Dead and Gone: The Rock Stars of Yesteryear

August 20, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

Some of my favorite artists are dead now, and some of them are just gone. What do we do when one of our favorite artists die. When they die at twenty-nine-years-old, it’s a time for mourning, and a time to think of what they could’ve been. When they’ve already been, and they haven’t been relevant for over forty years, and we learn that they had grandchildren, and in some cases great-grandchildren, it feels a little odd to mourn their passing. They gave us some great music, and perhaps the greatest homage is to simply listen to what they did and appreciate it for what it was way back then. It’s also weird to go back to their catalog and realize they haven’t come out with new music in thirty years. When we listen to them often enough, or they manage to keep their name out there is various ways, it can seem like they were putting out music as far back as a couple years ago.

Before dying, or finally leaving the stage after their fourth or fifth reunion tour, some of them braved “the age thing” and put out a new album. We went to their concert, because we loved them so much at one time, and we knew they were going to play their new songs, because they wanted to sell their last gasp album, but we wanted to hear their classics … until we heard them, and saw them sing that song we loved so much forty years ago. The reason that song was so compelling is that it was fun, obviously immature, and a rock-your-buns off classic. After the euphoria of hearing our favorite song from them died out, we realized that the man onstage is a seventy-year-old trying to recapture what made them “special” in their twenties.

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Dating back to an era so long ago that I now feel so old writing about it, I played the song Toys in the Attic in my car so often that my girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter could sing the refrain. She probably had a vocabulary of less than 300 words, but she knew those lyrics from that song. I also named my first dog Tyler. Seeing as how this was between their creative peak, the Toys in the Attic and Rocks era, and their Permanent Vacation commercial peak, I might have been one of the few who had Aerosmith in his tape deck nonstop. Now that they’re done as artists, we can look back and think they should’ve been so much more. Would their creative output have doubled if they decided not to experiment with drugs? That’s impossible to know and probably unfair. Even if they stayed clean throughout, they probably would’ve experienced creative highs and lows, and how many relatively clean artists came out with five straight top-to-bottom incredible albums? I can think of two. There was a time when I thought Aerosmith might be one of them, the elite of the elite. They weren’t, but I still think they could’ve been so much better if they didn’t fall prey to chasing the dragon. Yet, that was the nature of the beast, back then.

*******

Was there a rock artist who did more with less than John Michael “Ozzy” Osborne? We all know the icon that Ozzy became, the charismatic frontman who could put on some theatrical shows, but when we strip those elements away, we have a relatively untalented man who ruled rock music for over 50 years. He didn’t have great vocal range. Even his most ardent fans would admit that while Ozzy could sing, and he had one of the most distinctive voices in rock, his vocal range was extremely limited. His appearance, though suited for the role of a “Prince of Darkness”, was not what anyone would call pin-up material. According to his primary lyric writer early on in his solo career, Bob Daisley, Ozzy Osborne came up with melodies, but he didn’t write lyrics. Even with all that, I had friends and family who were diehard fans, and they said, “There’s Ozzy, and then there’s everyone else.”

There was no one quite like Ozzy Osbourne before he became “Ozzy!” He basically created this character, embellished it, and built it into something that no one will ever try to do again.

He was a one-of-a-kind, charismatic showman who could dwarf just about anyone who stood on stage with him, but if we strip away the legendary aura that surrounds him, we have a giant in the industry who wasn’t very talented.

As a young man, Ozzy met a gifted lyricist named Terence Michael Joseph “Geezer” Butler, and they invited a guitarist named Tommy Iommi to join them in a band they eventually called Black Sabbath. Tommy ended up writing the music for the band, and Geezer Butler wrote 95% of the lyrics for the Black Sabbath songs. Ozzy did, according to those who’ve worked with him, have a gift for creating melodies for the songs that others wrote, and some say these melodies were often one of the reasons the songs and albums proved so successful. He’d often hum to the music, and his writers would write accordingly. So, John Michael “Ozzy” Osborne didn’t have dynamic vocal range, he couldn’t write lyrics, and wasn’t very good looking, but he ended up playing a prominent role in music that sold over 100 million albums. He was inducted in the U.S. and UK Hall of Fame, and he was honored with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Birmingham Walk of Stars. No one will deny that Ozzy was charismatic and a great showman, but he and his wife Sharon’s greatest talents may have involved spotting talented individuals and collaborating with them. To this day, I look at the man, listen to him talk, and consider his oeuvre, and I still cannot believe that he succeeded to the degree he did.

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One of Ozzy Osbourne’s writers, Ian Fraser Kilmister, AKA Lemmy, would go onto form his own bands, Hawkwind and Motorhead. Lemmy Kilmister was another shouldn’t have been. As he proved with Ozzy, Lemmy could write lyrics. Other than that, he may have been further removed from pin-up boy than Ozzy. Those of us who try to figure out what women find an attractive man are often incorrect, but my guess is that few women would ever find Lemmy Kilmister an attractive man.

