Sunday, November 24, 2024

pop ventriloquism

 



Amazing how close these Sweetsong demos made by Mike Chapman are to the finished record. (you'll want to skip ahead past the early abject bubblegum pap to the "Wigwam Bam / Little Willie" onwards stompy stuff.)

Particularly on the level of the vocal inflections, the campy ad libs, the whole pitch of hysteria  - almost all of it was worked out in advance.  

Eventually the dummies assimilated the implanted style - so well they could generate their own material and dispense with the ventriloquist  - a kind of self-parody but with the original "self" invented by another

anti-theatricality in rock (slightest of returns)

  Spencer Dryden on the Jefferson Airplane's stage act, 1968: “It’s disorganized. We never know what’s going to happen. It’s different e...