On the subject of mailed-cassette-as-field-recording, this guy David with whom I have a trade pact with ('93 for '03 ya get me) quipped "maybe us pirate tapers are the new Harry Smiths eh?". Must admit the Smith/Lomax parallel had crossed my mind--this stuff is like folk music in a lot of ways, throwing up stuff as bizarre and eerie as anything on Anthology.
UKG as modern urban folk, yes why not? People singing about local things for a local people, using coarse vernacular, making the music themselves in relatively lo-fi manner. Obsessed with questions of realness and authenticity and grit-as-truth. The product of its environment. But that environment isn't just physical surroundings. This tribal music dwells in a media jungle as much as a concrete jungle. For instance there's a hardcore tune from '92 by Payback called "Eastenders", a cover (you guessed it) of the Eastenders theme. I could probably write a 3000 word essay (with footnotes) on this one tune -- the way it collides the fictionalized pseudo-real East End of TV (and c.f. US soap operas, Eastenders is gritty social realist drama only a notch below from Ken Loach, indeed it's shown on PBS the equivalent of BBC 2 over here) with the real multiracial East End of emergent junglizm, of De Underground Records and Labrynth and DJ Hype. The Eastenders' theme's sickly caramel-centre melody is turned first into a gorgeously soppy lover's-rock-meets-chillout lilt and then into a gloriously nutt-E rave-stab, and in between comes a chap jabbering in thick patois about whether the tune's a dubplate or not over monstrous quaking blasts of sine-wave sub-bass.
A few years back Pere Ubu's David Thomas opined: "Music should be regional, it should speak directly of a specific place on the planet, of a specific geography, a specific time, otherwise music is a function of merchandise and market… If it doesn’t speak of a small community of people, then it isn’t music.” I don't actually agree, but whereas 12 years ago I would have jeered at this idea, rejected it out of hand, now I pause and think: maybe the old curmudgeon's got, like, half a point. True, there's a lot of amazing music that isn't about a specific place, that is in fact about space. Then again, per Sun Ra, space is a place, albeit imaginary and utopian (root meaning literally no-place): ecstastic and otherworldly and often interstellar, but an environment. The only music I can think of that really seems to evoke nowhere in its pure blankest sense---the non-place of digitized and dematerialized and meta-stized information--are mash-ups.
"Rock" (I'm using that as omnigeneric shorthand for everything that conceivably might be under discussion) has never decided whether it's a folk form or an art form, and perhaps that indecision or undecidability is crucial, enabling it to perpetually explode and re-explode a whole bunch of different binaries, make a nonsense of them. Stuff I like seems to fall into either category or best of all into both simultaneously (that scenius-genius cusp/interzone/overlap--4 Hero or Dem 2 or Wiley, the auteur nourished by a particular subcultural soil). There's a third category, though, entertainment a/k/a showbiz. That's the enemy, not because I don't want to be entertained, but because if that's all there is, there's nothing to talk about.
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Friday, April 04, 2003
I guess the condensed version of below is: you can take UK garage out of London, but you can't take the London out of UKG. And why would you even want to? No, you don't have to be "there" to feel it or understand it, but it's a faulty logic leap to then conclude that questions of "there"-ness are irrevelant and outmoded in these easy-access days of the glorious interweb. Because "there" permeates every fibre of the music.
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Mass(ive) media. Philip Sherburne spins an interesting piece out of the tension between his renewed passion for UKG (must hear this Platinum 45 track he's banging on about) and feeling frustrated because he doesn't know who the music is aimed at and how they consume it. I must admit though I'm surprised he feels like he's not got enough sociocultural background to get a proper "read" on what garage rap is "about'"-- mean to say, apart from my own blogging activities and others on the unofficial gutter-garridge webring (Luka the prophet, firing on all cylinders at the mo'; Ingram, finding it harder to stick to the hibernation resolution than he thought, glad to have you back bro) it's not like UK garage and its constituency is undocumented, is it? This subculture hasn't sprung out of nowhere, surface sonic details aside at core it's essentially the same thing, the same system/infrastructure/"people", as jungle, which (I'd have thought) has been thoroughly placed and analysed both journalistically and academically. Plus now with garage rap you have the words which actually TELL you what it's about; even when there's a hyper-real fantasy element to the thuggism, the fantasies-as-social-facts-in-themselves tell you things. I'd say UKG w/ MCs as a social text is currently one of the richest and most transparently legible reads available, Lunnun accents and hyperspeed rhymes notwithstanding.
Still there are some things that obviously get lost in the transatlantic translation, and maybe i can assist with Phil's perplexity vis-a-vis the fact that Platinum 45 maker of mad sick underground beats as twisted as anything out of Cologne is also Platinum 45 as in Platinum 45 Featuring More Fire Crew as in Number 7 UK pop hit "Oi!". I suppose if you live in America land of Clear Channel and hits that take months to build and months to go away once they've finally clawed their way into the top 10, it's hard to understand how it can work in the UK with singles that are massive hits without ever really being pop. It's been like this at least since hardcore or earlier still with aciieed -- tunes that are so popular with the massive and on the pirates that they can shoot straight into the charts without any mainstream radio support. I'm sure "Oi!" got minimal play on Radio One and Capital or even from Kiss, but the sheer demographic heft of the garage nation propelled it into the Top Ten. And then the kiddies TV show appearances follow.
