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Who’s In Charge Here?: Reflections on (band) Leadership

7/5/2018

15 Comments

 
​by Evan Cantor

I grew up in an age when the idea of a rock band as a democratic unit or institution was very much in vogue. The Beatles, for instance, were just four happy-go-lucky guys who happened to luck into musical magic. The Grateful Dead was just one big happy family. The Eagles were an outlaw band of Jesse James’ musical heirs. I even thought The Monkees were a real band.

These misconceptions were the result of successful image marketing and, in retrospect, we all know better. The Beatles were a Freudian stew of competing interests. The Grateful Dead were led by one particularly charismatic individual. The Eagles all hated one another and stuck around because of the money. The Monkees were little more than studio musicians with a rotating cast of vocalists, a formula used widely by Motown and Stax. The illusion of a democratic band unit was appealing, especially to the hippie generation espousing Woodstock, freedom, peace and love, but it was very rarely an actual reality, if ever. There was always a “leader of the band”.

I never became one until Walls Of Genius was formed. Up until that time, I had been in any number of bands, all of which had dissolved primarily due to issues arising from poor leadership or lack of it entirely. Poor leadership itself was likely due to the fact that we were all young and inexperienced. Shaped by the illusions of our generation, we didn’t understand the need for leadership skills, how to provide them if we had known, nor how to respond when it appeared. Even the formation of Walls Of Genius was an organic process. In its earliest incarnations, Walls Of Genius was nothing more than casual jam sessions, a leaderless response against the traditional band unit as I had known it. But eventually it became ‘my’ band and I was (and remain, for better or worse) the undisputed leader of the band.

