| “Scream For Me, Tarzana!”:
Subcultural Dynamics and Performance Practices in
Glenn T. Pillsbury “Scream for me, Tarzana!” shouts Jenny Warren (a.k.a. Bruce Chick-enson), lead singer of the all-female heavy metal tribute band the Iron Maidens. At a small nightclub called Paladino’s in the city of Tarzana, Warren exhorts her audience with an adaptation of Bruce Dickenson’s famous shouts first heard on Iron Maiden’s 1985 album Live After Death. Located in the San Fernando Valley, a vast and nearly endless grid of concrete and asphalt north of Los Angeles, Tarzana is a small part of the Valley’s ragged patchwork of suburban and industrial areas crammed against each other and virtually indistinguishable from one another. Long derided as decidedly unhip, the Valley is, however, a haven for metal tribute acts from all over Southern California. At the other end of Los Angeles, south into Orange County, seaside communities like Huntington Beach also offer a network of pool halls and eateries eager to book the steady flow of metal tribute acts that have formed since the late 90s. Traveling between Orange County and the Valley, then, with occasional forays down to San Diego, the metal tribute scene forgoes almost entirely Hollywood and the Sunset Strip, perhaps the geographic location of heavy metal in the 1980s. Much like the way they geographically circumscribe the edges of the Hollywood vortex, tribute bands also function largely on the margins of popular music consumption and production. Not quite struggling bar bands hoping to get a big record contract, but also not lazily put-together hobbies, the metal tribute bands of Southern California combine the work ethic of an unknown rock group with the re-creationist spectacle of Las Vegas. Importantly, though, the phenomenon of metal tribute bands is not camp. Rather, with each performance tribute bands enact a concerted effort to halt time and capture a sense of modernist certainty as a way to pay earnest homage to the bands that so influenced their musical lives. Populated overwhelmingly by musicians in their 30s playing music first experienced in their teenage years, metal tribute bands perform for audiences nostalgic for their own youth and who are also perhaps alienated by the latest results of the ever-changing commercial soundscape. In other words, the participants in the scene (both musicians and fans) use metal tribute bands as an important soundtrack to this part of their adult lives. My presentation this afternoon offers a preliminary report into the tribute concept generally and the metal tribute scene in particular. I am interested not only in the mechanics of metal tribute bands but also in the practice of tributizing as an expression of subjectivity. Indeed, I view the tribute phenomenon as a useful way to enter into the emerging conversations about popular music and personal maturity. To be sure, tribute bands (particularly in Southern California) function as tightly crafted entertainment packages, but they also represent an engagement with history and collective memory. Tracing the details of what gets remembered through a tribute performance enables us to examine how the developing contexts of contemporary life situations affect the meanings that are attached to music. I will begin with an overview of some of the performance traits of the tribute bands before offering some thoughts on the broader issues. ******** The visual imagery of metal tribute bands in Southern California, though typically based on a particular era in the tributized band’s history, presents a postmodern assemblage of items, all designed to produce a larger sense of meaning. The result resonates significantly with Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the “hyperreal,” and presents a compelling instance of a third-order simulacrum: a copy for which the original never existed. All of the bands I interviewed work within the fluid boundaries of an era in the history of their tribute, though some go so far as to specify a tour their performance is based on.1 For the Iron Maidens, the “World Slavery” tour of 1984-85 serves as their starting point. Creeping Death revolves around Metallica’s “Damaged Justice” tour of 1988-89. Other groups refrain from identifying with a particular tour though. Thus, the Atomic Punks market themselves as a tribute to David Lee Roth-era Van Halen (1978-84). Hangar 18 has perhaps the most interesting sense of historical location, describing their focus as the “drug-induced Megadeth” (roughly 1985-94). As might be expected, such components as the design of the guitars and drums are reproduced (sometimes at great expense), as well as the typography of the tribute band’s logo. For both the Iron Maidens and Creeping Death the particular boundaries are also of personal importance to the founding members of those groups: in other interviews Jen Warren has explained that the “World Slavery” tour is an important part of her history with Iron Maiden because her parents wouldn’t let her see it. On the other hand, the “Damaged Justice” tour was the first Metallica tour experienced firsthand by Creeping Death’s founder Bill Warren (husband of Jen). Yet, such historical boundaries serve merely as guidelines