Description
The American singer and songwriter Mark Heard took the pseudonym iDEoLA for his tenth studio album Tribal Opera, released on What? Records in February 1987, manufactured and distributed by both Word Records and A&M Records. The album was written, produced and recorded by Mark Heard at his own studio Fingerprint LA in Los Angeles, California. (Mark apparently renamed his studio after moving it from a mobile unit to a shed behind his house.) Digitally mixed by Heard at Can Am Recorders in Tarzana, California. All songs written by Mark Heard. Tim Alderson designed the front cover while Stew Ivester did the photo art featured on the back (a manipulated Polaroid photo). According to an article featured in the October 10, 1987 issue of Billboard Magazine, “What? released only three albums, and all of them received a great deal of airplay and critical acclaim: Tonio K., Ideola and Dave Perkins.”
The songs were written in a period of time spanning the better part of one year and Heard actually had twenty songs and thus had to narrow it down to ten for this album. (The non-album track “Jericho” was later included on the 1989 album Adventures in the Land of Big Beats & Happy Feets, a multi-artist remix project engineered by Mark Heard.) This rather electronic tour de force album – heavy on the digital samples, synths, and drum machines – sounded nothing like any of Mark Heard’s work before or since. It’s a must have, with tracks like “How to Grow Up Big and Strong,” “Hold Back Your Tears,” “Go Ask the Dead Man,” and “Is It Any Wonder” leading the pack. (The latter track was the album’s single, with an accompanying music video aired on MTV.)
The juxtaposition of the words “tribal” and “opera” is like the visceral emotional part of living in the global village more or less. The operatic viewpoint would be this saga trying to tell the story of life in a particular time frame. So I suppose the two words might interrelate more than it might seem they do, at least in my mind. I think tribal just refers to the human race as a “closely knit group of beings” of some sort… The two words juxtaposed summed up much of the feelings in the music, a kind of neo-Darwinian village atmosphere in which the narratives of most of the songs take place. [The Curtain Rises On iDEoLA’s Tribal Opera, Excerpt from a New Sound interview with Mark Heard]
Leave-Me-Alone-to-Create Award: Mark iDEoLA Heard for the one-man-band experimental exploration of Tribal Opera (What? Records). Contemporary culture and urban concerns collide with stark, jarring rock. Danceable music with vocal and instrumental detailing that, in its artistry, resembles brush strokes for the ears. Dramatic, effective, haunting, Tribal Opera showcases a compatible marriage of message and music. [Campus Life Magazine, 1988]
iDOn’TKnOW what to say. The debut of iDEoLA on What?/A&M, Tribal Opera, is such an awesome delight that my superlatives are falling all over one another trying to get through my typewriter onto the paper. Just three days into the year – on my birthday, no less – it arrived and, after only one listen, I was convinced it would be the album of the year. More listens and many smiles of appreciation later, I will reserve that conclusion for later. Nevertheless…
iDEoLA, a name I cannot pronounce without singing it to the tune of The Knack’s «My Sharona», exists in a panoply of sounds (acoustic as well as electric, digitally-sampled, synthesizer-produced, and computer-enhanced noises of varying origin), ideas, and graphic metaphors of social disorder and a struggling humanity. The brainchild of writer/player/producer Mark Heard, iDEoLA breaks new ground musically with death-defying dance rhythms and an overwhelming interplay of instruments orchestrated to maximize both rhythm and melody while Heard’s vocal whine and howl demands response. It’s a bit like Lindsey Buckingham’s Go Insane in construction, it’s similar to XTC in its no-rules-apply compositional inventiveness, and its generally devastating percussiveness draws a lot from numerous dance remixes on the market – but essentially iDEoLA is a unique, fresh, and undeniably relentless sound.
Tribal Opera, an appropriate title suggesting the primal instincts just below the surface of even the most sophisticated and cultured elite as well as the album’s joining of “primitive” rhythms with grander musical and ideological themes, possesses the gutsiest, punchiest collection of songs to be heart anywhere. «Is It Any Wonder», the album’s first single and video, asks the questions that are central to the heart of Tribal Opera: “Is it any wonder we dare to live in our dreams / Is it any wonder we scare ourselves with our screams?” We hope for beauty, trust, and treasure, but we should know better than that given the deceptive qualities of reality («Everybody Dances») where communication and emotions are stifled («Talk to Me», «Emotional Man», and «Hold Back Your Tears»), human destructive urges overcome common sense («How to Grow up Big and Strong», «Why Can’t We Just Say No», and «Watching the Ship Go Down»), and the answer appear to be out of reach («Go Ask the Dead Man»).