This is one of the most interesting, little understood things about London pirate radio -- it's not so much an underground as a counter-mainstream. It's like the scene has its own mass media which make up a world that people can live inside and ignore the "real" pop world. Scroll through the FM dial at the weekend and the garage pirates almost outnumber the legal stations, plus these days you get pirates operating every single week night as well, with different crews having regular shows at specific times (see luke's heronbone blog for a Radio Times style breakdown of when to tune in). As a result of this, in their own heads and within the parallel pirate counter-mainstream universe, these MCs and crews are already stars, long before the outside world acknowledges them as such or even knows they exist. Most of the time it's the case that every so often one or two of the pirate-universe "hits" slips through into the chartpop universe. But every so often, the entire pirate universe manages to superimpose itself in a mass putsch and become the real-world pop music, almost totally supplant and displace it. That's what happened with hardcore in 91-92 and that's what happened with 2step in 2000. Hard to believe now but Artful Dodger and Craig David were underground right up until the last minute before they became chart overlords. In '91 Prodigy remained underground even when they were Top 5 with 'Charly' and 'Everybody Is The Place', then gradually became a pop group and then a rock band. And Dizzee Rascal will still be underground when "I Luv U" gets it XL rerelease in a few weeks and goes Top 30. (On which subject check the CD-single's B-side 'Vexed' which renders irrelevant the last six years of electro, and the tear-jerking tenderhearted "I Luv U" remix, showing off Dizzee's vulnerable side). Crossover success doesn't diminish the records or dilute them, it becomes an enhancement, a collective triumph for the massive.
This ability to be underground and pop simultaneously has something to do with how music from the hardcore/pirate continuum is innately populist anyway, addressed to a "people". It's like the difference between the crowd and the in-crowd. With other forms of electronic music, "underground" means unknown-to-most: IDM for instance defines itself as for-the-chosen-few, whereas rave is something like for-the-chosen-many. It's all to do with the scene's will-to-power and out-reach. Pirate radio after all is a form of broadcasting not narrowcasting, anyone can tune in or stumble upon the stations by accident. If you are broadcasting this stuff on the open airwaves you are by definition not cultivating culthood or following the small-is-beautiful-is-superior-is-cosily-incestuous line. There's an availability of access there, so fucking easy in fact that no Londoner has an excuse not to be plugged into it as far as I'm concerned.
Ah but there's the rub, the catch: it's. a. Lon. don. thing. The sense of place is paramount (as per Luke's recent comments on the different East End manors ,or More Fire shouting out to different postal districts, E3 and E11). Contra Deleuze, territorialization is a positive force (none of that technoculcha post-geographical bollix), an intensifier. Indeed there's almost a sense in which you have to physically be in the orbit of terrestial transmission, the radiowaves passing through your body. Kinda mystical I know, but I'm sure that's the reason I've never felt like tuning into those pirates who do actually stream live on the web, it seems contrary to the spirit somehow (I'd rather have the mailed-cassette-as-field-recording than the digitized illusion of "being there", which would be fucked by timezone disparities anyway). Does this localized tribe-vibe thing make anyone who isn't "there" through no fault of their own automatically an outsider? Yes, but so what, the records rock with or without the context, can be taken as sonic objets d'art or munitions to mash up the dance as you prefer. And the fact that a music isn't aimed at you or made with you in mind doesn't mean you can't make it your own. Even if a music or scene doesn't "belong" to you, you can belong to it -- hip hop being the paradigm example here of a music whose signal is received as a Call by huge numbers of people across the globe despite the fact that it was not really beamed at them in the first place .
Still there are some things that obviously get lost in the transatlantic translation, and maybe i can assist with Phil's perplexity vis-a-vis the fact that Platinum 45 maker of mad sick underground beats as twisted as anything out of Cologne is also Platinum 45 as in Platinum 45 Featuring More Fire Crew as in Number 7 UK pop hit "Oi!". I suppose if you live in America land of Clear Channel and hits that take months to build and months to go away once they've finally clawed their way into the top 10, it's hard to understand how it can work in the UK with singles that are massive hits without ever really being pop. It's been like this at least since hardcore or earlier still with aciieed -- tunes that are so popular with the massive and on the pirates that they can shoot straight into the charts without any mainstream radio support. I'm sure "Oi!" got minimal play on Radio One and Capital or even from Kiss, but the sheer demographic heft of the garage nation propelled it into the Top Ten. And then the kiddies TV show appearances follow.
This is one of the most interesting, little understood things about London pirate radio -- it's not so much an underground as a counter-mainstream. It's like the scene has its own mass media which make up a world that people can live inside and ignore the "real" pop world. Scroll through the FM dial at the weekend and the garage pirates almost outnumber the legal stations, plus these days you get pirates operating every single week night as well, with different crews having regular shows at specific times (see luke's heronbone blog for a Radio Times style breakdown of when to tune in). As a result of this, in their own heads and within the parallel pirate counter-mainstream universe, these MCs and crews are already stars, long before the outside world acknowledges them as such or even knows they exist. Most of the time it's the case that every so often one or two of the pirate-universe "hits" slips through into the chartpop universe. But every so often, the entire pirate universe manages to superimpose itself in a mass putsch and become the real-world pop music, almost totally supplant and displace it. That's what happened with hardcore in 91-92 and that's what happened with 2step in 2000. Hard to believe now but Artful Dodger and Craig David were underground right up until the last minute before they became chart overlords. In '91 Prodigy remained underground even when they were Top 5 with 'Charly' and 'Everybody Is The Place', then gradually became a pop group and then a rock band. And Dizzee Rascal will still be underground when "I Luv U" gets it XL rerelease in a few weeks and goes Top 30. (On which subject check the CD-single's B-side 'Vexed' which renders irrelevant the last six years of electro, and the tear-jerking tenderhearted "I Luv U" remix, showing off Dizzee's vulnerable side). Crossover success doesn't diminish the records or dilute them, it becomes an enhancement, a collective triumph for the massive.
