty years. And it would perhaps be tempting to say something drastic ("Born in the USA"="Le Marseillaise" for example) except that Bruce's drug is of the narcotic variety, not the schizo-o o O O O O yeah we know I know you know mmmbop. And what is his role today? A nostalgic fist-pump-inducer that produces townies, stagnant eternal-adolescence townies. And whereof comes this townie? The incapacity, for one reason or another, of an initiatory force, be it an overbearing state, college, military, etc. to instill in its recipient a desire to overthrow. So whereas the proletariat of yore was rallied to frenzy, our modern-day hick is coaxed to bed with Bud and Bruce. Ugh and wait this is going to be a whole aghghgh...
Anyway next: Why the glockenspiel? It has an obvious role in Born to Run, a sort of marching band glitz that blah blah blah who gives a shit. In German glockenspiel means "play bells", which explains their sonar similarity to a Fischer Price toy that, say, Silent Barn has on the back of its toilet. It is an instrument of dreams (it has a key role in "Die Zauberflote") and childhood, which if taken into account with the aforementioned fixed maturity of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd makes the choice so very choix. Arcangel may have appeared to have been nervously performing for a group of dorks but his message was in essence one of mockery, an "are you serious?" to our wasted parents.The obvious progression here is a bland commentary on the end of history à la Williamsburg. What makes shit worse was the omnipresence of foot tapping and mouthing of Springsteen's lyrics........ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
But what about the Blemish? It could be argued that its role was simply ornamental (or its operator could have been a third member of the performance, as with the lighting team at a show) (yes I used to go to jam shows), a hip-ish askew that puts everyone off. I'd like to think its role more radical, however. As this bitch noted, most of the crowd didn't seem to even know any of Springsteen's music (which is 1. bullshit and 2. she clearly is a joke): they weren't dancing around or bobbing their heads – and I can see here where it may appear I'm contradicting myself, but she clearly knew what a boss show should be like e e e e e. From the back it was clear that the music was penetrating most of the crowd. Everyone was there to see Arcangel, we knowwww, but both his presence in front of the screen or his abject withdrawal from a third of the performance contributed to make him, well, transparent. Thus returns the opiate quality of Bruce's music, making the Blemish the only savior-element to remind us of the performance's role as subversive art. I'm getting fucking beer muscles here: were it not for this missing piece the performance would have been complete, finished, understood. Yet as it stands we walked away with a fissure to pour over, something that kept the (I hope) multitudinous recountings from stopping at "it was cool".
