Collective Animals and Antisocial BRICs

The Animal Collective concert in Prospect Park on Saturday, a fundraiser for the Celebrate Brooklyn free concert series, was not quite sold out, though the previous night was, and I actually stood on line and considered buying tickets. But at $30 a pop for two people (and my wife, born in China, is not exactly out buying artrock CD's in her spare time), standing room only, I thought I'd explore the perimeter as a potential alternative. As I perambulated about, I quickly realized what was going on: the promoters had lined the 8-foot fence that surrounds the bandshell with opaque plastic sheeting, in an explicit effort to prevent people from seeing the concert even from a considerable distance.

Excuse me? Let's be clear about something. BRIC, the sponsor of the concert series (as far as I can tell the initials stand for Brooklyn Information and Culture) is a largely publicly funded organization. Outside the income they receive from events, about two thirds of their revenue is from government and foundation grants. Their 2008 Annual Report lists numerous New York City institutions and public figures as supporters, as well as federal entities like the National Endowment for the Arts. More locally, the people of Brooklyn have supported this group's forays into many different art arenas. You really have to wonder about the mindset of a publicly funded and city-supported organization that sits down to figure out a way to cut off visual access to an outdoor concert in a public park. It is nothing short of mindboggling, in fact outright insulting.

Up until recently BRIC was not even granted the right to hold these pricey, ticketed fundraisers at the bandshell. But for the last couple of years they have gotten more and more daring, sending us Bob Dylan and other luminaries at up to $100 a seat; er, stand. Most of the concerts are still pay-what-you-want pricing, but the fundraiser idea has obviously been condoned by the Parks Dep't. It is a dubious proposition that any organization, for-profit or not-for-profit, should be permitted to use public space for its fundraisers, but lets just imagine that Propsect Park or some other public institution is getting enough out of this to justify it. Still, the blatant "fuck off, freeloaders" of slapping black plastic sheeting around the entire hillside around the bandshell is in incredibly poor taste.

People will pay to see a concert by a known band from the inside whether they can see from outside a fence or not. The sound beyond the barricades is actually very good, but even without the obnoxious blackout paper you need binoculars to see much of anything. So what is the point? In all the years I attended the Schaeffer Music Festival (later Dr. Pepper Music Festival) at Wollman Rink in Central Park, there was never any effort to close off visual access from the rocks and hillsides (not that that would have been so easy). I saw many concerts from out there, as did thousands of other people, and yet many if not most of them were sold out. And in fact, in spite of BRIC's earnest efforts at exclusion, there were actually one or two places where you could get a full stage view from outside the Prospect Park bandshell arena, at least with a pair of binoculars. So, yeah, I saw and heard the whole concert for free. Tough nuggies. (I'm sure our BRIC friends can translate that - you are from brooklyn, aren't you, folks?)

BRIC needs to rethink their attitude here, and remember who made them what they are today. Cutting off the view from hundreds of yards away is, well, shortsighted. The next time I attend one of their regular concerts I will pay 1 cent per person, with a note explaining why. I encourage others to do the same.

I don't know too much about Animal Collective. I heard their latest, Meriweather Post Pavillion, which I thought was interesting, listenable prog-rock with an art-rock twist. The group was formed as a gathering of various artrock types, originally from Baltimore but now living in NYC. With names like Panda Bear and Geologist, stage props that light up like jack-o'lanterns and ocean wave cutouts that move back and forth with little fishies on them, they do seem a little precious; "Teddy Pre-school" might be an equally appropriate name. But the music is by no means from Romper Room. On the contrary, it challenges the listener with repetitive streams of keyboard-driven sound, to which the vocals seem almost accompaniments. The group is about sonic experience and how rock can be a medium for the expansion of that.

If I had to describe what they do relative to other genres, I might call them a cross between Yes and Phillip Glass (Genesis and Terry Riley?). They build these incredibly thick textures and stick with them for long periods of time, the vocals choosing a few notes to bounce around on, the bass (always, as far as I could tell, produced by a keyboard) thumping continuously and moving minimally or not at all. The result is not always pleasant, but never jarring; there are points at which it draws you in and others at which you are kind of waiting for them to move on to something else. There are few if any such things as breaks, even for the keyboards, and a guitar was brought out only occasionally to deepen the texture. There were just three performers (the group has four members but they perform in various combinations) yet the sound was more orchestral than almost anything I have heard since the late 1970's.

Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your perspective, and perhaps on where it leads. Rock went through a heavily orchestrated phase in the 70's with groups like The Moody Blues, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer making the synthesizer and an array of keyboards a primary component of their sound. There were groups like Supertramp for whom guitars seemed to be an afterthought. This was a great era for music, but it also led to a host of imitations that were far less inspired and gave the Synth Sound a bad reputation. A counterreaction was inevitable, and it came in the form of the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and the punk/new wave explosion that followed. Perhaps Animal Collective is a sign that the synthesizer is fair game again. The members of the group certainly come from that post-post-punk milieu that has rejuvenated rock and roll, after the dull fin-de-siecle thrashing of the last decade. The Seattle Sound and alt-country were about the only decent things that happened then (I'm exaggerating, but not much); but suddenly, along come The Strokes and Death Cab for Cutie and a lot of (slightly less promoted) bands that now constitute "alternative" rock, which is to say, more or less the living soul of rock. What Animal Collective shows is that the essence of this music can be presented in a format that fuses rock with much of what happened in "alternative classical" in the last 30 years - the downtown New York school of Glass, LaMonte Young, Steve Reich and John Adams, all of which was fueled originally, not from rock, but from jazz, specifically Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air. The curve has turned back on itself, and we now have an alt-rock form of this musical rainbow.

So once again, is this a good thing? Anything that opens up new possibilitiies is a good thing, because there is no way forward if you don't. The Strokes were commercial enough, but whether or not alt-rock was threatening to degenerate into commercialism from the beginning, with groups like Coldplay and The Killers making overt thrusts at Top 40 radio play it has perhaps rounded a corner. Art rock may come to the rescue. Or it may lead down a blind alley, with compositions more aimless and hermetic than anything Animal Collective produces. We'll see. Meanwhile, I can only say that even if no one moment gave me anything like the intense joy of sitting in the Garden listening to Yes perform "I Get Up, I Get Down", the overall impact of the concert was that of a kind of perverse pleasure - the pleasure of just experiencing something different, something not too dressed up for consumption but not too far gone to be taken in. And that is one positive kind of musical experience. Go see them if you get a chance, and if you don't like what you hear, at least consider yourself richer for having tried.