This ability to be underground and pop simultaneously has something to do with how music from the hardcore/pirate continuum is innately populist anyway, addressed to a "people". It's like the difference between the crowd and the in-crowd. With other forms of electronic music, "underground" means unknown-to-most: IDM for instance defines itself as for-the-chosen-few, whereas rave is something like for-the-chosen-many. It's all to do with the scene's will-to-power and out-reach. Pirate radio after all is a form of broadcasting not narrowcasting, anyone can tune in or stumble upon the stations by accident. If you are broadcasting this stuff on the open airwaves you are by definition not cultivating culthood or following the small-is-beautiful-is-superior-is-cosily-incestuous line. There's an availability of access there, so fucking easy in fact that no Londoner has an excuse not to be plugged into it as far as I'm concerned.
Ah but there's the rub, the catch: it's. a. Lon. don. thing. The sense of place is paramount (as per Luke's recent comments on the different East End manors ,or More Fire shouting out to different postal districts, E3 and E11). Contra Deleuze, territorialization is a positive force (none of that technoculcha post-geographical bollix), an intensifier. Indeed there's almost a sense in which you have to physically be in the orbit of terrestial transmission, the radiowaves passing through your body. Kinda mystical I know, but I'm sure that's the reason I've never felt like tuning into those pirates who do actually stream live on the web, it seems contrary to the spirit somehow (I'd rather have the mailed-cassette-as-field-recording than the digitized illusion of "being there", which would be fucked by timezone disparities anyway). Does this localized tribe-vibe thing make anyone who isn't "there" through no fault of their own automatically an outsider? Yes, but so what, the records rock with or without the context, can be taken as sonic objets d'art or munitions to mash up the dance as you prefer. And the fact that a music isn't aimed at you or made with you in mind doesn't mean you can't make it your own. Even if a music or scene doesn't "belong" to you, you can belong to it -- hip hop being the paradigm example here of a music whose signal is received as a Call by huge numbers of people across the globe despite the fact that it was not really beamed at them in the first place .
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Talking of trivia and its life-affirming value, here's the missus celebrating the TV micro-trend of gay-hosted talk-shows, namely Isaac Mizrahi and Graham Norton (whose show is beginning to catch on here via BBC America.
If it was available on the web I would also link to a provocative piece entitled "Thick Plus: Dumbing Up In the Age of Consumer Enlightenment" by Steven Daly and Mark Jordan, as it represents a sort of opposing view, and contains an obliterating critique of Norton as part of a general broadside against the cult(ure) of "Irony, Frivolity, Cheekiness, Glibness, Knowingness, Campness", whic together constitute in the authors's words "Dutch Elm disease of the soul". The piece focuses on mostly-UK manifestations of meta-popcult that laughs at itself or encourages the viewer to see through it/feel superior to it even as they consume/enjoy it. Robbie Williams is a paradigm figure here. Seeing Robbo a few months ago on the MTV Europe awards I was struck by the fact that while he truly excels at all the marginal aspects of being a pop star--going on chat shows, doing MTV Cribs, all situations where his blend of charm and smarm work wondrously--he's truly pisspoor at the traditionally central functions of the pop star, like dancing, singing, projecting songs with emotional conviction, being sexy (he looks like a cross between Norman Wisdom and Grant Mitchell). As he sings he's constantly meta-mugging and pulling smirky grimaces, stepping outside his own performance to mock himself (rolling his eyes) and the process. It's like schmaltz with the camp appreciation in-built, showbiz that undermines itself by drawing attention to its own staging and overstatement. "Let me entertain you" my arse.
A barely controlled rant (and co-written by a former member of Orange Juice to boot!) "Thick Plus" struck a chord when I read it about a year ago, 'cos the whole syndrome of heterosexualised camp had been on my mind, initially spurred by thinking about Radiohead and whether they represented a return to earnestness, the unabashed seriousness of Rockism, and whether that was a good thing or not. What interested me particularly re. "Thick Plus" with its jibes against Norton and Robbo (what is his sexuality, exactly?) was how one negotiates the sticky problem of critiquing mainstreamed camp as a new decadence without ending up with this classic polarity: a stern and forward-thrusting "heterosexual modernism" that opposes itself to effete postmodern irony (superficial, celebrity-worshipping, inauthentic, gossipy/bitchy, trivia-obsessed). In pop terms, that polarity (culture-warriors versus fops, basically) would translate to something like Young Gods versus Pet Shop Boys, or more up to dately, Gabba-Garridge versus Electroclash. I suppose the crucial if subtle distinction here is that a sensibility that was dissident in its original gay context (after all, didn't camp, with its acutely heightened sense of irony and awareness of the performative, constructed nature of sexual-social roles, historically originate as a survival strategy in gay culture? Susan Sontag, are you out there? drop us a line, love, willya?) takes on a different aspect when embraced by the hetero mainstream. So, er, that must mean it's alright to think Graham Norton a silly and vaguely pernicious twat then, right?
