Cancer of the pseudonym
posted on 15 Jan 2010 under category Meta
The previous post is probably not that big a surprise to anyone, as I always said my pseudonymous musical exploits were the worst-kept secret in the underground (to the degree that ‘the undergound’ was even aware of my existence). After all, I used my own name and address in all of my business communications when I ran UHR, BWV, and later ADR. I also would blab to select super-fans to let them know, halfway hoping they’d ignore my exhortations to keep it secret, thus allowing me to claim the glory (ha!) of all of these other projects directly instead of thinking “wow, that guy is cool…”.
So why not claim them directly? Why the pseudonymous rigamarole? Well, a few reasons.
One romantic notion of ‘Coming of Age’ is the taking of one’s own name: the child is given a name at birth, but once he undergoes his rite of passage he claims his own name, the one by which he will be known to all thereafter. The meta-idea is that names have meaning, and thus when one comes of age, they have decided what they are and what they want to be, and will claim a name that reflects that. After all, you wouldn’t call a death metal band ‘puppies and flowers’ (unless you prefaced it with ‘dead’ or ‘bloody’) - the name conjures an image, an idea, and hopefully one that reflects what the band stands for, artistically speaking. I’d taken pseudonyms from the very first time I started playing music, first calling myself ‘Crak Smak’ on that very first Rampage tape back in the day, then moving on to various permutations of Vic when a friend started calling me that in high school. Yes, he was a Megadeth fan. Vic sounded leaner and meaner than ‘Mark’, and given the metal I was playing I thought it was a shoe-in for use as a badass stage name. So I became M. C. Vic, then Lord Vic, then mostly just Vic, and now Vic Evicerator. Or, rather, I became Vic whenever I strapped on a guitar, which leads to the second point.
The second reason is more of a psych-up thing than anything. Putting some layer of persona between me and what I play allows me to somehow deflect criticism, and also let me be less afraid to express what I really think and feel. Is that ‘hiding’? I don’t know. Everyone has competing needs for companionship/connection and privacy. Then again, I’ve noticed that people try to hide from powerful emotions or ideas, even ones inside themselves. Euphemism, rationalization, excuses… we do a lot to find a way to hide from expressing those deepest, darkest thoughts and ideas, because we MUST let them out, but it becomes hard to connect it with us directly once it’s out there. A persona seemed the best way to do it. It puts me in that mindset, letting me say ‘okay, the dad and computer-flunkie number cruncher is going away for a while - I’ve got some ass to kick!’.
After all, why not just call any musical project by the names of the band members or the leader? Yes, many do, but the band name in many cases captures the meta-idea of the band, the inspiration and vision behind it. It’s not out of bounds to think the same is true of us as people. I mean, since most of the other guys in Death Beast also play in Rampage, why not just merge the two? Because, creatively speaking, and speaking for the ideas each band deals with, they’re really different, and the right name for the right ideas makes it work. It’s nothing that can’t apply to people. And yes, if I were doing some music REALLY different from what I do now, I’d probably use a different personal name.
(The ‘previous post’ mysteriously referred to above was one I ended up deleting, and so I have no copy to post. I still basically remember what it was, though - basically, it was me admitting to the kayfabe that I’ve built up around most of my musical activities. Rather than restore it imperfectly from memory, though, I’ll just own up to the kayfabe in a future post after I get these history posts completed.
I also can’t mention this without giving props to Stephen King for coining the phrase that it the title of this post - he mentioned it in his book “On Writing” when he was talking about the unfortunate demise of Richard Bachman.)