The music of Motorhead had harmonies, but they would never be confused with the pleasing harmonies of The Beatles or an Air Supply. When we hear him sing, we imagine that that’s probably what zombies would sound like, if they existed. This is probably the sound that vocal cords, damaged by death, might sound like. If the listener prefers the pleasing sounds of a David Bowie or Thom Yorke harmoniously developing a relationship with the music, they probably wouldn’t understand how others could prefer Lemmy.

He has the type of voice, similar in some ways to Tom Waits, though Waits found a way to make his gravel, growl, and guttural vocals harmonious and beautiful. We could also compare Lemmy’s gargling motor oil vocals with Captain Beefheart’s fragmented expressive vocal stylings, but Lemmy was more about brutish attitude and utter defiance than artistic technique.

“What is that?” is our reaction to hearing Lemmy sing for the first time. We might even consider it so bad as to be a joke, but Lemmy carved out an ever-expanding fanbase that put him in a relatively successful level that I doubt anyone would’ve predicted at the nascent of his career. He was also not a great interview for the softhearted types who favor artists that say wonderful and nice things.

There were no A&R guys in Lemmy’s camp early on in his career, and he had to almost do it all himself. I’m sure he had some undocumented assistance throughout his career, but by almost all accounts, Lemmy had to do it all himself. He was a self-made man. He expressed his disappointment in this regard when his career was eventually commemorated, and company men lined his audience. Lemmy did the opposite of thanking them for being there. “Where were you guys?” he asked them. We have to have some sympathy for those A&R guys though, because how could they sell this man to the public? If Lemmy wasn’t the most original and unique musical artists you’ve ever heard/seen, then you know far more about this world than I do. If Lemmy wasn’t an original, he gave new meaning to the Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”

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Billy Joel was Billy Joel for those of us who were young in the 70s and 80s. He was so ubiquitous that we never really considered him a man who just happened to be an artist. We’ve all heard about how many records the man sold, and we just kind of yawned. Every time he cranked out another song, we all heard too often on the radio, it was but another Billy Joel song that we loved, but it left you with a “What do you want me to do with this?” response. When we’re there, in the moment, we don’t recognize how hard it is to keep creating great songs. We all thought it was just something Billy Joel did. Some men wash dishes for a living, others prepare taxes for others, and Billy Joel writes songs that stick in your head like peanut butter.

Seeing these songs chronicled in the And So it Goes documentary on Billy Joel, as opposed to hearing it in yet another greatest hits compilation, gave us a new perspective on this man. We watched it with a “I forgot about that song” and “That’s right, he wrote that one too” reaction that struck me as if I never considered that he wrote all of those songs. Billy Joel was so prolific for about twenty-two years, at a near album a year pace, that he defined a generation.

Billy Joel was also trapped in the 70s and 80s when we could say there were so many great artists coming out with new music nearly every year. Even in that vein, Billy Joel was one of the few pillars of commercial dominance. He is the fourth bestselling solo artist in U.S. history, his Greatest Hits I and II still ranks as one of the bestselling albums of all time, and he’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The market was so stratified back then that we were all satisfied; the pop fans, rock fans, punk rockers, new wavers, etc., all had their favorite artists. It was such a prolific era that we can only appreciate in hindsight. I loved it at the time, but it also felt like it was just that way, and it always would be. At the risk of sounding like an old man, I think it’s just different now.

Even after watching And So It Goes, I still wouldn’t put Billy Joel in my personal pantheon of greatest musical artists of all time, but the magnitude of his discography, as displayed in And So it Goes, makes a compelling argument that he was one of the best of his generation, and if you told me you thought that before I saw this documentary, I probably would’ve scoffed at you. My biggest takeaway from this documentary was that this 70s/80s era was just packed with so many great artists coming up with song after song and album after album that we thought this was just the way things would be forever. It hasn’t worked out that way, but what an incredible time it was to be a kid listening to all of that incredible music for the first time. Those artists seemed like machines, but documentaries like this one, and others, remind us that real humans did this, and that we should cherish them for what did for us back then.

Figurative Schemes of Thought

July 22, 2025July 22, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

“Teachers teach to the dumbest kids in class,” a former student said to try to explain why we all found school so boring. It felt like truth when I read that, unvarnished, “the stuff they don’t want you to know” truth, because it explained so much. Some of my teachers were so slow and boring. I used to be a quick thinker, which shouldn’t be confused with a quality thinker. My brain operated in hyper-drive, both literally and figuratively, and I often had trouble slowing it down long enough to soak in details. Details drove me nuts, they still do, and when you ask me to slow it down to make sure I get all the details, I shut down. When storytellers focus too much of their presentation on detail, I want to yell, “Just go to it! Get to the point!” When I read what this former student wrote, I wanted to believe it because I thought it explained why my teachers talked so slow, repeated themselves so often, and why they focused so much on inane and insipid details. That truth, it turns out, has no basis in fact. It’s much closer to a myth that we all want to believe.

