Selling It: Your Name Here (TM)
In an attempt to consolidate my mental hold on my record collection, I returned the other day to a record I got about a year ago but put aside for a while. It’s an album called Tromatic Reflexxions by Von Südenfed, the inexplicable union of The Fall’s frontman Mark E. Smith and German techno duo Mouse on Mars. Such an unthinkable cross-stylistic merger of Manchester post-punk and Düsseldorf drum and bass is all the more remarkable because of Smith’s legendary irascibility; he is notoriously difficult to collaborate with, dismissing band members on a whim, dissing Black Flag on the Henry Rollins Show, and showing genuine reverence only for the late Bo Diddley.
Tromatic Reflexxions sounds exactly like you’d expect it to sound: Smith rants, threatens, and self-aggrandizes (“I am the great M.E.S.”) over abrasive Teutonic beats. In “Flooded,” he relates the story of when he drowned a rival DJ over a turf dispute. It might as well be Mark E. Smith(TM)—his character, as manifest in his musical contributions, is what sells the record. I’m not an expert in European electronica, but I imagine the same is true, to a lesser extent, of Mouse on Mars, whose fans have probably come to expect a certain flavor of spiky, Reaktor-y tracks. In sum, these artists have strong musical personalities that make the idea of their collaboration appealing. Match-ups like Von Südenfed illuminate eccentricity, musical and personal, by way of contrast.
And eccentricity is not in short supply among composers. Would it be hopelessly superficial to market composers based on their personalities, making the case that their traits and quirks necessarily inform their music? If someone could make it clear to symphony orchestras, opera companies, etc. that good composers tend also to be fascinating people, they might find it easier to convince audiences that new music is fascinating too. In the immortal words of Mark E. Smith, “The man whose head expanded / Come on with the heraldry / And misinterpretation prerogative.” Think about it.