Bradford Cox plays 'My Sharona' live for an hour to "sodomize mediocrity"

[alan nagsworth]

Yer man from the Deerhunter, performing under his solo Atlas Sound guise, got pissed off with a fan loudly requesting 'My Sharona' and decided to basically play some improvised freakout rendition of it for about an hour.

"It was one of the best performances I've done since Deerhunter started," Cox said, describing the mood as humorous and engaging, in contrast to the reportedly awkward scene documented by the local music media. "No one else fucking allows themselves to become unhinged. If it's frightening to people, then those people seriously need to look at the mediocrity they subscribe to."
Even still, Cox expressed frustration that his onstage behaviors were deemed newsworthy. "I am just a little, tiny punk person," he said. "It's not like fucking Lana Del Rey carved an upside down cross on her cheek and defecated all over herself on stage at fucking Bonnaroo."

Okay mate. So basically what happened is that a couple of days ago he phoned the Pitchfork guys and rambled on for about half an hour. He says some very interesting things and he also says some egotistical, pretentious things. It's a tough cookie.

The only person I asked to strip was the person who commandeered my stage [by requesting 'My Sharona'] and made the show about his self-interest. I tried to emasculate somebody whose ego was super potent. He asked me to strip when he called out the name of the song. It was a joke; he's basically throwing a dollar bill at the foot of the stripper. And I'm just saying hey, let's reverse the roles. Come on stage. Do something entertaining. Entertain me.

Section three: I am a terrorist. As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity. I am terrified and horrified and shocked that anyone would mention Phish in any article related to me.

Chapter six: My terror, continued. People had a fantastic, great time at this concert. At the end of the night, the majority of the audience was on stage dancing and having a great time. I'm a good time kind of guy. I'm like Sly from the Family Stone. I'm all about smiling and good times and white teeth. It was a very natural show and the people that didn't like it can suck my dick. They got the full fucking set of emotional fucking sincere whiny white people music. And then they got fucking 'My Sharona' as interpreted by Faust. It was like a death trance.

The saddest thing is that nothing can happen for an audience of 400 people anymore. Now it has to be on the internet and it has to be broadcast so widely. That intimidates people. Maybe that's the issue that makes people want to be more inhibited onstage. It makes people more self-censoring. That's the reason people think I'm a nutjob, because I don't give a fuck who reposts or how I sound. I don't Twitter, I just randomly urinate out of my mouth. And then people sift through the feces looking for seeds.

People are like, 'Oh, he's fucking crazy, he's melting down, blah, blah.' I just shoot the shit with people. I don't give a fuck how it comes off. People have to be themselves. It's just some little punk show. It's irritating to have people find your behavior interesting when you're not doing anything except being yourself. I'm just in a dark zone, searching for a little humor"

To be honest, yeah he raises some decent points about improvisation and gigs getting stale, but if he's really so unperturbed about people thinking he's having a meltdown why doesn't he just keep his trap shut and leave it to the imagination of everyone else instead of phoning some hipster publication and ranting on for thirty minutes?

Bradford Cox is a bloody good songwriter and his eye for creativity in sound really intrigues me more than most bands of Deerhunter's calibre, but whenever he makes a public statement he just paints himself in a really ugly light, and it does compromise his art a little as a result. There's mystery and intrigue to the production and the textures of sound Deerhunter use in their music and Cox coming out with pretentious garbage like this just kind of makes me think he's just another whining youtube idiot who happened to get lucky. It's a shame.

?

[Neil]

I would have killed to have been there.  I love him, and his attitude, and his music.  It is pretentious, but he's an artist, so it's fine.  It'd be different if he was some wanker on a forum, looking down on people who watch TV instead of chanting "nam myoho renge kyo."

(You need to use quote author= instead of just "quote" when quoting more than one message if using attributions. Or remove the attributions altogether, as you have now done :-))

[alan nagsworth]

Ha, thanks for that. It was doing my bloody nut in.

There are excepts up on youtube and to be fair it does look great, or at least it sounds great:

http://youtu.be/9sHpJLDHqOc
http://youtu.be/iFajBl97Lno
http://youtu.be/7zgiESdP0dA

The second clip features him pretending to fellate the guy on the theremin and goading the twatty 'My Sharona' requester to undress on stage.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Good luck to anyone attending a Deerhunter or Atlas Sound gig in the future who doesn't want it interrupted by continuous shouted requests for My Sharona.

[Neil]

Thank you, those videos are SPECIAL.  Fucking...wow. I was hoping for this kind of thing when I saw them last year.

[Neil]

Someone must have bootlegged this. 

[JesusAndYourBush]

I've never heard of him but this is great.  I'd love to attend a gig where something unexpected like this happened.

