Sunday, October 2, 2011

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Unconventional Live Experience

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's live shows situate the band within a musical world separate from the ticket payer's expectations. Small venues such as the 40 Watt Club and the Brooklyn Masonic Temple are ideal locales for Godspeed shows and come at a surprisingly low cost. I was fortunate enough to see them play at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA on March 22, 2011 for an eleven dollar ticket price. The intimacy of Godspeed's small venues evokes their devout cult following to honor the band's ideologies and sincerity. Countless people that I stood in line with were adorned in Godspeed You! Black Emperor tattoos. Meanwhile, there was not a single Godspeed T-shirt to be found. This exclusivity and counter-consumerist aesthetic amplifies the fan-base's trust in Godspeed's intentions as musicians instead of as commodities.

Once inside the venue, concert-goers are soon struck with awe. In the mean time, a trained eye can spot members of the band walking through the crowd as if they have no intention to go on stage. The performance at the 40 Watt Club began with a drone, a pulsing tone that the band members individually walked on stage to make their aural contribution to. A professional film projectionist lighted the stage with striking filmstrips that saturated the band, over half of which were sitting in chairs. That being said, the show was depersonalized. There was no shining star, no front-man or lead player. The band was a collective driven not by the cult of personality, but by their loyalty to the artistic work.
Live performances garner access to new material since the band reserves certain songs only for play at live shows. "Albanian" and "Gamelan" have never been recorded on an album. One can access these songs only through live shows or recordings of live shows. Coinciding with this magnified importance of live performances, Godspeed allows fans to record the show and post their videos and sound-files on-line. By permitting fans to post exclusive songs, Godspeed fan become not only consumers, but producers and distributors of the band's music. This agency over musical material enables Godspeed You! Black Emperor to promote their do-it-yourself message, stay true to their values, build a cohesive fan-base, and deconstruct common consumerist modes of advertising.

Based on this system of distribution, I believe Godspeed You! Black Emperor and David Foster Wallace would agree about advertising's relationship to human life:

"An ad that pretends to be art is — at absolute best — like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair."
                                                                     -David Foster Wallace

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