Would you play 'Wango Tango'?

Subject: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 01:32 PM

Being a Michigan guitar player of a certain age, I once had a band that played music that sounded a lot like "The Stooges" --When we played in public, it was generally early on the bill(it has been said, with some accuracy, that we played before the audience was let in) but we had dreams of glory, anyway--

We were better at getting gigs than keeping them(in order to keep working, we changed the band's name a lot) and were prone to receiving a lot of "constructive criticism"--one particular suggestion that has lingered over the passing decades was that I should try to be more like Ted Nugent, that is to say, I should do lots of songs in which "boogie" was a transparent euphemism for sex, and I should make faces at the audience, pretend to lick my microphone, and "dry hump" my guitar--

I have always been resistant to career advice, though, no matter how well intended, and could never quite bring myself to do it (I did write and perform a related parody number called "Animal Hunger", but that was a joke)--

My question is this--How many of you could, or would, let go of your musical tastes and your personal dignity in order to create and perform a show that you knew would be successful?

P.S. "Wango Tango" was TN's masterwork, containing such lines as,"Yeah you look so good baby I'm startin to drool all over myself", and "Is my baby alive, Is my baby alive? She Wango Tango'd to death!"

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 02:10 PM

Gee, Ted, I guess it isn't the Burl Ives song, Old Doctor Wango Tango. D'ya think Burl was Nugent's inspiration?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 02:44 PM

Most likely, Joe--There probably aren't many other places that the phrase "Wango Tango" is used-Don't remember the Burl Ives melody, but the lyrics seem to have a similar--

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: Kim C
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 04:02 PM

Aw, heck, have a little fun. :-)

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: GUEST,Taliesn
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 11:23 PM

(quote)
"Would you play 'Wango Tango'?"
"P.S. "Wango Tango" was TN's masterwork,....."

You've already answered this musical question by stating:

(quote)
"How many of you could, or would, let go of your musical tastes and your personal dignity in order to ...."

Let me expamd on it this way. I have this essay i revisit every so often ,some of it's undercurrent was expressed in a thread I discharged over the state of what passes for music at this year's MTV Awards ,and it all so effortlessly fits under the heading of
" Rock & Roll Assholes " and Ted Nugent is right up there as the proto-arsehole of rock along with that other shining formerly heroin-soaked shit-for-brains from Detroit ,Iggy Pop. These Northern MidWest White Trash boys preceeded the latest counter-evolutionary spawn of Kid Rock .

There isn't room enough to get started on the Eurotrash of the Sex Pistols, etc,. Suffice it to say Punk become White Thrash RAP has sent musicianship down the trough ever since to be replaced by what is always labeled as "raw" performance art attitude.

So suffice it to say that if I were ever to put in the effort to learn the craft of the guitar , per chance to master atleast a signature style ,the less than last thing I would then do is throw it all away on the likes of "Wango Tango".

I'm remnded of the line from one of my most favorite films " A Man for All Seasons" where Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas Moore ,on trial for his life ,asking a former student of his ,who betrays him by perjuring himself to convict Moore for high treason, what the chain of office he was now newly wearing ( suggesting his Judas pay for job well done ). Upon hearing he was made a magistrate of Wales . Moore responds " Why Rich ,it profit not a man to lose his soul for the whole world....But for Wales? "

"Wango Tango" is definitely in that catagory ,but certanly not alone in that catagory. I don't want to know how starving I'd have to be ,but it would take that ,but certainly not success. What kind of success would it be. It strikes me as equalling an actor dong pornography....cheap pornography at that.
No thank you.;-)

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 01:49 AM

Thanks for putting a little meat in my thread, Taliesn--Of course, I wasn't passing any sort of judgement on Ted's musicianship, I have actually always thought him to be a pretty fair player, but very intersted in doing whatever it took--Iggy was a very different sort of person, seemed more likely to kill himself than to succeed, but people often surprise you--

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: alanabit
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 02:54 AM

Interesting question. I guess it's really about how far are you prepared to go to get an audience on your side. When most of us start out, we are happy just to have an audience. Very few of us are either good or lucky enough to have a listening audience from the start. I shudder to think of some of the dross I used to play as crowd pleasers in my Irish Pub days, but there were plenty of things I was not prepared to do. I have always had a lot of respect for prostitutes - after all - they are seling their bodies for an illusion of sex rather than something which is important to their soul. When selling actually begins to damage their self esteem, it really is time to get out before it really damages them.
I feel rather the same way about playing (what I consider to be) drivel in public. There can be a lot of fun in playing disastrous kitsch like perhaps "Ebony Eyes" for laughs, but I began to feel cheap and stupid when I continually played material which I did not care about. A little bit of whoring was no problem for me. It began to sap me when I felt I had no choice. It was a good reason for leaving that scene - and I did.