While I was watching those 3 youtube clips another clip popped up in the sidebar.
Seems to be a little overlap with one of the other clips but this is a few mins longer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4jBjPa1uhE

[Beagle 2]

I can't quite decide about him. I completely got that "I'm not sure whether this bloke is a pretentious up his arse prick or an amusing self-deprecating thinker" when I heard him interviewed. To be honest I've skim listened to their stuff and it hasn't grabbed me, but maybe I should dig deeper. This stunt makes me again think... is this brilliant or is this just a waste of time? To be honest if I was there as I was a big fan of a band because I thought they did different and interesting things, I'd probably be buzzing off it. If it was AC/DC and I'd come along for the hits I'd be unimpressed. Oh yeah, and if I'd took my girlfriend along promising her she'd like it, that would be a fucking long night.

I was gonna post about how I heard them do a fucking awful cover of Who Makes the Nazis, but actually I'm quite enjoying it now I've found it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seR00gjezvY

[Beagle 2]

I am a terrorist. As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.

That's the sort of thing that would endear me to him really, made me giggle. It's got just the right amount of tongue in cheek to it, the way that a lot of stuff the Manics used to come out with did. I like the fact that's going to make some people eye-poppingly annoyed.

It sounds pretty great to me. Anyway, if you're gonna cover any song for an hour...

[thepuffpastryhangman]

"nam myoho renge kyo."

What if you're "an artist" and "some wanker on a forum"? 

Anyway, what I really wanted to ask is...isn't that chant singular to one particular Japanese 'Buddha free' strain of Buddhism and, unless you know better, unlikely to be (the) one TBC follows?

[alan nagsworth]

I can't quite decide about him. I completely got that "I'm not sure whether this bloke is a pretentious up his arse prick or an amusing self-deprecating thinker" when I heard him interviewed. To be honest I've skim listened to their stuff and it hasn't grabbed me, but maybe I should dig deeper. This stunt makes me again think... is this brilliant or is this just a waste of time? To be honest if I was there as I was a big fan of a band because I thought they did different and interesting things, I'd probably be buzzing off it. If it was AC/DC and I'd come along for the hits I'd be unimpressed. Oh yeah, and if I'd took my girlfriend along promising her she'd like it, that would be a fucking long night.

Yeah it makes you wonder. It's almost certainly gonna be that he's having a laugh but I don't think he makes these sort of stunts and statements in a way that draws me to him as an artist. I'm having trouble articulating what I mean but basically I much prefer his musical output to his verbal output. It's obvious that he's trying to draw big attention to the fact that at least he's having a go and people should respect that, and I really do! But, getting pissed off at being compared to Phish is half understandable and half small-minded of Cox himself, isn't it? I mean, Phish do jam-band extended covers and what Cox did onstage was really just an extension of that. I'm sure he was having as much fun as Phish do when they do it, regardless of whether the artistic statement is different or even exists at all.

As I said, it's a little condescending of him to have to seemingly lower himself and explain it, when if he wanted to be respected as a proper artist he should have probably just walked off the stage and never spoke of it again. Or maybe that's just my own perception of art and I'm just as pig-headed as the people pissed off with what he did.

[Beagle 2]

I've just realised that every time I've heard Phish referred to over the years I've assumed it was that bloke out of Marillion.

[Neil]

It sounds pretty great to me. Anyway, if you're gonna cover any song for an hour...

Then do Surrender by Cheap Trick?  Good point.  Imagine what that would have sounded like.  (Edit: Or maybe not... it's the chugging repetitive riff that made this such a perfect track for Cox's hypnotic looping delay style.)

Gonna dig out Cryptograms.

[alan nagsworth]

Weird Era Cont. is my favourite I reckon. Absolutely incredible album.

[lazyhour]

I've just listened to the longer clip as mentioned above, and the performance itself is surprisingly great, isn't it? Especially the instrumental bits. Better than the Atlas Sound stuff I've heard, really.

[PaulTMA]

How about we shout for 'The Idiot' and throw sachets of Nescafe at him.

[non capisco]

I remember with a huge degree of fondness Deerhunter's gig at Heaven in London, on the eve of the 2010 General Election results, where Bradford Cox spent the majority of the long middle section of 'Nothing Ever Happens' attempting to give one of the colossal and taciturn bouncers some kind of anti-erotic standing lapdance, until the bouncer finally cracked a smile.

Love him, basically. One of my favourite frontmen at the moment. The pretentiousness and petulance just make me like him more, you can get away with that when you've got the goods to back it up with. If you're going to a see a gig where the content is dictated by the artists' whim on the night then you could do worse than a freewheeling hour long cover of 'My Sharona', better that than Mark E Smith cunting off after four songs because he's got boils on his feet or something. Watching those clips actually makes me wish the Deerhunter and Atlas Sound shows I've caught hadn't been as comparatively prosaic, and I had a blast at all of them.

The Deerhunter 'Who Makes The Nazis' cover was a fuckabout because they were in session with Marc Riley. The same session yielded this fantastic, as-yet-unrecorded song which i couldn't stop playing last year, '60 Cycle Hum'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9i2thkyFjk

[Beagle 2]

Yes, that is absolutely great. I must have heard that at the time as well, but was almost certainly washing up and in a bad mood. Right, definitely going to re-investigate their stuff.

