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chiseler · 5 years

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The Chiseler Interviews Tim Lucas

Born in 1956, film historian, novelist and screenwriter Tim Lucas is the author of several books, including the award-winning Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula, and Throat Sprockets. He launched Video Watchdog magazine in 1990, and his screenplay, The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes, has been optioned by Joe Dante. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife Donna.

The following interview was conducted via email.

THE CHISELER: You're known for your longstanding love affair with horror films. Could you perhaps explain this allure they hold for you?

Tim Lucas: I suppose they’ve meant different things to me at different times of my life. When I was very young (and I started going to movies at my local theater alone, when I was about six), I was attracted to them as something fun but also as a means of overcoming my fears - I would sometimes go to see the same movie again until I could stop hiding my eyes, and I would often find out they showed me a good deal less than I saw behind my hands, so I learned that when I was hiding my eyes my own imagination took over. This encouraged me to look, but also to impose my own imagination on what I was seeing. Similarly, I remember flinching at pictures of various monsters in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine, then realizing that, as I became able to stop flinching, to look more deeply into the pictures, I began to feel compassion for Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster and admiration for Jack Pierce’s makeup. You could say that I learned some valuable life lessons from this: not to make snap judgements, not to hate or fear someone else because they looked different. I should also point out that beauty had the same intense effect on me as ugliness, in those early days at the movies. I was as frightened by the glowing light promising another appearance by the Blue Fairy in PINOCCHIO as I was by Stromboli or Monstro the Whale. I also covered my eyes when things, even colors, became too beautiful to bear.

As I got older, I found out that horror, science fiction, and fantasy films often told the unpleasant truths about our world, our government, our politics, and other people, before such things could be openly confronted in straightforward drama. So I’m not one of those people who are drawn to horror by gore or some other superficial incentive; I have always responded to them because they made me aware of unpopular truths, because they made me a more empathic person, and because they sometimes encompass a very unusual form of beauty that you can’t find in reality or in any other kind of film.

THE CHISELER: I'm fascinated by what you term "a very specific hybrid of beauty that you can’t find in reality or in any other kind of film.” Please develop that point.

Tim Lucas: For example, the aesthetic put forward by the films of David Lynch... or Tim Burton... or Mario Bava... or Roger Corman... or Val Lewton... or James Whale... or F.W. Murnau. It's incredibly varied, really; too varied to be summarized by a single name, but it's dark and baroque with a broader, deeper spectrum of color. I’ll give you an example: there is a Sax Rohmer novel called YELLOW SHADOWS - and only in a horror film can you see truly yellow shadows. Or green shadows. Or a fleck of red light on a vine somewhere out of doors. It’s a painterly version of reality, akin to what people see in film noir but even more psychological. It might be described as a visible confirmation of how the past survives in everything - we can see new artists quoting from a past master, making their essence their own.

THE CHISELER: Your definition of horror, to me, goes straight to the heart of cinema as an almost metaphysical phenomenon. My friend and frequent co-writer, Jennifer Matsui, once wrote: "Celluloid preserves the dead better than any embalming fluid. Like amber preserved holograms, they flit in and out of its parameters, reciting their own epitaphs in pantomime; revenant moths trapped in perpetual motion." Do Italian directors have what I guess you can call special epiphanies to offer? If so, does this help explain your Bava book?

Tim Lucas: The epiphanies of Italian horror all arise from the culture that was inculcated into those filmmakers as young people - the awareness of architecture, painting, writing, myth, legend, music, sculpture that they all grow up with. It's so much richer than any films that can be made by people with no foundation in the other art forms, people who makes movies just because they've seen a few - and maybe cannot even be bothered to watch any in black and white. I imagine many people go into the film business for reasons having to do with sex or power rather than having something deep down they need to express. The most stupid Italian and French directors have infinitely more in their artistic arsenals than directors from the USA, because they are brought up with an awareness of the importance of the Arts. No one gets this in America, where we slash arts and education budgets and many parents just sit their children in front of a television. Without supervision, without a sense of context, they will inevitably be drawn to whatever is loudest or most colorful or whatever has the most edits per minute. And those kids are now making blockbusters. They make money, so why screw with the formula? When I was a kid, it was still possible to find important, nurturing material on TV - fortunately!

Does it explain my Bava book? I don't know, but Bava's films somehow encouraged and sustained the passion that saw me through the researching and writing of that book, which took 32 years. When my book first came out, some people took me to task for its presumed excess - on the grounds that “our great directors” like John Ford and Orson Welles, for all their greatness, had never inspired a book of such size or magnitude. I could only answer that my love for my subject must be greater. But the thing about the Bava book, really, was that - at that time - the playing field was pretty much virgin territory in English, and Bava as a worker in the Italian film industry touched just about everything that industry had encompassed. All of those relationships needed charting. It would have been an insult to merely pigeonhole him as a horror director.

THE CHISELER: I discovered your publication, Video Watchdog, back in 2000 when Kim's Video was something of an underground institution here in NYC. I mean, they openly hawked bootlegs. There was a real sense of finding the unexpected which gave the place a genuine mystique. Now that you've had some time to reflect on its heyday, what are your thoughts, generally, on VW?

Tim Lucas: It's hard to explain to someone who just caught on in 2000, when things were already very different and more incorporated. VIDEO WATCHDOG began in 1990 as a magazine, but before that it was a feature in other magazines of different sorts that began in 1986. At that time, I was reviewing VHS releases for a Chicago-based magazine called VIDEO MOVIES, which then had a title change to VIDEO TIMES. I pointed out to my editor that his writers were reviewing the films and not saying anything about their presentation on video, and urged him to make more of a mandate about discussing aspect ratios, missing scenes (or added scenes) and such. I proposed that I write a column that would start collecting such information and that column was called "The Video Watchdog.”

In 2000, VW's origins in Beta and VHS and LaserDisc had evolved to DVD and Blu-ray was on the point of being introduced, so by then most of the battles we identified and fought had already been won and assimilated into the way movies were being presented on video. But in our early days, my fellow writers and I - were making our readers aware of filmmakers like Bava, Argento, Avati, Franco, Rollin, Ptushko, Zuławski - and the conversation we started led to people seeking out these films through non-official channels, even forming those non-official channels, until the larger companies began to realize there was an exploitable market there. Our coverage was never limited to horror - horror was sort of the hub of our interest, which radiated out into the works of any filmmaker whose work seemed in some way paranormal - everyone from Powell and Pressburger to Ishiro Honda to Krzystof Kiesłowski.

Now that the magazine is behind me, I can see more easily that we were part of a process, perhaps an integral part, of identifying and disseminating some very arcane information and, by sharing our own processes of discovery, raising the general consciousness about innumerable marginal and maverick filmmakers. A lot of our readers went on to become filmmakers (some already were) and many also went on to form home video companies or work in the business.

I'm proud of what we were able to achieve, and that what were written as timely reports have endured as still useful, still relevant criticism. Magazines tend to be snapshots of the present, and our back issues have that aspect, but our readers still tell me that the work is holding up, it’s not getting old.

When I say "we," I mean numerous writers who shared my pretentious ethic and were able to push genre criticism beyond the dismissive critical writing about genre film that was standard in 1990. I mentioned this state of things in my first editorial, that the gore approach wasn’t encouraging anyone to take horror as a genre more seriously, and I do think horror became more respectable over the years we were publishing.

