In recent years, there has been some consternation regarding certain artists who, much to their fans’ annoyance, have been known to go back and alter their earlier works.  Writer, director, and producer George Lucas made substantial modifications to his classic Star Wars trilogy, prompting many an angry fanboy to howl, “Han shot first, damn you!”  In certain circles, there was no small uproar over the allegations (I can’t recall whether or not they were ever proven) that legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist and creative mastermind Jimmy Page recorded new guitar tracks when he began remastering the Led Zeppelin library in 1990.  Oh, and while we’re on the subject of remasters, some older audiophiles claim that the current crop of remastered albums are too uniformly loud, robbing the original recordings of their intended aural dynamics.  No matter the medium—comic books, movies, music, what-have-you—fans tend to resent what they perceive as undue tinkering with the objects of their adoration, even when said tinkering is by the hands of the original artist.

Personally, I’ve never been the sort that begrudges a creator the right to change his work after the fact.  Audiences have an annoying habit of viewing the media they consume as somehow belonging to them, as if public consumption makes the creation one with its audience.  This notion, however, is utter nonsense, wonderfully illustrative of the needy self-absorption that plagues so many ardent “fans.”  I look at art as a window through which I am allowed to revel in the vision of the artist; though I may develop emotional attachments to—and fond memories from—the art I consume, that does not make it mine.  That art remains the manifestation of another’s vision, and I am merely along for the ride.  Until the work enters the public domain and thus becomes a recognized piece of the collective culture, it is another person’s intellectual property, to do with as he or she sees fit, even if changing said property might be ill-advised or downright silly.

I do not say this to invite debate on the subject.

Years before doing any “real” work in comics, I self-published a 14-issue series read by no more than a few hundred people.  During the course of writing and drawing that series, I was basically learning the craft as I went:  the early issues were, artistically speaking, lightyears behind the final few.  When I eventually decided to stop printing the individual issues (no, I don’t have any left) and collect the entire series in one fat volume (no, I don’t have any of those left, either), I gave serious consideration to reworking the art on the early issues to reflect the progress I had made over the years…and when my readers heard about it, some of them went absolutely nuts.  While my work wasn’t nearly popular enough to prompt anyone to deem it culturally relevant and therefore inviolable, I was informed in no uncertain terms that the whole point behind reading a collected edition of a self-published work is to see how the creator develops as an artist.  It was an assertion I was confident I could counter in debate—shouldn’t the needs of the story be paramount, or have we become totally obsessed with all things meta-contextual, even in our escapist entertainment?—but at the same time, I found myself agreeing that, in the world of self-publishing, watching the artist come into his own is part of the allure for many indie comics readers. 

When the collected edition went to press, the art was unchanged, and the book sold quite nicely.

Recently, though, I’ve undertaken the task of remixing my own musical recordings, and today, I had to re-record several guitar tracks in one of my songs.  Mind you, I wasn’t correcting any errors:  those I have left intact, and I assure you, the discerning listener will find many errors in virtually every song I write and record.  I have retained enough of my self-publisher’s DIY spirit to understand that anyone interested in hearing these recordings (including, as it may turn out, my own descendants) will want to hear me progress as a musician, and that means leaving my early works alone…as much as is feasible.  See, since I’m going from mono to stereo and cleaning up the mixes, it sometimes happens that the original tracks are simply not suitable for such work.  And thus, today, faced with some guitar tracks that just didn’t hold up under the scrutiny of a stereo mix, I broke with my own tradition and re-recorded four of the guitar tracks in one of my oldest songs. 

My early home recordings were sometimes recorded under downright crude conditions (not that I’m by any means running an advanced operation now), and I didn’t yet fully understand my own equipment.  Those songs just don’t fare well when compared to my recent work.  I will likely never be a master of the form:  my drumming is rudimentary, my guitar-playing is simplistic, and my home studio will never sound quite like the real thing.  But nevertheless, I just couldn’t leave that song alone…it just deserved to sound better. 

While the audience may love a creative work, its creator loves it more, and what creator doesn’t want the best for his artistic offspring?