[Paaaaul]

I saw Deerhunter last year when Cox had a throat infection and they played a 45 minute set of largely instrumental beautiful noise.
5 minutes before the end of their timeslot, someone at the back of the stage signalled to BC that he had to start wrapping it up. Obviously they launched into something else and only stopped when the power was cut to the amps about 10 minutes later. A hissy fit was had as the band stomped off the stage.

[sirhenry]

Never heard of Atlas before, but that was rather special. Wonderfully evocative of early Hawkwind to these old ears.

[phantom_power]

I can't stand it when musicians bollock on about kicking against mediocrity. Do it, don't talk about it. You just end up sounding like a twat. There is no way of making those sorts of statements without sounding pretentious and arrogant, in all the wrong ways. No-one but the blandest pop star actually strives for mediocrity so it is always best to just let your actions do the talking. Hearing about the My Sharona thing made me think that he was interesting and imaginative. Hearing him talk about it makes me think he is a character in Nathan Barley

[Beagle 2]

This is a really good point though isn't it:

The saddest thing is that nothing can happen for an audience of 400 people anymore. Now it has to be on the internet and it has to be broadcast so widely. That intimidates people. Maybe that's the issue that makes people want to be more inhibited onstage. It makes people more self-censoring.

That has to be true. An act trying to do something a bit different or spontaneous live knows that it's instantly going to be all over the internet with "OMG WTF" in minutes. Or even if it's "OMG GENIUS!!" I could see that being equally irritating if it was just something you were trying out. If it's a really big band it'll probably be in the tabloids the next day reported as an "on stage meltdown".

[alan nagsworth]

Personally I've never understood why an onstage meltdown is meant to sound like a bad thing. I think it sounds fucking ace. I read somewhere once that Syd Barrett used to wax all his hair way up above his head and the heat of the stage lights would gradually melt it down the sides of his face. That's all I ever envision now when someone sayd "onstage meltdown" and it sounds bloody great in my head.

[Squink]

Some audio of his statement here (around the 4:37 mark). Somehow, I really want some of whatever he's on and also don't want it at all. I love Bradford. He's a genuine character in a sea of dispiriting, faceless indie-rock frontmen. Stick around in that clip for some great interview and live footage of Jim Jarmusch and Jozef van Wissem (their album is really worth checking out too). 

[Famous Mortimer]

I can't stand it when musicians bollock on about kicking against mediocrity. Do it, don't talk about it. You just end up sounding like a twat. There is no way of making those sorts of statements without sounding pretentious and arrogant, in all the wrong ways. No-one but the blandest pop star actually strives for mediocrity so it is always best to just let your actions do the talking. Hearing about the My Sharona thing made me think that he was interesting and imaginative. Hearing him talk about it makes me think he is a character in Nathan Barley

Can he not do it and talk about it? I think it's interesting how many bands (way outside any useful definition of "pop") seem happy to settle for mediocrity too, so I'm delighted to see someone willing to do stuff like this.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Personally I've never understood why an onstage meltdown is meant to sound like a bad thing. I think it sounds fucking ace.

Though at a remove these things can sound entertaining, in the flesh they can be incredibly frustrating and/or really boring.  If you've paid £25 to see a band and they flounce offstage after 2 tracks or the gig is aborted because the singer and guitarist are rolling around the stage drunk it doesn't so much feel like you've witnessed an amazing rock'n'roll moment as that you've wasted your money.

[confettiinmyhair]

It depends on the consumer, are you prepared to witness an artist or a musician play without inhibitions, or are you paying to be entertained by a performer?

[alan nagsworth]

It also depends on the band. If you go to see The Fall and expect a by-the-numbers set where Mark stands behind the mic the entire night then you're a damn fool. Also, in this case it was a dickheaded fan who was to blame, so to be honest, I would have loved it! However if I paid £50+ to see Kanye West and he did a Jazz Odyssey I would only be half amused.

Can he not do it and talk about it? I think it's interesting how many bands (way outside any useful definition of "pop") seem happy to settle for mediocrity too, so I'm delighted to see someone willing to do stuff like this.

I'm with p_p on this one. I definitely feel like talking about being edgier than everyone else somewhat removes the edge. If your fans honestly give a shit about you as an artist they'll still come to your shows afterwards. Where's the mystery and intrigue when you phone bloody Pitchfork of all places to give a lengthy rant about it? I agree wholeheartedly with his criticism of mediocrity but I definitely think he overreacted to the overreaction.

[Famous Mortimer]

Well, yes, no sense phoning Pitchfork about anything, but I'll still defend someone as interesting as him's right to talk about sodomizing mediocrity (or being a bit more polite and just mentioning kicking against it, I'm not tied to the word sodomizing or anything). He probably shouldn't have to, though, you're right, as it's not like anyone would listen to a deranged one-hour rendition of "My Sharona" and think it was mediocre. You might not like it, but that wouldn't be the word to use to describe.

[CaledonianGonzo]

It depends on the consumer, are you prepared to witness an artist or a musician play without inhibitions, or are you paying to be entertained by a performer?

In my experience - and I have seen a few onstage meltdowns in my time - they usually result in the complete cessation of any music being played at all, so in practice you get neither.