THE CHISELER: My own personal touchstone, Raymond Durgnat, drilled deep into genre — particularly horror films — while pushing back instinctively against the Auteur Theory. No critic will ever write with more infatuated precision about Barbara Steele, whose image graces the cover of your Bava tome. Do you have any personal favorites in that regard; any individual author or works that acted as a kind of Virgil for you?

Tim Lucas: I haven't read Durgnat extensively, but when I discovered him in the 1970s his books FRANJU and A MIRROR FOR ENGLAND were gospel to me. Tom Milne's genre reviews for MONTHLY FILM BULLETIN were always intelligent and well-informed. Ivan Butler’s HORROR IN THE CINEMA was the first real book I read on the subject, along with HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT - and I remember focusing on Butler’s chapter on REPULSION, an entire fascinating chapter on a single film, which I hadn’t actually seen. It showed me the film and also how to watch it, so that when it finally came to my local television station, I was ready to meet it head on. David Pirie’s books A HERITAGE OF HORROR and THE VAMPIRE CINEMA I read to pieces. But it was Joe Dante's sometimes uncredited writing in CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN magazine that first hooked my interest in this direction - followed by the earliest issues of CINEFANTASTIQUE, which I discovered with their third issue and for which I became a regular reviewer and correspondent in 1972. I continued to write for them for the next 11 years.

THE CHISELER: I was wondering how you responded to these periodic shifts in taste and sexual politics, especially as they address horror movies — or even something like feminist critiques of the promiscuity of rage against women evident all throughout Giallo; the fear of female agency and power which is never too far from the surface. Are sexism, and even homophobia, simply inherent to the genre?

Tim Lucas: None of that really matters very much to me. I've been around so long now, I can see these recurring waves of people trying to catch their own wave of time, to make an imprint on it in some way. For some reason, I find myself annoyed by newish labels like "folk horror" and "J-horror" because such films have been with us forever; they didn't need such identification before and they have only been invented to get us more quickly to a point, and sometimes these au courant labels simply rebrand work without bringing anything substantially new to the discussion. Every time I read an article about the giallo film, I have to suffer through another explanation of what it is - and this is a genre whose busiest time frame was half a century ago. Sexism and homophobia are things people generally only understand in terms of the now, and I don’t know how fair it is to apply such concepts to films made so long ago. Think of Maria’s torrid dance in METROPOLIS and all those ravenous young men in tuxedos eating her with their eyes. Sexist, yes - but that’s not the point Lang was making.

I don’t particularly see myself as normal, but I suppose I am centrist in most ways. I don’t bring an agenda to the films I write about, other than wanting them to be as complete and beautifully restored as possible. That said, I am interested in, say, feminist takes on giallo films or homosexual readings of Herman Cohen films because - after all - we all bring ourselves to the movies, and if there’s more to be learned about a film I admire, from outside my own experience, that can be precious information. I want to know it and see if I can agree with it, or even if it causes me to feel something new and unfamiliar about it.

My only real concern is that genre criticism tends to be either academic or conversational (even colloquial), and we’re now at a point where the points made by articles published 20 or more years ago are coming back presented as new information, without any idea (or concern) that these things have already been said. As magazines are going by the wayside, taking their place is talk on social media, which is not really disciplined or constructive, nor indeed easily retrievable for reference. There are also audio commentaries on DVD and Blu-ray discs. Fortunately, there are a number of good and serious people doing these, but even when you get very intelligent or intellectual commentators, they often work best with the movie image turned off, because it’s a distraction from what’s being said. Is that true commentary? I'm not an academic; I’m an autodidact, so I don't have the educational background to qualify as a true intellectual, and I feel left out by a lot of academic writing. I do read a good deal and have familiarity with a fair range of topics, so I tend to frame myself somewhere between the vox populist and academia. That's the area we pursued in VW.

THE CHISELER: David Cairns and I once published a critical appreciation of Giallo, using fundamentally Roman Catholic misogyny — and, to a lesser extent, fear of gay men — as an intriguing lens. For example, lesbians are invariably sinister figures in these movies, while straight women ultimately function as nothing more than cinematographic objects: very fetishized, very well-lit corpses, you might say.

Tim Lucas: See, I admire a lot of giallo films but it would never occur to me to see them through a lens. I do, of course, because personal experience is a lens, but my lens is who I am and I’ve never had to fight for or defend my right to be who I am. I have no particular flag to wave in these matters; I approach everything from the stance of a film historian or as a humanist.

There is a lot of crossdressing and such in giallo, but these are tropes going back to French fin de siècle thrillers of the early 1900s, they don't really have anything to do with homophobia as we perceive it in our time. In the Fantomas novels, Souvestre and Allain (the authors) used to continually deceive their readers by having their characters - the good and the evil ones - change disguises, and sometimes apparently change sexes.

I remember Dario Argento saying that he used homosexual characters in his films because he was interested in their problems. He seldom actually explored their problems, and their portrayal in his earliest films is… quaint, to be kind about it… but it was a positive change as time played out. I think the fact that Argento’s flamboyant style attracted gay fans brought them more into his orbit and the vaguely sinister gay characters of his early films become more three dimensional and sympathetic later on, so in that regard his attention to such characters charts his own gradual embracing of them. So in a sense they chart his own widening embrace of the world, which is surprising considering what a misanthropic view of the world he presents.

THE CHISELER: But Giallo is roughly contemporaneous to the rise of Second Wave Feminism. Like the Michael & Roberta Findlay 'roughies', this is not a fossilized species of extinct male anger we're talking about here. Women's bodies are the energy of pictorial composition; splayed specifically for the delectation of some very confused and pissed off men in the audience. I know of no exceptions. To me it makes perfect sense to recognize the ritualized stabbings, stranglings, the BDSM hijinks in Giallo as rather obvious symptoms of somebody's not-so-latent fear and hatred.

Tim Lucas: I think that’s a modernist attitude that was not all that present at the time. Once the MPAA ratings system was introduced in late 1968, all genres of films got stronger in terms of graphic violence and language, and suspense thrillers were no exception. At the time, women and gay people were feeling freer, freer to be themselves, and were not looking for new ways to be taken out of films, however they might be represented. Neither base really had that power anyway at that time, but at any rate it wasn’t a time for them to appear more conservative. That would come at a later period when they felt more assured and confident in their equality. Throughout the 1960s, even in 1969 films like THE WRECKING CREW and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, you can see that women are still playthings of a sort in films; there are starting to be more honest portrayals of women in films like HUD, but the prevailing emphasis of them is still decorative, so it makes sense that they would be no different in a thriller setting. There’s no arguing, I don’t think, that the murder scenes become more thrilling when the victim is a beautiful, voluptuous woman. It’s nothing to do with misogyny but rather about wanting to induce excitement from the viewer. If you look back to Janet Leigh’s character arc in PSYCHO, the exact same thing happens to her, but because she’s a well-developed character and time is given to explore that character and her goals and motivations, there is no question that it is a role women would want to play, even now. However, the same simply isn’t true of most giallo victims, which should not be seen as one of their rules but as one of their faults. In BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, I think Mario Bava shows us just enough of the women characters for us to have some investment in their fates - but when the giallo films are in the hands of sausage makers, you’re going to feel a sense of misogyny. It may be real but it may also be misanthropy or a more commercial mandate to pack more into a film and to sex it up. I should add that, because I’m not a woman or gay, I don’t bring personal sensitivities to these things, so I see them as something that just comes with the territory, like shoot-outs in Westerns. If you were to expunge anything that was objectionable from a giallo film, wouldn’t it be just another cop show or Agatha Christie episode? You watch a giallo film because, on some level, you want to see something with the hope of some emotional or aesthetic involvement, or with the hope of being outraged and offended. There is no end of mystery entertainment without giallo tropes, so it’s there if you demand that. Giallo films aren’t really about who done it, only figuratively; they are lessons in how to stage murder scenes and probably would not exist without the master painting of PSYCHO’s shower scene, which they all seek to emulate.