Leading a band is fraught with obstacles, pitfalls and prat-falls. On one hand, it is an exercise in convincing others to manifest your personal vision. On the other, it is a means of encouraging and enabling others to contribute to something greater than the sum of its parts. At the end of the day, it is almost inevitable that leadership is an attempt to find a working middle ground between these two poles. If you are despotic about your vision, your collaborators will bristle, develop resentments and ultimately sabotage the product. If you allow your vision to be completely subsumed, this dynamic is reversed. The leader becomes resentful of collaborators’ demands, bristles at having to accommodate so many different interests and ultimately loses initiative as a result. When a band-leader is no longer motivated, the end is near unless leadership emerges from elsewhere. That’s how Ed Fowler and I morphed a dissolving new-wave band into the eventual Walls Of Genius.
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STAND IN THE YARD, (MIKAL BELLAN, BRAD CARTON & ED FOWLER), the core of what became Rumours Of Marriage when Evan joined them.
​In those ‘lost’ years, between the dissolution of Walls Of Genius and its subsequent re-birth, I played in a number of bands where this dynamic was played out in different ways. Polyester Prophecy could have been a Walls Of Genius spin-off, as its primary feature was the incandescent guitar playing of WoG’s own Ed Fowler (“Red Ed”). In typical fashion, Polyester Prophecy started casually, a jam session suggested. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the de-facto leader of this group would be the drummer, who had no appreciation of Walls Of Genius, didn’t understand it. In Polyester Prophecy, we played what he would, or could, play, dictated by one part chops and one part perspective. His vision was focused on heavy-rock and death-metal, mine on folk-&-jam-rock. Meeting in the middle-ground of post-punk, we morphed Polyester Prophecy into Motosapien, wherein de-facto leadership fell onto my shoulders as the lead singer and primary song-writer. The dissolution of Motosapien a year later was due either to my failure as a band-leader or my failure to comprehend just how much the drummer wanted that role for himself. I know that my accepting the reins of leadership bumped up against his aggressive control issues, but I’m still not sure, to this day, what I did wrong. It must have been something. My drummer friend told me that the bassist and lead guitarist viewed me as a dilettante or diva, a perspective that mystified me. But they were suffering from limitations in both imagination and chops. What’s a band leader to do?
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​After that, I joined Strange New Worlds, an all improvisational group that never played the same piece twice, combining elements of Miles Davis with Pink Floyd. The leader was clearly gifted keyboard artist Luke Palmer, who had placed the Craigslist ad seeking musicians in the first place. Although I got the gigs and drummer Eric Hoaglund recorded the massive studio improv sessions, it was clearly Luke’s show. His improv chops made him, in my eyes, a 20th century Amadeus. None of the three of us could have done SNW without the other two, but like Lola in “Damn Yankees”, what Luke wanted, Luke got. When Eric left for adventures south of the border, we never found another drummer to fit this mold. SNW finally dissolved when Luke declared that “playing with Bob just wasn’t fun”. Despite Bob’s monster chops, I had to agree. But it was already over, the leader no longer interested.
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​At that point, I decided to return to my roots, to articulate a version of Gram Parsons’ Cosmic American Music and formed New Cosmic Americans. My vision was to create a folk-rock group playing all genres, from rock, jazz and soul, to bluegrass, country and fifteenth-century ballads. As the self-proclaimed creator of the project, I was the self appointed band leader. We sounded good and played a lot of gigs, but it wasn’t without its challenges. Our female vocalist would only sing jazz songs a certain way, the way she had learned them at lessons, had difficulty counting measures, refused to play incidental percussion and took forever to figure out harmonies that I thought should have been no- brainers. The percussionist refused to learn more bluegrass or country songs, overplayed and sang very little. The bass player was excellent, but didn’t sing, so my dream of three part harmony mostly dissolved. As the band-leader, I began to resent my cohorts as we devolved into an amalgamation of their interests. As the leader, I felt that they had every right to their desires. In the interest of pursuing my own vision, they needed to be kept happy, so we would pursue their interests as well as my own. But this meant going in directions that so diverged from my own that it became stressful for me. Was it still fun? Not as much as it should have been. A medical diagnosis gave me the perfect excuse to dissolve the band without further discussion.
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​My current bar-band, the CBDs, functions more as a democratic institution than any other band I’ve ever been a part of. Clearly, as the most prolific song-writer in the group, the primary lead singer and ‘front man’, I am the de-facto leader of the CBDs. But we’ve been together in this incarnation for over 5 years and keep getting gigs. How come this band hasn’t dissolved after a year or two like all those others? I attribute the success and longevity of the band to a number of things, including the fact that we are all over the age of 50, so we can no longer use ‘young-and inexperienced’ as an excuse. But ultimately the reason for this success is the fact that I attempt to provide as little overt leadership as possible. I willingly share that responsibility with our keyboard player and everything seems to work out just fine.
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​How is it that I can do this? How can I discipline myself, hold back, keep my mouth shut, refrain from smarting off, to provide as “little leadership” as possible? Perhaps I’m a more mature dude at age 62. While I’m never entirely sure about maturity, it’s also because I know it won’t work any other way. I accept the fact of ego as a huge black dog barking up my backside. I also have other creative interests where I take more control of my own vision: visual art, solo-music, gardening, photography, the outdoors and writing. I also have Walls Of Genius.
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​The other members of Walls Of Genius never disputed the fact of my leadership. When we decided to bestow titles upon ourselves, I became the “Head Moron” and Ed and Fyodor were “Assistant Head Morons”. Ed was very likely grateful that somebody provided him a structure within which to pursue the electric guitar. He has never subsequently played with any other musicians besides myself and those that I assemble. Little Fyodor had a personal vision that predated Walls Of Genius. But he hadn’t yet created the fully-realized entity that we know as Little Fyodor and he sublimated his vision to the group when he discovered how much fun we were all having in our collaboration. The parameters of Walls Of Genius provided him with an avenue to develop Little Fyodor, but that never was the full scope of Walls Of Genius. What do you do when your vision must be sublimated to the demands of others, whether they are collaborators, colleagues or the audience itself? It’s a conundrum that is not always easy to swallow. Leadership means you’ve got to sometimes put your ego aside. It’s a balancing act, finding the sweet spot between trusting your own judgment and that of others.

After the initial dissolution of Walls Of Genius in 1986, I dropped out of the “cassette culture” and its subsequent incarnations for 30 years. So it would be inaccurate to credit myself with “successfully” leading a band that has survived for 35 years. However, it has been happily revived in the 21st Century. I remain the leader of the band. Little Fyodor kept the WoG flame alive for many years, but never overtly expressed any desire to be the band leader. I suspect this is because he has been quite successful pursuing his own thing and he has always had as much veto power and influence on Walls Of Genius as he ever desired. Obviously he no longer needs Walls Of Genius as an avenue to pursue Little Fyodor music. I, on the other hand, have appreciated having the Walls Of Genius brand available for creating ‘outside’ music. I readily admit that there could never have been a Walls Of Genius that was just me alone. But since Walls Of Genius can be many things, my solo efforts are legitimately within the scope of the whole.
​​The take-away from all of this is that leadership is not easy to get ahold of. It’s slippery, a fluctuating thing, a will-o-the wisp, evanescent (pun intended) and ever-changing in its approach. A lot depends on who you’re trying to lead and how you approach each of those individuals, with a strong determinant hand or hands-off, laissez-faire. When you’re attempting to create a whole greater than the sum-of-its-parts, you’ve got no choice but to keep those parts happy. Unless, of course, you’re generating a boat-load of revenue, in which case nothing else seems to matter. Witness Fleetwood Mac, the Dead or the Eagles. However, those of us who are creating for reasons other than revenue must hope that each individual part is happy in order to maintain the whole.
15 Comments
Little Fyodor
7/5/2018 18:08:07

