SOTW: "Everlong" by Foo Fighters and "Patience" by GNR (aka a Very Acoustic Christmas)

Inspired by recent situations where the relevance and value of performance as a site of study has come under attack in covert and insidious ways (whether institutionally or personally) and blessed with having a car for the past week (thanks to La Lucy's generosity), I'd like to make a brief case for the importance of liveness both as a keyword and condition. Debated most famously by theorists ranging from Philip Auslander to Peggy Phelan, Saidiya Hartman to Jose Esteban Munoz, liveness for certain bodies has meant the burden of existing under the rule of various culture industries -- whether they be entertainment, journalism, or even the academy.

Yet, at the same time, liveness and live performance offer these same bodies another means of world-making -- a physical, psychic, and creative space for cultivating intimacies between performers and audiences - in theatres and galleries, living rooms and garages, even within the space of our own cars, bedrooms, or between our headphones (which ALOTR member, JT, has described as "remote intimacies").

Today, during the early morning drive to my yoga class, I was reminded once again of the power and potential of live performance but, this time, within the particular form of an in-studio acoustic performance on KROQ's morning radio show. Listening to the "Best of Kevin & Bean's Morning Show" and driving through the Los Angeles rain, I caught 15 brief moments of an interview w/ Dave Grohl (frontman of the Foo Fighters and former drummer for Nirvana) with the added treats of his solo acoustic versions of "Times Like These" and "Everlong". Forever a child of the grunge era (I think it may have been the marriage between punk-inspired plaids and Northwestern hippie magic; my propensity for coffee, cigarettes, and guys with long hair in high school; not to mention Matt Dillon and Kyra Sedgwick in Singles), this unexpected live acoustic performance was so tempting that stopping in the car to listen to them almost made me late to (my favorite Vinyasa instructor) Natasha's class.




The illicit nature of listening to this live performance in a parked car brought me back to a Friday morning in 8th grade when I convinced my mom that I was sick enough to stay home, allowing me to sneak my mini-boombox under the bedcovers so I could listen to an early morning Pirate Radio in-studio performance from Guns n Roses. The memory of hearing for the first-time ever an acoustic version of "Patience" (versus another routine day of reading, writing & 'rithmetic in Catholic school) was priceless.




What do live performances such as these, distributed through the analog medium of national radio, show us at thirteen, sixteen, thirty-odd years old?

They make real the "other side" of performances --beyond the back stage, since there isn't even a literal stage in sight. They bring back into our imaginary the music and rehearsal studio -- those places where the large, "wall of sound" hair metal and rock bands are able to pare down to the bare minimum -- sans the light shows and big screens, the groupies and monster colosseums, the armies of roadies and overpriced merchandise and back to, dare I say, a more organic version of their songs (a la cage free chicken eggs). A form that invokes the tight and intimate spaces (as well as erotic zones of pubescent youth) of the campfire, backyard, dorm room, and music studio. A musical performance that isn't just about hearing a song's lyrics and notes but also about tasting the grain of the singer's voice, feeling the sensation of plucking taut guitar strings, and imagining the mystical olfactory mix of coffee (or maybe even whiskey), cigarettes, and a freshly laundered flannel shirt.

So in this season of spectacles - from the holiday parades and frenzied, sales-obsessed mall hordes, to the mounds of wrapped boxes under the tree; from the rockin' New Years eve fireworks and neighborhood Christmas light displays to children of all ages fighting for the latest Wii's and laptops - here's to the simple gifts that unplugged guitar heroes have given us over the years. - (CBB)