Matchstick Men in Picture and Song

Matchstick men in fluid convergence

I was not quite 3 years old when Status Quo released their song "Pictures of Matchstick Men." Not quite 3 years into college (a time I refer to as my Second Sophomore Year), I heard the Camper Van Beethoven version. I love both, and not quite 3 decades later, it's about time to tackle the topic here.

In the usual google lead-up, I learned that there is a Nick Cage (not his real name) movie called "Matchstick Men," but I've never seen it, and cannot stand that guy. So much so that I will not succumb to the temptation to snark the hell out of him. Nick who? I forget, except for the withered appendix of my memory that still hates him for turning into such utter shit after getting my hopes up with Raising Arizona.

The other web-search surprise was learning about L. S. Lowry, the British artist whose paintings were chock full of angular people who came to be termed "matchstick men." I've not read art critics take him on, but wikipedia implies that quite a few of them wrote him off as a naive, not highly accomplished, artist of the ilk that insiders like to call Outsider (but without the allure of insanity or melanin-enriched ethnicity). Apparently he refused a knighthood and several other honors, so I'm inclined to admire his outsiderness.

What strikes me, though, about his paintings is not the angularity of the individuals, but the fluidity of the collective. Dozens or even hundreds of people walk through the frame, stiff in microscopic isolation, perhaps, but in the whole view of the painting, they illustrate the fluid dynamics of crowds. Converging on a football game as above, or streaming out of factories, weaving through plazas, eccentrically erasing grids.

Crowds of individuals, each maybe set on a line, collectively chaotic, but still expressing a Flow. Good paintings to squint at or view from across the room. Approach closer if you want, focus on an individual or a family (despite their simplicity of form, they are individuals, not a Waldo among them), but for me, the box of Matchstick Men scattered across the canvas of industrial Britain is more interesting.

I cannot really guess what Status Quo was aiming for with their song. Maybe just fame and money, maybe a message. What they hit was a psychedaelic nerve, and their song has been played and played again for decades. Not complex, "naive" perhaps, but an alluring and persistent flow.

Lowery with an "e" and Campany

Then there's these guys. Older than when they covered Pictures of Matchstick Men, and apparently much more sensitive to light, what with the sunglasses. The Camper Van Beethoven version of the song is one of those few covers that exceeds the original without being a radical departure. Faithful covers so often fall into the tepid soup of mediocrity, but not this one. Not that it's without original flourishes (especially live), but the simple power of the original riff cannot be abandoned and still be the same song. Alls I ever hear is it and you.