THE CHISELER: You mentioned Val Lewton earlier. Personally, I've never encountered anything like the overall tone of his films. There's always something startling to see and hear. Would you shed a little light on his importance?

Tim Lucas: He's an almost unique figure in film in that he was a producer yet he projected an auteur-like imprint on all his works. The horror films for which he's best known are not quite like any other films of their kind; I remember Telotte's book DREAMS OF DARKNESS using the word "vesperal" to describe the Lewton films' specific atmosphere - a word pertaining to the mood of evening prayer services, which isn't a bad way of putting it. I've always loved them for their delicacy, their poetical sense, their literary quality, and their indirectness - which sometimes co-exists with sources of florid garishness, like the woman with the maracas in THE LEOPARD MAN. In THE SEVENTH VICTIM, one shy character characterizes the heroine's visit to his apartment as her "advent into his world," and when I first saw it, I was struck by the almost spiritual tenderness and vulnerability of that description. Lewton was remarkable because he seems to have worked in horror because it was below the general studio radar, which allowed him to make extremely personal films. As long as they checked the necessary boxes, he could make the films he wanted - and I think Mario Bava learned that exact lesson from him.

THE CHISELER: I've always been fascinated by a question which is probably unanswerable: Why do you think it is that movies based on Edgar Allan Poe stories — even those films that only just pretend to sink roots in Poe, offering glib riffs on his prose at best — invariably bear fruit?

Tim Lucas: Poe's writings predate the study of human psychology and, to an extent, chart it - so he can be credited with founding a wing of science much like Jules Verne's writings were the foundation of science fiction and, later, science fact. Also, from the little we know of Poe's personal life, his writing was extremely personal and autobiographical, which makes it all the more compelling and resonant. It's also remarkably flexible in the way it lends itself to adaptation - there is straight Poe, comic Poe, arty Poe, even Poeless Poe. It helps too that a lot of people familiar with him haven't read him extensively, at least not since school, or think they have read him because they've seen so many Poe movies. The sheer range of approaches taken to his adaptation makes him that much more universal.

It also occurs to me that people are probably much more alike internally than they are externally, so the identification with an internal or first person narrator may be more immediate. But it's true that his work has inspired a fascinating variety of interpretation. You can see this at work in a single film: SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1968), which I’ve written an entire book about. It’s three stories done by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini - all vastly different, all terribly personal expressions of the men who made them.

THE CHISELER: Speaking of Poe adaptations, I've long thought it's time to confront Roger Corman's legacy; as an artist, a producer, an industrial muse, everything. Sometimes I think he's the single most important figure in cinema history. And if that's a wild overstatement, I could stand my ground somewhat and point out that no one person ever supported independent filmmakers with such profound results. It's as though he used his position at a mainstream Hollywood studio to open a kind of Underground Railroad for two generations of film artists. He gave so many artists a leg up in a business where those kinds of opportunities were never exactly abundant that it's hard to keep track. Entering the subject from any angle you like, what are your thoughts on Corman's overall contribution to cinema?

Tim Lucas: I can think of more important filmmakers than Corman, but there has never been a more important producer or mogul or facilitator of films. I said this while introducing him on the first of our two-night interview at the St. Louis Film Festival’s Vincentennial in 2011. He was largely responsible for every trend in American cinema during its most decisive quarter century - 1955 through 1980, and to some extent a further decade still, which bore an enormous influx of talent he discovered and nurtured. People talk about Irving Thalberg, Darryl F. Zanuck, Steven Spielberg, etc. - but their productions don’t begin to show the sheer diversity of interests that you get from Corman’s output. He has no real counterpart. I’ve spent a lot of the past 20 years musing on him, first as the protagonist of a comedy script I wrote with Charlie Largent called THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES, which Joe Dante has optioned. A few years ago, I decided to turn the script into a novel, which is with my agent now. It’s about the time period before, during, and after the making of THE TRIP (1966). It's a comedy but one with a serious, even philosophical side.

You know, Mario Bava once described himself to someone as “the Italian Roger Corman.” It’s incredible to me that Bava would have said that, not because it’s wrong or even because he was a total filmmaker before Corman made his first picture, but because Bava has been dead for so long! He’s been gone now almost 40 years and Roger is still making movies. And he’s been making movies for the DTV market longer than anybody, so he sort of predicted the current exodus of new movies away from theaters to streaming formats.

THE CHISELER: Are there any other producers/distributors you'd care to acknowledge, anyone that you think has followed in what you might call Corman’s Tradition of Generosity?

Tim Lucas: No, I really think he is incomparable in that respect. I do think it’s important to note, however, that I doubt Roger was ever purely motivated by generosity of spirit. I don’t think he would put money or his trust in anyone merely as a favor. He’s a businessman to his core and his gambles have always been based on projects that are likely to improve on his investment, even if moderately. I have a feeling that the first dollar he ever made is still in circulation, floating around out there bringing something new into being. I also don’t think he would give anyone their big break unless they had earned that break already in some respect. And when he does extend that opportunity, he’s got to know that, when these people graduate from his company, he’ll be sacrificing their talent, their camaraderie, maybe even in some cases their gratitude. So yes, there is some generosity in that aspect - but he also knows from experience that there are always new top students looking to extend their educations on the job. I wish more people in the film business had his selflessness, his ability to recognize and encourage talent. It may be his greatest legacy.

THE CHISELER: You introduced me, many years ago, to Mill of the Stone Women — I'll end on a personal note by thanking you and asking: Would you share an insight or two about this remarkable gem, particularly for readers who may not have seen it?

Tim Lucas: MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN was probably my first exposure to Italian horror; I saw it as a child, more than once, on local television and there were things about it that haunted and disturbed me, though I didn't understand it. Perhaps that's why it haunted and disturbed me, but the image of Helfy's hands clutching the red velvet curtains stayed with me for decades (a black and white memory) until I got to see it on VHS - I paid $59.95 for the privilege because my video store told me they would not be stocking it. It's a very peculiar film because Giorgio Ferroni wasn't a director who favored horror; the "Flemish Tales" that it's supposedly based on is non-existent, a Lovecraftian meta-invention, and it's the only Italian horror filmed in that particular region in the Netherlands. It looks more Germanic than Italian. I’m tempted to believe Bava may have had a hand in doing the special effects shot, which look like his work, but they might also have been done by his father Eugenio, as he was also a wax figure sculptor so would have been good to have on hand. He seldom took screen credit. So it's a film that has stayed with me because it's elusive; it's hard to find the slot where it belongs. It's like an adult fairy tale, or something out of E.T.A. Hoffmann. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve wasted, trying to find another movie with the unique spell cast by that one.

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prime-one-blog · 7 years

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12 Takeaways From Michael Jackson’s Thriller

(DISCLAIMER:This is a bit of a read.If you enjoy reading and music,I think you’ll like this.)