When I read that truth, I should’ve reminded myself of the line I gave my conspiracy theory friend, “Just because it’s the most negative and cynical idea you can find, and it sounds like something the status quo doesn’t want you to know, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

My guess is that if we polled 1,000 teachers, 950 of them would say that that snarky assessment is false at best or an excuse poor students develop to explain why they did so poorly. They would probably add that while a quality teacher would never abandon a struggling student, it doesn’t mean they would slow the lesson plan down so much that they fail to cover the material they are required to cover in a semester. Schools provide teachers so many different avenues to explore with struggling students that there would be no need to slow the lesson plan down. That makes sense and all that, but the idea that the teachers I had were so boring, because they were trying to slow it down for Wally just explains so much to me. After sorting through various teachers I’ve had, I dismissed this idea as not only unprovable but inconsequential.

The more I tossed the idea of this assessment around, the more I thought every subject, every lesson plan, and every presentation is one quality teacher away from being interesting. I experienced that when a teacher made Economics so interesting to me that I entered college an Economics major, until I took some classes with poor teachers, and I realized how boring the subject was. I even had a teacher who could make Shakespeare fascinating, another who made World History exciting, and I have to imagine there’s an individual out there who could make Anthropology interesting, hard to believe, but I have to imagine that it’s possible.

Most of my teachers weren’t the type of people we would follow into a fire to save people. They slogged through the material as much as we did. We shared the idea that they probably chose the wrong profession with them. We knew this because we had those charismatic types who could make a lecture about the Sumerians interesting.

For most of the teachers I had there was obviously no prerequisite placed on the ability to craft a quality presentation to attract an audience. There is, however, for politicians, podcasters, and other entertainers. They have to craft a presentation that appeals to a wide-ranging audience. The same holds true for an advertising agency that hope to sell their presentation to a corporation.

“If you want to know anything about a culture,” someone once said. “Watch its commercials.” There might not be an institution that pays more attention to the cultural mores of society than the average advertising agency. They spend millions studying the culture through sociological and psychological research, and they market test all of their commercials before airing them to understand us better. They pay for this, because they know if they’re going to be able to convince a corporation to give them money, they need to prove that they know us better than we know ourselves. The one obvious fact they know is funny sells, but funny has all sorts of constraints around it, so they pack their commercials with the most common, least offensive jokes they can find to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I appreciate all the time and money they devote to crafting the perfect pitch for a product, but when one of these insults to my intelligence runs through my home I realize there is hatred in my heart, and if the Catholic Church is right about the progressions involved in Judgment Day, I could face obstacles.

“It says here that you do had hatred in your heart,” St. Peter might say with the pearly gates in his backdrop.

“That is absolutely not true,” I would protest.

“It says you hate beets, the Dallas Cowboys, and commercials.”

“Commercials?” I would say. “How can a hatred of commercials affect my standing in the afterlife?”

“Hatred in the heart is hatred in the heart,” he might say while thumbing through my life.

“I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t seem fair,” I would protest. “Commercials are a non-entity. I didn’t hate the players involved in making commercials. I know they have a job to do and all that, but I just found them such an insult to my intelligence and my sense of creativity, and the repetitive nature of them drove me mad, but you’re telling me that I face eternal damnation because I hated commercials?”

“What? No, you’re probably looking at three-to-five in purgatory for the general sense of hatred in your heart, but you’ll probably get out in eighteen months with good behavior.”

MacPhail’s MacGuffin

If entertainers and statesmen fashion their presentation to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and commercials employ dumb guy jokes, how do movie makers and TV show producers craft their projects for greater appeal?

Have you ever watched a movie with an excessively complex plot? We’re not dumb, and we’ve probably watched a million movies, but some screenwriters and directors fall in love with complexities that involve weaving tangled webs of intricacies with various twists and turns. I might be a lot dumber than I think, but I prefer to think that I never cared about a character, or a plot, so much that I’m going to follow them through the laborious labyrinths that “brilliant” screenwriter create.

A screenwriter named Angus MacPhail (apparently a real person and not a pseudonym) developed a device for dumb people like me who don’t care as much about complex plots as much as “brilliant” writers think. He called it: The MacGuffin. MacPhail and Alfred Hitchcock teamed up on several MacGuffin projects. The very basic definition of the MacGuffin concept is that it doesn’t really matter to an audience what the characters of a story are after as long as the chase is compelling.

The most interesting element of this MacGuffin concept is how true it is, even to a movie buff like me. After watching several MacGuffin movies, I realized that I could watch such a movie, thoroughly enjoy that movie, and love it so much that I memorize certain chunks of dialog from that movie without ever thinking about what the movie was really all about. I’ve read some Reddit discussions about what the characters in the movie Pulp Fiction were after. I loved that movie, and I consider it one of the most memorable movies ever made, but when they broke the movie down, I realized that I didn’t devote a thought to what the characters were actually after in that movie. Pulp Fiction is a movie that many movie freaks consider one of the best examples of a MacGuffin, because it never explains what the characters are actually after. When the Redditors explained their theories, I found them fascinating, and I realized that not only were their theories better than mine, I never even developed a theory, and I LOVED that movie so much that I saw it numerous times, something I rarely do.

