I heard a story once about the late Alex Chilton. Not a world-changing story, mind, but to the story-teller, it was monumental. It was a Big Star reunion show, years back. Our protagonist – let’s call him Jonathan – happened to catch Chilton’s eye, and in one glance he absorbed the acerbic, caustic disappointment and superiority of a would-be rock God. In that glance, Jonathan gained the confirmation of a soul in isolation, surrounded by crowds. Jonathan clung to his own obscurity, confident in a shared secret.
On Wednesday night, I asked Mark Burgess about standards, and in a drunken stupor, he confided in me a secret that I promised not to share. I will not divulge the specifics, but I will say it had to do with never being satisfied. But it’s not what you think. Here’s a man who fronted the Chameleons, one of the most influential post-punk bands of the 1980s, and the one band that built the bridge from the harrowing Joy Division angst to the sparkling Cocteau Twins melancholy. Burgess laid the blueprint used by countless shoegaze bands of the 1990s, and picked up years later by Interpol and all that followed. Take the Arcade Fire, a phenomenon that has taken over the music world that bubbles just under the mainstream; they’ve infiltrated large outdoor venues, the ipods of music lovers and pretenders alike, and the Leisure & Arts sections of serious Sunday papers all over the English-speaking world. Then trace the musical tree back to its roots, and at the very end of one of the largest roots you will find the Chameleons. But no one has ever heard of them.
So shouldn’t Mr. Burgess be bitter? Shouldn’t he, like Alex Chilton did, curse the industry and the hordes of tone-deaf punters that left him languishing in obscurity? Unlike Chilton, he hasn’t had the honor of hearing the cognoscenti cry, belatedly, “Our mistake, we get it now: you were (are?) a genius!” He hasn’t even had that consolation. By the way, that should have happened, and it better happen sometime before I die or I will leave this world embittered.
But no, Mark Burgess is not bitter for that reason. Here is how I saw him, and please understand these are first impressions only. I do not know the man. I only relate what I saw and sensed… In person he’s affable and aloof, looking out at the world with eyes wide and a boy’s grin. He appears devoid of guile, and all signs say he’s unconcerned with how he is being measured by others. Yet he measures himself, and for himself and his music he sets impossible standards. There was an underlying sadness there, a sadness that he hadn’t ever been able to faithfully and fully transcribe the purity of the music that runs through his subconscious.
Mark Burgess has got himself a new group of musicians, the next generation of Chameleons uber-fans, a friendly, well-spoken group of good guys from Los Angeles. They call themselves ChameleonsVox. Last Wednesday night I witnessed a note-perfect, energetic run through Burgess’ salad days, focusing mainly on Script of the Bridge, with a few tracks each from the other two early albums (no songs from the Tony Fletcher… EP, sadly, but that was to be expected…). Opening up with the chilling arpeggios of “Swamp Thing,” the tone is set: we’re looking inwardly, and we’re not scared away by the scariest things we might find there. The Chameleons’ sound is oceanic, urgent, aching, stormy, shimmering, beautiful.
What makes this music work for me is that it assumes that somewhere, deep and unseen, there exists an unspeakable beauty. The assumption goes further, that one can never look this beauty squarely in the face, and yet one is tormented by the after-image, like sunspots on a retina. But for such an introspective artist, Burgess frequently looks outside, finding foils to the impossible beauty. In “A Person Isn’t Safe Anywhere These Days,” the inner demons become personified by preying thugs on the streets, and in “Monkeyland” he dives headlong into a Manchester filled with hypocrites and anonymous tricks of the light. The exile continues with the magnificent “Up The Down Escalator,” a song, in Mark’s words, about “helplessness in a world gone stark, raving mad.”
The Chameleons: Up The Down Escalator
It all culminates in “Soul In Isolation,” which is difficult to even write about. If there’s anything more primal than the fear we carry, knowing we will all die alone, it’s the accompanying terror in the knowledge that we live the same way. The imagery is shapeless. Burgess stands “surrounded by crowds,” but there are no descriptions of the outside world. You can’t feel or see Manchester in this lyric, nor any real place on Earth. There are a few renegade lyrics here – references to a “big bad giant,” a “jailer,” and even his mother – but for the most part it’s a world behind closed eyelids, and cries heard through a wall. It’s simply about a loneliness that never goes away. It’s acknowledged that one could simply shut it all out, or conversely one could swim in it. But to the end, Burgess holds to his unshrinking claim: “I’m alive in here!”
The Chameleons: Soul In Isolation
By the time they get to “Second Skin,” I’m mystified that this band never became huge. The chiming guitar leads of this song, the pulsing bass, the “floating on air:” it’s all a near-death experience made into sound. The way it all elevates off of the stage and fills the half-empty Ottobar – so putrid and dank, this Ottobar, so fleeting, so false, so mismatched – as Burgess sings “but is this the stuff dreams are made of,” convinces me that this is the only tangible form that it can take. It, meaning the aforementioned unspeakable beauty. The one that Mark Eitzel said is seen only “as it begins to disappear.” Or as Burgess sings, “when something slips through your fingers you know how precious it is.”
And finally, there’s “Don’t Fall.” Inspired by a hallucinatory trip through Manchester, and the encroaching madness that went with it, the song stands undaunted. Like so much of Burgess’ work, it’s haunted by an existential throbbing: the nightmare worlds we inhabit, the rooms running red, the strange faces that follow us, gawking, oblivious, and we, left ultimately alone, stripped to the soul… in the end, what else is there? “But this roaring silence won’t devour us all. Don’t fall.” It’s a life of pleasure and pain, and we’re alive in here! It’s the only way to end the show.
Simply put, this was one of the best shows I have ever been to. The musicians that make up ChameleonsVox (and all I can tell you is that there’s a guitarist named Andrew, because I remember that, but any information whatsoever seems non-existent on the internet… if anyone reads this, and knows the band members’ names, please contact me or comment!) are more than hired guns. They’ve come on board out of devotion for Mark and his music, and it shows. They’ve all put aside personal projects to chase after the impossible beauty, because they too hear it filling the air. And when they do, it sounds like Chameleons music, like a perfume garden:
I thought of stories
They told us long ago
Of how the world was a perfume garden
I haven’t yet learned to tame the creature there
And that at least I think is something good
With this perspective, I can understand why Mark Burgess isn’t bitter about his lack of fame. The music is so clearly born out of the need to make it. Some make music to make money, some to impress girls/guys, others just because they have to. For this type of songwriter, success is measured by how closely you get to that essential, unspeakable thing. The thing, whatever it is that drove it all in the first place. I think Mark knows that he got tantalizingly close, closer than almost anyone, which is why he can from time to time become transported. But I also think he knows that he hasn’t ever really got it (who could?), and that must eat at him. So as long as Mark Burgess wrestles with that creature in the perfume garden, it doesn’t matter whether he plays to ten people or ten thousand, he remains a soul in isolation, thrilled and terrified.
Please visit the Chameleons Website.