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Welcome back to tomorrowland >> Trans Am have seen the future, and it was 20 years ago today by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
Despite the future's increasing lameness, it seems to be back in style again. This whole Y2K business may have something to do with it, although personally I believe it has more to do with the 20-year cycles that have blighted us with neo-hippies and disco-stalgia all too recently. "The early '80s was really obsessed with the future," says Trans Am's guitarist-keyboardist-vocoder songbird Philip Manley. "The new wave bands--Gary Numan, the Cars--and a lot of glimmer bands--Cameo, Midnight Starr, funk music that evolved into electro." It should be noted that Trans Am's latest disc, the timely-titled Futureworld, owes more to Tron than The Matrix, more to Atari than Playstation. It should also be noted that this is, at the end of the day/year/millennium, a rock band we're talking about. "A cool thing about a lot of the music--and especially the instruments that came out of that era--was that you had to operate them live. With the newer styles of music, like techno, it's all done through sequencers. You can get a keyboard that does everything, basically. Which is cool, but I kind of like being able to play it." It seems that lately some of the most forward-thinking music--France's Air, for instance--are doing the back-to-the-future thing, ditching digital for analog and its more organic sound ("sadder" is the term Manley uses). "I have nothing against anything that's digital," Manley says. "But there's something about the older analog things, they're more user-serviceable and user-friendly. The controls, the knobs and sliders, are easier to use than modern effects processors, where you have to scroll through with a cursor. It's not as tactile. "Digital is more reliable, though. Moogs, for instance, are horrible--they drift out of tune. Digital can be cool, like the Atari computer that Seb [drummer Sebastian Thomson] does a lot of drum programming on. He programs in Basic, and generates these sounds--it's like composing music for an Atari video game." Men and their tools While hesitant to play the bong-fuelled Nostradamus, Manley does have a few educated guesses to offer about the world of tomorrow. Just ask him about popular entertainment beyond music. "I hope it goes in more of a pornographic direction," he says. Thinking it through, though, he's not sure he shouldn't eat his words. "I have friends in Chicago, they have this crazy video collection of really fucked-up movies. They got all these pornos, one is called Man in Steel. This guy, he takes 10-inch threaded bolts and shoves them up his penis, and hangs weights off his balls, and totally... I couldn't watch that one, I couldn't stomach it. And then we were at this loft party and they threw on these movies that totally bummed everyone out. There was one where this woman gets fucked with eels. Like, live eels. It's so bad! I felt nauseous, and a bit sad that I'd even seen that." That's not what truly disgusts Manley, though. "All these huge companies keep merging," he grumbles. "Everyday you hear, 'This is the largest merger of its kind.' A German bank buying an American bank, or whatever. Exxon and Mobil. I can see corporate ownership of everything--even art. "We've been offered a lot of money for advertising, people using our songs. Sony, NBC and Nike. We declined, because it's a bummer when you see an ad for Toyota and you hear Sly and the Family Stone. Like, what does that have to do with anything? That's like dirty money, in the sense that we haven't earned it. It's just money that was given to you so someone can use your music to sell their shoes. They're buying your music, but not so someone can appreciate it as art. It becomes a tool for the Man." At Cabaret with Pan Sonic and Laddio Balacko on Wednesday, April 21, 9pm, $10+taxes
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The future sure isn't what it used to be. Fifty years ago, prognosticators assumed we'd all have personal hovercrafts by now. Twenty-five years ago, they figured at least a few of us would be living on the moon. Ten years ago, cyberspace seemed like a brave new world for infonauts, instead of a refuge for social defectives and circuit board snake oil salesmen.