The Echo is Still the Sound

Originally published in the Copper River Record, Vol. 33, Issue #31, November 5th, 2020.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," wrote Charles Caleb Colton way back in 1820. It's an astute observation, but not completely Colton's own. Over a century before in 1718, English writer Eustace Bedgell wrote "Imitation is a kind of artless flattery." And even before that, in 1708, there's exists a proto-quote by Jeremy Collier and Andre Dacier, in a book called Emperor Marcus Antonius: His Conversation with Himself:

"You should consider that imitation is the most acceptable part of worship, and that the Gods had much rather Mankind should resemble than flatter them." Colton's phrase, now ingrained in the English vernacular like water to fish, was, fittingly, imitative of something that came before.

Which brings us to the topic at hand: tribute acts.

Tribute acts are showbiz performances that replicate your favorite bands and musical artists down to the literal t-shirt. This differs from when a musician or band covers a song from another artist. This is when someone becomes someone else. It's a shadow you can pay to go see.

There's something profoundly sweet about such proceedings. By their very nature, tribute acts are dorky enterprises, akin to watching someone dress up as Spider-man or Ironman, if your personal Spider-man wasn't a fictional character but a real British rock star with too many incisors.

Chalk it up to mass media's grip on the monoculture after World War II. Picture now these moments from memory: Elvis swings his hips, Beatles bob their moptops on Ed Sullivan, and Michael Jackson moonwalks as leader of the least-intimidating gang known in the universe. These are images, for better or worse, as recognizable to the average American as the symbols on the US dollar, with good reason. Many of these said dollars were spent by the public in service of such performers and their record companies. It's doubtful this kind of secular replicated iconography could ever be repeated to such a scale, due to the decline of a singular, shared mainstream culture where most people watched a lot of the same stuff on TV and listened to the current "hits" on the radio. This is probably not a bad thing, though it's fascinating to see our politicians take the place of our entertainers, as Washington, D.C. is the only show everyone still likes watching together, besides The Office.

Why do tribute acts exist? A few reasons. First, the artist is past their supposed prime. Maybe they're not touring anymore. Or if they are, they're not touring like when the audience member remembers them. If you saw Paul McCartney in 1974, he did not look like your aunt. He looked like your local mechanic, complete with mullet and a pencil mustache.

A tribute act replicates that McCartney, and mullet, for the present day.. The second reason is the band broke up and/or the performer is dead, so they’re definitely not touring anymore. Third, and very importantly, the target audience now has money. This author is at the end of the Millennial Generation, which you may remember was the subject of lots of media coverage until Zoomers took the mantle of The Worst Narcissistic and Terrible Generation until, I don't know, the "Baby Doomers" arrive with holo-insta-grams. We now have some spending cash and nostalgia. I can picture the modern millennial cookie commercial now: “Do you remember when ‘pandemic’ only referred to a violent video game selling out store shelves? Remember when 5G meant five thousand dollars? Remember when we all tried to make Razor scooters cool, and definitely didn't succeed? Remember Jolt Cola? Remember when wearing a mask only meant you and your friends were dressed as ninjas while jumping on a trampoline? Remember love? Pepperidge Farm remembers.”

Tribute acts have gone millennial. There's Katy Ellis, a Taylor Swift tribute who "not only looks like Taylor Swift but has the same mannerisms, energy on stage and attitude, and-" this is an odd selling point "-is even the same age." Want Lady Gaga in her meat-dress finery but without having to actually deal with Lady Gaga? Hire Donna Marie, "number one multi-award winning Lady Gaga tribute" who looks exactly like Lady Gaga, according to Lady Gaga. Do you enjoy a certain boy band but are bummed they're now more of a "man band?" You could book Only One Direction, a tribute band so good, Virgin Radio declared they "sound better at being One Direction than One Direction are at being One Direction," a compliment so deep and meta, it simultaneously creates a Russian doll-spiral into an existential crisis and a very weird thought experiment, because, mathematically, three levels of One Direction is still One Direction but cubed. Also, one great thing about being in One Direction is you probably never have to go asking for them.

Imitation gets a bad rap in our modern times, but that hasn’t been the case for much of human history. Plato imitated Socrates, except he wrote things down, wore sandals and had a job. Christians are commanded to constantly imitate Christ. Children grow up imitating those around them. This is why you’re reading this essay in English and not in Esperanto.

Indeed, all musicians and artists, nay, all people, start out in imitation. Salvador Dali once said, “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” Everyone has watched another person do a particular thing and thought, “hey, I should try that,” then failed miserably over and over until it either clicked and they moved on, or they just gave up and moved on regardless. Some men learn to do the knot for a bow tie, others just buy clip ons, but all men have pretended to be James Bond when wearing a tuxedo. And so, let us celebrate the imitators, the fakes, the phonies, the second places and almost-greats, the impressionists and mimics, great echoes all. They are us and we are them. There is no escape from the ripples we are to the stones thrown before us into the water of time. All we can do is watch the stone pass us, making a new ripple, another tribute for the next day, and smile. After all: even if we are but an echo, an echo is still a sound.

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