Barbarian Invasion
By Angela Shawn-Chi Lu
July 24, 2005 9:00 p.m.
Live and on the air early one Friday afternoon, Malik Gaines,
keyboardist for the band My Barbarian, instructs listeners on how
to make a homemade percussive instrument.
“You take two paper plates and place some beans in the
middle and take a stapler…”
Jerking with laughter, he nonetheless continues.
“And then you have your own ethnic shaking device on which
you can draw your own favorite deity,” he says from behind
the microphone, smiling and laughing impishly.
Gaines and his band mate, vocalist Jade Gordon, are guests on a
radio show to promote their free upcoming performance at the UCLA
Hammer Museum on Thursday. They tell those listening to KXLU, an
indie radio station located at Loyola Marymount University, that
they want people to bring their own percussive instruments to the
museum on Thursday night to participate in the hippie drum circle
at the end of the show. Gaines ends up providing an arts and crafts
segment on the radio, understanding that not all of those attending
the show own professionally made percussive instruments.
Most fans of the band My Barbarian (and indeed the band itself)
will tell you that there’s no other band today quite like
theirs ““ comedic, campy and theatrical, with a Broadway
show-tune sound. But remember that little band from the ’70s
called Queen?
The difference between My Barbarian and Queen (besides the fame
of the latter) is that My Barbarian take the theatrics to another
level. That’s because the principal song writers of the group
have each been involved in theater and the band actually refers to
itself as a “performance art collective” as opposed to
simply a band.
Gordon is an actress who was nominated for an Independent Spirit
Award in 2000 for her starring role in “Sugar Town” and
has also appeared on “That ’70s Show.” Gaines,
who has a bachelor’s degree in history from UCLA, is a playwright
whose work has included a 2003 commission for the Mark Taper Forum.
And in 2004, the band performed at REDCAT’s NOW Festival and
as part of the Evidence Room Theater’s Spring Break
Performance series.
With a penchant for elaborate story lines, the members of My
Barbarian create a complex plot and multifaceted characters for
each of their musical productions. In “Pagan Rights,”
which they are performing at the Hammer Museum show, the story is
centered on the character of Josh Suarez, a gay marine stationed in
Camp Pendleton in San Diego, where he has adventures in drug
dealing, cruise ships and kite stores. Suarez is eventually sent
off to Iraq and the drama ensues.
The band’s childhood-fantasy-inspired lyrics are just as
colorful. References to unicorns are abound and vocalist Alex
Segade sings in Elfish in the song “Morgan Le Fay,” the
fabled nemesis of King Arthur.
Gordon said some lyrics and characters were inspired in part by
her mother, who was an actress in a French theater group and a
hippie who lived all over Europe ““ at one point, she served
as a tarot-card reader in a commune.
“She had all these stories, and I don’t know how
much of it is made up and how much is true,” Gordon said.
“Sometimes I draw on the stories to create characters and
when she sees them, she’s often upset because a lot of what
we do is comedic. She gets a little bit upset that we’re not
as serious as she thinks it should be.”
Another major difference between My Barbarian and Queen is that
the former consciously looks to create comedy in its theatrics. My
Barbarian lyrics have been about various aspects of apartment life
like shared laundry facilities and excessive masturbation. And
several years ago, they performed a jazz version of “O
Christmas Tree” with lyrics sung in German during their
Christmas caroling tour around town. One pit stop, in fact,
included the home of the musician Beck.
The group also performs choreographed dance routines in
leotards, neon-spandex and custom-made medieval/hippie costumes and
masks. For their performances of the project “Gods of
Canada” in Toronto at the beginning of July, they wore
Canadian superhero costumes that a friend created for them. The
costumes were inspired by a ’70s comic book that was the
Canadian equivalent of X-Men.
According to Gaines, the humor and camp come naturally to the
group, though he says it does bring up the style issue: “Can
you be entertaining and still be performance art?”
Nevertheless, the group basks in its comedic glory, saying the
comedy allows them to communicate better with their audience.
“People often can’t relate to performance art
because it often takes itself really, really seriously,”
Gordon said. “I think making something comedic is a way of
making it more palatable for people. People would rather laugh
about something than have people say (in an angry, accusatory
voice) “˜Do you know that…'”
For My Barbarian, comedy is a way to communicate highly
controversial themes with subtlety. For their last project,
“Gods of Canada,” the group designed and created three
flags to represent what they say are the three gods of
Canada’s socialism: gay marriage, universal health care, and
lax marijuana laws. The flag representing gay marriage depicted two
California bears kissing each other.
The “Pagan Rights” show features a song Gaines wrote
about the conflict in Iraq.
The pagan themes of the production, Gordon said, are a response
to the rise of the Christian right.
Despite all this controversial material, My Barbarian has
maintained a relatively low profile in its five-year existence in
the L.A. music scene. Who knows if the band will ever blow up to be
as big as Queen was, but Gordon says that’s of little concern
to the band. The problem, she says, with most bands today is their
obsession with fame.
“They’re complacent with fame,” Gordon
said.
“They want to be famous for nothing like Paris Hilton. How
do you build a pop culture of nothing?”
