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| 01/07/2008: "Conan O'Brien is a Clueless Goober"
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Conan O'Brien was slammed in the earlier entry just below, so we'd better provide context. When I used to work far into the night in the studio I'd sometimes have a small, battered black-and-white TV going beside the bench, and when "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" came on one night several years ago, the band's short opening number after the first commercial break featured -- of all things -- a flute! No, not an electric guitar or a wailing saxophone, but an actual flute, dude!
Isn't that refreshing? Sure nice to see that for a long-overdue change, right? Of course, one of the band's saxmen was doing the playing; many saxophonists double on the flute. The featured piece was the intro to "Heard it in a Love Song" by the Marshall Tucker Band, which is the only countryish-music outfit I'm aware of that prominently features flute.
The ditty in question sports a typical flute passage: a bouncy, bright, upbeat melody. As that Late Night band played, I thought to myself "It's nice to see them featuring flute for a change-- too bad they're using a somewhat stereotypical bouncy tune instead of something more edgy or unexpected. Oh well, at least it's a flute... you certainly don't see that every day."
But when the music stopped and the camera cut to Conan, he was staring at the band with a sour, disapproving expression.
"Ehhhhhhh-- I'm not digging the flute," he said. "To me, when I hear a flute, it just says Go to sleeeep..."
At that point O'Brien raised his arms and INCORRECTLY MIMED PLAYING A FLUTE, with both palms backward-facing, all ten fingers wiggling and an exaggerated, scrunched-up facial expression. After a couple more such wisecracks, he finally moved on and left me steaming with indignation. What a rube: as if that lightweight, breezy Marshall Tucker ditty was the only possible musical representation of the instrument!
I absolutely, positively guarantee that if *something* else had been played on the flute in a different style and musical context, he would have "dug" it just fine. Can't say just what would have worked for O'Brien, but SOMETHING else played on a flute would certainly have struck him as perfectly appropriate.
This is another of my pet peeves about the public's misunderstanding of musical instruments: they tend to conflate musical instruments with the musical styles and contexts in which they most typically appear. Must we describe the preconceptions inevitably associated with, for instance, the banjo, the electric guitar, the saxophone-- or the flute? Of course not: you know what I mean!
People just don't get that there are no boundaries in music: one could very well play punk banjo, heavy-metal flute, bluegrass saxophone, or classical electric guitar if packaged and performed convincingly!
Conan O'Brien had no business indiscriminately and ignorantly slamming the flute in general when what he was really disparaging was the way it was presented at that moment. This sort of confusion is commonplace, and flutists must battle such shallow preconceptions as much as any other instrumentalists, since the flute is universally known and carries longstanding mythological and cultural baggage.
Rant's not over yet! Here's the real kicker: the very next night, I was back in the studio at the same time; again, the TV was on and O'Brien's show started. The band played their customary opening bit: this time, it was a more typical, aggressive electric-guitar riff. When the camera cut to the host, O'Brien was beaming and nodding approvingly:
"Yeah-- I like that! And no flute!"
Now, that was really, REALLY too much. What a simpering, clueless fool. Conan O'Brien sucks!
--r.
[Previous entry: "I quit."]
[Next entry: "Shakuflutchi"]
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