The next question I ask those who employ the MacGuffin device is, is it an attempt to dumb the movie down for the dumbest kids in the class? The answer to that question might involve the overly complex and condescending, “Yes and no.” Yes, in the sense that we dumb guys can’t or won’t follow all of the complexities, and no, in the sense that the MacGuffin device helped moviemakers in their negotiations with producers.

The primary reason moviemakers “dumb-down” their beloved productions is to appease investors. The primary investors are called executive producers, because they often either fund the movie themselves, or they play a major role in securing funds for that movie. Some producers are so involved in the process of making movies that they offer notes: “This particular concept requires too much explanation, and that other idea needs more explanation.” Moviemakers mostly hate these notes, but they know that if they are going to make a multimillion-dollar production, they need to follow their producers’ notes. Hitchcock and MacPhail believed that using the MacGuffin device satisfied both parties by offering no explanations at all. They believed that if the chase was good enough, the audience wouldn’t care what the characters were actually chasing. We have to imagine that they experienced pushback, as the producers surely dropped a note that read, “We need some explanation, or the audience will feel lost.” Hitchcock and MacPhail were right.

“I’m From the Future. How is ya’?”

One note producers drop probably drop on moviemakers during productions that involve speculative themes is how to introduce foreign concepts in a more seamless fashion that appeals to all moviegoers without confusing them or belaboring the point with too much exposition. “How do I follow your notes without ruining my production?” is probably the reply most moviemakers send back.

The 1927, German film called Metropolis provided an example that movie makers now use to resolve the tricky dilemma of introducing characters from the future. The moviemakers could’ve simply had one of the actors say, “Maria is a robot from the future.” They could’ve also had the year of Maria’s introduction on screen, or on set somewhere (and they may have at some point.) The producers and moviemakers ended up creating a figurative scheme of thought by suggesting that everything in the future will be silver-metallic. Robots, like Maria, will be silver-metallic in the future, and the rest of us will follow suit by wearing silver-metallic clothing. Metropolis was so influential, in this regard, that for the next fifty-some odd years, movie makers forced actors, playing characters from the future, to wear silver-metallic costumes to symbolically represent their tense. Did any of them think we’d all be wearing silver-metallic clothing in the future, no, but they did this to conform to the figurative scheme of thought Metropolis developed.

Why did they choose silver-metallic? I think we can all agree that silver-metallic just looks futuristic. Either that, or this image might be so ingrained that that’s just the way we see it now, but my guess even if Metropolis was never made, some futuristic, speculative movie would’ve come up with the idea. The colors silver-metallic and the color white, are those we most closely associate with space and time travel, and most people in the present and past rarely wear/wore silver-metallic clothing.

My guess is, more than anything else, the silver metallic clothing solved the movie maker’s tricky dilemma of how to introduce a man from the future? Again, they could’ve simply had the character say, “Hi, I’m Arnie, and I’m from the future. How is ya’?” And that line might work in a quirky Wes Anderson movie, but it would prove awkward and stilted in others. How many of us introduce ourselves by saying, “I’m Arnie, and I’m from the present.” Even if we traveled back to the past, we would still regard our tense as the present tense, as in we’re presently in the past. Thus, the movie making world decided the best way to inform the audience that their character was a man from the future was to present him in an outfit no one from the present would wear. Once this symbolic representation was established by Maria, we either began thinking everyone in the future will wear silver metallic clothing, or the movie makers engrained the image in our head through repetition.

This symbolic image is so ingrained now that if we went into a supermarket with a silver-metallic outfit on, people might begin hounding us for Lotto numbers, sports predictions, prognostications on world affairs, or stock tips. If silver-metallic suits are becoming more common, we probably wouldn’t immediately assume that their silver-metallic clothing means they’re from the future, but what if they spoke in an emotionless monotone?

Speculative movies have long speculated that human emotions will no longer drive us in the future, on our next evolutionary plane, a concept most notably explored by Star Trek. They imply that we will no longer be as sad, angry, or happy in the future, and their implicit suggestion is that that will be a result of taking us all off the money standard.

Taking humans off the money standard is, at the very least, an interesting thought experiment. Some suggest that if we did away with the cultural, social, and worldwide reliance on money, it could diminish sadness, feelings of hopelessness, anger, jealousy, and it could eliminate most of the crimes those emotions inspire. That’s possible, but it’s also possible that we might not aspire to be better today than we were yesterday without some kind of reward. The pursuit of money is widely regarded as a soul-less venture, and we’ve all heard the line money is the root of all evil. Yet, depending on how we earn it, money is also the best reward we’ve developed for hard work. If money is the root of all evil, it’s also at the root of some feelings of purpose, a sense of fulfillment, and it can promote feelings of definition and identity. Money has tangible qualities, of course, but so many of its complex intangibles make us who we are today, and the unforeseen consequences of doing away with money could be an article unto its own.