We lounged on the cool surface of the mat, our breathing no longer labored but our clothing still drenched in sweat.  Our conversation was light, breezy; laughter came easily in the euphoric afterglow of an evening spent pushing ourselves to exhaustion.  It didn’t bother me that exhaustion came much sooner than it used to, or that my role in the evening’s exercises was solely that of the instructor—my days of active participation are well behind me now—it just felt good to be in the gym, with like-minded people, killing time waiting for Eddie and Richard to return from the hospital. 

Eddie’s shoulder had gone wrong during a sparring session with Dakota, and Richard had driven him to the emergency room.  It might surprise the reader to find that Rob and I were able to joke in such a relaxed manner while awaiting word on the extent of Eddie’s injury, but one has to realize that is simply the nature of a fight gym:  people get hurt.  It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when.  The laws of probability being what they are, the math catches up with everyone eventually, and what looked to our experienced-bordering-on-jaded eyes like a simple shoulder dislocation was actually pretty good news…as injuries go, that’s not bad at all. 

So it wasn’t that we didn’t care; we did, as a matter of fact, and that’s why we were still in the gym, more than two hours after closing, waiting for Eddie and Richard to come back.  It’s just that we knew it could have been much worse, and as such didn’t let it get us down.

“We probably should have followed Eddie out the door,” said Rob, upon realizing that neither of us had a key, and that one of us could theoretically end up waiting all night for Eddie to get back and lock up.

“No big deal.” I answered.  “It’s not like this is the first time we’ve ever been mat-rats.”  A mat-rat, for the uninitiated, is a guy who isn’t working out but hangs out on the mat and socializes.  Some people use it as a derogatory term, but I don’t.  Surfers spend all their time between waves lounging on the beach; I just look at the mat as the grappler’s beach.

“This is totally different,” came Rob’s mock protest.  Then, quieter:  “It’s a different mat.”  A good laugh was had. 

Not long after that, Richard and Eddie returned, Eddie newly-accessorized with a stylish sling and in good spirits.  Nothing was broken, and the gym’s diagnosis-by-consensus had been accurate:  dislocation.  For an injured man with a visit to the orthopaedist in his near future, Eddie wasn’t all that worried:  he’d once competed in a state wrestling tournament with a dislocated shoulder, so he wasn’t particularly stressed over the idea of coaching with one.

Just another day at the office…

The following post has been time-stamped, for which I apologize...it's not a practice of which I'm particularly fond.  However, I wanted to post this update as a result of the great discussion that has arisen from this subject, and which expands greatly on the original work.  The first part of this series can be found here; the second, here.

Allow me a moment to shake this off. 

Rock-n-roll was born over a period of time.  There was no singular moment of musical autogenesis in which some previously-anonymous guitarist picked up his battered Gibson, and, in the throes of divine (or diabolical) inspiration, strummed out a particularly dirty handful of chords, proclaiming, “I dub thee Sir Rock of Roll!” as his amplifier howled in dismay (although it would certainly be cool if that had been the case).  It was an American creation, this bastard child of country-n-Western, rhythm-n-blues, and probably some other things with hyphens flanking the letter “n,” but it was quickly taken away from us.  In the 1950s, American rock was defined by a handful of early pioneers (Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Presley, and others), but during the ‘60s, the real innovations were coming from across the pond…from England.  The Beatles and the Stones were just the spearhead of the invasion, as they were soon followed by the Who, the Kinks, and as the decade wound down, Pink Floyd (in its original, Syd Barrett-led incarnation), Cream, and Led Zeppelin.  American standouts were harder to come by:  Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys produced what might have been the ultimate in feel-good bubblegum pop, doing so while revolutionizing the art of producing and mixing a rock album, and as the peace-and-love movement of the 1960s rotted from the inside and became darkly paranoiac, the Doors emerged to sing the funeral dirge for the hippie generation with “The End,” “When the Music’s Over,” and “The Unknown Soldier.”  Influential as they were, though, the relative handful of American rock innovators were vastly outnumbered by their British counterparts.