While this critique of the world system looms dark and heavy, perhaps like the observations of the World Party, Bruce Cockburn, and Peter Gabriel, there is still the world of hope and affirmation for «Love is Bigger Than Life». The call to see through the veil of the culture and past the curtain of the powerless wizard pushes us to realities and values, to ultimate meaning and purposefulness, to the beginning of any compassionate evangelism. It begins in the real world where finally Christ shared all that humanity imposes upon us and proved indeed that love is bigger than life. iDOn’TKnOW what to say. I really liked it a lot. Happy Birthday. [Brian Q. Newcomb, CCM, March 1987]
Mark Heard is “an emotional man, with out-of-place feelings.” In case no one remembers, that’s a long way from the cerebral, detached poet of ‘Victims of the Age‘. In his one-man band ‘Tribal Opera’, Heard hits by-now-familiar themes with a new measure of intensity bordering on primal scream.
Still, he struggles with maintaining too much distance, “watching the ships go down” instead of helping folks into the lifeboats. For that reason, Heard’s new musical direction is particularly appropriate, adding Everyman’s emotional weight to the philosopher’s theological abstracts.
Absolutely powerful percussion drives this juggernaut of thinking man’s dance music. Through the relentless music, every line, every word, is a plea to feel, to hear, to cry. «How to Grow Up Big and Strong» scorches the emotions with vivid 16mm images, eight-year-old gun slingers and fat capitalists alike learning to assassinate the image of God they bear.
Some people never bother thinking out their faith; some never feel its pain; and some travel through the mind to the heart. The last find in God’s Word not only a refuge, but a reason to suffer. [Jon Trott, Cornerstone Magazine, 1987, Vol 15 Issue 82]
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “I Am An Emotional Man” – 4:29
A2. “Is It Any Wonder” – 3:49
A3. “Watching the Ship Go Down” – 3:52
A4. “Talk To Me” – 3:48
A5. “Go Ask the Dead Man” – 3:51
Side Two
B1. “Love Is Bigger Than Life” – 3:36
B2. “How To Grow Up Big and Strong” – 5:06
B3. “Everybody Dances” – 4:07
B4. “Why Can’t We Just Say No” – 4:23
B5. “Hold Back Your Tears” – 3:46
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette, 12-inch vinyl LP, and CD by What? Records/A&M Records. (The upper half of the LP cover, flipped 90 degrees, was used as the cover artwork for the cassette edition of the album.) The album track “Is It Any Wonder” was released as both a CD single and a 7-inch vinyl single.
The March 1987 issue of CCM Magazine featured a cover story on iDEoLA.
A full-page advertisement for iDEoLA’s Tribal Opera was featured in the February 1987 issue of CCM Magazine.
A photo documenting the shooting of the iDEoLA video “Is It Any Wonder” was featured in the July 4, 1987 issue of Billboard Magazine.
“Is It Any Wonder” (VIDEO)
CREDITS. Produced by Mark Heard. Recorded by Mark Heard at Fingerprint Recorders, Los Angeles. Mixed digitally by Heard at Can Am Recorders, Tarzana, CA. Assistants: Stan Katayama, Dan Reed, Jim Dineen. PCM 1630 editing at Digital Magnetics by Ted Hall. Digital mastering by Steve Hall at Future Disc. Slaves prepared at Hollywood Sound. Cover Design and Graphic Arts by Tim Alderson. Back Cover Photo-Art by Stewart Ivester. Front Cover Optical Textures by Andrew Doucene. All songs written by Mark Heard.
Musicians: iDEoLA – instruments and vocals. People who hit things for digital samples at Fingerprint Recorders: Doug Mathews, David McSparran, Steve Hindalong, David Baker (who also played the Wengi Drum introduction for “Talk To Me”), Dan Michaels.
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