If it was available on the web I would also link to a provocative piece entitled "Thick Plus: Dumbing Up In the Age of Consumer Enlightenment" by Steven Daly and Mark Jordan, as it represents a sort of opposing view, and contains an obliterating critique of Norton as part of a general broadside against the cult(ure) of "Irony, Frivolity, Cheekiness, Glibness, Knowingness, Campness", whic together constitute in the authors's words "Dutch Elm disease of the soul". The piece focuses on mostly-UK manifestations of meta-popcult that laughs at itself or encourages the viewer to see through it/feel superior to it even as they consume/enjoy it. Robbie Williams is a paradigm figure here. Seeing Robbo a few months ago on the MTV Europe awards I was struck by the fact that while he truly excels at all the marginal aspects of being a pop star--going on chat shows, doing MTV Cribs, all situations where his blend of charm and smarm work wondrously--he's truly pisspoor at the traditionally central functions of the pop star, like dancing, singing, projecting songs with emotional conviction, being sexy (he looks like a cross between Norman Wisdom and Grant Mitchell). As he sings he's constantly meta-mugging and pulling smirky grimaces, stepping outside his own performance to mock himself (rolling his eyes) and the process. It's like schmaltz with the camp appreciation in-built, showbiz that undermines itself by drawing attention to its own staging and overstatement. "Let me entertain you" my arse.
A barely controlled rant (and co-written by a former member of Orange Juice to boot!) "Thick Plus" struck a chord when I read it about a year ago, 'cos the whole syndrome of heterosexualised camp had been on my mind, initially spurred by thinking about Radiohead and whether they represented a return to earnestness, the unabashed seriousness of Rockism, and whether that was a good thing or not. What interested me particularly re. "Thick Plus" with its jibes against Norton and Robbo (what is his sexuality, exactly?) was how one negotiates the sticky problem of critiquing mainstreamed camp as a new decadence without ending up with this classic polarity: a stern and forward-thrusting "heterosexual modernism" that opposes itself to effete postmodern irony (superficial, celebrity-worshipping, inauthentic, gossipy/bitchy, trivia-obsessed). In pop terms, that polarity (culture-warriors versus fops, basically) would translate to something like Young Gods versus Pet Shop Boys, or more up to dately, Gabba-Garridge versus Electroclash. I suppose the crucial if subtle distinction here is that a sensibility that was dissident in its original gay context (after all, didn't camp, with its acutely heightened sense of irony and awareness of the performative, constructed nature of sexual-social roles, historically originate as a survival strategy in gay culture? Susan Sontag, are you out there? drop us a line, love, willya?) takes on a different aspect when embraced by the hetero mainstream. So, er, that must mean it's alright to think Graham Norton a silly and vaguely pernicious twat then, right?
Monday, March 31, 2003
Normal service will be resumed soonish. Must admit blogging seems pretty trivial at the moment (no offence to the blogging massive, keep on keepin' on, etc etc). But as the war takes on more and more of a prolonged, verging on perpetual, appearance, it's starting to seem necessary to embrace trivia for its life-affirming aspects, in the face of the deathly seriousness running amok in the world right now. Plus the home front needs its garridge goss and infolded meta-critical dissensions, right?
Talking of near-perpetual wars and extended occuptations, there was some military expert on CNN an hour ago who suggested the American troops had much to learn from their British colleagues, what with the latter's experience in Northern Ireland with street to street fighting (and "winning the hearts and minds of the local population"--cue hollow, poisoned laughter). What a ghastly analogy! British troops were over there for, like 30 years---in fact they're still there, right? It summons to mind a nightmare scenario of underground terrorist organisations wreaking retribution against anyone-and-their-families who collaborates with the protectorate's administrators, collaborating possibly meaning the most minor bureaucratic job like running water & sanitation or organising refuse collection.
I know jackshit about military strategy or the Middle East, of course, but any idiot can see now that the only outcome awaiting either side is an empty victory. It's a lose-lose situation, whose Pyrrhic aftermath will extend for generations. This massive geopolitical experiment, embarked upon with an almost exuberant nonchalance about the consequences, defies belief.
Talking of near-perpetual wars and extended occuptations, there was some military expert on CNN an hour ago who suggested the American troops had much to learn from their British colleagues, what with the latter's experience in Northern Ireland with street to street fighting (and "winning the hearts and minds of the local population"--cue hollow, poisoned laughter). What a ghastly analogy! British troops were over there for, like 30 years---in fact they're still there, right? It summons to mind a nightmare scenario of underground terrorist organisations wreaking retribution against anyone-and-their-families who collaborates with the protectorate's administrators, collaborating possibly meaning the most minor bureaucratic job like running water & sanitation or organising refuse collection.
I know jackshit about military strategy or the Middle East, of course, but any idiot can see now that the only outcome awaiting either side is an empty victory. It's a lose-lose situation, whose Pyrrhic aftermath will extend for generations. This massive geopolitical experiment, embarked upon with an almost exuberant nonchalance about the consequences, defies belief.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Visions of Light. The missus on TV's most visually ravishing series, Six Feet Under, and its literally radiant women.
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Talking of voices, how come there isn't a compilation or even a box-set (and maybe there is and I just don't know about it) of free vocal music, extremists of the human voice? Ideally vocal performances unaccompanied by music, or at least not mediated by technology and studio techniques (you could have a whole other compilation of that stuff: "Starsailor"). You could have one disc for the avant-classical lineage: the Dadaists and bruitism, Ligeti's choral stuff (as per 2001: A Space Odyssey), Cathy Berberian singing Berio, Stockhausen's Stimmung, Meredith Monk. Another disc for out-jazz: Patty Waters, there must be shitloads of other freeform vocalese types I don't know about. (Question: why does most free jazz leave me cold when it's instruments but is totally enthralling when it's the larynx?). A third disc for edge-of-rock: Diamanda Galas, Yoko Ono, live tapes of Buckley disastrously touring the Starsailor material, Furious Pig (this great Rough Trade vocals-only outfit, did one EP for the label, had a track on C81--lsounded a bit like the Pop Group as barbershop quartet, grunts and howls and infra-human mewlings, they were inspired by pygmy music), Arto Lindsay's Christmas Rose Choir. And disc four would be like world music: Inuit plainsong (there was a disappointing CD of this stuff out on Sub Rosa i think it was a few years ago, but i remember an Eskimo field-recording lp a friend had in the early Eighties, amazing breath-pulse duets that sounded like DAF or something, then they'd burst out giggling after two minutes), Tuvan throat-singing, pygmy monkey-chant.... This is all just scratching the surface I'm sure, suggestions welcome.