1982 was a year in music where a telephone number could function as a catchy rock song chorus (Tommy Tutone's "867-5309/Jenny"),where continents could get mad love or representation via Billboard-worthy singles (Toto's "Africa" and Men At Work's "Down Under"),and where "the number of the beast" was less a harbinger of earth's impending apocalypse and more a heavy metal masterwork (Iron Maiden's album and song of the same name.) It was a year that announced the arrival and breaking through of two artists that,together with Michael Jackson,would form the trinity of Eighties musical titans (Madonna and Prince,respectively.) As a rapper,it would be shameful if I didn't mention that 1982 was also a year where hip-hop was given a good,hard,from-behind shove into the mainstream courtesy of Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five's seven-minute long rap treatise of ghetto life that was "The Message" and Afrika Bambaataa And The Soul Sonic Force's Kraftwerk-inspired piece of rap/electro bliss that was "Planet Rock." (The latter song also spawned the freestyle subgenre of electronic music due to its Roland TR-808 generated drum track that became freestyle's default rhythm setting.)

With 1982 having already served up more than a generous helping of killer tunes (enough to make for an extensive and excellent playlist in today's terms),a nice portion of tasty albums (Roxy Music's Avalon,Duran Duran's Rio,and the aforementioned Iron Maiden offering of Number Of The Beast,to name a few),and a few watershed moments for burgeoning styles of music,it was only appropriate that the King Of Pop enter into the arena and throw his hat in the ring.On November 30th of that year,Thriller was released and the album would go on to not only be a monster smash but a game-changer in the music industry.

As a kindergarten-age pup at the time of Thriller's release,I had no awareness or understanding of the significance of that moment in recorded music history.My concerns were not of the transpirations within pop music as they were with having fun with die-cast dinky cars.Fortunately,given that Thriller was a mammoth pop record and there was some adroit promotion of it,it was still scorching hot product nearly two years after its coming-out and,as such,ties into a few of my childhood memories that were made when the buzz about Thriller was at its loudest.After undergoing the lengthy transition from being a young boy who enjoyed looking through his father's collection of 45-rpm vinyl records and playing around with a Casio keyboard to a grown adult that had a fiery passion for music and who immersed himself in the making of it,Thriller became more than just something I listened to for pleasure and entertainment.Having become cognizant of how big Thriller was in terms of sales,production,impact on popular culture,and influence on future music acts,the album was an object of thorough and serious study as it provided me with valuable education on how to make great music.

All that aside,it's mind blowing that three-and-a-half decades have elapsed since Michael Jackson dropped the highest selling album of all-time on the world like a large nuclear warhead.On the anniversary of its release,I offer my twelve takeaways from what I deem to be the GOAT of all albums.

12."BRUUUUUCE!"

Rarely,if ever,does a major-label recording artist or band make an album completely on their own.Looking at the personnel listing of Thriller,Michael Jackson had a small army of talented musicians to help him make the record.Among all of the names were three men whom-along with Jackson-formed an indomitable foursome.There was super-producer Quincy Jones (whom I'll get to later on),British songwriter extraordinaire Rod Temperton,and Bruce Swedien.

The mention of "Bruce Swedien" to your average Joe (or JoAnne) would probably get a "who's that?" in reply.If they ever saw him,they might think Swedien played in the movie Cocoon and did commercials for Quaker Oats and Liberty Medical (diabeetis!) In the music producer community,however,Swedien is something of an engineering O.G.that has probably forgotten more about recording and mixing than most people would ever come to know.When the man speaks,you listen because you might damn well end up learning something that will make you a better producer.But I digress.

Thriller was an ambitious project.Included within its lofty goals was-in Quincy Jones' words-to "save the music industry" and for the album to represent the gold standard of sound and production.With production credentials dating all the way back to Count Freakin' Basie,Swedien's experience and expertise made him the right man for a big job.And,boy,did Swedien ever deliver as the production value on Thriller is quite high.The uptempo tracks on the album have a Sugar Ray Leonard-type punch to them and it's that punch which makes them exciting and exuberant pieces of pop music.There's a clarity of elements in every cut off Thriller and good use of the stereo panorama where Michael Jackson's vocals are almost hugged by the backing instrumentation in a way that isn't suffocating.And something should be said about the convergence of Hollywood and pop music via the creepy and cinematic sound effects on Thriller's titular track.In short,Thriller is a fine example of what a pop record should sound like but rarely,if ever,does nowadays with loudness being prioritized over the preservation of dynamic range or the maintenance of good mixing work. Though the time that Thriller was made and vinyl records still being an absolutely necessary medium of music distribution played a large role in the album's production quality,Swedien's work enabled the record to hold up nicely against those of the future that would be combatants in "the loudness wars." It's pretty safe to say that Thriller might very well not be the album it is or possess the sound that it does without Bruce Swedien's miking and mixing prowess.That said,we should all give him the props that he deserves.

11.Getting sued sucks.But sometimes it isn't always so bad.

I know,it's easy to say when you've never been litigated against.I'm sure that no one in human history that has been made a defendant in a legal matter was overjoyed by the possibility of having to fork over some coin due to some allegation of negligence or infringement.That includes Michael Jackson,who was made subject to a lawsuit by Cameroonian artist Manu Dibango for the use of "mama say,mama sa,ma ma coosa" in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

One can't fault Dibango for filing suit against Jackson.After all,recording artists tend to get anal if one of their contemporaries pilfer or appropriate material that was borne from their creativity without so much as a request for permission of use and pursue legal action in response.Though Jackson had to compensate Dibango with more than just a few Cameroonian francs in an out-of-court settlement,it was more of a gain than a loss.For starters,the moolah that Jackson gave Dibango was a drop in the bucket to the haul that Jackson would eventually receive from sales of Thriller.It was not a bank-breaker for Jackson by any means.If anything,it was an investment into what has to be the best part of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." Though there may not be a direct connection between the song's subject matter and the "mama say,mama sa,ma ma coosa" which is repeated several times near the song's ending,it's easy to overlook.This is mainly due to the fact that it's so damn catchy.If the chorus hook with its "yeah,yeah" doesn't embed the song in your grey matter for some time after hearing it,the inclusion of the "Soul Makossa" chant is insurance that it will.It's triumphant,joyous,and it's a stroke of genius that isn't restricted to achieving maximum catchiness to the song.In the something-for-everybody approach that Thriller seemed to take premeditatively,the borrowing of "Soul Makossa" for its opening jam infused a world music flavor-specifically of the West African variety-into a Western pop song and it may also be a young black artist's musical acknowledgement of his mother continent.That said,it was worth every franc that Jackson doled out.

10.Eddie Van Halen was a bowse.

Before 1978,there was no shortage of guitarists that axe enthusiasts could revere or be influenced by.Page,Clapton,Blackmore,Iommi,Hendrix,Richards,Gilmour,and Beck were just a few names within the pantheon of string-plucking deities.Then along came a Dutch guy with a bad ass last name whose incendiary and almost futuristic guitar playing put him atop Olympus.Edward Van Halen was on a whole 'nother level and no one,save for the equally gifted Randy Rhoads (Ozzy Osborne's guitarist),was in the same tier.Sadly,Rhoads' young life was cut short in a March 1982 plane crash and his death left Van Halen alone at the top.Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones needed a guitar solo for the pop-rock combo of "Beat It" and "VH" was the most logical guy to go to first.

Right from the get-go,Van Halen was in bowse mode.He hung up the phone on Quincy Jones assuming that it was a prank call.Then he defied the "no doing anything outside of the band" rule that he and his Van Halen bandmates had by going down to Westlake Studios in L.A. and contributing to "Beat It." Then he set one of the monitor speakers in the studio's control room on fire in the process of laying down a seventeen-bar guitar solo for the ages that he didn't even ask a dime for! However,the bowse didn't stop there.When his Van Halen mates found out about their guitarist's breaking of band rules and told him that he was foolish for doing pro bono work on someone else's project,Eddie fluffed it off and stated that he knew what he was doing and he wouldn't have done it if he didn't want to.

