Someone at Bluesfest HQ must have noticed that John Butler and Xavier Rudd both play slide guitar, and both look as though they’ve been plucked from a ‘special’ Byron Bay plantation, so they decided it would be a good idea to put them one after the other on the same stage at Bluesfest 2007. I can understand where they’re coming from: until I saw Xavier Rudd live, I thought they were similar artists too. As soon as Rudd started playing, however, it was pretty obvious that something was happening that John Butler, even if he noticed it, wouldn’t understand. Although this was just one guy on stage, and it wasn’t too unique musically (simple chord progressions), the audience were really responding to it. He may use the same four-on-the-floor foot stomp percussion as Ash Grunwald, but I think to borrow one of Xavier’s own phrases, the “energy” in the air is different from any other gig I’ve been to. It takes a certain character to thank an audience for their “positive energy,” a gesture that could sound hokey coming from somebody else, but is undeniably genuine when coupled with the elation on Xaviour’s face at the end of a song-slash-happening.
Rudd does seem to want to make people happy with his music: similar to Ben Lee’s hit “Catch My Disease” which created its own flower-power image for Lee, replete with toy piano and flowers stuck to microphone stands at live gigs. But the irony of Ben Lee was that “Catch My Disease” was written when Lee was feeling bitter and unloved. He separates himself from even the weirdest Aussie bands (Sleepy Jackson) who were getting radio play when he wasn’t, and likens pop music to a contagious disease, suggesting a degree of shoulder chippage which must have conversely reveled in the fact a song complaining ‘they don’t play me on the radio’ ended up saturating Australian radio waves. Xavier Rudd must be a refugee from the hippie generation, where music was still thought of as a collaborative venture. These days people don’t usually live in communes, and drum circles are comparatively rare, even on university lawns. Producers behind the R&B hits we hear too often today seem to have reduced music to its most cynical state in the modern era; eliminating everything except those frequencies which excite people on the level that sells downloads. It is important to point out that what Xavier Rudd did to the crowd at Bluesfest was not about money. His festival appearance would generate him the same amount of income whether people liked him or not. It was about something much more important: communication.
Although Rudd cuts a mysterious figure when he’s singing, hunched over his microphone, as soon as he leans back from the mic, particularly when he feels the crowd’s really responded to a song, he simply radiates genuine human emotions. Rudd is not just reproducing a rehearsal or recording that worked in a different setting, he’s behaving organically in his present environment. There is a subtle but crucial difference, because I think that’s why there’s this feeling of a communion between Rudd and his audiences, because they feel they genuinely are having an affect on the action onstage, which is, let’s face it, every rock fan’s dream.
Afterwards, John Butler had the unenviable task of playing to a crowd still stuck on Xavier Rudd. So much about performing is physical, very little about it is verbal. Whether John Butler knows it, the crowd are watching him closely while he performs, expecting a reaction, a connection of sorts. Unfortunately, Butler gives the impression of being bored, as though the audience were transient and interchangeable: Butler is not present as a performer, and after the vivacity of Rudd, gives the impression of going through the motions. Sadly, with the inevitable comparisons to Rudd rolling in, it is hard to not ponder on everything that Butler could be doing, when one thinks back to the cult following of ‘Better Man’. Today, some might feel that there is little genuine or relatable about Butler, despite his technical superiority over Rudd.
I think John Butler is popular for the same reason prog bands hit big in the 70’s, because they broke out of the pretension occasionally to produce catchy pop hits like Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale and The Moody Blues’ Nights In White Satin, and because instrumental virtuosity which was their hallmark is alluring to a certain kind of crowd, because its something they can never do. Its like buying meals at restaurants you wouldn’t be able to make yourself. There’s something to be said for that, and so its fitting that John Butler, who decks his music out with plenty of impressive-ish solos, gets a respectful and impressed sounding applause between songs. I was watching the crowd with my rock scientist hat on, and during John Butler they were deadly still between tracks. They were watching him like he was on TV, because not only did they feel like they could never do what he was doing, so it was a bit alienating, but they perhaps didn’t feel there was any need to let John know how they were feeling because they couldn’t have made a difference. They couldn’t have been heard over the sheer volume of the band, whereas Xavier was responding to squeals and dancing he was observing during songs.
During John Butler’s set, the audience’s reaction was much more akin to their reaction to Vanessa Amarossi, who inexplicably had been standing right where Butler was just a few hours before. And she was really singing. She was singing like it was a high-wire trapeze act, like she had to climb higher and higher up the registers until she just… exploded! Because that’s what you do. Not because it feels right. Because Mark Holden’s told you to, and he’s the guy of Australian Idol, and that’s how the business works. No. That might be the state of pop music today, but you do not come to a blues and roots festival, no matter how jaded, and do something you don’t feel. The audience clap because its something they can’t do, and sounds really tricky, not because they’re feeling what the performer is feeling. They couldn’t feel more different from the performer, because the performer won’t quit shoving their brilliance in the audience’s face. Same problem with Joss Stone. It’s a very impressive party trick, but its just a trick. Having all the right moves, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re playing for real. Joss Stone sings like someone who’s had to grow into a role higher powers in the industry have allotted her: ie, soul diva. She tosses her hair and writhes around just like James Brown, except she’s faking it, something James Brown would never do: just watch him on DVD Live at the Apollo, he virtually induces an orgasm onstage. For ninety minutes. This might sound extreme, but these kind of ecstatic moments are possible in music today, and I had one at Bluesfest 2007, with my first encounter with Xaviour Rudd live.