House of God. My friend Tobias Rapp tells me that in German, the word for DJ booth--
DJ Kanzel---translates literally as DJ pulpit.
Incantation. That's the word I was struggling for re. the Eno My Life In the Bush/pirate MC connection and fired-up voices that become melodic and highly-contoured. Isn't there a German word for this too -- sprechstimme or something?
DJ Kanzel---translates literally as DJ pulpit.
Incantation. That's the word I was struggling for re. the Eno My Life In the Bush/pirate MC connection and fired-up voices that become melodic and highly-contoured. Isn't there a German word for this too -- sprechstimme or something?
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Two more:
Madness versus Reason---there's a thin line between being mad-for-it and being plain loony-tunes, between commitment and being committed (to the nuthouse).
Patriotism/chauvinism versus cosmopolitanism/multiculturalism.
The primal scene below of me, horrified yet compelled, being confronted by Rapturous Belief for the first time in the form of those girls in the Oxford church is a weird pre-echo of my first proper rave, Progeny, in Brixton autumn '91, where the kids looked like adepts of some modern Dionysian cult religion, blissed girls with eyes shut carved strange geometric patterns in the air with their hands, and the lights "conjured frescoes in the air". I wonder what a French feminist would say of the persistent trope of the "maenad" which crops up repeatedly in my writing about techno, from Castlemorton to that psy-trance rave in Puerto Rico: the ecstatic born-again girl, possessed by the sacred frenzy. Gender tourism? Clitoris envy? Helene Cixous, Luce Irigray, if you're reading this, drop me a line, yeah?
Madness versus Reason---there's a thin line between being mad-for-it and being plain loony-tunes, between commitment and being committed (to the nuthouse).
Patriotism/chauvinism versus cosmopolitanism/multiculturalism.
The primal scene below of me, horrified yet compelled, being confronted by Rapturous Belief for the first time in the form of those girls in the Oxford church is a weird pre-echo of my first proper rave, Progeny, in Brixton autumn '91, where the kids looked like adepts of some modern Dionysian cult religion, blissed girls with eyes shut carved strange geometric patterns in the air with their hands, and the lights "conjured frescoes in the air". I wonder what a French feminist would say of the persistent trope of the "maenad" which crops up repeatedly in my writing about techno, from Castlemorton to that psy-trance rave in Puerto Rico: the ecstatic born-again girl, possessed by the sacred frenzy. Gender tourism? Clitoris envy? Helene Cixous, Luce Irigray, if you're reading this, drop me a line, yeah?
Monday, March 10, 2003
FOUR MORE WAYS OF LOOKING AT FANATICS VERSUS DILETTANTES
(which may, as Sterling Clover argues, just be rewording the same binary, but then again: isn’t that what most criticism entails? Translating things into different terms, in the process altering the angle at which you look at things, shedding slightly differently light?
1/ RELIGION #1: MONOTHEISM VERSUS POLYTHEISM
I think of all of them this is the one that makes the dilettante look the most civilised and attractive actually. For sure, monotheism has certain appealing attributes: it accesses and enables will-to-power, a certain fieriness and urgency of rhetoric) but these are outweighed by the bad stuff: blinkeredness, intolerance, an excessively polarized worldview-- godly versus ungodly, chosen few versus the hellbound heathens. Polytheism, by contrast, has a lot going for it: it tends to be syncretic (sort of spiritual sampladelia) painlessly incorporating other beliefs, and it's not nearly as moralistic. Generally it’s much more Deleuzian, rhizomatic, multi-plateaued, non-hierarchic. And it has greater proximity to everyday life (household gods etc). Where monotheist religions are usually extremely successful at propagating themselves, polytheism is more laidback, it’s not looking to make converts to anything like the same extent. Off the top of my head I can't think of any polytheist religions that have dealt in jihads, crusades, holy wars, inquisitions, witch-burning. Of course there are lots of different polytheisms, from Hinduism to the Ancient Greeks and Romans to all sorts of pagan creeds. They’re not always particularly cuddly, often entailing sacrifices and unpleasant rituals. Still, it seems like there’s a good case for pop as innately pagan and polytheistic (that’s what Camille Paglia would say, although she’d also say it was Roman Catholic, all about incense and ritual and iconicity). Seems to me that the Pop-ist view of the world is actually animist (spirit-gods and mini-deities everywhere) or even pantheistic. As per Meltzer’s Aesthetics of Rock, all pop--the bad and the good, the trivial and the immortal, Herman’s Hermits and The Archies as much as the Stones and Dylan--is a manifestation of the divine, is made of the same god-stuff. And I actually feel like that fairly often: that I love it ALL, even the crap; even the stuff I don’t like, I like, if you get me. Hence the appeal of VH1 Classic: the rubbish, the absurdity, the dismal failure, is all part of THE GREATER GLORY. (This may however just be a corrupting side-effect of doing “this” for a long time: after a certain point you almost get more of a buzz out of bad music than good music, the defective stuff is more thought-provoking somehow, and ‘good music’ is too easy, there’s way too much of it for a start).
Winner: Dilettantism.
