“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re un-cool.” --Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman)
in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous
Embalmed in a sea of nostalgic rhythms and wannabe cool—lavished by a deluge of white confetti twirl spinning with the slow delicacy of a winter snow flake--basked and aglow in the warmth of variegated pyrotechnical flames, we stood in awe and wonder. This was Halloween. This was Kiss. This was the Voodoo Experience.
KISS loves the pyrotechnics
This past weekend in New Orleans, an orgasm of cool exploded upon City Park. It all began Friday night, shivering in the climate change (forty degree index differential)—a mugginess of humid mire turned to crisp cool driving rain, shimmy-shake-head-bobbing to the incendiary dirty blues of The Black Keys. There—in a haze of cannabis smoke and the incantation of rain rhythms pulsating into the soil, I literally watched the souls of euphorically induced fans contort to the music—a depth of conversing.
The Voodoo Experience mantra is “Worship the Music”—it’s bannered over the tops of the stages, a constant reminder (as if we needed it) that this festival was most certainly about worship—where we find solace in the clefts of Rock. In my personal worship, I realized that what’s at stake in this Experience is: cool. Being there IS cool, the music and festival amenities ARE cool—everything makes us FEEL cool—and COOL is about worship. What do I mean? Well, there are just some moments you experience, where descriptive words are impotent—their inept at recreating any clear sense, vivid or faint, of the soul languages that speak to us.
This "religious" guy stood in front of us and blocked our view of Wolfmother
Regardless, here’s what I noticed about our worship—or why we hide in the rock clefts of Rock. Where religion maunders us as disgraced and morally infected, music serves us up a smorgasbord of the pleasures of cool. Religion evokes brash disdain because, not only does it send us away, induced with the shame of moral ineptitude—but rather, it actually escorts us away, further down into the dungeon of doubt, that descending spiral staircase of solitude. But, don’t deceive yourself or be deceived—we don’t discard religious affection and adoration, i.e. worship, we merely transfer it to something else, ourselves, others, or things—in this case to music and the addictive cool associated with the construction of our individual and social identity.
We are born into the chase for cool—that feeling that numbingly suspends the pain of shame, temporarily, thus the addictive cycle of cool. Again, I can’t actually recreate the “crazy” that is the Voodoo Experience—it’d be like being satisfied by reading a cookbook rather than eating. However, I will say that Voodoo offers what no other music festival can offer—an elaborate experience of cool, not just music—but a stairway to heaven alongside a circus tent, a big-birdcage, illuminated mid air bulb-balls, alongside rotating art sculptures—on Halloween weekend to boot. I mean where else will you find the Pope, Michael Phelps, and the Cookie Monster jiving together in sacred harmony? Here, where music is a pantheon factory assembling commodities of cool—where you can be a god by creating your ideal world—music rules the kingdom of cool. Don’t misread me—there’s nothing wrong with cool. What’s most interesting though are the dynamics of cool as an indication of status or class. It’s about accessibility—whom and where you have access to defines status.
Paul Stanley sayz: Rawk On!
Where, in the world you may just be a cubicle dweeb, a familial black sheep—here, at Voodoo you can be whomever you want. Cue music—cue Voodoo. So, what makes cool, cool? Simply, whatever you want it to mean. The only rule in this complex universe of cool is that there are no rules. Where Voodoo contributes, is that it’s here on segregated fields where sanctimonious stories are born—where cool is actually constructed.
Paul Stanley (aka, “The Starchild”) made it clear that KISS music was about “escape”. For Lenny Kravitz it’s, “I gotta get away—I wanna fly away”. The pitch is, for a few days you can sequester your anxious life and escape into a world of your own creation. You can dress like anyone you like—BE anyone you like—change your status, almost anything—even if just for a weekend. This is our “industry of cool”. And, somewhere in the midst of the music via choruses, verses, and bridges—we can mull our present in the dim angst light of our past, in order to see our future. The common ground is, that unabashedly boisterous and gregariously veracious in our desire to be gods, we want to see our smiling face on the cover of the Rolling Stone:
“Well we are big rock singers, we've got golden fingers—And we're loved everywhere we go—We sing about beauty and we sing about truth—At ten thousand dollars a show—We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills—But the thrill we've never known—Is the thrill that'll get you when you get your picture—On the cover of the Rolling Stone…”
Personally, I felt most cool while getting lost in the melodic mazes of The Black Keys, Wolfmother, and Mute Math—lounging in a cushioned beanbag alongside a pond under the cool of the moonlight in the VIP area. Whether you agree or not, that we all worship—it’s a fair assessment that we all want to be cool—which I’m suggesting is about worship, i.e. adoration, even if only residually. Thus, we all want to be gods. Or like Russell Hammond’s aspiring last words in Almost Famous, “I am a golden god!” Voodoo seeks to make this aspiration a reality.
Raymond is the cultural critic for the South Side Sanctuary. He is a father of three, a graduate of Seminary, drinker of beer and patron on music. Ray recently traveled to New Orleans, LA over Halloween weekend to attend the 2009 Voodoo Experience. This annual music festival features rock, hip-hop, blues, zydeco, funk and experimental marching band music. Featured acts included KISS, Wolfmother, Lenny Kravitz, The Flaming Lips, and Jane's Addiction.
