A word about this video:
YouTube has followed the lead of TikTok to have a “shorts” selection of vertical smart phone friendly videos that are one to three minutes long. Often these are clips from long form videos, videos of talking head influencers giving their opinion or a new genre that is emerging of the “very short essay,” or the two to three minute “take,” video – whatever you want to call it. That’s what this is and I think I am starting to get the feel for the punchiness needed to make this work. First you have to give your audience a flash of what this is about in the first couple of seconds or they will scroll forward to the next video, then sum up your core ideas fast, accompanied by quickly edited visuals. And choices will need to be made on what to leave in and what to leave out as you can’t comprehensively cover a topic in three minutes.
In this video I cover a very narrow part of Mike Patton’s discography specifically his weirder and more abrasive material – tracking his speed-scream evolution from the self-produced Adult Themes for Voice to the Crank 2: High Voltage soundtrack.
It’s funny even when I take a break from politics I go with the more subversive topic (in this case – weird music) I can find. Hardcore Patton-heads will like the video but others might stop because of the abrasive sounds.
There is a lot to be said on this subgenre that I didn’t have time to get into, like how the group the Boredoms were doing this before Patton was. Their vocalist, Yamantaka Eye was the screamer for John Zorn’s inventive Naked City album. In later Naked City live performances when Eye was not available, he would use Mike Patton instead. That is how Patton got into this avant garde tangent to his career.
I have grown up on Patton’s music and had my tastes evolve alongside his musical growth. I suffered many of the experimental concerts he did in the 90s so I feel I have the right to poke fun at him for this. I remember the audience running away from an especially bad collaboration he did with the Rova Quartet -- no one was left for the encore.
Here’s one he did with John Zorn that I went to. Don’t feel bad if you don’t make it all the way through this video:
But this early Fantomas concert is incredible and totally worth watching in its entirety:
I know enough about this subject to do a long-form video in the future. There have been a lot of career retrospective videos of Faith No More and Mike Patton is the Greatest videos, and I don’t want to do anything redundant. I would need to form a thesis that is more original and based on my personal experience attending his concerts over the years.
At the moment I will leave you with this micro-essay.
Enjoy.
‘Nuff Said!