The Aliens are Turning

Movie characters from the future no longer wear silver, metallic outfits, as we’re all past that silliness now, but we still have numerous figurative schemes of thought in our movies that we fail to see them, because they’re so ingrained.

‘Who is the alien?’ we ask while in the audience of one of those aliens from another planet movies. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait until one of them turns their head,” they say. ‘What?’ “Just watch.” Most movie aliens either have a different musculature structure, or they haven’t learned the mechanics behind a full shoulder/torso turn well enough to mimic a full human turn properly. In the 1978 version of The Body Snatchers, a movie I believe set the symbolic representation, the aliens only turn their head, and they fail to incorporate the shoulders and torso in that turn. The turn is also so slow that it appears eerily mechanical and menacing. Their stiff, unnatural motions, dictate their inhuman nature to us. “He’s the alien!” we all scream. The sudden switch in music helps, but only to accompany the visual.

If we’re trying to locate movie aliens in other social situation, we should note that if these movies are correct, the evolution of most aliens from another planet also failed to provide them casual conversation sounds, as they tend to communicate in a lexicon of roars, high-pitched squeals, or creepy, slither sounds that humans find unnerving. If movies are correct, aliens from another planet do not have mundane interactions. If we were to witness one of them in a transaction at a Walmart franchise, from their home planet, it would probably involve a series of various roars and slithering sounds that we would find so unpleasant we wouldn’t shop at that location.

Monsters Only Eat Non-Believers

If we find ourselves a character in a monster movie, we should also know that believing the raving lunatic in our production could save our lives, as movie monsters, humanoid and otherwise, have a particular, dietary preference for non-believers. If we survive that first round, we should then avoid thinking that they’re mindless, bloodthirsty beasts, yet we cannot doubt their ferocity either. Failure to do any of the above will lead the monster to zero in on us to prove us wrong. “Why does a monster of blind bloodlust care if we doubt its existence?” we might ask. ‘They just do,’ the raving lunatic will inform us with dramatic repetition. ‘They do just do.’

When we first witness the monster, we see it in its more natural setting. In the second scene, we hear the roar, and just about every roar suspiciously mimics the ferocious roar of the lion. They roar in a projectile manner with their spines bent in an S-shape formation, and they do it in a manner that shows us nearly all of their teeth. We might even notice that their saliva is thick and gelatinous. Even some individual species of sharks have evolved a lion’s roar, and we don’t question that, because we know that that means they’re just that ferocious.

Another sync-up we have with modern moviemakers is our fascination with motive. Why does a killer kill? Why does a monster kill? Nonbelievers suggest that it/he just has a blind bloodlust. Believers know better. They know that it’s too simplistic to believe that anyone, or anything, has a primal lust for killing. They know it’s complicated, and figuring out its primary motive is the best method to finding a way to eventually pacify it.

In early movies, monsters had no motive, they were built on blind, bloodlust and destruction, but modern moviemakers know that their monsters/aliens don’t necessarily need a motive, but we do, and it’s usually political. Modern audiences require complex motives that call for scientific research. It’s just too simplistic for us to believe that a beast would harm or kill another being, because the idea that any beast acting in an instinctive manner when encountering something foreign is reductive. It’s also reductive and simplistic to explore the idea that a foreign entity might act in a reflexively defensive manner, or that they might view humans as a source of food. These speculations suggest that foreign entities are relatively primal, and as we all know, suspect, or fear, foreign entities have an intelligence that we cannot comprehend.

Even some slasher flicks, with human monsters, now feed into our need to know what motivates someone, or something, to kill us. “If they were just nicer to it, perhaps it wouldn’t feel the need to kill them all,” we now whisper in theaters. “They just need to understand it better.” Thus, scientists and reporters are often the sole survivors of the monsters, because the monsters appreciate their desire to understand them better.

Indicators of an Infernal Influence

Most of us don’t pay attention to these figurative indicators, but thanks to the image provided by The Exorcist, we now know that one of the ramifications of undergoing a possession is that it will damage our daughter’s complexion. In its place will be the ruddy complexion of the meth head, that is accompanied by a creepy green hue. It also won’t matter if we instructed her to use conditioner that day, because her hair will go instantly scraggly and oily when the demon infiltrates. Possession movies teach us that demons know how to manipulate our vocal cords in such a way that it doesn’t matter if we’re a young woman during a possession, all victims of a possession will assume a deep, rich demonic voice. What is a demonic voice, we don’t know, but if our child is possessed and her new, demonic voice reminds everyone of Bob, the electronics department employee at Best Buy, we’re probably going to have a tough time convincing anyone to help us exorcise that demon from her system. That’s because everyone knows that demons come out growling and speaking some antiquated language in a hissing whisper that is punctuated by a lion’s roar.

“I know she sounds like Bob from Best Buy, but I’m telling you that my daughter is possessed by a demon named Gerty, which I know makes no sense either, because Satan usually gives his minions more creative, multi-syllabic names, but this is an actual possession Larry. We either need to run or find a Bible written in a language other than English, like Latin or Aramaic.”