Behind the dazzling and superhuman guitar shredding is a real dude that does whatever the hell he wants and doesn't care.Bowse.

9."The Girl Is Mine" was a significant moment in music history.

Perhaps rightfully so to an extent,"The Girl Is Mine" deserved the flak that it got from music critics.Though not a terrible piece of music,it likely was a wasting of potential that a Paul McCartney-Michael Jackson duet could have otherwise yielded and it does require a suspension of disbelief to listen to (although that potential ended up being better met the following year on McCartney's "Say Say Say.") Two guys fighting over a girl often get violent with each other and don't use words like "doggone" in their exchange (maybe "goddamn" but not "doggone.") Furthermore,if you're going to make a song based upon that concept,it's better to give it the crunchy,heavy,aggressive,and hard-edged sound of "Beat It" than it is to make it an ultra-sugary soft rock number.Nonetheless,it was a hit and probably so because it was aimed squarely at the older crowd,many whom indubitably met ex-Beatle McCartney and his fellow invaders from the British Isles with anything but resistance and rancor.

When you look beyond the saccharine character of "The Girl Is Mine" and examine the whole of the song,the significance of it becomes more visible.Macca and MJ teaming up to do a song was not only significant in that it was a pairing of legends on the same track but that it was a symbolic "coming together" (Beatle pun intended) of two major pieces of twentieth century music history:The British Invasion and Motown.

8.If it wasn't for Peggy Lipton...

Let's first establish who Peggy Lipton is before I proceed.Lipton is an actress who's perhaps best known for serving up coffee and cherry pie as Norma Jennings on the iconic television series Twin Peaks.At the time of Thriller,Lipton was Quincy Jones' wifey-poo and,as such,her lingerie and Hollywood connections would result in her making a contribution to parts of the album.

Yes,Peggy Lipton's intimate wear did indeed contribute to Thriller.Jones noticed that the lingerie said "pretty young things" on them which,in turn,caused a light bulb to appear over his head.His spouse inadvertently gave him at the very least a title to a song that could go on a Michael Jackson album and eventually did with the James Ingram-penned "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." Aside from being a bouncy,relatively funky tune that perhaps gave a passing nod to the electro genre that was gaining steam at the time (with its vocoder elements),"P.Y.T." exists as a musical testament to artistic inspiration sometimes coming from the most unlikely or unexpected things.

Probably of more importance than her lingerie being the origin of "P.Y.T." was Lipton's role in having a big-named movie star do a feature on "Thriller." The song was already a danceable number that,at its surface,seemed like a celebration of the scary and horrific but there was something missing:A chilling spoken-word rap that gradually brought the song to its conclusion.Quincy Jones could envision horror-flick legend Vincent Price reciting this rap and Lipton did her part in making that a reality.Nowhere does Lipton's name show up on the Thriller personnel listing or in the songwriting credits but she helped in more than a small capacity,whether she intended to or not.

Speaking of Price...

7.Vincent Price sorta got shafted.

One would think that Price's evil,reverb-drenched laughter at the end of "Thriller" alone would have had the ducats coming into his estate even now never mind the rest of his masterful recitation of Rod Temperton's Edgar Allan Poe-like spoken-word rap.Nope.Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones paid a rather low "price" for Vincent's feature on "Thriller." $1,000 was what it cost to get the horror film star to be at his most creepy over top haunting and ominous pipe organ chords that have "Baroque period" written all over them.Obviously,the one-off deal was great for Jackson because he got a Hollywood icon on his record for cheap.The deal worked the other way around for Price whom,after seeing "Thriller" blow up the way it did,got salty about getting a measly grand for his feature.He attempted to reach out to Jackson with the intentions of appealing for a more generous compensation and was ignored.

On one hand,Price had no right to seek out more money for his cameo on "Thriller." After all,if he wanted a handsome sum of dolla,dolla bills,he could have used his celebrity and legacy to negotiate something with Jackson and Jones that was fair for all parties instead of agreeing to a one-off that would put only ten "benjamins" in his pocket.Price made the regrettable mistake of undervaluing his own talent and,rather than let it be a live-and-learn experience,he wanted to renegotiate a done deal.

However,it's hard to be devoid of sympathy for Price.He put down perhaps the most epic poetry reading ever through his magnificent voice-acting and gave "Thriller" the piece it needed to complete its spooky picture.The fact that neither Jackson or Jones revisited their deal with Price when the song had proven to be a hit and offered him more on the basis of it being the morally right thing to do was something of a douchebag move.It certainly wasn't one of Jackson's or Jones' shining moments,to say the least.

6.It's a good thing that Quincy Jones let one particular demo casette play.

Toto guitarist Steve Lukather,drummer Jeff Porcaro,and keyboardists David Paich and Steve Porcaro were making contributions to Thriller while concurrently working on their own band's 1982 project Toto IV.En route to the recording studio,Steve Porcaro had gone to visit his young daughter that had been living with his "baby mama." After arriving,he'd been informed about his little girl's terrible day at school,one that saw her being pushed off a slide by a boy.When asked by his daughter "why" this boy would do that to her,Porcaro told her that the boy probably liked her and that it was "human nature." In trying to explain to the best of his ability to his emotional young child why a boy could be so mean to her,it inspired Porcaro to later come up with a song called "Human Nature." He recorded a demo of the song on a casette tape.

David Paich was working on some keyboard grooves for Quincy Jones in this time frame.Knowing that Jones' assistant was going to stop by,Paich asked Porcaro-whom was staying at Paich's house-if he could make a casette with what Paich had been working on for Jones.Realizing that they had run out of tapes,Porcaro recorded Paich's material on the A-side of the casette that he had put the "Human Nature" demo on and eventually gave it to Jones' assistant.Jones was listening to Paich's grooves and ended up becoming preoccupied with something in his office,which allowed the A-side to play all the way through and for the auto-reverse feature on Jones' casette player to run the B-side of the tape.Porcaro's demo caught Jones' attention and he asked Porcaro if "Human Nature" could be used on Thriller.After being given the green light from Porcaro,Jones enlisted songwriter John Bettis to replace Porcaro's original lyrics as Jones wasn't too keen on them (save for the "why,why" and "tell them that it's human nature" stuff.) The inclusion of "Human Nature" to Thriller gave a song called "Carousel" the swift boot off the album.Though "Carousel" (later released as a bonus track on a re-issue of Thriller) was a fairly decent track that was so wonderfully early-Eighties in its sound,"Human Nature" was leagues above it.Being my favorite cut off Thriller,there's so much right about "Human Nature." Jackson's vocal delivery is breathy and from a place deep in his soul.The song's lyrics,with its clever metaphors and its underlying meaning,are well-written.The synth melodies are aural candy and sound like they were composed in heaven.All in all,the song is a smooth R&B track that is perfect for something like a night drive in the city.

Quincy Jones was of the belief that a higher power had a hand in making Thriller the successful pop masterpiece that it is."Human Nature" making it on to the album could very well be an attestation that divine forces were at play.Had Jones not been involved in something,he may have stopped the tape after hearing Paich's music and "Human Nature" wouldn't have seen the light of day.Fortunately,things happened the way they did and a little girl's lousy day at school was turned into something great.

