Jim Bessman – Manhattan local music Examiner

It made perfect sense that John Watts began his recent CMJ-related activities with a college lecture at Fordham University.

“I got to know a semantics professor there over the years, and performed there a year ago,” explains Watts, the front man for defunct British rock band Fischer-Z and a prolific, politically-minded solo recording and visual artist and poet, whose main purpose for being in New York was to perform three gigs during last month’s CMJ Music Marathon while promoting his new albums Fischer-Z and Morethanmusic.

“I talked about world events in songs, and how to get something really significant across in a simple, communicable way,” he continues. “I wanted to show them how you can solve many communication–and world–problems: It’s about making yourself extremely vulnerable and cutting down barriers by stepping away from your normal status.”

 

For Watts, breaking down barriers is also a function of music and art–both of which he himself employs in addressing world events.

“My big subject is the idea that history over the last 10 years is fascinating in the extreme,” he asserts. “But it has also been a big disappointment to me in that world news is presented as politically biased entertainment.”

At Fordham, Watts conducted a songwriting exercise where he and students attempted to write a song about Palestine.

“It was very contentious,” he relates, “but that was the point: We spent 40 minutes to get just one line–putting an opinion into a verse structure. Some people thought it was stupid, but I like to work with people outside their comfort zone–and mine as well.”

Then again, Watts’ music has never been  comfortable. A new song and video, “The Heart of New York,” is a good case in point.

The song offers a fresh take on 9-11, with lyrics gleaned from touching excerpts of transcribed phone conversations made by victims to loved ones during their final moments.

“I copied some down from a 9-11 documentary I watched,” says Watts. “Most were positive, really elegant and dignified ways of expression–as opposed to the clichéd terrible imagery in all our minds that we’ll never forget.”

Watts released the song for free on 9-11, along with a video by his daughter Leila Watts consisting of 4,827 stop-frame animation stills comprising the text.

“The idea of it was to represent the generally wonderful human state–which you have to believe in,” says Watts. “Even though the last 10 years have been really disappointing, I still believe in the basic human goodness of people–which I didn’t believe when I was younger.”

Watts is not marketing “The Heart Of New York.”

“It’s an art music piece,” he says. “If people like it, they’ll find it. You can’t shove it down them.”

But he is promoting Fischer-Z, a newly recorded compilation of politically-charged Fischer-Z songs and featuring Watts’ cover drawing of soldiers with rifles pointed skyward; it also includes “Dark Crowds Of Englishmen,” an unreleased Fischer-Z track from 1985 that is a tribute to the British miners’ struggle with Margaret Thatcher.

“I re-recorded my favorite songs from the first Fischer-Z albums–and there’s a big demand for my black-and-white drawings,” he says. “You can’t change history, but songs never get old as long as the arrangements are fresh.”

The first Fischer-Z album, Word Salad, was released in 1979. The band did well mainly in Europe, with third album Red Skies Over Paradise (1981), which focuses on Cold War Europe, especially establishing Watts as a musical political commentator.

“It was a big record,” he recalls. “It appealed to the youth consciousness in those Cold War countries, when pop musicians actually led youth culture. Now it works the other way around, with artists trying to keep up with a youth culture driven by business.”

Spending so much time away from England–and so little time promoting in the U.S.–Fischer-Z and Watts never enjoyed the success achieved elsewhere in the world, to the tune of over 17 albums and two million units in sales.

“The English media didn’t like that I was a smart-ass guy who came out of a psychology/psychiatry education background and got a record deal three days later!” says Watts. “But I could communicate better with non-English speaking compatriots.”

He now boasts a major YouTube presence, and fans who hire him to write songs commemorating their personal milestones.

“I write songs about marriages, births,” he says, “and we both get to do what we want with them. I wrote ‘What Makes Your World Go Around’ for a Dutch couple and always do it at the start of my shows.”

Watts also creates limited edition sculptures out of his own vinyl recordings, and looks at his website as an art form unto itself.

“Leila has chopped up and mashed up a lot of my old videos to use with different songs in an interesting way,” he adds. “I’ve also made short movies for songs that I’ve written for fans, and instead of releasing singles in Europe, I do art shows!”

Add to all this Watts’ poetry books (he accompanied his 2004 album Real Life Is Good Enough with a 60-page book of related poetry and short stories), and he is in step with “the 21st Century boutique way of doing things,” he says.

“Songs with poetry books, films, art pieces–it’s a boutique industry,” he says. “It’s all about presenting yourself to the world–about getting seen. You have to do something with value, and if you have a regular audience you can then go on to the next thing.”

Next up for Watts, then, is new album Morethanmusic, which comes out next month behind the Oct. 17 release of first single “Head On.” The song hinges on the execution of Saddam Hussein and is critical of all who practice “aggression in the name of peace…violence in the name of love.”

“It’s about the need for a new way of thinking–’time to screw another head on,’” says Watts, who also points to album track “All The Workers” and its “idea that everybody can change the world a little bit.”

Acknowledging that he’s “never done much in the States,” Watts now expects to spend more time performing here, though he’s also gearing up for “a very big project” next year: A one-man show, with a choir–”like a radio play, with music,” he says.

Watts adds: “People who have followed you all over the place deserve something more–and this is the next thing for my regular audience.”