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 12:03 PM

Once you manage to get the crowd in front of you, it is easy to start giving them whatever they want, and no matter what kind of an audience you play for, the temptation is the same--I remember all too well the many, many folkie performers in the 60's and 70's who played up to the anti-establishment sentiments so popular at the time--

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 02:03 PM

I remember years ago being upset at a Malcolm Dalglish & Grey Larsen concert because they were 'different' than the first time I heard them...(one example was the song "Shawnee Town", a slow, almost ponderous song about river boats)...they had speeded it it up to a 'bouncy' tempo!

I, critic that I be, went up and asked "why?"...and was told thay the younger, mostly college audiences they were playing for, responded better to up-tempo stuff! I was too astounded to ask "Well, then, why don't you LEARN some new songs that fit and/or just play there...instead of messing with a good song and your own image?"

This is a much milder example than the thread starts with, but it does illustrate the principle of "Once you get into being onstage and making a sort of living doing it, it IS easy to do whatever necessary to stay there" And I'm sure that when LOTS of money is involved, it is even easier.

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 02:16 PM

Good example, Bill, and not an isolated incident, either.

It could be argued that that was just the folk process, since traditional material was being reshaped by the tastes of a new audience--on the other hand, it seems pretty likely that "Wango Tango" was based on a traditional song, as well, and that Nugent had an earlier hit of "Baby. Please Don't Go", you'd be able to say the same thing in those cases too--

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 02:43 PM

I do not pander, with my art or with my music. (pandering - making a profit by catering to the lower tastes and desires of others or to exploit their vices.)

I have changed ways of performing traditional music - like using a tune for an instrumental break with a song - but I would never use overt sexual come-ons in lyrics or performance to appeal to an audience. That isn't the kind of audience I want. I even avoid using amplification whenever possible and try to find good acoustic spaces for performing. Obviously I am not making enough money to support myself with music.
Plenty of Robert Burns songs and Child ballads have sexual meaning, but to act like Madonna or Michael Jackson... no way. Or to perform stuff I don't care about... again, no way.
;-)

Alice

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: Bert
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 02:54 PM

Speaking as someone who sings songs like "Size Doesn't Matter". I don't know how much more there is to let go;-)

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: GUEST,Taliesn
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 04:31 PM

(quote)
""Once you get into being onstage and making a sort of living doing it, it IS easy to do whatever necessary to stay there" And I'm sure that when LOTS of money is involved, it is even easier. "

Let me further illustrate the point with a further example then; one that I went through personally, and see how wide of the mark I am.

I was a fine artist that honed their talents and skills to be able to compete on a professional level. My parents said all well and good with your art and we will pay for your university but you must choose something more practical to apply your talent to.
( the proverbial "Day Job" ).
The only thing I could come up with was Advertising Design ( living in the shadow of Gawd-almighty New Yawk at the dawn of the 80's) thinking that I could do the professional work to pay for my privsate time at my personal altar , my drawing board , to do the work that was my passion and labor of love.
Aye, but this Faustian Bargain reared its ugly head when the ever-ratcheting up demands of energies and craft to serve the commercial beast of evermore clever ,nay cunning ,ways of pandering to the lowest common denominator and the hyperventalated cult of status that became the Yuppie/Studio 54 /Reagan 80's.
Too soon those demands of the "business" servicing das Zeitgeist of the Status-worshiping 80's rapidly began to drain away my time ,and then my abilities ,to court my private muse at the drawing board and I came to an epiphany that I had to cut loose of the degenerate culture of the time , in one of it's leading Metropolis', and break free .

Yeah, I said good-bye to serious money , but it was money that would've easily led to bills for pychiatry & detoxification and divorce costs had I chosen to marry any of the harlots I traficked with that were part of that scene. ( Sorry ,no innocents not already spoken for ever crossed my path. Wasn't to be ).

I finally escaped thanks to a younger native Northern Virginia woman whom I became involved with through friends and whom ultimately invited me to a way out by way of returning with her too N.Virginia. I did and got into carpentry to make a living and, thus ,kept my sanity and ,to my joy , my original artistic tuning fork.

