Cult frontman’s creed: Embrace live music
Information overload. Do you feel it? Every five minutes, another Internet story bubbles up that we all have to take a stand on, disagree with others about, and move on.
Will our brains survive this onslaught of knowing everything?
I had this conversation with singer Ian Astbury, because he’s a contemplative Buddhist. His rock band The Cult co-headlines with rap royalty Public Enemy today at the Hard Rock Hotel ($40-$150).
“Information, information, information,” Astbury, 53, said of news we’re constantly processing.
“Only recently, we’ve had the Boston bomber’s death sentence; what happened in Paris (the Charlie Hebdo shooting); the recent situation in Texas where there was a terrorist attack of a freedom of speech event; and the Nepal earthquake,” Astbury said to me on Wednesday.
“But now we’re onto the Vanity Fair cover,” he said.
Actually, in the past few hours, even that viral Vanity Fair photo illustration of Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner was put on RAM pause in our brain CPUs because we need that cerebral space to process 800,000 other items today.
Astbury even suspects the recent tumor-related death of a friend was brought on by too much mobile phone use — a death that occurred after Astbury’s parents were killed by cancer caused by industrial pollution.
“I’m interested to see how the Apple Watches do. We don’t know the effect of radio waves and anything upon our person,” Astbury said.
And yet, Astbury, like most of us, continues to integrate with the Internet because what’s the alternative?
“I love culture. I’m not pofaced about media. I observe it. I try not to get too drawn into it,” he said.
One unexpected consequence of our data overload has been the flattening of emotions in popular music.
A generation ago, Public Enemy encapsulated American thought by yelling “Fight the power.”
Pop music now peddles generic love and lust (the oldest musical themes), but also the self-aggrandizing id.
“Everything is like, ‘Look at me.’ We’ve gone from defining ourselves from observing external activity to now we define ourselves by our selfimage,” Astbury said.
“The grand days of politically aware, altruistic performers seems to be on the wane, somewhat,” he said.
“There’s this new conservativism where it’s, like, the Urban Outfitters’ rebel: You don’t have to go out and have that many experiences. You can go online to access and experience and make that your mantra.”
Astbury thinks the next dehumanizing software could be computer programs which are being designed to replace club DJs. Those programs will read algorithms of songs in audience members’ phones and then remix club hits based on those phones in the audience.
I informed Astbury some companies are also writing software meant to replace writers like me. Will any of us have jobs in the future matrix?
“Maybe it will be like red pill/ blue pill,” Astbury mused, “and Kanye (West) will be dressing us.”
Astbury believes bands are carrying the torch for humanity in music.
“Live performance is where sound is generated and comes out of the individual playing the instrument,” Astbury said.
Huh. Human performance, on a stage, in front of people paying money to experience something in person. Hopefully, that quaint notion will be preserved in the “Terminator” future Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk keep warning us about. ‘FURY’ BETTER THAN ‘MAD MAX’
“Kung Fury” is a fast-paced 31-minute film that begins with the main character Kung Fury killing a sentient arcade game machine that runs amok, followed by Adolf Hitler shooting people through the phone and a hilarious tech nerd devising a time machine after a mere five-second pause.
That’s right, someone finally directed the perfect video game-commentary movie, “Kung Fury,” even though critics keep calling it a smashing ode to 1980s films about cops, karate, computer nerds, mythical creatures and Miami-style mayhem.
I don’t want to ruin the surprises of this masterpiece, which satirizes not just 1980s movies but also 1980s arcade games of the old-bit variety, especially the “Street Fighter” platform-fighting series.
It was written, directed and stars Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg, who looks like a young Charlie Sheen delivering lines as if Clint Eastwood were Batman with a sore throat.
The $630,000 movie, featuring violence and language Sarah Palin probably wouldn’t like, was funded via Kickstarter with promotional help from David Hasselhoff, so the Hoff sings and appears briefly.
If you find yourself in the right state of mind this weekend, do yourself a flavor and watch “Kung Fury,” if you’re not already one of the 13 million people who’ve seen the free little film on YouTube.
If you really want to go down the rabbit hole of great recent satires, also watch the Adult Swim film, “Too Many Cooks,” an 11-minute parody of family sitcoms of the 1980s and 1990s. Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@ reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Follow @ VegasAnonymous on Twitter.