2/ RELIGION #2: EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTISM VERSUS ANGLICANISM, aka CHURCH OF ECSTASY VERSUS CHURCH OF ENGLAND
It must have been 1982, and for some reason I went to Church. This was Oxford and I think me and my friends were on some anti-clericalist kick at the time, there were a lot of Christian evangelical groups preying on lost and lonely students, we used to attend and ask difficult questions, the obnoxious know-it-all fuckers that we were; this attending a Sunday service must have been some kind of field-research, I can’t think why else I would be there, since I don't believe (ha, ironic). It was your typical C of E vibe, middle aged ladies with nice hats, everyone trying to sing as quietly as they could get away with. But in the pew next to us were these girls, they must have been in some Anglican fringe group, maybe one of the Christian outreach groups had freshly converted them, at any rate they were HARDCORE. Beseeching and clasping hand gestures, supplicant arms reaching out and aloft to Jesus as if to pull him to their breasts, looks of rapture and gratitude, shining eyes, only a few notches below St Theresa. You could tell the other parishioners disapproved of how unseemly, how un C of E it was (Anglicanism: as close to agnosticism as you can away with, without pissing God off). For me it was embarrassing yet fascinating, I couldn't stop peeking round at them.
So that’s me innit: the non-believer fascinated by the believers. And on this tip, this very morn I stumbled upon an old Brian Eno quote from 1981, circa My Life In the Bush of Ghosts, where he talks about how during the making of the record he and Byrne found themselves gradually, unconsciously drawn towards preachers as sample sources for that record, ‘cos they were more exciting than the tempered, even-toned voices of newscasters. “When people speak passionately they speak in melodies, [their voices become] highly contoured and melodic”. And through pondering .”why do preachers sound the best?”, Eno and Byrne concluded it was because: “They convey a sense of energy and commitment to some belief or other.” So here the ultimate dilettante sensualist-sceptic Englishman confronts his Other: the Devout All Fired-Up Believer. Moreover, he started to understand the appeal of fundamentalist Christianity in the context of Carter’s America, as a sort of rock’n’roll for the godly: “in such a bland situation such an energy is suddenly very attractive." Of course when I read the quote, esp the bit about speaking in melodies and highly contoured voices, I immediately thought that Eno was describing my own feelings about garage rap/dancehall-influenced MC-ing in the pirate radio tradition. And there’s a real connection there, a thread connecting Pentecostalism and Baptism and Afro-Protestant religions in Jamaica (of which there were several others apart from Rasta) as they filtered into the vocal stylings of house, rap, roots reggae, dancehall…. Modes of utterance and cadence as well as actual concepts (redemption, salvation, being born again, trance, possession, testifying, speaking in tongues, glossalalia etc etc etc). So there really is a sense that religion can be like rock’n’roll and rock’n’roll can be like religion.
Winner: Fanaticism
3/ LOVE SEX ROMANCE: Monogamy versus Playing the Field.
This wasn’t a big hit with the ILM cru but I think it has some applications. I’ve got a bit of a roving ear but I do feel kinda matrimonial towards the ol’ pirate-radio hardcore-continuum. We’ve been through some rough patches, mind, we weren’t getting along at all well in 2001. But at the moment it’s like a second honeymoon. (In a bizarre synchrony, the year Joy and I got married: 1992). By comparison, the dilettantism thing really is like being a swinging bachelor or bachelorette. Actually I think in the age of MP3’s and filesharing it’s much more like cruising, actually: Soulseek and Kazaa as the modern audio equivalent of the bathhouse. Music as a series of ultra-intense but transient encounters. Where it’s almost like the scene, the infrastructure, the milieu, the process, itself that is erotic rather than any specific sexual/musical act or partner. The buzzthrill of pure connectivity rather than actual connection. (I’m speculating here, the only downloads I’ve ever down are the mash-ups when they were first out. Already got WAY too much music).
Winner: a tie.
4/ CUISINE
Can’t think of a conceptual way of framing this polarity, but it’s like the difference between going to different ethnic restaurants all the time or sticking to your native-born or one chosen cuisine. The fanatic stance is a bit like eating just pizza all your life: the toppings may vary a lot, you could maybe stretch to piadini or some garlic knots now and then, but you’d basically be eating the same thing over and over. The only advantage is the Zen possibilities this would afford: you might learn to experience infinities in the subtle variations of crust and sauce. But overall, the dilettante option wins hands down here. That said, my music preferences would translate to the following: likes to eat at different ethnic restaurants, but generally thinks fusion cuisine is a bad idea. (Which doesn't correlate with my actual gustatory preferences at all really).
Winner: Dilettantism
So, overall, dilettantism wins, 2 and a half to one and a half. I would add finally that by and large, when it comes to being a good read, dilettantes---or to call 'em by their respectable rockcrit name, “generalists"--win hands down over the genre-ists/fanatics. Specialist writers are almost uniformly dreary, incapable of standing outside their own passion (which is often oddly muted anyway, more churchy/dogmatic/doctrinal than evangelical/ecstatic) and unable/unwilling to make a case for it or explain it in terms that mean anything to outsiders. Generalists have multiple perspectives and a lot more angles and contrasts to work with; they also tend to be more jolly and cheerful perhaps because they don't have to listen to such an inordinate amount of shit music as the stick-to-one-genre types. With genre-ists at best you get meticulously researched, factually informative archivalism (all those Steve Barrow types); at worst, you get the UK dance press, or undie hip hop writers writing crypticisms for the amusement of six friends (the non-black ones seem to be the worst offenders here) or your average indie-rock/lo-fi/emo/garage-punk fanzine where the righteousness of Da Cause is taken for granted and all they do is stamp their feet and state their druthers (I told you I was naturalized! Actually that’s cheating, it’s a sample from Christgau). So I guess I am a kind of genre-ist/generalist hybrid, or a generalist who prefers music made by genre-ists and tries to cream off the best of each tunnel-visioned creed.
