This is the official music video for Life Sex & Death’s School is For Fools.  Their album The Silent Majority was released around the peak of the hair-metal era in the early 90’s.

There’s a gold mine of information here, but I’ll focus just on the band’s look.

We have short-haired Stanley out front, hamming up his homeless front man gimmick with a perfectly dirty thrift-store suit that would look at home on Cosmo Kramer if you gave it a dry clean. In back, we have three long-hairs doing a standard hair-fling, jump-around routine.

The feeling for me is one of extreme disconnect between the front man and the band. It feels like we’re looking at either (a) three metal guys who got sick of looking for a good match and finally let Stanley in the band to move forward, or (b) a band-leader front man who picked up three metal guys off the street as a backing band. Ultimately there is no Band As A Gang vibe. I think what the band members are wearing plays a big role in creating (or at least not reducing) this disconnect. I remember when the album was released, a few of the songs really resonated with me, but I never took to the band itself. I think I just couldn’t relate to any of the band members as avatars for the projection of my own ego.

LSD could be the basis for a case study in gimmickry, namely Stanley’s homeless drifter shtick. The broad questions, perhaps addressed in the future, would be (a) was the gimmick a good one, and (b) was it properly executed. Lots of great ideas perfectly executed fall flat in the marketplace. Was LSD’s gimmick a great idea executed well, or was it doomed from the start for improper conception and/or execution? Did it ultimately give the band more attention than they otherwise would have gotten, or did it ultimately box them in and hurt their career? As I said, here’s a little seam of gold waiting to be mined.

Principles:

• Band As  A Gang
• Band Needs A Uniform
• The fine line between manifested personality and gimmick
• Superfluous, exaggerated physicality

I want to look at this video (Journey’s Steve Perry at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2017) as an example of great front man in action on stage, in the context of an awards banquet rather than in concert. I want to point out some behaviors for commanding an audience’s attention that work regardless of the context.

Throughout the whole video, notice how it feels like Steve is completely in the moment, comfortable in his own skin, with this audience, right now. This is not a person you expect to be pulling out their cell phone to see if anything more interesting is happening. The only people in the audience I see with phones out are the ones who are trying to capture what everyone in the room senses is magical moment in time.

Steve’s facial expression during the initial applause is a mix of smiles and earnest gratitude. Then some perfunctory but seemingly heartfelt crowd work (“Hello rock and roll hall of fame…pause…you sure look good to me tonight!”).

And then BAM, the man in charge TAKES CHARGE and immediately starts telling his story. It’s a complete narrative about an emotional experience that is personal to him but also universal enough (and told in such a way) that most people could likely project themselves into the narrative.

The narrative: Explicit conflict (Steve was trying to get signed, which was hard to do in those days). Plot points (he’d go see Journey perform, he’d was blown away, a fate-like process got them together). Resolution (Steve reached his career goal and they wrote great music together). Secondary implied conflict (Arnel replaced Steve, potentially volatile situation, how does everybody feel about that?). Plot points (Arnel sings his heart out every night). Resolution (Steve tacitly approves and Steve explicitly says he loves Arnel).

Steve looks over at Neal for a personal aside about writing their first song together, “remember that?”

Steve is a powerful man who doesn’t owe anybody anything, which makes his constant compliments extraordinarily powerful and believable as something well beyond flattery. What a pleasure to hear every single compliment: the band was great, Neal Schon was great, Herbie Herbert believed in Steve, “are you fucking shitting me?” after saying the name of each band member and their unbelievable musical ability, graciously recognizing and complimenting his replacement Arnel.

Slip of the tongue at 1: 02, “bar to none” but nobody cares. We love this story and we want more! Heartfelt trumps perfectly delivered.

Now back to some crowd work to summarize and bring the energy level back up: “Speaking of fans….speaking of fans!” with a raised voice pitch and level.

And finally he further embraces the reality of the shared moment by acknowledging out loud that he hasn’t been active with the band, but (crowd work) “you’ve never not been in my heart, and I love each and every one of you.”

