Thursday, May 28, 2009

"i hate ___", update

you'll probably have seen Impostume's Carl expanding on his Burial hate (and then going off on one... or two... or three...)

and caught Zone Styx's Flying Incognito giving Uncle Brian some kicks

and perhaps And You May Find Yourself's Seb laying into Animal Collective (again!)

and also Attic Plan's Jon not-elaborating (yet) on his Lynch-loathing

in the mailbag, Rowan Wilson wonders if Burial really fit the Floydian hole of band whose "omnipresence has led to a sense of getting ‘stuck’... In fact, I don’t think there is a singular figure that exemplifies a certain cul de sac. If one wanted to be merely provocative then ‘I hate Throbbing Gristle’ would be fun – maybe similar to Pink Floyd in that an avant garde transgressive (ok, that’s overdoing it for PF) band now seen as curated classic. And for anyone who had never heard of the band the statement would look great! But, like you say, kind of flounders on the fact that I don’t hate them.

"Maybe ‘I still hate Pink Floyd’ captures the hauntological moment…

"However, with visual art I thought ‘I hate Rothko’ would be perfect. Expressionist existentialist stuff consumed as almost decorative. Horribly self-indulgent and one of the key moments in the nihilistically pseudo-uncanny (that is, tritely weird) dominating contemporary art. I wanted to describe him as the Jim Morrison of 20th century painting, but that doesn’t capture it."

and JD Geddes proposes as perfect band to fill the ___ -- Radiohead.

Hmm, in some ways that fits too perfectly into the slot left by Pink Floyd (who the 'Head always got compared to).

I Hate Pete Doherty or I Hate Jack White might be more Noughties-Geisty.

Taking the place of Floyd in I Hate ___ requires a special combination--mass cultural dominance/ubiquity, middlebrow soft optionism but also a sense of once-underground/crossed-over big time and having-once-been-great/innovative.

Hard to think of something that would fit the bill... I Hate Jay-Z?

This kind of drawing a line in the sand, "which side are you on" polarisation and animosity seems beyond our present capacity

perhaps the Manics ruined it with "we hate Slowdive more than Hitler"... the point at which anger-is-an-energy became an absurdity

okay, upping the ante:

anyone fancy a crack at updating the famous T-Shirt, You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning and KNOW What Side of the Bed You've Been Lying On? You know, the one McLaren, Westwood and Bernie Rhodes came up with shortly before punk, which divided pop (and beyond) culture into "Hates" and "Loves" (with Bryan Ferry shunted into the establishment/enemy camp despite the fact they'd all loved Roxy originally).