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Stadium is named after the most bloated spectacular phase of rock music - 'stadium rock'. Tagged as such in the early to mid 70s (though now sometimes referred to as 'arena rock'), it signalled a time when rock was morphing into a corpulent pre-obese monster of consumption and production. 'Stadium' referred specifically to the new venues rock acts commandeered for their shows. Touring acts like The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Wings, Pink Floyd, Yes, Supertramp, Kansas, Styx, and numerous others gained wide popularity in the US during the early 70s largely through FM radio exposure and its attendant national promotional power. US tours became less regional affairs and more national strategies closely aligned to the corporate logistics and exploitation of the major record labels. While this is the norm now, back then it was an eruption of sorts, requiring the bands to no longer play concert halls - let alone clubs - and forcing them into grander stage arenas such as the extant sporting stadiums. This was the moment when rock became as overground as sport.
Rock'n'roll history paints the period like the US media portrays 'the obesity epidemic', picturing the acts and their trappings as gaudy, excessive, debauched, hysterically out-of-control. Not ecstatically out-of-control like Iggy Pop or Kurt Cobain, but high on intimidating power like thundering hammering demigods, bludgenoning audiences into submission. But such negative views are typical of rock purists who simply couldn't hack that rock had become supremely overground, and so commercially implicated that the countercultural distinction between 'rock' and 'pop' had become meangingless. Furthermore, that very meaningless allowed the rock stage spectaculars of the time to initiate the transformation of rock from a socially-impelled discourse suited to English Lit students to a bombastic para-synatheasthetic stellar event suited to anyone. The archetypical rock event thus framed itself as loud, throbbing, flashing, doom-laden, apocalytic, visceral, trancendental - all qualified through vulgar broad-stroked rendering in its staging and presentation that would eventually achieve sublime comic-book form through acts like Kiss.
Stadium is an openly deluded revelling and wallowing in this particular kind of flatulence which makes rock such a fattened overripe display. A parody of the skinny drummer at the back of any stadium act, Philip channels the largescale dramatics of this era which elevated rock to its most bloated stage. Like the rider for Queen. Like the mics surrounding Keith Moon. Like Rick Wakenan's cape. Like Styx's twin-necked guitars. Like Kiss without their make-up.
BUYStadium online through Sound Punch Records
Complete contents of this page © Philip Brophy