Preliminary Materials on a Theory of Tracy + the Plastics

VERY minimally edited response to Slim Volume's Questions:

by Lifeguard of Love

To work backwards: The artist lets go of work immediately upon sharing it, especially in this case, as Olympia had a pretty major “all ages” scene circa 2001.

To be a fan is a one-sided relationship, but in a small community it becomes more recipricol. As soon as she left the stage, she introduced herself to people as Wynne, never Tracy. The act immediately came off, which may have further blurred the line between performance and performer. Nothing about her seemed to “change” once she was Wynne and not Tracy (no one ever mistook her for Nikki or Cola). One time there was a Sunday early-evening show for some reason, and she was like “Oh my god guys, I’m so hungover I thought I was going to die.” But she did the show anyway. Her performance was performance, but the closeness of the space (including often playing at venues without stages) was also humanizing. She let one of my friends be the singer at one show.

Humanizing, strangely, can lead to further objectification. In a punk rock community, the MORE we think we can relate to a performer, the more we feel we POSSESS them. (what to make of the possessiveness of fans?).

What happens? What happens is that fans are happy. The fans are 18 and don’t have anywhere to put this information about performance, identity, femininty. Greenwood has a faint moustache and a GREAT ass, and that’s all they need. All the queer kids, butch or femme, can dream of her. We don’t know what she means by Modern. We don’t know what the Art Test is. Queer youth group is telling us that we’re Golden.

What made this actual record the flip side of The Need is Dead? It is like it’s companion album, and not just because I listened to them both the first time I did mushrooms (that is not even a true story).

What puts this record into a rock category? I don’t fucking know! I am trying to figure that out.

How did Tracy and the Plastics employ irony in a way that contemporary electronic musicians today (Grimes), 11, 12 years later, do not need to?

*

It was a weekend in February. My girlfriend’s teeth had crashed into my lip while we were making out and I wouldn’t let her kiss me after; since my lip was cut it was not HIV-transmission safe. Queer youth group had drilled so much HIV prevention in me that I’d missed opportunities to have sex with girls when I didn’t have a glove; all bodily fluids were treated equal.

We went to an all ages performance space called The Midnight Sun. I am most certainly at risk of mixing up this story with a million other stories of shows at The Midnight Sun. This may in fact be a hybrid, this may not even have been the night that my girlfriend’s mouth cut my lip; it may have even been her lip that was cut. This was only 11 years ago. I don’t remember. I was really stoned.

We peeped into the venue. They actually wouldn’t let us in because the place was at maximum capacity. We saw a TV and we were like what the fuck, this isn’t a band, it’s just a TV.

We went and saw Tracy and the Plastics and The Need play almost every weekend for the next several months. Their records, Muscler’s Guide to Videonics and The Need is Dead were flip sides of one another.

 *

Tracy and the Plastics was temporal drag of a very recent past – a past that many of Greenwood’s peers lived with, although we, the all-ages part of the all-ages audience, did not. She employed irony in sound and medium. But then a lot of the fans didn’t get the irony because they had younger parents (???) so they just thought it was cool (???).

 

But that brings in a question of authenticity/sincerity; I personally am still stuck in finding rock n roll more “authentic” than electronic music because it is something you can feel (performing and listening). [I know this to be untrue/authenticity to be not even real, etc., but it is something that grates on me when I think about electronic music in general, even though I fucking love some of it].

 

What about Glass Candy using and recording total analog. You can feel that too? (need to read the section on analog recording in Time Binds by Elizabeth Freeman).

What made Tracy and the Plastics different for me? Was it really just Wynne Greenwood’s moustache and fine ass? Are the teenage hormones that objectify performers the same teenage hormones that make you want to fuck everyone you can just because you can?