There comes a point in everyone’s existence when they’ve read too many books, listened to too much music, and watched too many movies. When we reach that point, it becomes difficult to avoid spotting the indicators that moviemakers use to abide by our figurative schemes of thought. They can insert a wide variety of creative inserts to their production, but there are certain touchstones that the audience needs to follow along without confusion. When we witness the agreed upon touchstones, we know exactly what they mean, and we know that the producer forced the moviemakers to incorporate agreed upon symbolic representations to get the audience from point A to point D.

Most of these touchstones are so ingrained and expected now that we don’t even see them for what they are. If you’ve ever watched a movie with a child who hasn’t watched the hundreds of thousands of movies you have, you’ve probably heard, “How did you know that guy was from the future?” If you recognized that it was all about the silver-metallic suit, you probably opened up a can of worms that you couldn’t answer until you began thinking about these figurative schemes of thought that you didn’t even know you absorbed until they asked you about them. Once these touchstones enter our mind’s eye, it’s difficult to separate them from the mostly fallacious theme that teachers teach to the dumbest kids in the class.

“We need to rewrite this scene, so the dumbest kids in the class can get it,” the producer’s note says, and the creative types probably argue with their proposals, saying we want to introduce a new way to introduce a man from the future, an alien, a monster’s mindset, or a product of a demonic possession. “Too much exposition,” the producer might reply, or “the characterization is too complicated, just give them meth face, have them make a head-only turn, or put them in a silver-metallic suit. Even the dumbest kids in the class will get that.” The moviemaker might fight back with righteous indignation regarding their creative interpretation, but they know most ideas won’t get off the ground without the producer’s check.

“Fortune favors the brave and the bold,” is a phrase we’ve learned through the years, and we all want to be the renegade, the maverick who bucks the trends set by others. We don’t want to follow the rules, we want to be the exception to the rule, but if we’re going to attract a wide audience, we learn that no one appreciates the exception until they become successful. We also learn that the irreplaceable become the replaceable when they refuse to follow the rules.

Mike Patton: Maestro del Differente

May 16, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

You want to get weird? I’m not talking about the weird music our aunts and uncles might chuckle at or say, “Hey, that’s kinda neat-o.” I’m talking about a strain so close to normal that they might be a little concerned about our mental health when they hear it. “If you think that’s quality music, then I’m probably going to have to edit my perception of you.” I’m talking about a definition of different carved out in a band called Mr. Bungle, then chiseled into with Fantômas, and ultimately destroyed and reconstructed in a project called Moonchild. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, let me introduce you to the outlandish innovations of a bizarre brainchild named Mike Patton. “Isn’t he a one-hit wonder?” a friend of mine asked, decades after Mike Patton became Mike Patton. “Isn’t he the “It’s it what is it?” guy?” I was so stunned that I couldn’t think up an appropriate term for cluelessness. Then, VH1 went ahead and confirmed his uninformed characterization, by listing the band Patton fronted, Faith No More as one of their one-hit wonders of the 80s. I knew most didn’t follow the career of Mike Patton as much as I had, but I was stunned to learn how even those with purported knowledge in the industry could dismiss him in such a manner. I had to adjust my idealistic vision of the world to reconcile it with the reality that if Billboard is your primary resource, Mike Patton and Faith No More were one-hit wonders. To those of us who live in the outer layer, seeking the sometimes freakishly different, “It’s it what is it?” or the single Epic, was only the beginning. Mike Patton discovered he had a talent at a young age, he could mimic bird calls. He found that he could also perform some odd vocal exercises on a flexi disc that his parents gave him. The idea that he could do that probably didn’t separate him much from the four-to-five billion on the planet at the time, and I only include that note to suggest that Mike Patton probably didn’t even know how talented he was at the time either. Yet, the young Mike Patton knew he loved music. He loved it so much that he and his buddies in school, including Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn, decided to form a band they called Mr. Bungle. They were all around fifteen at the time, and anyone who listens to their early self-produced demos, Bowel of Chiley (1987) and The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny(1986) can hear how young and inexperienced they were. These demos were a chaotic blend of metal, funk, and juvenile humor. It’s so chaotic that it’s as difficult to categorize as it is to listen to, but suffice it to say whatever general definition we might have of traditional music, the music found on those demos is likely the opposite. While devoting himself to Mr. Bungle, and studying English literature at Humboldt State University, Patton worked at a local record store, immersing himself in everything from punk to classical. He obviously kept himself busy during this period, and we can only guess that he was probably as surprised as anyone else when, in 1988, a man named Jim Martin invited Patton to audition for the role of lead singer in Martin’s band Faith No More, after seeing Patton perform in a local gig as the lead singer of Mr. Bungle. Patton won the job after displaying his raw energy and his vocal range for the band. If this were one of those always disappointing biodocs, the moviemakers would depict Martin and the other members of Faith No More as being blown away by Patton’s audition, and they would say something like, “This is obviously the man to lead us into the 90s.” I understand that these movies are often constrained by formulas and time constraints, and they often take shortcuts just to get a point across. I was all prepared to dispel that movie trope by writing that while the members of the band, their management, and the execs thought his audition was great, they heard the demos, and they didn’t think his talent would translate to Faith No More’s furthered success. It turns out, they were so blown away by the talent he displayed in that audition that they did consider him the man to lead them into the 90s. After hearing Mr. Bungle’s early demos, firsthand, all I can say is that must’ve been one hell of an audition.