Pop and rock had yet to divorce themselves from one another entirely, and for much of the ‘60s, rock remained, in simplest terms, merely the dominant style in American pop.  Stateside-born rock-n-roll did its level best to keep pace with daring British imports during the 1970s; that it succeeded at all had more to do with the rise of Southern rock than any other particular rock offshoot.  However, in the end, American pop came to be dominated by disco, the first in a long line of quasi-musical fads as vapid as they were inextricably linked to the decades in which they came into being (anyone remember “New Wave?”).  By the end of the 1970s, even rock was seen as bloated and pretentious by the music intelligentsia—pop was already beneath their notice by this time—which led to the rise of punk, ostensibly a return to rock’s stripped-down, rebellious roots…but that’s another story entirely.

Once again, I seem to have let myself get mired in the rich history of the genre, and even though I’ve condensed it so ruthlessly as to court charges of criminal negligence, I’ve used up all my space writing about said history.  Rather than make you wait any longer for the meat of the piece, though, I’ll just soldier on ahead.  Perhaps I can wrap this up in much less space than it took to begin the journey…

American rock is virtually nonexistent in this, the early 21^st century.  Don’t get me wrong:  there are some forms of rock that continue to flourish here.  For example, America can certainly smelt some fine, high-grade metal; in a society as economically and socially divided as ours, the youthful hostility at the heart of metal in all its myriad forms is easy to come by (that same sense of rage brought us hip-hop, too, so the next time you hear a metalhead bashing “rap,” remind him that they share very similar psychological roots).  There are also a few diluted strains of wannabe-punk that occasionally emerge as temporary inheritors of the rock-n-roll attitude, but they lack the progenitor strain’s honesty and refreshing lack of sophistication.  No, there is very little music produced in this country today that can simply be called “rock”…there are no AC/DCs, no Deep Purples, not even any Led Zeppelins or Black Sabbaths. 

When is the last time an American-made album hit the listener with such power, such potency, that it made you believe you had heard the very first note of a revolution in progress?  When Black Sabbath’s titular track first assaulted listeners with its plodding diabolus in musica main riff, the audience knew:  change had come.  When Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” writhed through the listeners’ collective minds like a sweaty, sinuous Lothario, the audience knew:  change had come.  When Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, arguably the first (and maybe last) modern rock-n-roll masterpiece, the audience knew:  change had come.

It’s been some time since an American rock album let anyone know that change was coming.  Innovation in American rock is virtually unheard of, and the establishment is hardly challenged when music has become little more than a product peddled by massive entertainment conglomerates who—as one look at the ledgers proves—represent the very worst the capitalistic establishment has to offer.  During the 1980s, the only band fanning the fire of good ol’ American rock-n-roll—until the debut of Guns N’ Roses, then years away from becoming a parody of themselves—was, in fact, a British band:  the Cult.  During the 1990s, the sullen reaction to late-’80s hair metal, grunge (a musical movement which, to the casual observer, looked like a gaggle of angst-ridden heroin junkies with only passing familiarities with their instruments playing at being “serious artists”), made intermittent stabs at relevance, but its own ill-defined malaise and general ennui were ultimately its undoing.

Does this country even remember rock-n-roll?   Do we remember its power, its purpose, its ability to push envelopes and challenge sensibilities?  Or has the rock-n-roll phenomenon run its course, fated to drift into obscurity while fragmenting even further into micro-genres (what the hell is the difference between “emo” and “screamo,” anyway?), doomed to obsolescence by the pervasiveness of prepackaged pop music?  Is the driving force behind modern music so far removed from the urgency, the immediacy of rock, that we have been left with naught but the pop rubbish peddled by such schmaltz-fests as American Idol?  Must we forevermore recoil at the horrific realization that we are both consumers and perpetrators of such pop showcases, circuses of inanity in which only safe, bland contestants are deemed palatable by the unwashed masses, and in which true talents whose attitude and raw chutzpah—yes, chutzpah, and maybe moxie, too!—are ignored in favor of those aforementioned safe choices?

Oh, look…I remembered how American Idol was supposed to figure into all of this!

If you actually read this meandering missive to completion, I applaud your tenacity (and your patience).  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sleep off the effects of this Tom Wolfe novel.