| Tracy + the Plastics | |
| Background: | group_or_band |
| Origin: | Olympia, Washington, United States |
| Genre: | Electropop |
Tracy + the Plastics is an American electropop and video project group from Olympia, Washington, United States.[1] The members include Nikki Romanos on keyboard, Cola on drums, and Tracy as the lead vocals. Although the name implied the group was made up of a lead singer and back up musicians, all three characters were performed by Wynne Greenwood, a lesbian feminist artist using video projection,[2] who calls herself a representative of the "lesbo for disco" generation.
Tracy + the Plastics' music consisted of a Boss DR-5 drum machine, an Akai 612 disc sampler, and combines lo-fi filmmaking, performance art, Devo-styled songs, and feminist and queer politics in an entertaining package. During live performances Nikki and Cola would perform and exist only through projected video previously recorded, and through the performance, the band members would communicate with each other[3]
Tracy + the Plastics was the ultimate result of two other projects Wynne created, the first of these being called The Tooth, then The OK Miss Suit. "Tracy + the Plastics came from this choose-your-own-adventure murder mystery movie I was writing. The Plastics were a group of girls who ran a pawn shop and replaced parts of themselves with hyper-colorful pieces of plastic. Their town was never-ending, gray drab, surrounded by super-tall mountains that people lived on top of. Bits of plastic debris would fall down the mountains, and the Plastics (Nikki, Cola, Tracy, and Honeyface) would find and use the debris, like a red toothpaste cap for a tooth or something like that."[4] [5]
In 2005, Tracy + the Plastics recorded a version of the Lesbians on Ecstasy song "Summer Luv", which was released on that band's LP of remixes, Giggles In The Dark.
In a 2001 essay, Greenwood discusses Tracy + the Plastics and performances in relation to her feminist beliefs. She explains "When an individual in a marginalized group talks to a recorded image of themselves it empowers the individual to open the door to the understanding and celebration that he/she/it can be deliberate. It is an interaction with a fragment self. By fragment, I mean a cohesive identity that's constructed from different often conflicting, parts of society, culture, and life that we relate to because popular culture has no whole identity to offer its audience other than one that resembles the ruling class. We can come out. And then come out again. We can rearrange our world how we want it."[3] As well "a Tracy + the Plastics performance attempts to destroy the inherent hierarchical dynamic of those "spaces"by placing as much importance on the video image (the Plastics) as the live performer (Tracy). The front interacts with the back in a way that emphasizes their equality and the dependence on one another to dismantle their roles and prescribed boundaries."[3]
In Art Forum International (Summer 2005), Johanna Burton describes Tracy + the Plastics as "lo-fi, split-personality hallucination". As well the band members "are all only slightly modified renditions of Greenwood herself- less alter egos or highly evolved personae that seemingly playacted brand of critical levity operates to question, affirm, and confuse both existential and constructed notions of 'the self'.".[11]
In 2004, cultural critic Sara Marcus, writing for The Advocate, said that Tracy + the Plastics's performance art "successfully crosses borders between high art and pop music." Marcus described the act's 2004 album Culture for Pigeon as "elecntronic dance punk" with "complex rhythmic sensibilities" and "increasingly off-kilter beats." [1]