Hardly a big shmeal, but just for the record, I gave Assistant Head Moron Ed Fowler some opportunities to display his guitar wizardry between WoG stints as well, mostly in the form of studio overdubs that he did on one or more songs for each of my four Little Fyodor long-player releases, plus he played live on stage with me and Babushka on two occasions (though just for one song each time). The larger point implied about Ed’s musical activity in general (or lack thereof) is nary affected. It was a bit of a revelation to me when Evan and I interviewed Ed for Hal’s WoG archive to find that he had never played in any band at all before Stand In The Yard (shown above), the band that morphed into the band that directly led to WoG, despite being a phenomenal musician who’d been playing guitar on his own a good 14 or 15 years at that point. (See the Ed interview here: http://www.haltapes.com/ed-fowler-interview.html) He just didn’t really have the personality for pursuing opportunities or making things happen. I remember once after a WoG gig, some woman we didn’t know approached Evan and myself and asked us if Ed was a professional musician (presumably just slumming with WoG), just because he was so obviously so accomplished at his instrument and just basically so freakin’ good, and Evan responded that he (Evan) and I were “closer to being professional musicians” than Ed was (said with an emphasis that made the point that we weren’t close ourselves!). Not to diss Ed, who’s a beautiful fellow, it’s just interesting how different people are… different! Like the man said, isn’t he a bit like you and me (well, especially me, nowadays!)…. (Ironically, Ed has more of a “point of view” than he ever did in WoG days and is now one of the more ardent Republican haters I know!) (And I know a lot of ardent Republican haters!)

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Little Fyodor
7/5/2018 18:41:52

GREAT flyers, BTW!!

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Evan Cantor
7/5/2018 23:56:02

good point Fyo! That text should read that Ed never played in any subsequent ensembles other than those that I or Little Fyodor assembled. This is in no way to detract from Ed's fingers-on-fire electric guitar playing... whoo! There were times when ya needed a fire extinguisher to cool him off...

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Little Fyodor
7/7/2018 01:38:13

As succinctly put as my own reply is rambling!! :)

Lord Litter link
7/7/2018 12:16:21

Interesting subject! .. I was thinking what to add from my side.

I remember being in two bands that I would call *organic* my first one (very *out there* - we only had a sign, no name) and Das Freie Orchester. in both bands every member had his/her place but I don't think there was a boss (whether male or female).

The first band started as a 5 piece band, then mutated to a trio then morphed into a 7 piece band (with brass section). In the end it just *crumbled* and faded away. The band was a ongoing process always reacting to the situation in West Berlin .. meeting people in clubs exploring the night..leaving people in dispute...

Das Freie Orchester came to an end when the world finally had changed (that is how I see it today) because the band came alive as an underground reaction to life in the German Democratic Republic - not political - cultural. When the wall fell for a short time it seemed we could combine a better Germany from the *ashes* of East and West Germany. In those days I was member of the band. The VERY DAY the wall fell I joined. For three years there was this period of *anything goes* (1989 - 1992). When Germany was reunited it soon became obvious - hard core capitalism is about to change the world (the result .. we suffer from it today) .. that *killed* Das Freie Orchester MK2.

Why this description? Well - both bands I somehow would like to describe as democratic. It worked as long as the situation allowed.

The Lord Litter Band and Litter & The Lazy Sleepers that was a different story. I was the assigned boss at least as it was about the music - my songs, I was the singer etc etc .... and .. it did not work at all. I don't want to direct people .. tell them what to do. But a hierarchy only works with someone on top who knows *how to*. I can offer a good framework but people have to create and act autonomous, if that does not work, I'm out.

So in the end I left Litter & The Lazy Sleepers because I could not get the message across to the guitar player about the solo the song definitely needed.

By the way - the smallest band is probably a duo - can be also very difficile!

Thanks! ... did'nt think about all this this for a while...

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Little Fyodor
7/7/2018 15:07:07

Lord, I didn't realize you were in Das Freie Orchester. I just pulled out my aT eponymous tape and I don't see a name I recognize as yours in the liner notes, I guess you were listed under a different name? I also either forgot or never picked up on the fact that you were based in East Berlin! Our impression here in the West was that musical activities in the "Communist Bloc" could be punished by the law if not overtly sanctioned by the State. Did you ever consider yourselves in any such danger? Did your radio activities date to this period? I feel dumb to not know this about you already!

