Authenticity
Two weeks ago, we spent the day in Tombstone, Arizona. Mrs. DJStan and I were both children in the fifties, and grew up immersed in Westerns. This included TV shows like Wyatt Earp and Tombstone Territory as well as western movies old and new, including My Darling Clementine and Gunfight at the OK Corral. So for us, Tombstone was a kind of a mecca. In fact, we rerouted our road trip by several hundred miles just to make sure we got there. Bottom line? We had a great time. The town is a mix of a few original buildings from the 1880's and a lot of more recent ones. It's got a stagecoach tour of town, wooden sidewalks, guys walking around packing six-guns (totally legal in Arizona if not concealed), various displays of varying historicity (such as a recreation of the Epitaph newspaper office but housing authentic equipment). The original site of the gunfight between the Clanton/McClaury gang and the Earp/Holiday gang is part of a tourist-driven complex that includes the "Tombstone Historama", a combination film/department store Christmas window type display that tells the story of the town (narrated by Vincent Price). There's a recreated gunfight staged nearby every day. We went, of course. And then there's Boot Hill, the famous Tombstone cemetery. It's been renovated (the original one slid into disrepair) with fresh signage and cactus, but it's a real cemetery with the bodies of the deceased buried where indicated (including the McClaurys and Billy Clanton; they were the losers in that gunfight).
So is Tombstone "authentic"? Well, yesterday an article in the NYT discussed the question, which has come up since the National Historic Register is considering removing the town from it's list of sites. Personally, it's authentic enough for me, if not for a historian. The townsfolk could be more upfront about what's real and what's replicated (no T-shirt stores in the original town, I'm sure), although the sites that are genuine take pains to say so, and one friendly and informative fellow who does tintype photographs explained clearly what was authentic about the corral site and what was not. But authenticity is a funny thing, and some people can easily get bent out of shape over the fact that the Crystal Palace saloon, with its restored bar, passively passes itself off as "authentic" when it's not the original building at all. Yeah, they should be clearer, but it's a knock-out old bar and there's a guy sitting up front in a old school cowboy outfit who'll explain the game of Faro to you (pro gambler Wyatt Earp ran a Faro game in a Tombstone saloon, BTW).
And what does this all have to do with music, anyway? My work CD yesterday was While Passing Along This Way, a set of traditional and traditional-type songs performed by Norman and Nancy Blake. These two acoustic musicians create a sound which looks and feels "authentic" – like the way an old timey musician would have performed had he Norman's incredible chops and Nancy to accompany him in a perfected supporting role. Their voices are pleasant and always on key, and Norman's in particular has a hillbilly twang (not a Southern one like Lucinda Williams', say - he's from Tennessee), but are flat in affect and without vibrato – folk voices from the Harry Smith collection. While most of the songs they perform are arrangements of traditional vocal and instrumental pieces, they also write songs in the same genres as they mine, and those songs are hard to separate from the "authentic" material. Their instrumentation too, which occasionally includes Nancy on cello or Norman on Hawaiian guitar, sounds traditional even when it is not. Incidentally, if I didn't mention it, these are first-class musicians, and I own several of their albums (and some of Norman Blake's equally fine solo work – he's just about the cleanest guitarist I've ever heard and some of the runs he pulls off are worthy of Doc Watson).
The Tombstone thing also reminded me of Steve Earle's terrific The Mountain CD, recorded with the Del McCoury band (not the McClaury band!). The album, which sounds like a collection of "authentic" bluegrass songs, was written entirely by Steve.
Bottom line for me is that there are times when I want to hear the real, original sound – even if it's scratchy and plagued with hard-to-hear moments. But at other times, a solid rendition of traditional genres in compatible styles, even if not truly "authentic", works just fine. Like I said, we had a great time in Tombstone, walking the streets where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday once sauntered (even if the wooden sidewalks were rebuilt decades after they were gone).
And we each bought an authentic Tombstone T-Shirt.
