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My response to Christian Steinmetz will be no where near as
intellectual as his original criticism. I haven't read the
other 4 responses before writing this. There is a lot of
speculation about Milemarker and their goals below.
Part of being human is being a socialized entity. Part of
being a socialized entity is that all of your past
experiences contribute to your interpretation of a present
experience. You can imagine for example, at the extremes, if
a member of Milemarker had given you a place to crash one
night in the past or had kicked you in the groin, both of
those experiences would undoubtedly affect your
interpretation of their live show (barring the fact that
these experiences might affect your decision to go to the
show at all). My point here is that no matter what anyone
does in the present, the past experiences of the crowd and
band will affect the current show. This works on
instantaneous time-scales (a show will be vastly different
if started an hour later or an hour earlier).
Milemarker seems to execute their musical recordings in a
very exacting and specific manner. The convolution of
instruments, lyrics and the final mix is a consequence of
their instantaneous perspective (which, remember, is
affected by all past experiences). It is very difficult, if
not impossible, to re-create these confluences at a live
show. The performed songs will change with time no matter
what measures they take (save playing the recording) and an
interactive relationship between crowd and performer can
cause wild swings in the band's ability to execute their
art. My theory is that Milemarker used the previous
stage-specific aesthetic media particularly in an attempt to
be as honestly expressive as possible and separate their
performances from the crowd (while still performing for the
crowd) or, at least, dominate the audience-performer
interaction for the benefit of expression.
I would give Milemarker the critical benefit of the
doubt. That is, it seems that they have recently attempted
to play down visual aesthetics (cf. "Anaesthetic" and recent
performances) as much as possible specifically to
concentrate on their sonic expression. In fact, I would
argue that you should keep your damn eyes shut when you go
to a Milemarker show (while the band is playing... try to
avoid injuries at other times).
Another interesting piece of insight manifests through an
examination of West Coast vs. East Coast shows. The raucous
scene that Christian Steinmetz described is the antithesis
of the recent show I had the privilege of attending in a
major Northern California city that will remain nameless (or
get blanked). At said show, the audience didn't much
appreciate a trashing dork like me with my eyes closed. In
fact, the majority of the audience stood there... some of
them did the classic nod-of-the-head staring-at-the-band
number. It is my belief (although I haven't been able to
experimentally verify this) that this show, with almost no
audience interference or interaction whatsoever, was a
better representation of what the band wants to get across
sonically. Although, if you would have asked me then I would
have told you that I was disappointed that the crowd didn't
vocally and physically express their approval of the
performance... in retrospect, the audience at this show
probably got a better sonic performance out of Milemarker
than Christian Steinmetz's show. (Granted you could imagine
a constructive audience-performer interaction that would
lead to an even better performance).
So, in short, who gives a shit if Milemarker has two
different manifestations? In fact, every manifestation (be
it performance or recording) of Milemarker is completely
different from every other one. Part of the fun of a band
like MM is that the character and ringing of their
expression changes with time, place, attitude, etc. A major
source of variability to the expression is the
audience-performer interaction. Maybe they should play with
a large, opaque screen in front of them... then their visual
aesthetics would be reduced to something very simple and
criticism about the "two Milemarkers" would be unfounded. I,
however, think they have wisely chosen to include us-- as an
audience-- in the experience of the execution of their art
so that we can see their contortions, sweat, tonsils and
instrument changes as well as their errors and
imperfections. There are not "two Milemarkers" but infinite
Milemarkers that come and go with every passing
moment... and I'd like to be able to appreciate as many as I
can.
Joseph Lorenzo
Hall
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