Tag: vincent moon

palestine / amy

“If you’re gonna write a hit song,
make it a short one.”
-Willie Nelson

Years ago, I saw Yann Tierson perform live on my birthday in Brighton, England.  Between “comptine d’un autre été,” “j’y suis jamais allé,” and this Takeaway Show of new material, I was super excited.  During a break in the music, all disconcerting takes on songs I had never heard, someone yelled out, “Play Amelie!” and he gave the crowd the most disgusting sneer I’ve ever seen from a performer.

“I don’t play songs I don’t like,” he said.

Then he played a really crap experimental version of Palestine.

I mean, yes, be an artist; make art, not money — and I do totally get hating those songs after playing them and playing them and playing them.  I do.  But don’t forget in your success that you have money because people paid you.  They didn’t pay you for existing — they paid you because they were enlivened, enriched, entertained by the art.  Arrogance is an ugly and unfortunate thing.

Art isn’t about you, Yann.  Once you take it out of your basement, once you perform it for profit, then art is about bringing beauty and solace to the lives of the people who took hours of their lives, turned them into money, and then gave that money to you.  A working artist has an obligation to their audience, not the other way around.

When I’m rich and successful, please remind me of this:  No matter how sick you are of playing to the common denominator, it’s not okay to forget there are people here who chose to spend their birthday with you.  I don’t care how French and Famous you are, it’s never okay to be a spoiled, self-centered dick.

Huh.

Well.

That’s not at all what I sat down to write.  After some reflection, I think I either believe what I’ve written here, or the complete opposite.  The truth, I suspect, is somehow both.

Anyways, enjoy the Takeaway Show.  What I do believe for sure is that what matters is the art, not the artist.  Whether Yann Tierson is a poor tortured soul, ground down by profiteering capitalist pressures, or an obnoxious piece of shit, made vain and obscene by fame, is fundamentally irrelevant.

What matters is the art — and this art is fantastic.

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this modern love

Another old Concert à Emporter from the early days.  Vincent Moon, my hero of musical film-paintings, is the fellow smoking and imploring him to sing.  Kele, the man being implored, is both famously shy and gay.  I like this a thousand times more than the polished studio version.  A thousand thousand times more.

“Shh…“

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2080 / tightrope

I’ve been holding off on this for a long time.  Almost a year now, since I first started this thing (has it really been a year?  Christ).  I held off because this could easily have devolved into simply reposting la blogotheque’s content and making the bindle a Vincent Moon fanpage.  The fact that this was a concern says a lot about how much I loved what he was doing.  For a long time, these Concert à Emporter were my special secret thing, this little perfect place on the internet where I would bring my favorite people when I wanted to un-cup my hands and show them the light I was holding.

The early videos were ingeniously simple in their concept: Vincent Moon got artists to Paris, put a mic on them, then followed them out into the world.  Most of the early bands didn’t know it, but this wasn’t just about the music, it was an artistic collaboration.  Vincent is not simply a producer, he’s an artist himself; the best of these were little films, and they were exactly what a music video should be.  The casual intimacy and art-school sensibilities of his approach were so obviously successful that they’ve now been appropriated and imitated ad nauseum.  Yeasayer went on to warp their sound and sputter out, and la blogotheque outsourced, grew unwieldy, and mostly lost their touch.  It no longer seems novel, because it isn’t.

But there was a moment, early on, when they were just catching lightning in a bottle, one bolt after another.  It was unbelievable how good the work was.  After growing up on ’90s music videos, lumbering abortions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and were shining plastic piles of self-congratulatory shit, these first few Concert à Emporter just knocked the air right out of me.  I was stoned and un-prepared, and they left me grinning like an idiot child with an ice-cream cone on a hot summer day.  It became my secret, special thing, the light I kept cupped in my hands.  So here’s my very favorite one, the best bit of bottled lightning.  Open it, and wait for the thunder.

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