Raymond is currently working on an new book tentatively titled "Lauren's Guidebook to Modern Colloquial Discourse" due out in 2010.
Almost Famous: A 2009 Voodoo Music Experience retrospective
Embalmed in a sea of nostalgic rhythms and wannabe cool—lavished by a deluge of white confetti twirl spinning with the slow delicacy of a winter snow flake--basked and aglow in the warmth of variegated pyrotechnical flames, we stood in awe and wonder. This was Halloween. This was Kiss. This was the Voodoo Experience.
KISS loves the pyrotechnics
This past weekend in New Orleans, an orgasm of cool exploded upon City Park. It all began Friday night, shivering in the climate change (forty degree index differential)—a mugginess of humid mire turned to crisp cool driving rain, shimmy-shake-head-bobbing to the incendiary dirty blues of The Black Keys. There—in a haze of cannabis smoke and the incantation of rain rhythms pulsating into the soil, I literally watched the souls of euphorically induced fans contort to the music—a depth of conversing.
The Voodoo Experience mantra is “Worship the Music”—it’s bannered over the tops of the stages, a constant reminder (as if we needed it) that this festival was most certainly about worship—where we find solace in the clefts of Rock. In my personal worship, I realized that what’s at stake in this Experience is: cool. Being there IS cool, the music and festival amenities ARE cool—everything makes us FEEL cool—and COOL is about worship. What do I mean? Well, there are just some moments you experience, where descriptive words are impotent—their inept at recreating any clear sense, vivid or faint, of the soul languages that speak to us.
This "religious" guy stood in front of us and blocked our view of Wolfmother
Regardless, here’s what I noticed about our worship—or why we hide in the rock clefts of Rock. Where religion maunders us as disgraced and morally infected, music serves us up a smorgasbord of the pleasures of cool. Religion evokes brash disdain because, not only does it send us away, induced with the shame of moral ineptitude—but rather, it actually escorts us away, further down into the dungeon of doubt, that descending spiral staircase of solitude. But, don’t deceive yourself or be deceived—we don’t discard religious affection and adoration, i.e. worship, we merely transfer it to something else, ourselves, others, or things—in this case to music and the addictive cool associated with the construction of our individual and social identity.
We are born into the chase for cool—that feeling that numbingly suspends the pain of shame, temporarily, thus the addictive cycle of cool. Again, I can’t actually recreate the “crazy” that is the Voodoo Experience—it’d be like being satisfied by reading a cookbook rather than eating. However, I will say that Voodoo offers what no other music festival can offer—an elaborate experience of cool, not just music—but a stairway to heaven alongside a circus tent, a big-birdcage, illuminated mid air bulb-balls, alongside rotating art sculptures—on Halloween weekend to boot. I mean where else will you find the Pope, Michael Phelps, and the Cookie Monster jiving together in sacred harmony? Here, where music is a pantheon factory assembling commodities of cool—where you can be a god by creating your ideal world—music rules the kingdom of cool. Don’t misread me—there’s nothing wrong with cool. What’s most interesting though are the dynamics of cool as an indication of status or class. It’s about accessibility—whom and where you have access to defines status.
Paul Stanley sayz: Rawk On!
Where, in the world you may just be a cubicle dweeb, a familial black sheep—here, at Voodoo you can be whomever you want. Cue music—cue Voodoo. So, what makes cool, cool? Simply, whatever you want it to mean. The only rule in this complex universe of cool is that there are no rules. Where Voodoo contributes, is that it’s here on segregated fields where sanctimonious stories are born—where cool is actually constructed.
Paul Stanley (aka, “The Starchild”) made it clear that KISS music was about “escape”. For Lenny Kravitz it’s, “I gotta get away—I wanna fly away”. The pitch is, for a few days you can sequester your anxious life and escape into a world of your own creation. You can dress like anyone you like—BE anyone you like—change your status, almost anything—even if just for a weekend. This is our “industry of cool”. And, somewhere in the midst of the music via choruses, verses, and bridges—we can mull our present in the dim angst light of our past, in order to see our future. The common ground is, that unabashedly boisterous and gregariously veracious in our desire to be gods, we want to see our smiling face on the cover of the Rolling Stone:
Personally, I felt most cool while getting lost in the melodic mazes of The Black Keys, Wolfmother, and Mute Math—lounging in a cushioned beanbag alongside a pond under the cool of the moonlight in the VIP area. Whether you agree or not, that we all worship—it’s a fair assessment that we all want to be cool—which I’m suggesting is about worship, i.e. adoration, even if only residually. Thus, we all want to be gods. Or like Russell Hammond’s aspiring last words in Almost Famous, “I am a golden god!” Voodoo seeks to make this aspiration a reality.
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Raymond and his co-writing robot
Raymond is the cultural critic for the South Side Sanctuary. He is a father of three, a graduate of Seminary, drinker of beer and patron on music. Ray recently traveled to New Orleans, LA over Halloween weekend to attend the 2009 Voodoo Experience. This annual music festival features rock, hip-hop, blues, zydeco, funk and experimental marching band music. Featured acts included KISS, Wolfmother, Lenny Kravitz, The Flaming Lips, and Jane's Addiction.
Raymond is currently working on an new book tentatively titled "Lauren's Guidebook to Modern Colloquial Discourse" due out in 2010.