My point is considering why you chose to take the path of the muse through music in the first place; as a "job" just to get by and perhaps thrive, or as your sense of artistic "calling" to which you devote yourself to and keep your "Day Job" ,if it is not your calling , separate because you know your "calling" is too precious to you to risk profaning it to degenracy and, perhaps, losing it. If this has no real meaning to you then that's OK.
Then the quote from "Citizen Kane" is appropriate when the Sloan character was being interviewed about the just deceased Cahrles Foster Kane said " Well it's not trick to make a lot of money...if ALL you want to do is mke a lot of money ".

As far as the wealth game goes ; word has it that if you sincerely pursue and are true to your calling you can't help but acheive a level of mastery all your own as unique as one's signature that othe will discover and you will always make atleast a living.
Hence the danger of pandering to the evermore "brutish" sensations of the purely hyper-sensual biological human.

You become what you chose and if pandering to the lowest natures of the human spirit through your profession suits you just fine, then go in peace. Life's made to be lived, I s'pose.

I guess I'm just making the case for that part of the path of the artist/musician/ troubador/writer..whatever.. is ultimately a "spiritual path " for it is , as is my non-denominational belief , that the artistic experience is one way that the higher spirit communes with and through otherwise we would just endlessly plod on as clever opposing thumbed tool-making and weilding beasts , the so-called "biological human" which the secular humanists vouchsafe is all there is to existence. Thus thee is no higher spirit to be held account to, hence no real reason for striving for a higher purpose because there is none, just the endless round of preserving the same level of existance with evermore material fascinations.

That is why I take such issue with the secualr humanists/ Carl Saganists and fundamentalist evolutionaries.
To them I say to what possible need for survival of the fittest did the need for a strictly biological human ever arise to "have" to master a musical instrument like a Beethoven or a Mozart ,let alone compose like a Beethovan or Mozart. Whence came the Gregorian Chants. Biological humanistic splitting of ever smaller quantified hairs just strike me as missing the point entirely which is why the explanation is so very alien to them.

Mind you I speak of that spiritual self and not any particular "religion", but apparently even this is just too much ground to even consider.

I didn't intend it to go this way , but there you have it anyway.
...and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. ;-)

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 05:09 PM

You crack me up, Taliesn! I must be honest and say that, try though you may have, to "fit into servicing das Zeitgeist of
the Status-worshiping 80's", they would have spotted you sooner or later--their loss, our gain....

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: GUEST,Taliesn
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 06:22 PM

(quote)
"they would have spotted you sooner or later-...."

You think seriously that I waxed philosophical out loud this way in front of my employers & their clients ?
Brother I couldn't have talked this way and not be "spotted" as not being on the team and risk being unemployed. Nah ,it was best I got out when I was still young enough to pursue that old poem/prayer about asking to be granted the strength to change the things I can, the courage to accept the things I can't , and the wisdom to know the difference".

Not to wory, though as I'm currently loving pusuing my digital artistry at my drawing board along with advanced 3D animation work now and that ahs put me in touch with a far wider network of creative talents of all ages than I ever had in my previous life.

i dunno, unless you're getting at something that I'm missing entirely. ;-)

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: M.Ted
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 01:17 AM

It shows up in other ways, Taliesn, than the philosophical waxings--there are subtle signs, like failure to salivate sufficiently at the prospect of a new client, indifference to the trappings of success, and that fatal quarter second lag between the time the boss says something and the time that you agree enthusiastically--

Subject: RE: Would you play 'Wango Tango'?
From: GUEST,Taliesn
Date: 16 Nov 02 - 12:02 PM

For honesty's sake I will own up to getting caught-up in that time and into the lure of the status game with the pecking order of the "name brand" trappings of success clearly defined as the entry fee to higher cirlcles so to speak.
I also can not plead indifference to it all as I was young and turkish about it , but I came to make the clear distinction between what was becoming the slavish chore of working evermore competitively in order to afford that next level of "foodchain" status
and then what truly gave me joy in creating.

Most creative types know what comes next when you find that you need to dull the pain of not owning up to one's inner artist......
...you know, the usual potions and hyper-sensual distractions that are still all the rage, now expressed in "Rave" culture of techno-disco drugging .
Most working musicians know of what I speak by direct observaion if not experience. Happily not all succumb and some whom do make it back from that brink .

And ,then again, you've got "grateful Dead Walking" in the form of aging rockers made medical marvels with the latest in medical techniques of simulated rejuvenative mummification.
Ladies & Gentleman: Take Keith Richards....please. ;-)

Talk about "Grateful Dead Walking".
Gawd it give me the spinal shivers just to look at what "it" has become.