I'm In With The Out Crowd

[koganbot]

Haven't listened yet to the whole Farrah Abraham album or followed much of the discussion. But Phil Freeman calls it "pure outsider art — fucking brilliant. Makes Peaches and Le Tigre sound like Taylor Swift." And Dave seems to be endorsing this characterization, "outsider art," in his Atlantic piece. Not sure whether or not I'd use it on her, or how often I'd use it on anyone. But to poke around further, let's ask the following questions:

(1) What is Farrah Abraham outside of?

(2) What might she be inside of? Who might her models and sources be?

I'm thinking of people like Teena Marie, Sophie B. Hawkins, Stevie Nicks — not as Farrah's sources or models, but as people who had sources and models themselves for their ideas of song lyrics and liner-note poetry; they were drawing on ideas of poetry that were probably as abundant as "real" poets' ideas, if not more abundant.*

EDIT (June 2019): Farrah seems to have deleted all the vids from My Teenage Dream Ended, but here, at least, is what she sounded like ("On My Own"):

Watch on YouTube

END EDIT

*As far as I know, Teena, Sophie, and Stevie were never called outsider art (nor were Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, for that matter, whom I wouldn't say were themselves altogether "inside," and who probably helped to make Teena et al. possible, though were hardly their main sources). But this might be just because no mainstream critics ever made much of a case for Teena et al. as poets (unlike Dylan and Morrison, whom I'm keeping inside parentheses — Dylan was sometimes slotted as "folk poetry," a term that hardly explains anything, but does point to people not being merely outside).

By the way, I don't think Farrah presents her stuff as poetry, but that doesn't mean she doesn't draw on poetry. Actually, I've never seen the Teen Mom shows, nor do I know much about her, nor have I read her book; so I don't know if she's claimed any poetic ambition. I'm guessing not, from the way she embeds her words in home-made pop tracks.

Comments

Re: Outside Looking In

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

The relevance of the producers doesn't really apply to "what results," since what results from whatever the process is doesn't change when we know more or less about the production. In terms of process (not social category), the "what is this inside" strikes me as something like what Frank Zappa did in the studio with xenochrony, "a recording technique that takes guitar solos from older live recordings and overdubs them onto new studio recordings." What I meant to say in the bit you quoted above is that there is a procedural difference between Farrah playing with beats and consciously putting vocals over them in a certain way and a producer taking the vocals and letting spontaneous things happen by cutting and pasting. But the effect is (obviously) the same; you get the same music. I'm just curious as to what it was.

I think that we have to go back to social expectations, though. If I knew going in that this album was done by an up-and-coming experimental artist who wanted to make a "statement" about reality TV by taking recordings of Farrah Abraham and sticking them on top of their amateurish electronic productions, I would probably be galled enough at the implications not to listen very carefully. I would probably miss the magic in the music, which is still there whether it was done in earnest good faith or not. Because I was able not to engage those expectations of electronic art -- built up through ad hoc experiences with smug appropriation projects -- I was listening to it "with Farrah," from the perspective of the reality TV star now trying her hand at art therapy pop. That put it in conversation with youth media, a really fascinating and frustrating amateur mode of production usually not widely circulated outside of enrichment programs that can often sound pretty strange. It's not too far removed (in that sense) from "Bootlegged," the weird song my students made (with some of my amateur production help) in 2009.