So is Tombstone "authentic"? Well, yesterday an article in the NYT discussed the question, which has come up since the National Historic Register is considering removing the town from it's list of sites. Personally, it's authentic enough for me, if not for a historian. The townsfolk could be more upfront about what's real and what's replicated (no T-shirt stores in the original town, I'm sure), although the sites that are genuine take pains to say so, and one friendly and informative fellow who does tintype photographs explained clearly what was authentic about the corral site and what was not. But authenticity is a funny thing, and some people can easily get bent out of shape over the fact that the Crystal Palace saloon, with its restored bar, passively passes itself off as "authentic" when it's not the original building at all. Yeah, they should be clearer, but it's a knock-out old bar and there's a guy sitting up front in a old school cowboy outfit who'll explain the game of Faro to you (pro gambler Wyatt Earp ran a Faro game in a Tombstone saloon, BTW).
And what does this all have to do with music, anyway? My work CD yesterday was While Passing Along This Way, a set of traditional and traditional-type songs performed by Norman and Nancy Blake. These two acoustic musicians create a sound which looks and feels "authentic" – like the way an old timey musician would have performed had he Norman's incredible chops and Nancy to accompany him in a perfected supporting role. Their voices are pleasant and always on key, and Norman's in particular has a hillbilly twang (not a Southern one like Lucinda Williams', say - he's from Tennessee), but are flat in affect and without vibrato – folk voices from the Harry Smith collection. While most of the songs they perform are arrangements of traditional vocal and instrumental pieces, they also write songs in the same genres as they mine, and those songs are hard to separate from the "authentic" material. Their instrumentation too, which occasionally includes Nancy on cello or Norman on Hawaiian guitar, sounds traditional even when it is not. Incidentally, if I didn't mention it, these are first-class musicians, and I own several of their albums (and some of Norman Blake's equally fine solo work – he's just about the cleanest guitarist I've ever heard and some of the runs he pulls off are worthy of Doc Watson).
The Tombstone thing also reminded me of Steve Earle's terrific The Mountain CD, recorded with the Del McCoury band (not the McClaury band!). The album, which sounds like a collection of "authentic" bluegrass songs, was written entirely by Steve.
Bottom line for me is that there are times when I want to hear the real, original sound – even if it's scratchy and plagued with hard-to-hear moments. But at other times, a solid rendition of traditional genres in compatible styles, even if not truly "authentic", works just fine. Like I said, we had a great time in Tombstone, walking the streets where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday once sauntered (even if the wooden sidewalks were rebuilt decades after they were gone).
And we each bought an authentic Tombstone T-Shirt.
posted by DJStan at 6:39 PM
14 Comments:
an authentic tombstone t-shirt. just exactly what does that mean, stri... um, dj?
c'mon, it's pure camp, right?
edem
It's "authentic" because (a) it was bought in Tombstone and say so and (b) it represents what the town is today. And it's not "camp" because IMHO "camp" involves an ironic stance; the Tombstone experience is totally sincere - commercialized, but sincerely so! For that matter, Mrs. DJStan and I approached our day at Tombstone without an ironic mask - we really love old westerns and were genuinely excited to be there; there's enough realness to balance the ballyhoo (which, for that matter, is also an "authentic" aspect of an American road trip, and has been since the Snake Farms and plaster Dinosaur Parks of my youth).
artificiality is part of the authentic american landscape.
is it possible to have an authentic campy experience?
i just find it strange to celebrate the popularization of what has been characterized as an abuse of police power.
To the first point, a big yes. From Barnum to Disney to Hefner to Steve Wynn, a certain brash artificiality - rising to the creation of entirely phony worlds - is definitely an American art form.
To the second point, I suppose if you're sincerely seeking a campy time and come upon one, it would be authentic...but I think we're moving deep into the semantic brush. Let's just say that "authentic ironic distance" doesn't quite compute no matter how you look at it.
And third, I think you're referring to the gunfight at the OK corral. The tours, info folks, etc. in Tombstone really make it clear - much more so than the movies - that this was a pretty nuanced business in many ways. It involved conflicts between Democrats (supported by the newspaper "The Nugget" and backers of the Cowboys) and Republicans (supported by the newspaper "The Epitaph" and backers of the Earps) for turf control, old-timers and the new money (which was pouring into Tombstone at a fierce rate) for - among other things - vice control (have you seen "Deadwood", BTW?), and pure deep personal dislike between the Earp/Holiday and Clanton/McLaury gangs.
In fact, in the reinactment the Clanton/McLaury faction was shown as reluctant to engage while town marshal Morgan Earp was trying to keep things calm; Wyatt was the most aggressive and was portrayed as the precipitator of the shoot-out, although the general consensus is that shooting by both sides began virtually simultaneously. It was over in a few seconds.