5."Billie Jean" was all types of crazy

According to Jackson,Billie Jean was purely a fictitious female that was MJ's composite of all the groupies that he and his Jackson 5 brothers had to deal with.However,according to Jackson's biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli,the song may have been inspired by an obsessed female fan that had taken her obsession with Jackson to great lengths.In 1981 (the year before Thriller),Jackson had been in receipt of a few letters from a chick claiming that he had been a father to one of her twins.In response to her paternity claims and her expressions of love for Jackson and her desire to have a family with him being ignored,she got angry and sent Jackson a parcel containing her photo,another letter,and a gun.In the letter,she instructed Jackson to commit suicide on a certain date and that she would do the same after murdering the baby that Jackson had supposedly impregnated her with.If Taraborrelli's theory was correct that "Billie Jean" derived from something so chilling as to induce goosebumps and cause the tiny hairs on the back of the neck to rise,the song was already crazy in the literal sense by who and what inspired it.

In the process of writing "Billie Jean," Jackson's life could have ended more prematurely than it did with his June 25,2009 death at the age of fifty.Being so absorbed in this song that he was working on,he was completely oblivious that the vehicle he was driving in had a fire going in it and he had to be made aware of the situation by an alert and concerned motorcyclist.Add another layer of crazy to the mix.

Then there was the song itself,which was a smash hit that went deep in the upper deck.Though "Human Nature" is my favorite MJ tune and personal bias could compel me to say that it's the finest work in Jackson's catalog,"Billie Jean" was perhaps Jackson's magnum opus.From a musical standpoint,it had all the necessary ingredients for it to be a high-charting pop joint.The rhythm could implore one to get on the dance floor the very instant that the solo drum break starting "Billie Jean" off sounds.The bassline-a rather simple repetitive eight note sequence-grooves and can lodge itself in the listener's head.The pre-chorus alone is hook-ish never mind the chorus itself,which is hook perfection.There's the gradual introduction of funky synth,punctuated guitar,and dramatic string elements that keep the song interesting.And,yet,for all of the sheer pop goodness that "Billie Jean" offers,it just might be more frightening than "Thriller" because the subject fare of the song is far more real than zombies could ever be."Billie Jean" may well be as much a song about paranoia as it is about what could result from being famous and messing with a girl that has "schemes and plans" behind her feminine wiles.Adding to the stark nature of the song is the conflict that Jackson seems to have within himself.On one hand,he declares with conviction that "Billie Jean is not my lover" and that her "kid is not my son." On the other hand,his vocal delivery when he speaks of looking at a photo of the little boy and realizing "his eyes look like mine" is one of shock,fear,and resignation.It arouses wonderment whether Jackson's repeating of "Billie Jean is not my lover" a number of times late in the song is an emphatic proclamation of his innocence or a convincing of everyone including himself that the truth is really a lie.It all makes "Billie Jean" a crazy good song.

If things weren't crazy enough,the video for "Billie Jean"-deserving of its own exegesis-helped the fledgling MTV to soar into the mainstream.Furthermore,it was also the song to which Jackson-at the Motown 25 television special watched by an estimated 50-million people-created a craze by performing his famed "moonwalk" dance move for the first time."Billie Jean" had every crazy base covered.

4.Thriller was almost as much Quincy Jones' project as it was Michael Jackson's

Michael Jackson is the only name that shows up on the cover of Thriller.And rightfully so,as he is the performer that's front and center on the album.When all the other musicians and producers were finished with their work on the album,it was Jackson that took the songs from out of the studio and brought them to concert venues around the world.However,Thriller could have easily borne both Jackson and Jones' names and it would have been fair.

Jones was in possession of some incredibly keen ears.One could have dropped a nickel on the ground from half a block away and Q would've likely heard it.Jones had an amazing acuity for sound that went to its deepest level.Maybe of greater importance was Jones' encyclopedic knowledge of music.From that,Q's instincts were more often than not trustworthy when it came to chasing down a hit song.He could discern what would make a musical work fly and what could cause it to flop.Michael Jackson wanted to make a killer album and he knew that Q would make the odds of him doing so quite favorable.It likely took no arm-twisting for Jones to get on board with Jackson's vision and become as invested in it as Jackson was.Part of Jones' investment may have been spurred by what he would stand to gain if this album had succeeded in meeting all of its goals:A boatload of money and a larger-than-life addition to his CV.But it's hard not to get the sense that Thriller was a labor of love for Q,one that not only involved a love for good music and the making of such but a love that he felt for the artist with whom he was working.The relationship between Jackson and Jones wasn't solely a professional one,which meant that Jones had a more deeply personal interest in making Thriller a big-time record and giving the young pop singer he had been mentor to with the needed fuel to be a superstar.In so doing,Jones-along with Jackson-had went through approximately 700 demo recordings and only committed what was felt to be the creme de la creme to the album.

It was Jones who,inspired by The Knack's "My Sharona," came up with the idea of having Jackson foray into rock territory and who could visualize Eddie Van Halen performing a guitar solo in the instrumental midbreak of what became "Beat It." It was Jones who felt that a recitation of a spoken-word rap in the outro of "Thriller" was needed and he could hear Vincent Price doing it.And,when the initial finished product of Thriller revealed a falling short of the desired goal for its sound upon play through,it was Jones who rallied the dejected troops to do what needed to be done to correct things with the deadline fast approaching.It was Jones who willingly took on the rigor and exhaustion that came with the production of a highly aspiring album.It's beyond difficult to fathom Thriller being as magical or scintillating without "Q" as its executive producer.

3.Even the non-singles on Thriller were great tunes.

Though it's a given that Thriller is a hit-laden,solid from first-to-last track album,saying that 77.8 percent of its songs were singles really illustrates how insanely good it is.(It bears a resemblance to a greatest hits compilation.) However,the other two cuts-or 22.2 percent-that weren't singles are by no means filler material."Baby Be Mine" is a danceable love tune that seemed to be a continuation of the Off The Wall sound,albeit in a punchy post-disco vein where synthesizers replaced the orchestral element (usually string sections) that was present in scads of disco tunes like Jackson's own "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." With "Baby Be Mine," Jackson's pre-Thriller fan base were able to enjoy some degree of consistency in Jackson's sound while tweaks were made to it to veer away from disco and warmly embrace the Eighties.Then there's "The Lady Of My Life," a gorgeous love ballad that closes out Thriller.With Jackson's soulful vocals,its heartfelt lyrics,and its warm R&B-meets-smooth jazz character,it might just be the perfect song for a newlywed man to put on and do his bride to.

"Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady Of My Life" could have probably been hits in themselves had they been on someone else's album or not pitted against stiff competition on its own.However,despite being overshadowed by the more behemoth songs on Thriller,these two cuts were sparkling necessities for the whole of the record.

2.There is an irony in Thriller.

If it's not an irony,maybe it's a paradox.If it's neither,I don't know what you would call it.

