Eh…What’s Opera, Doc?

When Mike Pat­ton played Sus­pend­ed Ani­ma­tion for an April Fool’s joke last year, not every­one got it. The com­bi­na­tion of jump cuts, cal­cu­lat­ed mis­cues and caf­feinat­ed exper­i­men­ta­tion was too heavy for the avant garde (with excep­tions) and too car­toon­ish for any­thing but the art met­al scene, leav­ing it orphaned for ADHD weirdos and nos­tal­gia freaks (seem­ing­ly just two…)

Strange­ly, despite John Zorn’s imprint being all over Sus­pend­ed Ani­ma­tion, as well as the cura­tion of Warn­er Bros. enig­mat­ic and dizzy­ing Carl Stalling Projects Vols. 1 & 2, there was nary a men­tion of the man behind the Mer­rie Melodies orches­tra. Pat­ton’s rit­u­al­is­tic Ani­ma­tion relies on Stalling’s ellip­ti­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty, moody and play­ful com­po­si­tions evok­ing the vio­lent one moment and the bucol­ic the next. Pat­ton’s record­ings are per­haps more tweaked and in some instances more child­ish, but that’s owed more to his brood­ing com­po­si­tion­al men­tal­i­ty than any­thing else; Stalling drew on com­po­si­tion­al schiz­o­phre­nia to match wits with Mer­rie Melodies. Stalling’s self-con­scious zani­ness lends itself well to the sort of post-mod­ern meta-nar­ra­tive of ther­a­peu­tic lan­guage that’s part and par­cel of every­day speech — it’s a com­pli­cat­ed metaphor for every­day life: is this real­ly hap­pen­ing? After all, Bugs once assured us that he’d been adju­di­cat­ed non com­pos men­tis, and I think we can take his word for it.

Fantômas — “04/01/05”

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol. 1 — “Var­i­ous Cues from Bugs Bun­ny Films”

Fantômas — “04/19/05”

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol. 1 — “Stalling Self-Par­o­dy: Music from Porky’s Preview”

Carl Stalling — “What’s Opera, Doc?”