Charlie Sheen "News"

It is said that the English word “news” came from the pluralizing of the word “new” in the late 14th century. I think that this is important to remember because most of the things that are exposed to the public as “news” are really just “goings on,” events that do not represent any deviation from the norm or expected outcome and have no direct relevance to the reader (or viewer). Any look at the daily stories of any “news” source will generally result in some sort of feeling of déjà vu. If it’s not surprising, if it’s not new, it’s not news.

Charlie Sheen is going crazy… Or at least he’s acting crazy and saying crazy things, and as the old expression goes, if he walks like a ducks and talks like a duck and he’s not actually a duck, he’s probably fucking crazy. I don’t believe I have to dwell on his antics and although the story seems to just get sadder (I just read online that his kids were just taken away by police), I feel like it’s important to say that this cannot be seen as unexpected. He has a history of drug use, running around with porn stars, frequenting prostitutes, and violent acts against romantic partners (don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against most of those things). This is merely a logical extension of behavior that he has exhibited over the last twenty years or so, which has been allowed to continue and escalate because, well, apparently we like him that way.

Remember that after Sheen had done quite a bit of damage to his image in the late nineties, he was given a second chance on a show called Spin City, replacing Michael J. Fox as the central character. Sheen’s character, unlike the cheeky, but earnest workaholic character played by Fox, was a charming, philandering semi-lowlife named… Charlie. He won a Golden Globe for that role. Clearly, he was back.

After Spin City was cancelled Sheen ended up reprising the character, which is to say he played another loveable reprobate named Charlie, on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men. America loved him so much that he ended up being the highest paid actor on television, garnering nearly two million dollars per episode. America told him that not only did we forgive him for his transgressions, but that we would reward him with heaps of money (or, more accurately, the ratings that would justify those heaps of money).

Television actors commanding large salaries is nothing new. The cast of Friends, for example, made record breaking salaries at the time, but we expected them at act to some degree, or at least to learn to respond to different names. I will not compare most sitcom acting to Ben Kingsley transforming himself into Mahatma Gandhi, and also I don’t know the cast of Friends personally, so I can’t say the extent to which their characters differed from their actual personalities. However, it is not hard to see the past decade of Charlie Sheen’s career as him simply “being himself” (okay, minus perhaps the spousal abuse), and receiving huge amounts of money and adoration for it.

And now he’s going crazy. Or crazier. But this should come as no surprise. When he began exhibiting his outlandish behavior we gave him a biscuit… and a TV show. We gave him another TV show and his behavior escalated and we gave him another biscuit…. and even more money and fame. He has been given positive reinforcement for all his negative behavior over the past decade. The escalation of his antics should be expected.

Therefore, it is not news.

It’s entertainment.

If the producers of Two and a Half Men, were really smart, they would try to fill out the DVD of this aborted season with his clips from TMZ, The Today Show, 20/20 and the rest of the interviews he did this past week. After all, it’s the same character. It’s the same old Charlie, just on at a different time. And clearly we love him just as he is.

Steal Your Face: Branding The Grateful Dead

In 1975, the San Francisco Bay Area band, Hot Tuna, released their fifth album, “America’s Choice.” The cover was designed to resemble a box of laundry detergent, complete with suds overflowing on the box. Was this a jab at American consumer culture from members of the quickly disappearing counter-culture, or was this an acknowledgement that, indeed, their record album was a product like any other and they were trying to sell it? I imagine it was a bit of both.
At this time one could say that the band was in a bit of an identity crisis. It wasn’t sure what it was or how it was going to present itself. Looking back on the previous four albums, the band’s identity was based around members Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy’s mutual love of old blues combined with the free approach exemplified by their previous band, Jefferson Airplane. Now they were beginning to go for a more traditional hard rock format. Was this evolution or trying to sell records? Did this shift have something to do with the deliberately generic album cover design?
When people discuss branding, more often than not they think of a product in terms of something that is artless and utilitarian. Talk to any amateur musician about branding their work and usually the words “sell out,” “philistine” and “Michael Bolton” will enter the argument. Yet, they will spend hours discussing “their sound” or having a designer friend of theirs come up with a “bitchin’ logo.” And yet, why is this not referred to as branding? It seems that applying any business model or language takes away from the artistry, so people simply call it other things. When successful bands form their own record labels, as the Grateful Dead did in the seventies, and actually take control over production and manufacturing, this is done in the name of “artistic control” never referred to “vertical integration.”
I am not going to say that Hot Tuna broke up because of a branding crisis. However, it is notable that as seventies went on, Cassidy and Kaukonen seemed more geared towards finding new audiences than holding on to the one they had, exemplified by the fact that they both formed New Wave bands after the Tuna dissolved in 1978.
The Grateful Dead on the other hand, well, say what you will about them, but they knew how to hold on to their audience. Alright so they may have dabbled in some disco beats in the late seventies, but they never lost their core, even when their music was most at odds with the pop music trends. While their peers faded from the scene, they persisted, monopolizing their audience of aging (and neo) hippies. Am I saying that they did all of this because of a “bitchin’ logo”? Of course not.

