Anyone who enthusiastically embraced pre-Lollapalooza alt-rock has experienced the music of Chris Connelly. In fact, anyone who hit more than one edgy dance club or frat party between 1990 and 1995 has almost certainly been exposed to the U.K.-born singer/songwriter.Heard Ministry's Land of Rape and Honey or A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste? Heard Revolting Cocks' Beers, Steers & Queers? Of course you have — multiple tracks from these pioneering industrial collectives were and are dancefloor staples. See also Pigface, the conglomerate with which Connelly collaborated for a long time. His ideas and evocative, cinematic vocals have colored a sizable percentage of releases by forward-thinking American labels Wax Trax and Invisible. Often, Connelly's contributions were less widely noted than those of more, shall we say, extroverted characters like Al "Alien" Jorgensen and Nivek Ogre, but that scene is the one with which he is still most widely associated.
"The stuff I did at that time with Revolting Cocks and Ministry was merely a chapter in my life, but it was the chapter that had the most prominence. And so be it," muses Connelly. "It's the same as any artist, actor, writer, whatever. I'm sure Robert Englund gets really sick of being called Freddy Krueger, you know? He's probably very serious about his work. I was like the Freddy Krueger of rock. But I've accepted that."
The songwriter's lengthy solo catalog ranges from the industrial-tinged sounds of his past to subtle, intimate and semi-acoustic, showcasing a thoughtful talent working for the song rather than the bombast. As a solo artist, Connelly has nurtured a smaller loyal fanbase, but to the music-listening culture at large, he's still best known as a contributor to RevCo's explicit, provocative deconstructionalist novelty.
He admits to some frustration to that end, particularly when working on his first records immediately post-Beers, Steers & Queers. The quality of the work those collaborations produced, though, and their enduring status as standard-setters have brought Connelly equanimity.
"Fortunately, that music that I did, I am proud of it. I don't think it was stupid," he says. "We set a very high precedent. So I'm lucky in that respect … and it was a tremendous opportunity for me, and I'm, of course, incredibly grateful for that opportunity."
His own albums are, as a whole far, more poetic — Connelly is a published poet — and infused with more subtlety than most of his collaborative efforts. Daring and surprising arrangements pepper his work, along with a risky willingness to rely on single standout elements — one voice, one beat — to convey and carry the mood of a song. If one wanted to get all analytical about it, his sequence of releases might be interpreted as a gradual paring away of his industrial-music origins' many noisy layers, culminating in last year's hauntingly spare Private Education.
"The previous couple of albums had been pretty lush, and it's really something I'd always wanted to do," says Connelly of Private Education, which brings him almost, but not quite, down to solo acoustica. "I didn't want to do it with just guitar and voice — I wanted the drum machine in there … for me, it has kind of a melancholy, archaic sound to it. But yeah, I wanted to sort of clean the slate, as it were."
The idea of closing a chapter persists in the Chris Connelly collection Initials CC, also released in 2002. The disc includes highlights, rarities and little-heard alternate mixes from most of Connelly's collaborative projects, as well as material from his first band, Tribe Fini, and some solo favorites. Such an anthology fairly screams, "It's The End of an Era."
"It's not altogether a chapter ending," Connelly clarifies, "but more a gathering of loose ends. One of the biggest incentives to doing that piece was, I wanted to give props to the people I'd worked with in the past, and perhaps present them in a new or different light.
"I think it's a fairly comprehensive overview of what I've been thinking over the last 20 years, but I've collaborated so much. And a lot of these things are very hard to find — I wanted to have some kind of a reference of the more obtuse things I've done."
For a man who so obviously enjoys the collaborative process, Connelly is of a surprisingly singular vision when it comes to his solo work. He releases his records on smaller, artist-friendly labels, and handles such peripherals as promotional posters and touring out of his own pocket, so as not to get even slightly under someone else's thumb. While initially influenced by punk's free expression, the singer's music has moved far beyond its rudimentary stylistic confines, but he still conducts business with the DIY ethos currently leaching out of the scene that spawned it. And when it comes time to record, outside influence is not welcome — even if it were in hypothetical exchange for a higher commercial profile.
"Always, when you're making records, there's always someone saying maybe you could do this or that. It means relinquishing a certain amount of your power," he says. "I would love to make more money at what I do, and I think there are many ways I could do that, but I haven't had to sacrifice a single thing."
This autonomy has resulted in some of the most visionary, criminally under-heard tunes in fringe music, but Connelly believes achieving the former is worth the latter. He probably couldn't take marching orders even if he decided at some point that he wanted to:
"I have to be able to sleep at night, and it would be uncomfortable. It would be like wearing somebody else's clothes."
Music critic Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by email at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2003.