Fame is a Form of Incomprehension, Perhaps the Worst

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I only discovered Black Flag's Damaged during my embryonic punk phase in the early/mid-90s, as some of my, let's say more forceful acquaintances disallowed my ignorance of it. And sure, I remember it now, even though it's been roughly a decade since I've heard it. Damaged is a hard record to forget, for the most obvious reason: it's brutally simple. After illegally downloading a new copy of it recently, I found the tracklist and tried to remember how the songs went, before listening. Not bad, if I don't say myself---I recalled seven tracks, to varying levels of completeness. Then, after listening, the rest of them locked into place, along the way noting (less than a month shy of 30) how much I took for granted then (at 14/15): Henry Rollins' unchecked macho aggression (see the cover) and vocal cords on the verge of ripping lengthwise, the bitter punk sarcasm of "Six Pack" and "TV Party" co-mingling with the singalong sincerity of "Rise Above," the whole event veering oh-so-close to wanky metal at several points. There's even less for me in Damaged now than there was then, which was only a symbolic entry point to my high school's punk kibbutz. I liked watching TV (still do!), and later, learned to love drinking beer. I wasn't ready for self-rumination or animosity toward jocks. I liked classic rock. So be it. My experience with Damaged was quick, relatively painless, but for whatever reason, as evidenced by my decade-later memory of much of its content, somewhat meaningful.

David Longstreth's Black Flag memories are different than mine, and thankfully so. He leads an ensemble known as Dirty Projectors, and will bring them (with YACHT, Vampire Weekend, and Normanoak) to Bloomington's lovely Buskirk-Chumley Theatre this coming Thursday for only $5 (for students, still a bargain for non-matriculants at $10). The name Dirty Projectors is a wonderfully apt descriptor for Longstreth's work under the moniker: transmissions of highly fractured, somewhat academic musical interpretations of personal memories and historical events. Take 2005's The Getty Address, for instance. I quote:

The Getty Address is an album-length narrative inspired by Aztec mythology, the Eagles, and the 9/11 aftermath. It is a sprawling, layered glitch opera about Don Henley, leader of the aforementioned country/soft-rock group, and it was recorded over the course of almost two years, in three different states, with more than twenty-five people. Dave Longstreth, the principal Dirty Projector, wrote and recorded arrangements for wind septet, women’s choir, and cello octet, digitally deconstructed them, and then sang over the reconstituted parts in order to make these songs. Many of he album's often-gibberish lyrics stem from Longstreth’s first album, "The Graceful Fallen Mango", and the Eagles’ "Greatest Hits Volume I".

Longstreth's forthcoming Rise Above, to be released via Bloomington's own Dead Oceans label (September 11 | preorder), is, as you're either already aware or at least suspecting, a recollection of the 1981 Black Flag LP. A "reimagining," if you will. Longstreth has given himself a set of constraints for this record: re-record Damaged, from memory, without listening to the record or otherwise studying in any way.

Longstreth launders his source material so thoroughly that there's no need to fret about a "definitive" version between the two; it's best to note the pamphlet handed to you at the gallery door, and then put it in your pocket. Rise Above needs the initial smell of punk to fully register as concept, but holds up on its own as a singular work of occasionally breathtaking delicacy and violence. Listen to the wordless, quasi-gospel breakdown at 1:40 of "Spray Paint" (mp3), followed by a climbing acoustic guitar figure reminiscent of Jimmy Page at his most bucolic, then Longstreth's own elastic wail, a distant, globetrotting relative of Rollins' strident scrapings. Rise Above molds Afro-Beat guitars, British folk strumming, avant-electronic textures, miniature choir vocalizing, occasionally torrential drumming, and myriad other media into a whirling, shape-shifting song-cycle of cut-up/re-pasted memories. Of course, Rise Above is anything but a tribute album to Black Flag; Longstreth was a fan, sure, but this record is a much more a document of the capriciousness of memory, and its vulnerability to ever-shifting influences. Longstreth:

I did it because I thought it might be fun to stage my own theft of the punk rock spirit, like they did with new wave and grunge and American Idol. Only my doing it would be more like an observation than an action: not muscular at all: purposely useless, beautiful, like a witness.

Make of that what you will, but of course, the idea has a predecessor, even noted in the one-sheet. Jose Luis Borges' legendary "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," in which an imaginary author attempts to recreate Cervantes' 17th Century novel from memory. It's an appropriate recollection of a novel that derives its own action from a deluded, highly imaginative character who adopts a persona after delving too far into tales of chivalrous knights. The fictitious Menard, recalled by Borges, takes into account not only the mind's foggy capacity for retention, but also the body of knowledge and philosophy accumulated since. Quoth Borges, as Menard:

My general recollection of the Quixote, simplified by forgetfulness and indifference, can well equal the imprecise and prior image of a book not yet written. Once that image (which no one can legitimately deny me) is postulated, it is certain that my problem is a good bit more difficult than Cervantes' was. My obliging predecessor did not refuse the collaboration of chance: he composed his immortal work somewhat à la diable, carried along by the inertias of language and invention. I have taken on the mysterious duty of reconstructing literally his spontaneous work. My solitary game is governed by two polar laws. The first permits me to essay variations of a formal or psychological type; the second obliges me to sacrifice these variations to the "original" text and reason out this annihilation in an irrefutable manner...To these artificial hindrances, another--of a congenital kind--must be added. To compose the Quixote at the beginning of the seventeenth century was a reasonable undertaking, necessary and perhaps even unavoidable; at the beginning of the twentieth, it is almost impossible. It is not in vain that three hundred years have gone by, filled with exceedingly complex events. Amongst them, to mention only one, is the Quixote itself."

Borges' 1939 piece was groundbreaking for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was its prediction of the postmodern literary theory that would take hold later in the century. In part, he was questioning the nature of authorship and ownership, unsettling the taken-for-granted notion that a work, after it is written, retains a singular meaning or set of meanings attributable only to its creator. Roland Barthes, among others, would pick the thread up in the late 60s, arguing for the conception of the author as a "channel through which language 'speaks,'" giving much more agency to the myriad interpretations of historically-situated readers. Borges illustrates his idea with humor, quoting as an example Menard's version of Cervantes, which on the page is absolutely identical. That, of course, doesn't stop Borges (playing the fawning critic) from praising Menard's version as superior, as a way of noting the impotence of the written word to resist external changes forced upon it. Remember, this quote refers to the same exact passage, only written 300 years apart:

The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard--quite foreign, after all--suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time.

So where does this leave us when thinking about hardcore punk and Longstreth's polyglot interpretation of same? Well, he's produced anything but a word-for-word recreation of Black Flag's 1981 work, but Rise Above can certainly be appreciated as a fiction-upon-fiction, filtered through 26 years of lens smudge. The form of personal expression practiced by Ginn and Rollins in 1981 is still lauded for its "purity," but it's hard for me not to view it today as a bilious aggro-curio, much more regressive than novel in its unbridled masculine fury. I have no idea if Longstreth had this in mind when combing his own memory and converting it to melody, of course: that a hell of a lot has happened in popular music (as well as the understanding and theorizing of it) during the interim is of course an understatement. More interesting here is Longstreth envisioning his own emotional and intellectual evolution, which seems to be on display here more than anything. Rise Above's sonics feel purposefully designed to evoke the incongruity of a dream sequence, with Damaged filtering in occasionally, refracting endlessly through whatever resides in his unconscious. The most compelling component of the whole affair, for me this far, is attempting to parse some semblance of influence from his incomprehensibly gorgeous puree. Perhaps in 20 years it'll be easier.