bravery, nepotism and art

I want to write about Rufus Wainwright and his considerable skill as a musician. I have decided that the proper format will be short, bulleted paragraphs. The reason for this is that it takes me considerably more energy to write about something I love than something I hate, so I will approach the topic differently, lest I approach it not at all.

-Rufus Wainwright is the son of Loudon Wainwright and one of the McGarrigle sisters, although I forget exactly which. I'm interested in his records, not his provenance.

If Rufus had been the son of a bricklayer or a diplomat he wouldn't have had a chance in hell at releasing records for Dreamworks. Sorry, that's the way it is. His gayness would have given him a decent audience as a hardscrabble indie and that in itself could have been interesting, but certainly he wouldn't have gotten any major label muscle behind him (an analogy I'm sure he would appreciate).

There are countless others like Rufus, artists that deserve renown and would have gotten none without famous family members. Michael Penn, Jeff Buckley, Sean and Julian Lennon come to mind. I'm very glad that these artists have this advantage because their music has great merit.

This is clearly a case where nepotism has given us worthwhile music and I think that's a good thing.

Why do you think I have given myself the stage name of Bobby Lightfoot?

Why, to cash in on the vast legacy of my not-really-father Gordon. Mrs. Lightfoot didn't raise any dummies, man.

-Rufus Wainwright, at 31, has about two albums left to go before this ceases to matter. That's because he doesn't write big hits and soon it won't matter if his father is David Fucking Geffen. So I plan to enjoy his brilliance while I can. He seems of a delicate and neurotic bent, and I wonder if he could survive a career where he'd have to tour and promote like a bitch to make it happen.

-Rufus Wainwright reminds me of Tom Waits, in that he pursues a very specific esthetic that is eclectic and eschews that which is "tasty", "punchy" and "sleek". His works are unapologetically ambitious and his approach makes me think that perhaps he knows his days of commercial viability are numbered. There is a desperation, a cramming-in of ambitious and difficult music that connotes a desire to get it out while the getting is good.

-There are very few songs in Wainwright's canon that are without merit. The obvious example is "Old Whore's Diet" from his latest "Want Two" which is execrable and features some awful club queen guest named "Antony" who clearly sucks badly. I don't know what happened. "Old Whore's Diet" reeks of get-a-gay-club-hit and I don't like it one bit. It lacks the ambition, the mastery of song and chord structure, and the incredible evocativeness that he usually kicks out.

-I've never seen Wainwright live. I saw Roxy Music at the Greek Theatre in LA a couple of years ago and Wainwright opened, but I didn't know him from Adam then and my love and I give him a miss, making the scene instead as Bryan and the gang were kicking into "Remake-Remodel". But that is another story of genius and bravery. I have, however, watched the live DVD that came with his latest "Want Two", and the concert is brilliant. The band plays like angels, Wainwright sings with great élan and puts across a sense of humor that I despair of approaching in my own self-important staggerings about the stage.

-For me, great pop music is never a song-by-song affair. It involves the development of an _ouvre_ wherein a well-constructed esthetic and style have a chance to evolve, for a book of rules to be written which can subsequently be perverted by artists of bravery who approach their work with a sense of risk (i.e. The Police, The Beatles, XTC, The Who, etc.).

-Wainwright's esthetic is predicated largely upon his classical and opera leanings. This is great for someone like me who feels like pop and rock have said what they have to say and continue to exist as a retro artifact, a dead end. There are worlds to be explored in the popification of the art song and chamber music formats. And I don't mean like that crud in the 70's although Yes were by and large a great band.

-All this having been said, I have to take a whiz. Thanks, Rufus. Don't get tiresome, don't do too much crystal meth and Special K and please practice lots of safe gay love so you can stick around and fill me with hope.