When he first “discovered” Patton, I imagine Martin returned to his FNM bandmates and said, “I found the guy!” and he handed them the demos. As musicians themselves, I imagine they heard Patton’s talent, but they couldn’t reconcile it with Faith No More’s sound and image, until he auditioned for them. Again, that must’ve been one hell of an audition to blow them away like that. When Patton joined FNM, the music for The Real Thing (1989) was 80-90% written, primarily by keyboardist Roddy Bottum, guitarist Jim Martin, bassist Billy Gould, and drummer Mike Bordin, but Patton wrote all of the lyrics for the original tracks on what happened to be Faith No More’s third album, often crafting those lyrics quickly to fit pre-existing music. Patton contributed vocal melodies and arrangements, that ended up shaping the songs’ final sound. Patton’s contributions transformed the album, and some suggest his input proved instrumental in this album’s eventual success. As popular as FNM’s The Real Thing proved, there’s evidence to suggest that at least some of Patton’s motivations for joining this Epic band was to expand and amplify his beloved Bungle’s reach. If we stop right here, we all have to thank Jim Martin for taking a chance on this nineteen-to-twenty-year-old singer, because at the time, Mr. Bungle was nothing more than a local act in Eureka, California. They had a couple of almost unlistenable self-produced demos to their name, but how many starving artists had that in late-80s California? How many of those same starving artists dreamed of Billboard Top 100 hits, stardom, and vast amounts of money to follow? Anyone who says this is what motivated Mike Patton doesn’t know his ethos or his outlook, yet he was quite proud of what he and his Bungle bros created, and he wanted us all to hear it. In a 1992 Kerrang! interview, Patton admitted he initially viewed Faith No More as a “means to an end,” hoping their success would open doors for Mr. Bungle. As evidence of that, Patton wore a Mr. Bungle T-shirt in the video for Epic, and he handed a Bungle demo to Faith No More’s label, which led to Warner Bros signing Mr. Bungle to a deal in 1989. Again, those of us who heard those demos, in their raw form, would have a tough time believing Warner Brothers would’ve signed Mr. Bungle if Patton didn’t have some standing as the frontman for Faith No More.