As part of your fee to visit the site and see the reenactment, you also got a copy of the Tombstone Epitaph report on the inquest, with several pages of the testimony (eye witness and otherwise) that was given at the time, both pro- and anti-Earp.
The popularized Hollywood version makes sharply defined heros and villains; that's the Hollywood way. But in Tombstone, if you're interested, you get a far better picture of the incident than that.
Incidentally, one reason that was given for both the long-running popularity of the incident and the one-sided viewpoint that has come down is that Wyatt, who didn't die until 1929, became an advisor to the movies around 1915. With the McLaurys and Clantons gone, his was the only story of the gunfight that got told, and he used his access to Hollywood types to burnish his own reputation. In fact, movie star cowboy Tom Mix became a close friend and was a pallbearer at his funeral.
Anyway, as John Ford (who knew Earp) put it in Liberty Valance, "When the fact becomes legend, print the legend".
was there much discussion of tombstone's origins as a mining town?
Yeah, plenty. The whole town's 1880's prosperity was built on it (apparently at one point it was the biggest city between St. Louis and San Francisco), and the "Historama" presentation told the story of the mines, including the flooding that ultimately shut them down. Without the mines, they make it clear, there wouldn't have been a Tombstone.
The day we visited Tombstone, we actually spent the night in nearby Bisbee, a copper mining town that's now being revived (since the Copper Queen shut down) as a sort of southwestern Sausalito/Provincetown (artists, restaurants, etc.). There's still a huge open pit mine right along the highway - "The Lavender Pit" (which I thought would be a great name for a local gay bar) with a "scenic overlook" for open pit fanciers.
From Barnum to Disney to Hefner to Steve Wynn, a certain brash artificiality - rising to the creation of entirely phony worlds - is definitely an American art form.
I remember reading, in one of the Little House books, Laura's description of the town they'd moved to, in particular the buildings with their false fronts. "False fronts"? It wasn't explained, so I had to think about it. False fronts? I pictured town like I'd seen in Westerns, one-story buildings whose front wall was taller than the building, making it seem (unless you looked at it from the side or the back) like the building was taller than it was. Why would they do that? I wondered. That's dishonest. And what a waste of wood, and everybody knows the building is only as tall as it is; it's not like they're fooling anybody. But maybe they had to do it that way, because everybody else's store had a false front, too, and you wouldn't want to look like the smallest building on the block, even if you weren't.
I think even the original ("authentic," if you will) towns had inauthenticity, in one form or another, all over them.
they were keeping up with the joneses. it certainly wasn't inspired by The Big Orange Splot.
8^)
BTW, striver, i can assure you, there's not one picture of Tombstone that anyone would mistake for Provincetown, even in a drunken stupor.
Confusion reigns, ed - I was talking about Bisbee, not Tombstone. The town, built up on hills (more Sausalito than P-town), has art and crafts galleries, bars, restaurants, hotles and inns. That sought of ambience is its target, and it has become a weekend getaway for Tuscon folks.
And just who is this "striver" you keep talking about, anyway?
I wonder, in The Big Orange Splot, if, once all the judgmental neighbors warmed up to Mr. P's crazy-looking house and started decorating theirs all wacky, too(just like his, but different), some of the neighbors only did it because everyone else was doing it, when in fact they'd have been happier leaving their houses plain old beige or white or red brick.
I think you're on to something related to fashion victimization, where people take on a style they don't really like because that's what they think they should be doing. Or the old saw that you can always recognize non-conformists because they dress alike (e.g., beats, hippies, goths, etc.).
And one more note to ed - as far as Tombstone vs. P-town is concerned, the Cape Cod tourist mecca definitely has more t-shirt stores. I'm not even going to start on candle shops. :)
"Confusion reigns, ed"
hey, there's no need to be redundant! yes, my mistake.
"The town ... has art and crafts galleries, bars, restaurants, hotles and inns."
that sounds like thousands of cities and towns all across the country that now don't manufacture anything as they've been reduced to service economies.
ah, the t-shirt comparison; yes, maybe you're right.
luckily, no one goes to either P-town or Bisbee/Tombstone for the t-shirts.
re: the Big Orange Splot
my only complaint is that i wish one of plumbean's neighbors, even after drinking that crazy batch of lemonade, would state his/her preference for the traditional suburban house.
oh, and another thing.
8^)
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