Clowns

 Let’s talk about lead singers. Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey and that guy from R.E.M.—I just could NOT deal with their stage histrionics.

Generally, I like the Rolling Stones but watching Mick flap his arms, running around on stage like a coked up blue heron was mega distracting. He struck me as an aerobicizing ego clown.

Daltrey? Sure, he was dead gorgeous (still is) but, that mic swinging bullshit? Just frat boy antics ruining every song. I couldn’t take him at all seriously.

REM guy? I enjoyed the band’s tunes but, man, that singer’s stage presence was 99 kinds of melancholy blue funk. He struck me as being in love with his own tortured artist persona.

These boys, to my mind, weren't so much into the music as they were in love with the stage, the adulation and ego stroking.

Why do I find these dudes pretentious as fuck but NOT David Byrne or David Bowie? 

//shrugs// 

David and David were better actors/performers/musicians. They became an integral part of the art they created—the Davids weren’t just singing songs with extra added over-the-top melodramatics. Maybe, I simply preferred their music?

Also, apparently I have virtually no sense of humor when it comes to tuneage. What can you expect from a human wildly in awe of Emerson, Lake and Palmer (Pictures at an Exhibition, Brain Salad Surgery…SWOON), King Crimson, Jeff Beck, etc., etc.

Oh wait—I DO have a musical sense of humor (sort of). There was the comedic (unintentionally comedic?) recording of The Queen of the Night aria  (AKA Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen—Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart ) from Mozart’s Magic Flute. I remember hearing a recording of it (5,000,000 years ago when I was a music major in college) by an incredibly gifted, precision, coloratura soprano. She managed to deliberately go flat on one random note out of each phrase. It was hilarious. 

This brilliant, technical whirlwind, tour de force aria performed with purposeful odd clinkers, surgically inserted—why did I find this amusing? Maybe I was in wild awe of the soprano’s insane chops. She was so damn hardcore talented that she was able to casually twist certain individual notes sideways. (Ummm, possibly imagine Simone Biles going all Gangnam Style at random points of her floor routine?) It was mondo delightful and made me laugh. 46 years later and deaf, the memory of it still does.

Okay, I guess that doesn’t really count towards me having a musical sense of humor. Also, my apologies but I can’t find a recording of this intentionally flawed aria performance.