Some of these folks are otherwise parts of ensembles that I may or may not like. None of them are obscure, and I'm sure I sound like a Pitchfork poser on some of them. But I'm too old to care much about that at this point. Anyway, here is a quick list of no pre-determined length of some of my personal favorites with perhaps a brief note as to what makes them particularly important to me. Or not.
1) Roky Erickson - incredibly influential perhaps, and a seminal artist in an embryonic moment, the crystallization of what was best and what was meant, if anything - perhaps by the Geist - by the Texas garage scene of the mid-Sixties, and Austin, when Austin actually meant something. Austin stopped really meaning anything meaningful long about 1986 or so, I think. Maybe earlier. Maybe it died with Rock Against Reagan.
Anyway, I love Roky. Roky is listening to my sisters' 45's when I was six years old. It's stopping at the Pirate's Den flea market way up on north Lamar as we would leave Austin, so I could buy comics back in 1969 and 1970, and we would listen to the AM radio in mom's '68 Ford Galaxy 500 and make the long trip back on the Old Dallas Rd as I read the Conan books and horror comics I'd bought at the flea market.
I've seen him live a few times, but only in recent years. There was something odd about seeing him at Chaos a couple years back, especially with Billy Gibbons arriving for a guest appearance, complete with that weird nipple hat of his. I was proud of Kevin opening up for Roky. It was a cool night.
I have a sentimental attachment to him. He is a true Texas artist, if anyone is, I'll grant you that.
2) Syd Barrett - Take all that groovy, hippie, acid shit and give it a DSM IV diagnosis...and another few doses. Jesus. The Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, if I ever heard it.
3) Skip Spence - Like Syd, I hear something breaking down. Something powerful thwarted and inflected through a piece of smashed glass or processed with broken machinery, such that it achieves a unique beauty. May be my most prized piece of vinyl next to Easter Everywhere.
4) Jeff Mangum - My ex Matt in Minneapolis hates Neutral Milk Hotel, so my affection for this guy has always given me a sense of integrity about my aesthetic sense. I don't think Mangum is genius. I think he is intuitive. In the Aeroplanes Over the Sea is maybe the best album of the last twenty years.
5) Anton Newcombe - I don't care about the film, though it was fun to watch. I got into BJM just shortly before it came out, which was about eight years late, I suppose, but still. This is just a guy who is incredibly talented, prolific, creative, in my mind likable, somewhat tortured (for some reason with me always a plus. I don't know why that should be so, really) and who apparently grew up listening to almost exactly the same music I did. I don't think he is regurgitating anything at all. I just know that whatever he does always sounds right and familiar, even if it also sounds new. We draw from different wells on the same aquifer I guess.
I've seen him a few times. He has spawned an incredible number of bands and influenced an entire generation of artists, whether people realize it or not. He does it all on the cheap and makes no excuses. Give It Back is probably one of my favorite albums of all time, and to me it is essentially meaningless. That really doesn't matter to me. It proves to me either way that someone else was soaking in the same juices all those years. I really love this guy.
6) Calvin Johnson - I saw him at the 7th St Entry in Minneapolis while a metal band played at 1st Ave on the other side of an adjoining wall. And it didn't matter. I was whistling at his command and clapping along and singing, and I was in a state of arrest. The guy has a voice that to me would be otherwise somewhat jarring, even if he's in tune, just because of its, I guess bartone?, quality. But there's something ballsy about it to me.
7) Jad Fair - Man, this guy is perfect. I mean, if you want to make music, just do it! Who cares what you think you know. I tremble a bit at that.
Besides, if Mo Tucker wants to play with him, he must be worthwhile.
8) Stephin Merritt - He wrecks me. This one is partly personal and all about my life with Matt all those years ago. But it's also about how incredibly creative he is as an artist. Still, 69 Love Songs is really all about house-sitting in Wayzata, Minnesota with the guy who, to this day, probably wrecked me for anyone else. Merritt's songs make me cry. Maudlin and schmaltzy? Perhaps. Who cares? They're great tunes in any case. Listening to them reminds me that I will always be in love with every guy I've ever loved. However, and this doesn't take away from any of the others one little bit, there was something magical about the six years of my life in which I belonged solely and completely to Matt Greenwood. A lot of that, perhaps, is because it coincided with the other great adventure of my life, leaving Texas and my family behind for a time. But Matt is forever special to me either way, as is his family. And 69 Love Songs is something of a sacrament of that, I think.
9) Steve Marriott - Jesus God, the quintessential rock vocalist. Nobody better. Incredible. Stage presence for the nations. I mean, cmon. Makes me wanna screw somethin.
10) Ray Johnson - If ever someone's entire life embodied their creative mission, if you can call if that; if ever someone's life personified their artistic integrity, it was this guy. There is no one greater, in my estimation, if you judge them by those criteria.
11) Andy Warhol - Whether you like him or not, no single individual had a greater impact upon fine art, popular culture or culture in general in the last one hundred years than Andy Warhol. I'll stand by that statement. I applaud it.
12) Robert Pollard - Does it make sense to say that this guy is a comfort to me? I'm awed by the his output, but he just seems like a regular guy.
I think there's something to that. A lot of the artists who I admire are either guys who are tortured by something, deal with something, or otherwise seem accessible to me and make their own creative processes somewhat less mysterious as well. They empower folks like me to do anything we want to be expressions of whatever is universal about our experience. I don't think that's too difficult to discern from my list so far.
13) Marcel Duchamp - Everything is derivative, and nothing is sacred. And art is not the particular purview of some regimented elite. It stands apart from all that.
14) Henry Darger - What I wouldn't give to have one of his paintings. True outsider art. Darger had perhaps the richest interior life of any human being who ever lived, inasmuch as it is documented as such. There certainly may have been others, but they left no record, no groaning of the spirit to match his output.
15) Tracy Emin - A big fuck you to the art world from someone talented enough to make that statement. Amen.
16) Frida Kahlo - I saw an exhibit of her work at the Dallas Museum of Art in December of 2000. It effected me. That doesn't always happen. It has only rarely happened, actually, and the only other moment that springs to mind is from Florence in 1981.
17.) Deacon Lunchbox - Dude could be my twin, only I'm better lookin.
I'll think of more later.
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