Prior to Thriller,Michael Jackson-inspired by Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" suite-wanted to make a colossal album that was the highest selling of all time and would launch him into the stratosphere of superstardom.And yet,something of a leitmotif is established on Thriller in the subject matter of 3 of the album's nine tracks:Jackson's dealings with the negative aspects of being a pop music luminary.Wasting no time,"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"-the lead off track on Thriller-is Jackson's ebullient counterstrike on media and their propensity for sensationalism and gossip.Long before Jackson had faced scrutiny for the lightening of his skin color and the surgical alterations to his face as well as allegations of sexual misconduct toward children,he had an issue with bad press and the spreading of rumors.He likens being a celebrity to being a vegetable that "they"-most likely the media but not limited to-will feed off for their own survival or gain.Then there was "Billie Jean," which I have already addressed in my fifth takeaway from Thriller. "Billie Jean" calls to mind Jackson's earlier celebrity/vegetable analogy from "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (Jackson does mention the name "Billie Jean" on that song) but,on this occasion,the one trying to do the feeding is a girl claiming Jackson's paternity to her young child.Finally,on "Human Nature," Jackson touches on his longing to step out into the city night and walk around like an average person instead of being cooped up in his room and insulated from the world which he was known all over.Part of Thriller in essence was Jackson expressing the discontentment he had with life in the spotlight and letting his listeners know that fame and fortune wasn't all glitz and glamour.However,having been thrust into the spotlight as a young boy and being someone with an artistic soul,the possibility of giving up the life he'd known since his formative years and denying himself further opportunity to be creative wasn't realistic.Perhaps resigning himself to the notion that fame was inescapable,Jackson decided to embrace it to the best of his ability and make himself as huge a star as a human could be.

1.Thriller established why Michael Jackson was (and still is) the King Of Pop

If Jackson's fabulous 1979 effort Off The Wall wasn't his coronation as pop music royalty,Thriller saw the diadem placed atop his jheri curls.Jackson raised the bar so high with Thriller that he made it near impossible for anyone,including himself,to elevate.Though his death forced him to abdicate his throne,he was buried with his crown.

One only needs to reference Thriller to understand why Jackson is pop music's kingly figure.He was his harshest critic and a staunch perfectionist who never rested on his laurels.Though Off The Wall was a critically acclaimed album,he wasn't entirely happy with it.It was like he was constantly nagged by the thought do more,do better.He set huge goals and then pushed himself hard to accomplish them.He had the right people working with him to make his vision a reality.Jackson embodied indefatigable work and relentless drive.

Whereas we might refer to all pop music stars as being "artists," such a description of Jackson wasn't given to be polite but rather because it was befitting.He had such an appreciation for art.As previously mentioned,Jackson's inspiration for Thriller was Tchaikovsky,who had written suites like "The Nutcracker" filled with great music.He had instructed the musicians who had worked with him on Thriller to "think of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel" and to do what they felt was necessary to provide the right "colors" for his songs.Jackson's art was transcendent of the audio medium.The videos for songs from Thriller were iconic as the songs were themselves.

Michael Jackson made pop music that was palatable.Jackson's brand of pop was so much different.It was pop that sounded like pop but yet didn't.Though,like all popular music,Jackson's material had the largest possible listening audience in its crosshairs,it frequently didn't come off as being kitschy and that was especially the case with the cuts off Thriller.Jackson's music reached into the handy-dandy grab bag of tried-and-true musical devices without conveying the impression that it was trying too hard to be a hit pop song.It didn't need to encourage people through chorus hooks to get on the dance floor or shake what their mothers bestowed upon them.People just got on the dance floor.Most importantly,Jackson's pop was staunchly avoidant of placing a best-before date on itself.Though Thriller may be very Eighties in its sound and its premeditation to be humungous (because everything had to be big in the "decade of decadence"),it contained the necessary preservatives to keep itself fresh over a lengthy span of time and there's an awfully high probability that it will never grow stale or become a relic of the period in which it came out.A sizeable quantity of pop music simply isn't in Jackson's league.As such,it doesn't stand out from its ilk but rather sounds like simulacra of it.It tends to be corny and irritating instead of stylish and agreeable.It makes itself easily replaceable by future music that will inevitably use the same recipe from the musical cookbook to whip up something for the Hot 100.

Perhaps the only way that someone can take the King Of Pop distinction away from Michael Jackson is if Jackson's soul is reincarnated in someone else's body.Otherwise,Jackson continues to reign and it's due in large part to Thriller.Happy 35th!

#thriller #michael jackson #1982 #quincy jones #bruce swedien #rod temperton #album #paul mccartney #peggy lipton #vincent price #toto #steve porcaro #david paich #jeff porcaro #steve lukather #eddie van halen #pop #music

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cynical-amphisbaenia · 3 years

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hello! if you wouldnt mind could i please get a classpect assignment? lunar sway and maybe blood caste would be cool too. i’m an entp, he/him, probably 7w6 but i’m not sure. i’m probably most like a realist rather than an optimist or pessimist, i use what i know to determine what might come into fruition. i’m not what most people expect when they first meet me, i seem really composed at first sight but i act kind of embarrassingly around my close friends. it feels weird to say, but i feel like if i joke about myself and act ridiculous deliberately, nobody can hurt me. i moved to another country as a kid, and tho i went back to my home country after a year, that year i spent in an unfamiliar place was a lonely one. thanks to that experience i learned how to cope with being alone, so as much as i enjoy being with my friends, i can manage well by myself. when i traveled back, ppl were intimidated by me for a while since i had that Lone Wolf Mindset but i was back to normal soon. i have kind of an old-timey aesthetic, when i was young it had to be explained to me that i couldn’t just wear a suit and tie anywhere (even though anyone totally should be able to). i like playing instruments, like the guitar, but i cant read like. that fancy sheet music. i just feel like its kinda tedious. i can talk to anyone who is friendly to me, and most of the time i’m polite with a tinge of irony, though playfully trying to one-up someone is always fun. i like to pretend that my aesthetic is edgy dark colors, but i’m actually just a sucker for that retro diner milkshake type of thing. i also really like vhs aesthetics?? i don’t like to consider my feelings for the most part, and what i want has to be achievable (by my standards) in order for me to be able to take myself seriously. this kind of clashes with the part of me that likes to question how far i can push things. although i’m not a planner, i try to remember that what i do now can influence my future, and i try to look into my past as a way of gauging where i’m headed. that being said, i kind of just believe that if i make the right choices, i’ll get where i want to be. uhh lets see, i love my friends a lot but i can’t tell them that, because it makes me feel things, and i don’t like that. when i was a kid, online friends were the only people i talked to, so i value having irl friends that i can physically see and touch and interact with... again, i couldnt say that to their faces, not rn, but i do love it. despite all this talk about being content by myself, i actually enjoy being included in a friend group, and i do anything i can to preserve my relationships, even if i’m far away (physically) from the people i care about. alright, thats it, sorry if that was long. thank you so much for reading if you got this far, all that was probably incomprehensible. dw if it doesn’t make sense you can delete this if it’s too long or anything. you’re doing gods work, chief -🦈

Hello, thanks for asking! My response isn't going to be that straight forward, apologies in advance.

First of all, you're most likely a Knight of Blood. Friendship, especially physical representations, are important to you and you wish to preserve it (i.e. protect it). Also, you carry some of the typical Knight traits of refusing to show that you actually care so much about your friends and forming masks in other ways. Knights can also sometimes lack parts of their aspect at first, which would explain your connection to Breath.

However, due to this connection you might want to consider something such as a Rogue or Bard of Breath. Rogues tend to be surrounded by negative traits of their aspect, which would relate to your experience of loneliness. They also tend to care greatly about their friends. However, there isn’t too much evidence of you being a Rogue. Similarly, although Bard would work due to you avoiding Breath and basically destroying it through forming friendships, there is not as much supporting evidence.

So unless you do actually feel that some of Breath’s values (e.g. freedom, direction, change) align with you more than Blood’s (e.g. connection, society, responsibility), I would say you are a Knight of Blood. If you feel that Breath is more important, then to determine Rogue or Bard, try to determine if in forming friendships it’s more of a way to destroy disconnection or to steal disconnection - one will likely stand out to you more.

