2 posts tagged “the revival spiral”
This theatre production group that I'm currently involved with suddenly agreed to my jokingly suggesting of changing the script. I had asked a friend to help me with the training last night since I have a make-up class. After we have finished with the training session, he starts to talk about the script that he wrote and which will be staged by his production group. From what I hear I thought it was a bit like the Theatre of the Absurd - him being influenced by Samuel Beckett I suppose. Then we got round to me telling my story - my acting troupe loved it and they were unanimous and adamant they want it to be staged. I think to a certain extent I do feel, sort of... honored and proud that they love my story and they want to use it. The problem is however, we only have two week's worth of training session and that is not especially the thing that I want to hear. For one, I still lack much knowledge about staging a play, directing, the lot. It is very much like asking a 12-year old child to crack the Da Vinci's code; you know you'll never get the right answer, but certainly an answer in the most plausible, colorful, creative way that you'd never dare to imagine. To be frank honest, I don't have at my disposal the best of acting troupe but I am really amazed at their level of interest (although there was nothing much about their commitment for some of them to talk home about); their enthusiasm to be a part of the theatre-acting movement thing is just wonderful - because now that I know that they are all for the cause among themselves I can just skip the boring and tiring training routine and play computer games. I have not attended three thousand hours worth of computer games session which should keep me occupied in front of my computer for two good weeks. I don't need to go out and buy food because by that time I'll be in the hibernating mode; I'll just chew off the fat bits from my stomach area and my thigh area. I suppose it will be sufficient to keep me alive for two weeks before I come out from my room and it was already the judgment day. And my girlfriend had dumped me and are dating a giraffe instead.
Right.
Seriously nowadays bands/artists are more likely to revive the good ol'
years then to look forward and invent new sound of the future. I still
remember seing the artwork on the cover of Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne
single LP (if I'm not mistaken), it says there (and quite a bold claim
it is) "the sound of tomorrow". Well, I guess all the farthest distance
that is technically posible has been covered by man by the so-called
'front guard-ers' (a.k.a avant-gard-ers), the pioneer of invention and
creation - the out there, the unknown sphere; it has all been
unearthed. Besides many experimental bands of today seems to have lost
the excitement of charting new territory by repeating themselves.
Mogwai for example: from 1997's Young Team to 2006's Mr. Beast, their
music has become sort of formulaic. Stereolab, the most wide-ranging
experimental band, the safer side of avant-garde, are repeating
themselves now. The Flaming Lips - a glimmer of hope but not very
exciting. Kinetic Stereokids, the last feature in The Exotic Assortment
issue #1, sounds dangerously experimental but is still as shocking as
last month's news. Hence it raises the big question: can we go even
farther than what we have gotten ourselves into now? Can we go farther
than the avant-garde? I used to think that the final frontier in music
was Noise, a branch of avant-garde that utilizes unwanted sound (or
noise) and turn it into a musical composition, and despite of my many
brilliant ideas, I couldn't imagine a horizon that is beyond Noise.
Like I said earlier on, it seems that the trend in music right now is
to revive the good ol' years. First we have the Mod Revival in The
Strokes, The Hives, The Vines, The White Stripes, The Datsuns,
the-what-have-you-more. Then the trend just start to pick up
everywhere; it's almost like a madness, a disease or something. Now we
have a lot of new bands that reminisce us of the Culture Club years,
the Duran Duran years, the Joy Division years, the glamor eighties, and
it is only a matter of time before we start to repeat the nineties as
well: the generation x angst thing. So, in the true spirit of the time,
here I present to you another segment: The Revival Spiral. This segment
will feature bands/artists that are emulating the golden era of
seventies and eighties and nineties. If you're looking for the new New
Kids on the Block, or the new Kiss, or the new Sex Pistols, or the new
Depeche Mode, this is the place to go. So kicking off the inaugural
issue of The Revival Spiral is: The Start. Playing super sexy, super
heavy, retro 80's synth rock, it makes you feel like getting on the
dancefloor and work that Flashdance thing; the 'Chair dance' thing,
whatever it is. Or the Grease moment - but Grease was released in 1978.
The point is: everyone is dancing and singing along around like
everything is okay. (Yeah, who cares about Iraq and Palestine).