Also, I think a lot of people in the US would be surprised to see Germany described as an exemplar of "hard core capitalism"! People here are more inclined to see western European nations in general as embodiments of "socialism," though I sometimes do point out to folks that those countries are largely capitalistic, which I think makes these folks realize that they really knew that.... I find myself wondering how you feel your country suffers from this (not that I can't guess at all, but still I wonder) and whether you feel the previous economic system was preferable.... But of course these are huge subjects and maybe not fit for an Electronic Cottage comment thread on a blog about band leadership!! :)

I always liked that DFO tape, BTW, and played it a number of times on my radio show!

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Hal McGee
7/7/2018 15:36:34

Fyodor, you can read about Lord Litter's involvement in DFO here - https://www.electroniccottage.org/lord-litter/archives/04-2018

Lord Litter link
7/8/2018 09:26:05

Das Freie Orchester was formed in 1985/6 in East Berlin with 5 members, all from East Berlin. They were not a political band, they reacted to the daily situation. Example: Baerbel the female singer worked at a store where they sold screws ... but there were often no screws to sell because of the situation of the economy of the state. So one day she improvised lyrics entitled "Ham wa nich'" - "We don't have this" in several accentuations. Well - in a way this is politcal.

To describe the situation of *underground bands* in the eastern bloc is'nt an easy task. Several different situations in several countries. Nowhere you could sing "Destroy the state" but you could find all kind of ways to describe the situation using *uncomfortable* words and music. Das Freie Orchester in the end was filed under "Jazz" (which gave them a accepted *status*) and made good money playing concerts because that was part of the way the state handled culture. Imagine getting guaranteed regularly real good money for underground concerts because your state pays for this! BUT ... money was of almost no importance in East Germany - everybody had everything to live anyway - everything you needed to live was real priceworthy. But noone had a real good amplifier made in the Eastern bloc (the good ones had to be *imported* by friends)..and noone could buy a banana and you had to wait 5 years to buy a car and.. And underground bands sure could not release on the only existing record label owned by the state. So - YES - all the underground was releasing on cassettes!

That was how I got to know Das Freie Orchester. They sent cassettes to me living in West Berlin. I was playing them on my radioshow in West Berlin and thus had a big audience in East Berlin. I also visisted the band several times in East Berlin - West Berliners could go to East Berlin. We became friends and the day the wall came down it was a logic move I joined the band. Two of the original members had left. East / West Berlin .. so many stories to tell ...how I smuggled cassettes of underground bands out of East Berlin to play them on my show and to distribute them...how we planned I would make *undercover* appearances at Das Freie Orchester concerts when there still was the wall (which never happened because as we wanted to start with this the wall came down)...etc.


"People here are more inclined to see western European nations in general as embodiments of "socialism."
This is what we were hoping for Germany with the unification. Social aspects of the German Democratic Republic (they had many very positive aspects of social life!) combined with elements of what was called the West German *social state*. Healthcare system, pension and all these aspects were in a perfect balance in West Germany. EVERYTHING is worse these days. You can take any social aspect of the society to realise it totally went down the drain. I heard a very sad report about day nurseries - all was quite well in the 1980s.

"I think a lot of people in the US would be surprised to see Germany described as an exemplar of "hard core capitalism"!"
I guess we can agree on a worldwide "hard core capitalism" with different faces. We definitely suffer from a *profit first* mentality here in Germany and all over the world.

First Apple, Facebook, Google etc .. then the *consumer* then.. you have an Iphone and then you can post a next selfie on Facebook and feel well because you get *likes*. And you sure can buy super cheap at Primark producing for very little money in third world countries and thus making an ENORMOUS profit - so you have super cool clothes that last for two days (then they fall apart because they are definitely no quality clothes) but you can't afford the rent anymore .. and...

YES I think that "the previous economic system was preferable". It was based on much more humanistically values ... even if you drove a Mercedes Benz.






Little Fyodor
7/7/2018 15:16:57

As extensive as Evan's blog is, I get the feeling that it barely scratches the surface of the subject it directly addresses, not to mention the whole shebang of related human relationship issues it tangentially touches on or might raise.

The one concrete conclusion I can find to personally take away is that one of our major jobs as humans is, indeed, to try to make or at least keep the people in our lives happy, even if only for purely practical reasons (not to discount the importance of the ethical reasons to do so, just saying even the practical ones are reason enough!). On one hand I find myself thinking this is rather obvious; on the other, it occurs to me that this is something that too many people, particularly young and inexperienced people, too often lose sight of and can very much stand to be reminded of!

