COLLAPSE BOARD

A list of 20+ performances that have shocked

These are my notes from a lecture/workshop I just gave in Creative Performer 2 at QUT this afternoon. I forgot to give my students break in the three-hour class, so several of them were gasping for a choker by the end. We sat around discussing music mainly, and the ways context (space, audience) affects performance. The title of the lecture was ‘Performance as Shock’. I didn’t show all the following by any means, and we showed several others – notably one featuring on men’s dicks substituted by heads, some featuring big booby-ed women, and one from those  bloody performing North Korean children – but most of these were discussed in one shape or another.

I drew the line at coprophilia.

Sorry GG Allin fans.

PLAYED (intro)

1. Elvis Presley – Mystery Train (to tie in with a quote about Sam Phillips drawn from the Greil Marcus book of the same name)

2. Madonna – Like A Prayer (always good to mention the stigmata)

The following four were subject of a class discussion.

1. Sun Ra (dissonant but not shocking)

2. Justice Yeldham @ Le Bourg, Lausanne, Switzerland (we only lasted a few minutes into this, as I took pity on a couple of students sheltering behind their laptops)

3. Katie Stelmanis – Natural Woman (agreed that middle America would find this disturbing)

4. Teddy & The Frat Girls – I Wanna Be A Man (relented after two minutes)

http://www.collapseboard.com/everett-true/song-of-the-day/song-of-the-day-391-teddy-and-the-frat-girls/

ALSO

1. Neneh Cherry pregnant on TOTP (no one quite understood why this was considered shocking, even at the time)

2. The KLF + Extreme Noise Terror (at the Brits!)

(continues overleaf)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 at 4:45 pm. It is filed under Music Blogs and tagged with Bob Dylan, David Bowie, David Lynch, Elvis Presley, Extreme Noise Terror, Frank Zappa, Gertrude Michael, GG Allin, Gilberto Gil, Janet Jackson's nipple, Justice Yeldham, Katie Stelmanis, Katy Perry, L7, Lady Gaga, M.I.A., Madonna, Marilyn Manson, Minty, Neneh Cherry, Nicki Minaj, Odd Future, Os Mutantes, Sun Ra, Teddy & The Frat Girls, The Jesus Lizard, The KLK, The Legend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.