Master behaviors:

• Judicious use of crowd work that feels completely earnest
• Complete immersion in the shared moment
• Unshakable self-confidence without the crutch of arrogance
• Heartfelt delivery of planned remarks that feel extemporaneous

Here’s a video of Blink-182 in concert at Big Day Out 2000. I’d like to point out a couple of things.

First, I don’t think snark and cynicism generally pair well with the project of live popular rock. The adolescent audience is surrounded by that shit everyday. They go to a live rock show to escape all that by being in close proximity to men who do and say what they hell they want, when the hell they want. The boring masses of workaday adults generally use snark and cynicism to shield their true emotions and aspirations from endless assault dished out by the rest of the masses of boring adults who have given up. At a rock show, we’d like to escape all that nonsense, even if true escape may just be a fantasy.

So my general rule would be to avoid snark and cynicism like the plague. That said, however, you can see here how confidence and authenticity can make Blink’s snarky, (falsely) self-deprecating jokes and banter work great for them.

So if self-deprecating is your shtick, by all means run with it, but unless it some how captures the authentic essence of your best self in a compelling way, that shit will just bomb mercilessly when the 10 people in your dive bar audience silently agree with you and think, “Yeah, this guy in front of us is pathetic. Barkeep, turn on the TV so we can see Channing Tatum or Ryan Reynolds prance around in a movie.”

I think that there is a self-limiting nature to how far snark and cynicism can take a rock band. When I think of snark and cynicism, two bands that come to mind are Blink-182 and Steel Panther. These bands are hugely successful, but they always seem to take second billing to earnest bands. At the very top level of success, at the major festivals you’ll have Blink-182 and Steel Panther playing during the daylight, and earnest bands like Muse and Aerosmith headlining. Even Blink’s pop-punk contemporaries Sum 41 seem to end up with better billing. Both are fun bands with a few major hits and clever, humorous song lyrics. The only major difference I can discern is that Blink is snarky and Sum is earnest.

The upshot is that if snark is the only thing you can do well, run with it as far as you can, but if you are able to do earnest, stick with that, as you’ll have a much longer runway in front of you.

So we have a rule (avoid snark) with a pretty major exception (Blink, Steel Panther, et al do snark to the adoration of millions), so stay tuned for some refinements of the theory. Consider this food for thought on the topic of sarcasm on the stage.

Back to Blink’s banter: I qualify their self-deprecation as “false” because to any observer’s subconscious lizard brain, these men are obviously among the top alphas anywhere, skillfully and successfully commanding the attention and love of thousands of emotional adolescents. So maybe part of the reason the snark works is that we all know that the self deprecation is really just evidence of a top alpha man being munificent, pretending to be just like the rest of us for our entertainment only.

Second, notice how the guys are wearing what amounts to a uniform. Each has long baggy cargo shorts, canvas sneakers and visible tube socks. Sure, there are different colors and t-shirt logos, but in essence they are all wearing the same thing. This visually communicates to the audience that this band is a united gang, and deep down in our lizard brains, we all love a gang. I think the subconscious psychology is a mixture of two basic emotions, greed and fear. Greed: “I would have more great things in my life if I were a part of that gang!” and fear: “It would be dangerous to piss off humans working together like that gang!”

Finally, as Mark and Tom trade witty scatological insults with each other, both of them are implementing improv’s “yes, and…”thinking and pickup artists’ “agree and amplify” strategy to great effect. The thrust of both concepts is to accept the logic and implications of whatever your verbal sparring partner says, no matter how ridiculous, and take it to the next logical step, in as dramatic and humorous direction as you can.

Generalizations of rules effective behaviors:

• Excessive, superfluous physical movement showing off power and stamina
• Let shine the authentic essence of your best self in a compelling way
• Snark and cynicism are probably not a good idea.
• Very simple humor is probably a good idea.
• Band members should wear a uniform that doesn’t consciously register as such
• Band as a gang
• “Yes, and…” and “agree and amplify” as banter strategies