(which may, as Sterling Clover argues, just be rewording the same binary, but then again: isn’t that what most criticism entails? Translating things into different terms, in the process altering the angle at which you look at things, shedding slightly differently light?
1/ RELIGION #1: MONOTHEISM VERSUS POLYTHEISM
I think of all of them this is the one that makes the dilettante look the most civilised and attractive actually. For sure, monotheism has certain appealing attributes: it accesses and enables will-to-power, a certain fieriness and urgency of rhetoric) but these are outweighed by the bad stuff: blinkeredness, intolerance, an excessively polarized worldview-- godly versus ungodly, chosen few versus the hellbound heathens. Polytheism, by contrast, has a lot going for it: it tends to be syncretic (sort of spiritual sampladelia) painlessly incorporating other beliefs, and it's not nearly as moralistic. Generally it’s much more Deleuzian, rhizomatic, multi-plateaued, non-hierarchic. And it has greater proximity to everyday life (household gods etc). Where monotheist religions are usually extremely successful at propagating themselves, polytheism is more laidback, it’s not looking to make converts to anything like the same extent. Off the top of my head I can't think of any polytheist religions that have dealt in jihads, crusades, holy wars, inquisitions, witch-burning. Of course there are lots of different polytheisms, from Hinduism to the Ancient Greeks and Romans to all sorts of pagan creeds. They’re not always particularly cuddly, often entailing sacrifices and unpleasant rituals. Still, it seems like there’s a good case for pop as innately pagan and polytheistic (that’s what Camille Paglia would say, although she’d also say it was Roman Catholic, all about incense and ritual and iconicity). Seems to me that the Pop-ist view of the world is actually animist (spirit-gods and mini-deities everywhere) or even pantheistic. As per Meltzer’s Aesthetics of Rock, all pop--the bad and the good, the trivial and the immortal, Herman’s Hermits and The Archies as much as the Stones and Dylan--is a manifestation of the divine, is made of the same god-stuff. And I actually feel like that fairly often: that I love it ALL, even the crap; even the stuff I don’t like, I like, if you get me. Hence the appeal of VH1 Classic: the rubbish, the absurdity, the dismal failure, is all part of THE GREATER GLORY. (This may however just be a corrupting side-effect of doing “this” for a long time: after a certain point you almost get more of a buzz out of bad music than good music, the defective stuff is more thought-provoking somehow, and ‘good music’ is too easy, there’s way too much of it for a start).
Winner: Dilettantism.
2/ RELIGION #2: EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTISM VERSUS ANGLICANISM, aka CHURCH OF ECSTASY VERSUS CHURCH OF ENGLAND
It must have been 1982, and for some reason I went to Church. This was Oxford and I think me and my friends were on some anti-clericalist kick at the time, there were a lot of Christian evangelical groups preying on lost and lonely students, we used to attend and ask difficult questions, the obnoxious know-it-all fuckers that we were; this attending a Sunday service must have been some kind of field-research, I can’t think why else I would be there, since I don't believe (ha, ironic). It was your typical C of E vibe, middle aged ladies with nice hats, everyone trying to sing as quietly as they could get away with. But in the pew next to us were these girls, they must have been in some Anglican fringe group, maybe one of the Christian outreach groups had freshly converted them, at any rate they were HARDCORE. Beseeching and clasping hand gestures, supplicant arms reaching out and aloft to Jesus as if to pull him to their breasts, looks of rapture and gratitude, shining eyes, only a few notches below St Theresa. You could tell the other parishioners disapproved of how unseemly, how un C of E it was (Anglicanism: as close to agnosticism as you can away with, without pissing God off). For me it was embarrassing yet fascinating, I couldn't stop peeking round at them.
So that’s me innit: the non-believer fascinated by the believers. And on this tip, this very morn I stumbled upon an old Brian Eno quote from 1981, circa My Life In the Bush of Ghosts, where he talks about how during the making of the record he and Byrne found themselves gradually, unconsciously drawn towards preachers as sample sources for that record, ‘cos they were more exciting than the tempered, even-toned voices of newscasters. “When people speak passionately they speak in melodies, [their voices become] highly contoured and melodic”. And through pondering .”why do preachers sound the best?”, Eno and Byrne concluded it was because: “They convey a sense of energy and commitment to some belief or other.” So here the ultimate dilettante sensualist-sceptic Englishman confronts his Other: the Devout All Fired-Up Believer. Moreover, he started to understand the appeal of fundamentalist Christianity in the context of Carter’s America, as a sort of rock’n’roll for the godly: “in such a bland situation such an energy is suddenly very attractive." Of course when I read the quote, esp the bit about speaking in melodies and highly contoured voices, I immediately thought that Eno was describing my own feelings about garage rap/dancehall-influenced MC-ing in the pirate radio tradition. And there’s a real connection there, a thread connecting Pentecostalism and Baptism and Afro-Protestant religions in Jamaica (of which there were several others apart from Rasta) as they filtered into the vocal stylings of house, rap, roots reggae, dancehall…. Modes of utterance and cadence as well as actual concepts (redemption, salvation, being born again, trance, possession, testifying, speaking in tongues, glossalalia etc etc etc). So there really is a sense that religion can be like rock’n’roll and rock’n’roll can be like religion.
Winner: Fanaticism
3/ LOVE SEX ROMANCE: Monogamy versus Playing the Field.