The reason is this: John Butler may be technically competent, but Xavier Rudd’s music, and his personality, as it comes across onstage, have something that Butler lacks; namely, honesty. If Butler was an actor, people would ask him, “Do all your lines mean the same thing?” to which he would reply, “Of course not.” The underlying question would then be, “Well, why sing them all the same way?” I am personally glad I am not in charge of mixing live rock gigs. Understanding an entire line of words on first hearing is a rarity, let alone an entire new song as a whole. Performers must fight to communicate, and make every effort to enhance their chances. John Butler seems to love a challenge: it was enough for R.E.M to write one hit in the four words a beat style (It’s the End of the World), quickly retreating following the fans’ backlash to more manageable fare, but John Butler seems intent on making every song sound like the end of the world. Perhaps Butler is naïve, otherwise he’s just brash, thinking it humanly possible to communicate anything at that speed. Whichever is true, the result is giving himself needless trouble getting a simple message across, unless he does not care whether people understand him. Why write lyrics at all, then, one might ask, why not just scat? It worked for Ella Fitzgerald, maybe that could be the new direction for John Butler?
I’ve been looking for a magic formula to what Xaviour Rudd did to cast a spell over the crowd at Bluesfest, which is something most industry types prefer to think of as the mysterious “X-factor,” but I think there’s no reason the phenomenon can’t be simple, why not, since that’s what I think his secret is: keeping the music simple. Rudd’s progressions are simple indeed. Three chords, sometimes four, ones we’ve heard before, often in the same order, but born out of necessity. If Meat Loaf wasn’t allowed a band, and had to produce every noise on “Paradise By The Dashboard Light,” he never would have agreed to the bombastic arrangement (as it happens Meat Loaf had nothing to do with Jim Steinmans’ arrangements)… If you have to play several instruments at once, of course you can’t afford to be complex. But I argue this is a great thing for pop music.
Rock history has so far has been like a wave: one one side of the wave, it gets complex and interesting, but at a certain point it gets too tricky and people stop listening, so a ritual cleansing takes place. This effect can be seen with the punk movement which cleaned the decks after the misguided moog wanna-be symphonies of “super” groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and other musical excesses of the late 70’s. The first punk music, years before Green Day, was simple: two chords is fine, three chords is just for jazz. But its other defining characteristic was its anger. Johnny Rotten couldn’t “sing,” but he didn’t care, and the fans loved him for it. Usually when you simplify your chord progressions and song structures, you find you’ll concentrate more on whether the vocal tells a story, and whether that story is worth telling.
Rock is a continuum, and there’s no precise equation for working out the right amount of honesty and complexity, but just judging from the fact that none of Butler’s lyrics come across live, and the arrangements swamp the lyrical sentiments of the song with unnecessary riffy bombast, and so audiences don’t respond to it in that special way they respond to Rudd. Butler, I argue, has gone too far in the wrong direction of the continuum. Popular song existed in Beethoven’s time, Schubert wrote his Lieder, and they were popular because they were simple: Pop music is popular because it’s easy. It is music at your fingertips, music in the first place you look for it. It doesn’t try or want to be difficult. Of course, as in all arts, artists can choose to be difficult, if that’s their thing, but generally they’ll only be difficult to their mum and, if they’re lucky, a small cult following. If Butler wants to stay in the game, I’d suggest an acoustic album, and replace his pro-muso partners with looser jamming buddies from simpler days, who might be more interested in complementing a song than showcasing their personal talents. Like the boys in the bars say: too self-indulgent.
It is human to crave communication, if we didn’t, MTV and commercial radio wouldn’t jab at our ears with nothing but drum and bass and lyrics containing nothing more thought-out than ‘booties’ and ‘bitches’. My hope is that Rudd’s frequent aural resemblance to dance music (with his drumming and simple vocal style), a current fad, might help him rise like a condor to be the saviour (pardon the pun) of the scene, using the ultimate superficial music, dance music, as his platform, and wipe the slate clean again of the drum’n’bass epidemic.
I’m normally quite cynical, and I pride myself on not getting swept up with crowds, so I hope it’s a testament to Rudd’s talents, not my naivety, that he managed to move me like he did. Music moves us in mysterious ways, most are non verbal, but I believe music that survives its year of being current must gain its strength by saying something people can’t help hearing. Keeping it simple may get you heard, but then the choice is what to do with your platform once you’re on it. For today’s R’n’B stars, it’d be as simple as spending the night before thinking what the song should be about, or turning up to the studio and expecting something brilliant to come on the spot. After ten years of this crap haven’t they realized it doesn’t? Look at some of the longest living songs, ‘What A Wonderful World’, ‘Stand By Me’: we don’t have to concentrate, they just communicate, because their entire body has an Aristotilean unity of purpose, which their every syllable contributes to. Do you think that kind of thing just comes blurting out?
This is probably the biggest reason why Xaviour Rudd’s songs are so simple, for they are not trying to be different, but are simply the natural expression of the man’s soul. I don’t know if Xavier Rudd has written any songs that will live beyond next year, but by caring about communicating, and communing messages of real love, not just using pop music to spread his image like a Ben Lee-esque disease, he’s done all he can, and let time tell the rest.
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