Page 22 - the NOISE October 2015

geTTing hoT wiTh panTher burns
inTerView bY MiKe wiLLiaMs
From the few samples out now, there was an essence of authenticity and wild beauty to the photos that was just breathtaking.
Thank you very much. I shot all those pictures on film and made the prints myself. They were part of a traveling exhibition from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and those pictures that are featured in the book was where they were first publically printed. The other prints that you’ll see in the book are struck from the original scans of my negatives.
You did some work with the late Lux Interior of The Cramps, who also pioneered the anti- rockabilly sound that would later evolve into psychobilly. Is this a genre of music that interests you, as both projects were at the forefront of its creation?
I’m not a part of that movement. Panther Burns has nothing to do with that term and, frankly, I don’t consider The Cramps part of that camp, either. The Cramps gave a treatment to rockabilly music as a genre, but in the way that they interpreted it. I consider their treatment more psychedelic than what was done with bands like The Meteors and bands like that. It’s a different sound. If you want to bite the head of a chicken off, okay, but The Cramps were more than that. They were too self-conscious to be psychotic, but not to be psychotropic. It was like a physical response to life. The same with Panther Burns. We strive to stir up the dark waters of the unconscious.
Can you tell us about your film Urania Descending that just premiered in Paris in September?
I had the notion to do a film contrasting America, especially the American South, and the culture in Europe. The idea was the intrigue of greed and lust for buried Nazi plunder, which is, in a sense, a metaphor reaching far wider. It stands for individuals, corporations, and governments lusting after the treasure and ostensible wealth with no care for expense, no moral compass or conscious. So, I mention treasure buried in the depths of a Lake Attersee in Austria and, as I began to look into it, I discovered there was a Junker aircraft carrying the last mail dispatch from Munich and a cargo of gold from the Third Reich. So, there’s this worthless cargo, too, and it was shot down by American forces. There’s been a number of divers over the years who have lost their lives looking for it, as trees from the alpine forest fall into the lake and have sunk to the bottom. It’s a clear lake, too, but it’s so deep you can’t see light at the bottom. That’s the premise.
As an artist, you’ve made your mark in avant-garde music, but also worked heavily in film, photography, printing, and poetry. Is there anything else you’d like to expand into down the road?
Well, that covers the story of my life. It’s all really just one song. Every record, everything I write, every picture I draw, every photograph I print, it’s my persona. I guess that’s all anyone is really ever interested in is the persona of the artist ... It’s just trying to draw out from that fertile undercurrent and the expression of perception of the unconscious. I just try to perceive in the everyday world that which is connected to unconscious perception and thought. I’m not a rationalist, in fact, I’m working against that. When you see a picture, photography is a literal medium, but I’m trying to bring out something else, a subtext, that I can’t tell you what it is. I can’t put a photograph into words. But I can tell you it is a sign for something. A metaphor. And that’s what my persona is as well. It’s music and concerts, but it’s murders and hangings and tarrings and rapes. It’s burning mansions, the Civil War, and brother against brother against brother. It’s massacres and why, as human beings, do we do these things? Music is an emotional form; it is an abstraction. All of that, you can make it rational, electronic, or cerebral, but only to a certain extent. It’s an emotional form, always will be, and emotions come out from the unconscious. That’s what I work with.
Since your move to Italy, you’ve become an accomplished Tango dancer as well. Do you think that urge to express the unconscious that has moved you in so many other mediums is what drew you to a more physical display like dance?
Absolutely. Tango is an expression of a relationship. It’s a subjective one, but it’s a relationship between two partners: male and female. And it doesn’t matter if the male dances the female, it matters none, just as long as it’s the expression of the masculine and feminine. And that’s a beautiful relationship. An emotional relationship and a formalistic one. Two forms expressing movements. In the past, Tango dancers had daggers. Today, I don’t care how people dance Tango, real Tango had daggers in it. It was a dance for people who were going to die. And I’m not a violent person. Panther Burns in not a violent band, but the metaphor of the daggers is the same thing. Tango started as a depiction of a knife fight to the death.
Great, we can’t wait for the show! Thank you so much!
We’ll see you at the show!
| Mike Williams can be coerced to do a dagger dance from time to time. music@thenoise.us
They don’t make artists like Tav Falco anymore. In a world where music is as much sound as it is a commodity, a Renaissance man like Tav Falco is a reminder of the days gone past where pursuits were done out sheer reactionary compulsion and a new medium was just another
frontier to explore and shape. From his humble beginnings in Memphis, Tennessee, Tav began his rise to fame as a photographer working with contemporary artists like R.L. Burnside, Mose Vinson, and Cordell Jackson before forming his own band, Panther Burns, in 1979. Largely influenced by rockabilly with heavy nods to the emerging punk movement, Panthers Burns joined like-minded bands like The Cramps to create what was later dubbed “anti-rockabilly” and
“art-damage.” His place in the ever progressing evolution of music secure, The Noise caught up with him as he was leaving his current home in Italy to tour the States to talk Memphis Blues, his philosophies on life, and the ancient, deadly art of the Tango. Check them out on October 23 at the Monte Vista where they’ll be joined on stage by the legendary Mike Watt, former bassist for The Minutemen, Porno For Pyros, and currently playing with the reformed Stooges. This will be a night of icons that absolutely cannot be missed.
In addition to music, you have also spent decades working as a photographer. While documenting the various music scenes in the South, you captured some images of a young R.L. Burnside, a performer whose legacy and importance cannot be understated. What can you tell about that night?
We filmed with him in 1974 at his honky tonk out in the boondocks in Cormel, Mississippi. This was when R.L. was still working as a sharecropper. He’d just come in from driving a tractor all week in the fields and he’d have these events every week. He hadn’t really been out of the county so much at that point, other than as a young man, he’d gone to Chicago for a while. He played a little bit in Chicago, but I think not a lot. His story there sounded like that old joke
... A guy from Mississippi that goes up to Chicago and he finds a hundred dollar bill on the pavement and he says, “I heard that money grows on trees here up North ... Well, I tell you what, I’m not going to work on my first day and I’ll just pick you up tomorrow.” His wife was there that night, dancing a lot, and he had a lot of friends in. He didn’t even change clothes when he got off the tractor. It was a cinderblock brick building, they had a chicken frying in a big, black iron skillet, and a leather dice horn that they were shooting craps with. Just shaking the dice in the horn and rolling them out on the table. In the back room, the girls were working, so they had, umm, a little bit of action going on ... But, it was pretty mellow. People came there to dance, like seriously dance. You could have discussions on secular discourse with each other. I had never heard music quite like that.
The picture you got of R.L. was just one of many legendary Southern performers from that era that are included in your upcoming book, An Iconography of Chance. When can we expect to see that out?
It’s coming out in October. I think I’ll have the first proof here soon. It should be in stores and on Amazon with Chicago Press doing the distribution. It’s my first book of photographs ...
1228 • october 2015 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
interview