This wasn’t a big hit with the ILM cru but I think it has some applications. I’ve got a bit of a roving ear but I do feel kinda matrimonial towards the ol’ pirate-radio hardcore-continuum. We’ve been through some rough patches, mind, we weren’t getting along at all well in 2001. But at the moment it’s like a second honeymoon. (In a bizarre synchrony, the year Joy and I got married: 1992). By comparison, the dilettantism thing really is like being a swinging bachelor or bachelorette. Actually I think in the age of MP3’s and filesharing it’s much more like cruising, actually: Soulseek and Kazaa as the modern audio equivalent of the bathhouse. Music as a series of ultra-intense but transient encounters. Where it’s almost like the scene, the infrastructure, the milieu, the process, itself that is erotic rather than any specific sexual/musical act or partner. The buzzthrill of pure connectivity rather than actual connection. (I’m speculating here, the only downloads I’ve ever down are the mash-ups when they were first out. Already got WAY too much music).
Winner: a tie.
4/ CUISINE
Can’t think of a conceptual way of framing this polarity, but it’s like the difference between going to different ethnic restaurants all the time or sticking to your native-born or one chosen cuisine. The fanatic stance is a bit like eating just pizza all your life: the toppings may vary a lot, you could maybe stretch to piadini or some garlic knots now and then, but you’d basically be eating the same thing over and over. The only advantage is the Zen possibilities this would afford: you might learn to experience infinities in the subtle variations of crust and sauce. But overall, the dilettante option wins hands down here. That said, my music preferences would translate to the following: likes to eat at different ethnic restaurants, but generally thinks fusion cuisine is a bad idea. (Which doesn't correlate with my actual gustatory preferences at all really).
Winner: Dilettantism
So, overall, dilettantism wins, 2 and a half to one and a half. I would add finally that by and large, when it comes to being a good read, dilettantes---or to call 'em by their respectable rockcrit name, “generalists"--win hands down over the genre-ists/fanatics. Specialist writers are almost uniformly dreary, incapable of standing outside their own passion (which is often oddly muted anyway, more churchy/dogmatic/doctrinal than evangelical/ecstatic) and unable/unwilling to make a case for it or explain it in terms that mean anything to outsiders. Generalists have multiple perspectives and a lot more angles and contrasts to work with; they also tend to be more jolly and cheerful perhaps because they don't have to listen to such an inordinate amount of shit music as the stick-to-one-genre types. With genre-ists at best you get meticulously researched, factually informative archivalism (all those Steve Barrow types); at worst, you get the UK dance press, or undie hip hop writers writing crypticisms for the amusement of six friends (the non-black ones seem to be the worst offenders here) or your average indie-rock/lo-fi/emo/garage-punk fanzine where the righteousness of Da Cause is taken for granted and all they do is stamp their feet and state their druthers (I told you I was naturalized! Actually that’s cheating, it’s a sample from Christgau). So I guess I am a kind of genre-ist/generalist hybrid, or a generalist who prefers music made by genre-ists and tries to cream off the best of each tunnel-visioned creed.
And the welcome return of Jess Harvell--the crazily mixed up kid who may one day surprise us all and breed/rear/ride his own horse. But only if he EMBRACES THE INSANITY. A "sane" relationship with music is fine, if you're happy with remaining a civilian.
Sunday, March 09, 2003
The welcome return of Tim Finney, who hasn't been posting but has clearly not stopped thinking. I love the idea of him caffeinated to the gills knocking out that piece in the internet cafe! Time to get a proper internet connection Tim. Here he's writing on that funk vs funklessness dialectic which is so crucial in dance music and black music generally. The paradox that funky music can sometimes get so funkily looselimbed it's not that funky anymore, and that it's actually funkier to have stiff beats (hence 'Pulse X' after 2step's excessively frisky multi-accented nimbleness). Until the beats get too stiff and you have to go the other way again. (Which is why 'Made You Look's apache break is so refreshing after all the neo-electro beats in hip hop -- it's the anti-Grindin').
Maybe the solution is to have both going on at the same time? For instance in house, you often get a totally monolithic kick-drum but these real frisky, hyper-syncopated hi-hat patterns. Seems like the history of dance music involves the shifting back and forth across "the drum kit" (which obviously in programmed rhythm is increasingly fantastical and not based on a real-world analogue) of where the loose funky bits and where the rigid inflexible strands of the rhythm are located. If only one had some real drumming knowledge, then it might be possible to do a grand historical breakdown of the various forms and see how that applies to James Brown, or skank, or garage, or___.
Actually the definition of funk itself might be the play of mechanistic/inflexible rhythmic elements with more fluent elements, the whole matrix becoming a metaphor for freedom-within-discipline, or liberation-through-work/commitment, or self-realisation achieved through participation/communality.
Oops, there I go attributing social weight/resonance to musical forms again! I just can't adjust to this weightless world we now apparently live in.
Maybe the solution is to have both going on at the same time? For instance in house, you often get a totally monolithic kick-drum but these real frisky, hyper-syncopated hi-hat patterns. Seems like the history of dance music involves the shifting back and forth across "the drum kit" (which obviously in programmed rhythm is increasingly fantastical and not based on a real-world analogue) of where the loose funky bits and where the rigid inflexible strands of the rhythm are located. If only one had some real drumming knowledge, then it might be possible to do a grand historical breakdown of the various forms and see how that applies to James Brown, or skank, or garage, or___.
Actually the definition of funk itself might be the play of mechanistic/inflexible rhythmic elements with more fluent elements, the whole matrix becoming a metaphor for freedom-within-discipline, or liberation-through-work/commitment, or self-realisation achieved through participation/communality.
Oops, there I go attributing social weight/resonance to musical forms again! I just can't adjust to this weightless world we now apparently live in.
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