Smell The Glove organizer Michael Gaughan goes beyond metal
With his long hair and oversized T-shirts, Michael Gaughan may look like a headbanger dude, but he won’t be pigeonholed. He's an artist whose work includes drawings, paintings, photography, sculpture, video art, and the cover of Gayngs' Relayted. He’s been a regular in the Twin Cities music scene for the better part of a decade with Brother And Sister, Little Dog On Top Of A Big Dog, and his hip-hop persona Ice Rod. But he's at least a little metal, as proven by his latest art project, Smell The Glove, which opens Saturday at CO Exhibitions. Named for the fictional, censored album from This Is Spinal Tap, the exhibit is the result of an open call Gaughan put out asking artists and non-artists alike to interpret the stanky title as they saw fit. Open-ended, yes—and that’s how Gaughan likes it. He was more than happy to talk to The A.V. Club about how rock and art can defy expectations.
The A.V. Club: There was a show in L.A. last year called Smell The Glove, and you spent some time out there. Was that your show?
Michael Gaughan: No, that was a collection of fan art. This is more of an assignment, specifically to create an album cover for the album Smell The Glove, which is described in the movie but which you never see. I understand why it’s funny and powerful—a "less is more" kinda thing—but... Sometimes, in my head, I see one solution for a piece, but watching that movie, I thought it’d be cool to have a bunch of different artists do the same thing. Thought that could be funny in a different way.
AVC: How many artists are we talking about?
MG: Oh, man, realistically? Around 100, hopefully. I wish I could say thousands.
AVC: We could say thousands.
MG: I think there will be thousands of pieces, actually.
AVC: And it should be pretty metal.
MG: Yeah. You can think of metal as a visual style, like Art Deco or New Wave, and there are things that I like about that aesthetic: the energy, the speed. You get the letters that are made out of lightning bolts—stereotypical metal things. But this exhibit goes beyond that.
AVC: How so?
MG: It’s about the specific combination of ideas—lots of layers. It references a movie that came out over 20 years ago, and the metal is an added bonus. I would like to see the art be about all kinds of things: families, jobs, comedy, tragedy. And I think with metal it’s easy to go cliché. Right now there’s a resurgence of thrash and stoner sludgy metal, but it’s like a formula. I know that the people who are playing this metal love it. But as a listener, I don’t get that much out of it. It feels like it’s about the aesthetic and very little about the true feeling of it. And then there’s metal where people are using it to make fun of that whole scene. People do that with everything—rap music, anything. You don’t want it to become stale, contrived, predictable. You want to take the spirit of the style and do something fresh. If you’re listening just to metal, your music will be derivative, easy to dissect. You have to expand your own personal library of inspiration to make your own concoction. Like Metallagher. That’s great. They’re taking the best parts of Metallica and Gallagher. It’s more than where you started. Or Andrew W.K. You fall in love with him because he never separates himself from what he’s doing. He owns it.
AVC: Who else is making art that starts in one genre and ends somewhere else?
MG: One of my personal huge inspirations for visual art is Christian Marclay. His visual art is thematically about the visual aspects of music, and it’s actually good art. It has a life of its own; rather than someone drawing a picture of David Bowie, he uses that as a jumping-off point. He’s also a composer.
And Neil Hamburger. He’s a stand-up comedian who’s doing this Tony Clifton thing, but instead of just making jokes, he knows his audience: people who have a pretty open-minded attitude toward music and pop culture. ... He makes fun of Yo La Tengo and stuff like that. He’s someone who’s on my top list of “things.”
AVC: What else is on the list?
MG: Kool Keith. He’s a genius. Everyone should be listening to him all the time. Jonny Corndawg from Virginia, Philly, Nashville, and now NYC. He does country music to create something comical and fun, but he isn't just making fun of country, and dude's lyrics are genius! He also does leather work and airbrush T-shirts. Har Mar Superstar does R&B really well but really irreverently. Obchod Na Korze, a Minneapolis-based male, vocal, acoustic, absurd choir group. They’re super-weird, super-talented guys. They are like the illegitimate children of Frank Zappa, unplugged.
Then there’s stuff like the Found Footage Fest. These dudes curate weird, obscure VHS tapes ... edit them together more thematically than TV Carnage but with a sort of sweet randomness. And No Bra, who’s an electronic, spoken-word, minimalist, queer, punk, art musician. She’s aware of her predecessors—she does a Suicide cover—but she is brilliant and contemporary. Check out the lyrics in “Munchausen.”
And the lady who made Wayne’s World, Penelope Spheeris. She also did The Decline Of Western Civilization. I love that she knows how to approach each project: Sometimes it’s journalistic, sometimes it’s straight-up comedy. ... I love Wayne’s World. I think I like it even more than Spinal Tap.
AVC: Which have you seen more times?
MG: Wayne’s World. I’ve watched it too many times. I love that Beavis And Butt-head, Bill And Ted thing—two slacker male friends sitting on a couch. Maybe I need to make some art about that.
Smell The Glove runs Aug. 7-Oct. 8 at CO Exhibitions. Opening night includes live-band karaoke with a Spinal Tap cover band featuring members of Atmosphere. Closing night will feature a screening of This Is Spinal Tap.
