Chris Whitley was, back in the '90s, my favorite musician, and remains so to this day. He played and sang the Urban Whiteboy Blues, "my" blues, rooted in American musical traditions but transcending their conventions, with some European "artiness" tossed in for mystery flavoring. His live performances could be frighteningly intense in that "good" way that, say, the Butthole Surfers and Swans could be, except that he'd muster it all with just his guitar, voice and foot-stomp board. His guitar would seem to have so much musical and spiritual energy coursing through it that it seemed on the verge of exploding – and not in the way that Prince's guitar did at the "climax" of his film Purple Rain. I would have been proud to walk away from one of Chris's gigs with a piece of shrapnel from his 1930s National steel guitar embedded in my forehead. Speaking of Prince, I witnessed Chris segue seamlessly from his traditional-blues song "Phone Call from Leavenworth" into Prince's "Erotic City," without any irony nor sense of contradiction. Such was Chris Whitley.
After – what, a decade ? – of post-production delays in completing the documentary Dust Radio: A Film About Chris Whitley, "someone" must have just thrown up their hands and said, "Fukit – I'm putting it on YouTube." It is apparently still a rough cut, but engagingly watchable. (Some bits of interviews of Chris and others appear outside of the film, in the trailer also viewable on YouTube.) The reason why I'm presenting it here is that I feel this to be a film that everyone must watch. It nakedly demonstrates how ass-backward the music industry can be in regard to its presentation and marketing of musical artists. But that's not even the half of it. Most people have no idea of what it's like to be an artist, of any medium or discipline, much less a self-taught master who defies arbitrary categorization and expectation. (His record label deplored his second album, whereas everyone else, out in the real world, considered it an exemplary motherfucker of a rock album.) Most people also have no idea of what a musician's life is really like on the inside.
This documentary film brings all of that into nauseating clarity. The final-interview scenes of Chris, beginning with his exclaiming, "I'm gettin' thrown out of my pad – again!" and periodically swigging from a wine bottle, angry and broken, and literally (though unknowingly) on the verge of death, are a most unfortunate view of the torment that too many musicians can experience. I am terribly sorry that it is Chris to serve as this example, as it detracts from the glory of his musicianship. I wish that it could have been a number of other particular musicians, but none burned as brightly as Chris, which wouldn't have set such a breathtaking and heartbreaking example. This leaves me feeling as though Chris had been sacrificed for this purpose, but I don't want to elevate him as Christ Whitley. I would like for everyone to watch this film, so that at least a portion of you all might feel yourselves asked, "How much do you now hate the machinery of bullshit culture that you've embraced, such that it might do this to such an unique and powerful artist as Chris Whitley?"
"No wonder why everyone's neurotic – 'cause they don't admit to what they actually live through." – CW