It certainly didn’t hurt, though. The logo, derived from an old stencil that was used to identify the band’s gear when playing at venues and festivals where numerous other bands were playing, ultimately ended up adorning the entire cover of their 1976 live album “Steal Your Face,” giving the logo its unofficial name. Since then, the logo has adorned tickets, posters, t-shirts, archival releases, websites and all manner of merchandise. The image is so well known, and so associated with the deadhead culture that law enforcement officials in some states even made it probable cause to search for narcotics when seeing the logo on a bumper sticker.
At first glance, the logo would appear to evoke a more heavy metal sound, with the image of the skeleton and the lightening, but the same could be said about the name of the group. Personally, as a fan who doesn’t necessarily appreciate being lumped in with the majority of “Dead Heads,” I appreciate the simplicity of the logo, the design of which also counters the more “hippyish” aspects of the music and culture (“The dancing bears” seem more appropriate). The fact that most Dead Heads would disagree that the design is somehow inconsistent with the music that they make is evidence of the fact that the image has become so inextricable from what it is intended to represent.
The design itself is very effective. Essentially a logo within a logo, the inner circle containing the lightning bolt dividing a circle into red and blue halves is often used by itself in band images. The red white and blue obviously speaks to the colors of the American flag, as well it should. The music of the Dead, being hugely inspired by old folk, bluegrass, and blues, is distinctly American. The lightning bolt signifies that music is vital, a living creation emerging from the traditions of the past. In the outer circle the skull (Skull = Dead, no-brainer) frames the inner logo, indicating that this mixture takes place within the head space. Again, the outer circle is almost as recognizable on its own without the lightning bolt, also being incorporated into many images and packaging designs.

All in all, I would say that the logo is incredibly potent and effective for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is ubiquitous. People know what it means and whenever any part of that logo shows up anywhere, the viewer knows that the “product” will somehow be associated with the Grateful Dead or the Dead Head culture. Secondly, though the colors are striking and clearly have symbolic value, the image is completely recognizable in black and white and still has power when the image is altered, or shown in part. Lastly, it is aesthetically appealing, a powerful image that, artistically, is even a bit more “badass” than the band portrays itself.

(On a side note: Hot Tuna finally got their “bitchin’ logo” when they reformed years later. Not as ubiquitous or versatile, but it looks awesome on a t-shirt.)

Digital Media, Ritual, and Pink Floyd

I guess before I go into the “how did I get here from there” bit, at which I sometimes marvel myself, I should come out with my basic problematic, and then explain how I arrived at it along with all the thrilling moments (Ha!) and startling revelations that came on the way.

My problematic is this: How does the shift to digital media (primarily referring to information rendered on one’s computer or personal media player, formless and easily copied) devalue information and art, and how can this shift work to the advantage of artists and media professionals who seek to actually make a living off of their efforts?

My background and training had been in theatre. From the time I was in elementary school, I believed that I my future had been mapped out for me and that future would be on the stage. It was only after I graduated from college that I decided that the vitality of theatre as a changing force in mass consciousness was a myth, or at the very least, a highly outdated notion. People were no longer getting their ideas in theatre. Theatre was no longer affecting anyone’s daily lives. I must have known that. I had grown up more on movies than plays, and as a child I watched more MTV than saw live music. Why and how did I end up with this unshakable reverence for the direct, immediate live experience?

The MP3 started to gain in popularity around this time. I knew, as everyone did, that digital media was the way of the future. CDs had put vinyl in a pauper’s grave (the resurgence of vinyl was still a few years away), and DVDs were threatening to do the same to VHS (which then, as now, nobody looked at as any big loss). Information was getting put in smaller and smaller (and more portable) packages, but in my stubbornness, I refused to believe that the package would go away altogether. I had a debate with my best friend, himself a former actor now turned musician, about whether the MP3 would really catch on. He believed that it would, but I said otherwise. I made reference to an article I had read about McLuhan (“What If He Is Right?” by Tom Wolfe, which I had read way back in junior high school and represented the whole of what I knew about McLuhan at the time) in which he said that in the future, people would want tactile experiences (however, he also said in the same breath that packaging would become obsolete), as well as citing the autobiography of Frank Zappa, in which he said that “People like to own stuff.” I thought that by quoting two dead guys that I would automatically win the argument and, in doing so, provide an accurate forecast for the future. I don’t think I need to say how wrong I was.

Years later, my friend called me and reminded me of the talk that we had had. I, of course, conceded to him, and he told me that even though he had been right, he wished that he hadn’t been. He mentioned how he was listening to the album “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd, and he recalled the first time his father played it for him as a child. He remembered noting the care with which his father pulled the LP out of the jacket and placed it on the turntable, gently putting the needle on the record, then hearing the warm crackle of the old vinyl as the music started. He listened to the whole album staring at the image of the burning man on the jacket. How will my children experience that now? He felt as if the future had been gypped of something, that a beautiful bit of ritual would be missing from their lives.

Of course now, the beautiful ritual is the least of everyone’s concerns. Given the nature of digital media to be copied easily and exactly and the move away from a physical carrier (such as a packaged CD ), the idea of authenticity is becoming a hazy notion. Fewer people are paying for media, and the industries are losing income (boo hoo) as are the artists who create the material. How can the artist benefit from this shift instead of being shortchanged by it? How do we get that sense of beauty and ritual back, and if we can’t, what are we getting in return? What’s going to happen to album cover art?