for the visual presentations of tribute bands. Bill Warren’s stage appearance, for example, features the distinctive facial hair worn by James Hetfield from 1988 until around 1994, as well as the white Explorer-shaped guitar Hetfield used until 1989. However, Warren also wears black jeans ripped in the knees and t-shirts of bands Metallica were into earlier in the 1980s. Both of these sartorial components disappeared from Hetfield’s stage imagery after 1986. The Iron Maidens’ visual imagery also introduces a desire, according to Jen Warren, to “feminize” some of the iconography of Iron Maiden. In particular, the Iron Maidens’ logo features certain tongue-in-cheek modifications (large pink bow, eyelashes, and even a beauty spot) to one of Iron Maiden’s iconic figures, the mascot Eddie. As a tribute comprised entirely of women, the group self-consciously play with the perception of Iron Maiden’s music (and heavy metal generally) as men’s music. At the same time, and notwithstanding the distinctively “girly” elements of Betty, Warren professes little interest in making an outward statement about heavy metal and female empowerment. Even though the all-female lineup is an important marketing tool for the Maidens, and one they acknowledge gets them many more gigs than if they were playing original material as an all-female rock group, Warren insists that the ultimate purpose of the band remains the celebration of Iron Maiden’s music:
This resistance toward making a statement about gender is reflective of how gender was typically avoided in the music and public image of metal bands such as Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, and Queensrÿche, bands not associated with the Hollywood glam scene. It is also, I suspect, indicative of the continuing stereotype that locates feminism as primarily the purview of "man-hating lesbians." In an interesting twist on the gender politics of the tribute scene, the use of wigs by a few of the men intensifies the visual component, and acts as one of the most telling features demarcating the phenomenon as theatre. Most of the time, the wigs aren’t mentioned, even though they can be terribly obvious. Nevertheless, Ralph Saenz (a.k.a. Diamond Dave) makes it a point during the beginning of each Atomic Punks’ show to break the fourth wall and announces that, yes, his guitar player wears a wig—so what. The guitarist, Russell Parrish, puts on an incredible show as Eddie Van Halen, complete with all the expected guitar virtuosity, facial quirks, and performance as the grinning musical sidekick to Diamond Dave’s sexualized athleticism. Still, as if to reaffirm Dave’s disclaimer, Parrish also quite self-consciously adjusts his wig during a short pause between the two halves of his performance of Eddie Van Halen’s signature piece “Eruption.” As performers engaged in the recreation of a personal set of experiences, the fluidity of historical boundaries has practical benefits as well. Most notably, it allows bands to play a wider range of music. In other words, another set of fluid boundaries frames the visual boundaries of metal tribute bands. This historical fluidity enables them to play songs which had not been performed live by the tributized band during the era represented by the tribute band. At this point I’d like to give you sense of the performance of metal tribute bands and this idea of playing material which lacks an original performance. This is a short excerpt from Creeping Death’s gig a couple of months ago at Paladino’s and is a clip from the song “Dyers Eve,” originally recorded by Metallica in 1988 on the album …And Justice For All. [Watch clip (9 MB QuickTime)] As you can hear, this counts as one of Metallica’s most compelling examples of ensemble virtuosity from the 1980s. Right from the powerful opening riff in 7/4, “Dyers Eve” is full of aggressive intensity, and it features the kind of rhythmic and structural characteristics so important to the contemporary appeal of Metallica’s 80s music as “complex.” However, Metallica never performed “Dyers Eve” during the time represented by Creeping Death. In fact, Metallica first performed the song only last Friday night. Creeping Death’s regular performance of “Dyers Eve,” however, functions as a special entertainment element at the same that it serves to “remember” powerful and complex music Metallica had apparently decided to forget. Yet, when Bill Warren, dressed as a late-80s James Hetfield, launches the band into “Enter Sandman” or “Sad But True” (both huge hits from 1991) we are in a very postmodern place.3 For Creeping Death, the decision whether or not to play material from Metallica’s most commercially successful period is made on a case-by-case basis, usually on the spot. Typically, the set list is amended mid-show depending on the crowd, and usually at the expense of Metallica’s early-90s hits. Loud cheers accompany Bill’s announcement of “No new shit. Strictly old stuff tonight!” The performance of Metallica’s “new shit” (keeping in mind it’s over ten years old now – old for someone in their early 30s) also functions as an interesting bridge between the idealized goals of the tribute musicians and the requirements of a paying gig. Hangar 18 lead singer William Rustrum (a.k.a “Fro” Mustaine) also indicated that his band’s set list changed depending on the crowd, but it depended equally on the other bands Hangar 18 shared the stage with:
Indeed, the tribute musicians I talked with seem to have very little concern for being seen to “pander” to the audience. While these bands were formed to pay homage to a particular repertoire, their sense of professionalism and their understanding of the economics of the tribute scene allows them to play popular hits with little or no guilt. Whatever concerns they may have about being seen as “sell-outs” in their other projects are checked by their desire to put on the best, most ideal tribute show possible. ******** As statements about history, metal tribute bands exemplify what anthropologist Marc Augé calls the “supermodern,” defined most importantly in terms of excess. Augé describes three elements of excess that mark the supermodern: an excess of time, space, and the ego (or individuation). Unlike postmodernism, which (among many other things) explains the difficulties of integrating recent culture into History as the failure of grand narratives, Augé’s supermodernism sees the problem as stemming from the overabundance of events that enter into historical consciousness. Indeed, according to Augé we are witnessing the result of a century’s worth of an “overabundance of history,” where “[the] need to give a meaning to the present…is the price we pay for the overabundance of events.”5 In particular, the basic fact of longer life expectancy has increased the number of co-existing generations from three to four, and has thereby broadened cultural and historical memory. It has also multiplied the occasions in which an individual can feel one’s own history interacting with History. In many ways, metal tribute bands operate seamlessly with these ideas. The very existence of a tribute scene itself indicates that the history of metal is being encountered at a very rapid pace. Since most metal tribute bands perform with three or four other tributes, a tribute show produces a very strong sense of super-concentrated historicization. Moreover, bands articulate these ideas through the combination of reverent tribute — i.e., placing Megadeth, Metallica, et al into a Historical frame — at the same that the performers and audience members revisit their own personal histories. As such, tribute bands also provide us with valuable information about the relationship between popular music and maturity. It has become a truism among pop music journalists that there will always be heavy metal bands because there will always be “angry” teenagers, the implication of which is that once those teenagers become adults and join the real world, the grimaced aggression and fantasy lyrics will be replaced by things like melody, chord changes, and sensible haircuts. However, if songs like Metallica’s “Disposable Heroes” or Slayer's "Mandatory Suicide," with their ensemble virtuosity and “real” lyrical content about the dynamics between the powerful and the powerless in the waging of war could have attracted Creeping Death’s Bill Warren as a young man, he also feels they can seem a bit naïve in the present day, that the soldiers in the war on terrorism are anything but powerless. At the same time, Melanie Sisneros, bass player for Hangar 18, told me that she’s become more politically engaged now over the Bush administration’s handling of the post-9/11 era, and that those songs are more relevant than ever. On another level, whatever sense of “anger” tribute musicians and fans may have experienced years ago has been replaced by such things as raising children, a mortgage, and a receding hairline. Participating in the tribute scene allows them to experience an idealized vision of their past when life doesn’t seem to have been filled with so many challenges. Similarly, it allows them to connect with other fans who, for all their differing views on taxes, the war, gay marriage, etc., at least experience the collective memory of Iron Maiden or Megadeth. The attraction to tribute bands can also be explained, following sociologist Joseph Kotarba, as “helping to maintain continuity with the past, and thus to solidify a sense of self security.”6 Indeed, the social networks manifested through participation in the Southern California scene lay the groundwork for new sets of meanings given to metal within the context of contemporary life. ******* Metal tribute bands offer a particularly rich backdrop for this kind of study because of the overwhelming understanding of metal as a specifically youth-oriented experience. So much of the discussion of metal is linked to the ways it addresses feelings of powerlessness and drift, enabling young fans to make sense of the world and their experiences. Yet, the questions for scholars remain regarding what happens when those youths grows up. There are obviously many areas of inquiry that need to be addressed in greater detail than I’ve had time to present this afternoon, so I will conclude by noting that even as the participants in the metal tribute scene (and the tribute phenomenon) are actively engaged in remembering, popular music studies runs the risk of deciding to forget.
Notes
|