Now, when it comes to lunar sway and blood caste, this could entirely depend on your classpect. To explain - you could very well be a dual dreamer, however as Blood is more similar to Derse and Breath is more similar to Prospit, your balance could very well be because you have the opposite moons to these. So, if you’re a Knight of Blood, I would say you’re a Prospit dreamer, and if you are a Breath player, I would say you’re a Derse dreamer.

Similarly, although you can consider Jade, Blue and Purple as all options for your blood caste, I would particularly consider Jade if you’re a Knight of Blood. This is because it would explain your Breath-like experiences. Jade bloods often go through periods where they are disconnected from people and may end up lone wolves, maybe only temporarily, as a result. If you are a Breath player, I would consider all of them equally though.

I know to some extent, this is probably one of the least clear answers I’ve given, but I do hope it helps! Feel free to ask me to clarify anything or any other kind of question. ^^

#apologies for how late my response is as well #ask #anon #🦈#classpect #classpecting #long post

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connorrenwick · 4 years

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Aaron Lowell Denton: The Accidental Designer

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Entering the world of Indiana-based visual artist Aaron Lowell Denton can feel like stepping through the doorway of an astonishingly preserved record shop you’d long had forgotten – a realm embellished in the hallmarks reminiscent of Stanislaw Fernandes’ finest OMNI magazine covers, the Memphis Movement, forgotten classics of the 1980s Japanese city pop albums era, and maybe even the neon hued geometric landscapes once emblazoned across blank VHS cassette tapes. With a portfolio pulsing with a surreal experimental glow, Denton has carved out a career as a musician’s artist, one adept at mining the collective memory of music’s imprint onto our emotions, expressed through an Indian summer spectrum of colors and absurdist’s sense of movement.

Photo: Anna Powell Denton

Originally from Upland, a tiny little town in northern Indiana, and now based in Bloomington, Indiana, Denton’s journey follows the trajectory more that of a squiggle than a line. “[When I first moved to Bloomington] I had a slew of day jobs before I went full time with design. I served tables at a vegetarian restaurant here in town called The Owlery,” says Denton, “I also painted houses for a while, alongside some carpentry work. I worked the door at a bar during a 10pm to 4am shift. That was a weird time.”

Between this hodge-podge of jobs, Denton was also designing flyers and posters for a local musical venue for the love of it, sometimes for just $50 a pop, but mostly for free. Over time he found himself spending an extraordinary time on these projects despite the modest pay. It was only when his then-partner-now-wife suggested making a go of a career as a visual artist that Denton decided to abandon toiling 70-hour weeks to dedicate himself fully into his design work.

“I was super scared to quit my restaurant job. I figured I’d try it for a few months and go back to waiting tables, but it worked out! I feel super grateful to have the job and life I have. It’s a privilege, especially in times like these, to be able to work for yourself and make art for a living. I can’t believe I get to do it everyday.”

The world would soon come knocking on Denton’s door by way of Instagram, where his work garnered a great deal of attention from design and music aficionados alike. He’d soon find himself inundated with commissions by promoters all seeking Denton’s uniquely hypnotic pop manifestations for the likes of musicians such as Wild Nothing, Leon Bridges and Khruangbin, John Maus, and Stereolab, tying a lyrical sense of typography together with a heart-on-his-sleeve affection for artists such as Donald Judd, Joan Miró, Helen Frankenthaler, and Bridget Riley.“That high art stuff is a bit in my aesthetic DNA at this point, and my sense of color and composition comes from all the time I spent (and still spend) in museums and looking in books.”

Today Denton’s eye finds itself drawn toward other outliers of art, including surreal futurist Stanislaw Fernandes, 1960s-1970s Japanese typography, and OMNI magazine, influences clearly discernible across his portfolio, “I also got into a big city pop phase last year that resulted in a bunch of work in that style. I just get really into looking and researching a certain style, and I think it’s fun to sometimes try on styles and techniques. It’s a way to give yourself permission to experiment and grow.”

This growth also included designing his own website on Squarespace, where his online portfolio resides alongside an e-commerce shop where some of his more recent work is available as posters. The site has become an integral extension of his online presence, allowing him to connect with new clients and customers alike. Denton remembers designing his site as surprisingly “easy”, crediting Squarespace’s robust site building tools. “There was definitely a time when building a website felt like such a feat, but it’s just not that way anymore.”

Denton also cites an appreciation for the collaborative nature of his work. As a musician himself, he calls the process a “conversation” integral to informing his eventual solution in tying together his vision with the artist, the venue, and even the audience. It’s a process he’s embraced increasingly more as he ventures solely from poster work toward collaborative commissions.

“Part of the art in it for me is the dialogue with clients, and the personal connection that can come out of creating art together,” notes Denton, “Especially when you’re representing someone else’s art with your own, that process has to be collaborative. That being said, like I mentioned, musicians can understand the need to not be caged in too much. They can empathize with needing a certain amount of autonomy to find something unique.”

“I’ve been lucky to work with some of my favorite musicians and it does sometimes feel like it’s coming from somewhere mysterious, pre-cooked.” Promotional risograph poster for Wild Nothing. September, 2018.

When asked about what makes for a good poster or album design, Denton is quick to point out the open-minded nature of his clientele – musicians – has afforded him a fairly relaxed relationship that tends to foster, rather than hamper good design.

“[Musicians] tend to be less intense than say, an art director. When I do a poster there’s not much between my idea and execution and the final piece; whereas, with something like a logo for a business, or a commercial project, it needs to be discussed and examined. That can be fun too…it’s all just different.”

These fairly unrestricted bounds have permitted Denton a level of interpretive freedom not all designers are always given, allowing the artist to consider both the complete oeuvre of the musician with his own personal connections with their music to form novel solutions. “I sometimes feel like the bands I get asked to work for already have visual representations, fully formed, sitting somewhere inside me. Like, they’re formed from my own relationship with the music and fandom.

“Design has a rich history of endearing social messages with imagery. With the Abolish ICE poster I was working with a group called New Sanctuary Coalition to raise funds for immigration bonds, which are exorbitantly higher for people in that system. I’d love to collaborate on more social posters in the future though, it’s an area of my work I really value.”

Photo: Anna Powell Denton

Amusingly, Denton’s affinity for collaboration even extends to the nuts and bolts of operating as a one-person operation. “I actually enjoy emailing quite a bit,” admits Denton, “The dialogue between me and my clients is something I’m actively interested in. I don’t dread any of that stuff.”

Denton credits his Squarespace designed site as an alternative medium to show work outside of social media, one where his work can be shown without the expectations and associations of an audience-based medium like Instagram. “I like to think of my site just as a full view of a collection of work. It’s the fastest way for someone to see what my work is all about.” Visitors are welcome to peruse his portfolio of work and purchase posters from an e-commerce shop vertical. Denton’s design is clean, simple, and easy to navigate, permitting his artwork to be the centerpiece of the experience.

Squarespace has made selling my work all around the world a more accessible possibility. The commerce tools are really easy to use and understand.

With a majority of his past work connected to the music industry, Denton is using his site to aid in pursuing new opportunities, both out of curiosity and out of necessity, “When COVID hit, a majority of my poster work evaporated, so this year has been a lot different as far as where the work is coming from. I’ve been doing more editorial jobs, which I’m really into. I’d like to do a book design at some point, and also want to do more movie posters. I’m trying to learn about motion design in my spare time, so I could see myself trying that at some point.”

Ready to share your vision or brand with the world? Take the first step today with your very own website with Squarespace. Start your free two week trial (no credit card required!) and use coupon code DESIGNMILK when you’re ready to get 10% off.

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