I first heard The Make-Up in 1995 when I ordered their first seven inch in the summer of 1995. I thought it was pretty clever, something I could shake my ass to. But I did not really get it until I saw them live about a year later in San Antonio. I had purchased "Destination: Love; Live at Cold Rice" by then, but even this full length album did not do them justice. Seeing them live that night showed me what live music was all about. My most recent Make-Up show in Denton, Texas was just as intense as the first. This result is not just a product of The Make-Up’s talent, though that talent is certainly immense. It is because of the moment The Make-Up create between themselves and the audience. That artistic experience is like no other I have felt during a music show.

The Make-Up’s aesthetic is unique because it acknowledges the role of the audience in creating an artistic experience. They play the music, and we bob our heads and shake our hips. Their work is, I think, a conscience rejection of the tendency in modern music to forget the listener and glorify the musician as a messianic purveyor of life’s beauty and tragedy. The creation of artistic works can be fulfilling, but the more intense feelings that are generated by art come from the sharing of art with people. Everyone who is exposed to it and enriched by it has become a little better for the artist’s effort, and that is far more fulfilling than merely "art for art’s sake."

Moreover, the larger problem faced by art made without the audience in mind is that the result is easily reduced to a product that can be placed into commerce. Here it is important to keep in mind that there is a difference between making art with an audience in mind and manufacturing a product with consumers in mind. The two concepts could only be thought of as synonymous in our current age of consumption. Making art with an eye to the audience involves creating something that will bring the audience into the experience with the artist. The two interact with each other. This occurs for musicians like Make-Up primarily while playing before a live audience.

The manufacture of music to be bought in commerce and promoted by concerts is not made with the audience in mind as an equal in the aesthetic experience. Rather, art is the furthest thing from this process. It deprives listeners and viewers of their subjectivity and treats them as the objects of the consumer product. This subject/object barrier between audience and performer (or more appropriately the entertainment-media firm behind the performer) distinguishes commerce from art.

The return of the audience to the music experience is no accident on the part of The Make-Up. They consciously bring the audience into the experience as an equal participant. This, I think, is why they call their music "gospel yeh-yeh." Gospel music is about the choir stirring the congregated, moving them, showing them a little bit of the divine on earth. The gospel experience is nothing without the chorus of "Amens!" from the folks in the pews as they stand-up to get down. The dialectic between musicians and the congregation is what makes gospel music spiritual. This dialectical component of music has gradually been stripped from was lost as The Make-Up bring this back into the music experience, and breakdown the subject/object barrier between audience and performer.

What I have described was all the more true this past summer when I saw The Make-Up in Denton. That night, James Canty (guitar/organ), Steve Gamboa (drums), Michelle Mae (bass), and Ian Svenonius (vocals) brought down the house. That night I bobbed my head and shook my hips with all the vigor that I displayed the first time I heard The Make-Up. In between songs, Mr. Svenonius talked between songs about the uniqueness of that night in Denton, and I have to agree. That night was distinct from any other night or show because once it was over, it would not come again. So best to enjoy it while it was there, and being there with The Make-Up and my fellow congregates was an invigorating way to spend that might. It was a revival in the sense of moving me both physically as I danced and spiritually as I realized that for that night, at that moment, I was part of something bigger than myself, something that was getting down and jumping around and screaming and shouting. Amen!