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Little Fyodor
7/7/2018 15:39:51

Here's something else I'll add.

It's been noted that often times in the business world that a person is made a manager because of various factors, such as seniority or knowledge of the subject being dealt with, that may or may not actually reflect on that person's ability to actually *manage*! Management is mostly about people, and just because you may know the science or the technology or law, etc., better than the people in your charge does not necessarily make you good at all at getting those people to help you work towards the ends that you are personally knowledgable about.

Similarly, it has certainly occurred to me that being a songwriter and lead "vocalist" who thus must "lead" whomever I work with on realizing my songs is far from any type of qualification for doing this leading. Alas! the landlubber must sail....

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Evan Cantor
7/8/2018 10:26:03

Fascinating discussion about underground music activity behind the iron curtain--LL, you could probably write a book about that. Over here, across a wide expanse of ocean, I don't think we have any idea of what life was really like in the communist state of the 20th century. We see the world through our own "American" lens. Regarding leadership and management, yeah, I focused on my experiences as a band leader, or those dealing with band leaders, not leadership on the whole. But after reading Jon Meacham's recent book, "The Soul Of America", I would paraphrase Lyndon Johnson (president 1963-1968) this way: If you're trying to change somebody's mind, you've got to make them feel good about it, as if it was their own idea.

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Lord Litter link
7/8/2018 11:52:17

If all works out ok there will be a book about underground music in the GDR ... BUT..it will be in japanese! Dieter (DFO guitar and more) and I were interviewed in 2016 by a japanese journalist who already had written a book about electronic (underground) music in Russia. Haven't heard since then so I don't know about the status of the book.

And the LBJ recommendation is sure super clever! .. on the other hand I don't like kind of acting ... but that's another story.

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Little Fyodor
7/17/2018 19:31:26

Thank you very much for answering my questions, Mr. Litter! Always great to hear a perspective from much, much closer to that old Iron Curtain!

Evan, it's ironic to hear the sentiment you cite as coming from Lyndon Johnson! I've always heard he got his way from sheer headstrong bulldozing take-no-prisoners aggressiveness, I would never have pegged him for the gentle touch!

I've seen similar sentiments as the one described in my own readings on the general subject (Carnegie, Burns), and I've found them as enlightening as I've also found them somewhat disturbing for reasons similar to the one expressed by Mr. Litter (authenticity, being true to yourself, etc.). I think if someone comes up with interesting things to say about that paradox, he or she could make a bundle in the self-help market! Meantime, I guess we'll just have to figure it out ourselves, haha!

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Frank
7/18/2018 21:35:37

No matter who of Walls Of Genius, writes on EC... it's always fun to read! And the answers of the other Genius'... hilarious!

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Little Fyodor
7/18/2018 22:23:10

Thank you, Frank. Yeah, I guess I'm a funny guy -- in more ways than one, haha!!

Say Evan, I've been meaning to ask, who was this Bob whom Luke didn't wanna play with, thus causing the breakup of SNW? I figure he was must have been Eric's replacement on drums, but I'm not sure as I don't see anything that specifies that, only mentions of Luke's antipathy toward playing with him and your agreement, oh and his monster chops....

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    Walls Of Genius

    formed in 1982, a musical performance-art comedy experimental noise ensemble, featuring everything from musique concrete, sound collage and extended rock improvisation to demented top-40 parodies, free jazz, industrial and audio experiments of all kinds, mostly fitting in no category whatsoever.

    Over the course of the next four years, Walls Of Genius took the underground by storm and rained on every conceivable parade, all with tongue firmly in cheek and cockeyed smiles.
    ​
    The brain-child of disgruntled musician and self-anointed "Head Moron" Evan Cantor, Walls Of Genius' other founding members ('genial genii') were the famous wild-man Little Fyodor and electric guitar wizard Ed Fowler. 

    Stalwarts of the early 80's cassette culture scene, Walls Of Genius was both loved and reviled in equal measure.

    By 1986 WoG had disbanded and was inactive until reunion sessions in 2014 re-ignited the flame. They happily soldier on, voices crying in the wilderness of madness that is this world in the 21st century.

    Evan Cantor email
    Little Fyodor email
    Walls Of Genius Bandcamp
    WoG Archival site

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Electronic Cottage is a webzine covering independently-produced Experimental & Electronic Music, Space Rock, Audio Art, Video Art, Mail Art and more.