This isn’t to suggest that Mike Patton didn’t devote himself to Faith No More, as he devoted an overwhelming amount of his time and energy to the band during their recording and touring of The Real Thing and Angel Dust (1992). He wrote the lyrics and melodies for both albums, toured extensively (over 200 shows for The Real Thing alone), and handled media duties. Mr. Bungle, meanwhile, was more of a side project during this period. Their self-titled debut (1991) was recorded in gaps between Faith No More’s schedule, with Patton contributing vocals, lyrics, and some production alongside bandmates Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn. In 1995, Mike Patton basically proved that a man could toggle between two bands and produce two great albums for each outfit. He played a pivotal role in both Faith No More’s King for a Day and Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante. Patton wasn’t the first to play in two bands at once, by any means, but it wasn’t commonly done in this era. He stated that his daily routine consisted of recording King for a Day at Bearsville Studios, during the day, then driving down to record Disco Volante late into the night and repeating the same process the next day. “It was insane,” he told the Alternative Press in a 1996 interview. He admitted he barely slept while juggling both bands’ demands. Patton never claimed to be a trailblazer in this regard, but he’s acknowledged the strain. In a 2001 Kerrang! interview, he called 1995 “a blur,” saying Mr. Bungle was his “heart” while Faith No More paid the bills. If you haven’t heard him interviewed, this is Mike Patton. He is a humble man who often downplays moments the rest of us consider groundbreaking. King for a Day was another great FNM album, not as good as Angel Dust, but better than The Real Thing, in my humble estimation. Disco Volante was, and is, an incredible album that any serious artist would consider a career achievement, better than the self-titled disc but not as great as California. Most Bungle fans disagree on the latter. After spreading himself so thin in 1995, Patton went and got bored after Faith No More’s 1998 breakup, which the band “officially” stated was due to the fact that Faith No More had run its course creatively. Anyone who thinks that Patton would devote himself entirely to Mr. Bungle at this point just isn’t following along. He gets so bored that he ventures out and creates other artistic enterprises that take that definition of weird out to “Here, there be Dragons” locations on the map. He takes it to the ‘if you think Faith No More was outlandish in places, you should check out Mr. Bungle, and if you think Mr. Bungle stretches the boundaries of genre, you should check out a band he created called Fantômas.’ Fantômas became Patton’s new passion project while devoting an overwhelming amount of his time to what I consider the Mr. Bungle masterpiece 1999’s California. We write all of this, and we don’t even get to Patton’s role as the lead vocalist in the five albums of Tomahawk, and then there’s his varying roles in the bands Peeping Tom, Dead Cross, Lovage, and the killer role he played in one of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s albums. He has two proper solo albums, two works with Kaada, various film scores, and over 60 collaborative efforts, various ensembles, and guest appearances on other artists’ albums, including John Zorn and Björk. The overall brilliant catalog this “one-hit wonder” has amassed can be so overwhelming to the uninitiated that they may not even know where to start. 1989’s The Real Thing might, in fact, be the place to start, but I am so far past that starting point that I can’t even see it any more. That’s the problem with true fans of artists, they’ve listened to the artist for so long that they don’t know where to tell you where to start. Those who like Mike Patton, but don’t have an unusual, almost concerning adoration of him, tell me that Faith No More’s Angel Dust is probably the best starting point, as they say it’s probably the best, most mainstream album he took part in. If that’s the case, I would add Mr. Bungle’s California, Tomahawk Mit Gas, and Patton’s work with the X-Ecutioners as the second class of the Mike Patton beginner’s course. If you make it past that point, and you might not, I would submit Tomahawk’s Anonymous, Fantômas’s Suspended Animation, and Disco Volante as great second-level albums. A trend in Patton’s music I’ve noted, is the 2^nd album trend. The first albums are great, but they seem to set a template from which to explore the dynamic further, and Patton and his various crews seem to peak with the ideas germinating around in their heads concerning what more can be done with this band. He helps build on the base idea of that first album, and they usually create something of a creative peak with those second albums. Don’t get me wrong, I love the third albums, as in King for a Day, Suspended Animation and Anonymous, and as I wrote I think California is better than Disco Volante, but the second album peak seems to be a standard for most of Patton’s ventures. (Most true Bungle fans would say Disco Volante is superior to California.) I imagine those with some authority in the conventional music world might begrudgingly admit that they once considered Mike Patton one of the most talented singers in rock music. They probably all acknowledged that he possessed one of the most versatile and dynamic voices in modern music, characterized by an extraordinary vocal range, stylistic adaptability, and emotive depth. His voice spans six octaves, reportedly from E1 to E7, though some sources conservatively estimate around five octaves (approximately C2 to C7). This range allows him to seamlessly shift from guttural growls and primal screams to operatic falsettos and silky crooning, often within a single song. The experts who admitted all that might also add, “At some point, it didn’t matter how talented he was, because he wasted that incredible voice on music so abrasive that he basically alienated so many of us. In 1995, we all loved the underappreciated King for a Day, but when he hit us with Disco Volante, we shook our heads trying to figure out what he was doing. Most of us dismissed the initial Bungle album a one-off side project, then he doubled down with an even weirder album, and he topped it all off with an album we considered career suicide with the vocal experiments on Adult Themes for Voice (1996). That led us to dismiss him, because we realized he had no interest in becoming a marketable talent.” If you’ve read the writings of mainstream rock critics for as long as I have, you know that they have a difficult time understanding why someone would pick up a pencil and musical instrument and not try to do everything they could to sound like Springsteen, Dylan, or Joey Ramone. They don’t understand why someone would use vocal effects, as opposed to writing meaningful and important social commentary to help us reshape our world. We could excuse this with the idea that musical tastes are relative, but their blanket dismissal of anything different led me to start reading periodicals like Alternative Press and Decibel, who recognized what artists like Patton were trying to do. They praised Patton for his risk-taking, and they hailed his fearless innovation. As for the “marketable talent” comments we’ve heard, some fans and critics note that while he abandoned whatever mainstream potential awaited him, Mike Patton did develop a substantial cult following with each progression into the weird, strange, and just plain different. The next question any gifted artist must ask themselves soon after they discover they have a talent for something is what do I do with this? Patton, and Faith No More, could’ve followed up 1989’s The Real Thing with some version of The Real Thing Part Deux, and they could’ve gone onto develop a template, or a formula, in the ZZ Top, AC/DC vein. The mainstream music critics often eat up commodification of a brand as a cash grab. Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, could’ve made a whole lot of money, enjoyed all the trappings of fame as rock stars. We can saw all we want about artistic integrity and all that, but it can’t be easy to turn away from the prospect of making truckloads of money. Contrary to what detractors say, money and fame can bring a us whole lot of happiness … if we love what we’re doing. If Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, followed the formula of “building trust” with listeners, they would’ve been so bored and unsatisfied artistically. Patton obviously chose to use whatever gifts and talent he had to confound us and obliterate our boundaries in his pursuit of his version of artistic purity, and he chose projects and players who shared his philosophy. If the young Patton had a career path, or a place he “wanted to be in twenty years,” he obviously grew so bored with the “current” direction of his career so many times that he needed to do something decidedly different and out of his comfort zone so often that I don’t think he has any comfort zones left to destroy.