... i read that guy's riposte to your vituperative blast, see the thing is your
thing was arguably ill-considered -- who cares though? SWEEPING AND
PREJUDICAL = RECIPE FOR GOOD PROSE! ... and is somebody really supposed to have listened all 47 Melvins albums before they can offer an opinion? your invective was entertaining and excitingly-written, whereas his nuanced thing just drones on staking out his likes and semi-likes, no argument there as such, nothing anybody can use to fire up their own thoughts. almost as dreary as a popist dissecting the songs on Kelly Clarkson's new stinking black turd of an album, mapping its knobbly surface and noting its variegated color-tones...
Thursday, October 29, 2009
there was one point he made that i thought kind of insightful or at least interesting to think about, where he talked about how rarely i brought "the tribunal of live performance" into my assessments of bands in Rip It Up... i thought the language was interesting (tribunal with its suggestion of popular justice)... and he misses the mundane pragmatic reason for why i don't talk
much about the gigs--my memories of them are faded (wasn't taking notes,
obviously) whereas the records are here, accessible to me, something i can
plunge into as part of the research and writing process ... but it's also
quite true that the phonographic experience is much more key to me than the live one... i've seen some amazing, amazing live performances in my time, but the majority of my profoundest experiences with music have been based on listening to records (plus some epiphanies via radio or TV). and then secondarily in the writing
and discourse around music... i think that may actually be quite a British thing
(in American it's the opposite -- seeing the band live is the ultimate
arbiter)... also there's something ephemeral about a gig (they vary so much)
whereas when a record is released it is the Band's Statement and also it's Accessible
to All, it becomes the locus of shared memory...
much about the gigs--my memories of them are faded (wasn't taking notes,
obviously) whereas the records are here, accessible to me, something i can
plunge into as part of the research and writing process ... but it's also
quite true that the phonographic experience is much more key to me than the live one... i've seen some amazing, amazing live performances in my time, but the majority of my profoundest experiences with music have been based on listening to records (plus some epiphanies via radio or TV). and then secondarily in the writing
and discourse around music... i think that may actually be quite a British thing
(in American it's the opposite -- seeing the band live is the ultimate
arbiter)... also there's something ephemeral about a gig (they vary so much)
whereas when a record is released it is the Band's Statement and also it's Accessible
to All, it becomes the locus of shared memory...
i'm not sure why people get so fussed by the genre terminology and semantic distinctions. quite a few people (nearly all Americans) have responded to the concept of "postpunk" as if it's an affront -- and as if hadn't actually been in widespread use since 1979! i mean i've trawled the era's music press, it's used quite often that early and by the time i was doing my own fanzine Monitor circa 1984 it was an established term for that era, and had these associations with a particular kind of music. so it's kind of a futile battle to resist what is an established social fact. when enough people use a certain word to signifiy a certain entity, there's not much that can be done about it
but mainly i'm not really sure what is at stake in the proposals some had made to refold postpunk into "punk" -- what would actually be gained except to make punk itself meaninglessly expansive? A historical sense of punk itself is best served -- and I think is actually more flattering to punk -- by the idea of it as a short sharp shock. That a lot of people got stuck on that particular moment (Oi! etc) is not necessarily to the detraction of the prime punk moment itself
like all cultural fields :postpunk" is is fuzzy at the edges, fuzzy at the start, and fuzzy at the end (which doesn't end, in so far as the bands themselves mostly carry on after 1984, johnny-come-lately bands doing postpunk-y type things after 1984, and then you have later bands who refer to or reactivate ideas from that era (radiohead, nine inch nails, whoever), so postpunk is still with us to an extent). but for all that fuzziness the area/approach/attitude has enough coherence that people can use the term postpunk and other people know what it's referring to
i don't really see postpunk as a slight to punk, it refers above all to the idea of the next stage from punk; not necessarily the refutation or cancelling of punk, but an attempt to move on from it. But because people disagreed about what "the next stage" would be, and indeed disagreed about what the really important element of punk was, you got a panoply of directions, an ever-widening delta. in that sense, you might say that postpunk is the actualization of the internal contradictions of punk, or the releasing of the dissensus that for a year or so was contained within the pseudo-consensus of the word "punk",
the "post" in postpunk is similar to the post in postmodernism -- the latter isn't the cancelling of modernism, but a kind of relaxing off its strictures, a kind of selective betrayal of its tenets, an attempt to sidestep certain blocked paths and dead ends. The original impetus of modernism subsisted in postmodernism in the very demand to keep on innovating; postmodernism was not about a simple return to tradition or classicism; it was a response to the becoming-tradition, becoming-canonical, becoming-institutionalised of modernism after WW2.
A similar kind of complex set of reactions and relationships with the precursor informs postpunk activity; there is a simultaneous move of keeping faith and breaking faith. From this point of view staying true to punk as a form (Oi!) or indeed in terms of a narrow idea of its content (Oi!, anarcho-Crass) would be to betray its spirit (change).
but mainly i'm not really sure what is at stake in the proposals some had made to refold postpunk into "punk" -- what would actually be gained except to make punk itself meaninglessly expansive? A historical sense of punk itself is best served -- and I think is actually more flattering to punk -- by the idea of it as a short sharp shock. That a lot of people got stuck on that particular moment (Oi! etc) is not necessarily to the detraction of the prime punk moment itself
like all cultural fields :postpunk" is is fuzzy at the edges, fuzzy at the start, and fuzzy at the end (which doesn't end, in so far as the bands themselves mostly carry on after 1984, johnny-come-lately bands doing postpunk-y type things after 1984, and then you have later bands who refer to or reactivate ideas from that era (radiohead, nine inch nails, whoever), so postpunk is still with us to an extent). but for all that fuzziness the area/approach/attitude has enough coherence that people can use the term postpunk and other people know what it's referring to
i don't really see postpunk as a slight to punk, it refers above all to the idea of the next stage from punk; not necessarily the refutation or cancelling of punk, but an attempt to move on from it. But because people disagreed about what "the next stage" would be, and indeed disagreed about what the really important element of punk was, you got a panoply of directions, an ever-widening delta. in that sense, you might say that postpunk is the actualization of the internal contradictions of punk, or the releasing of the dissensus that for a year or so was contained within the pseudo-consensus of the word "punk",
the "post" in postpunk is similar to the post in postmodernism -- the latter isn't the cancelling of modernism, but a kind of relaxing off its strictures, a kind of selective betrayal of its tenets, an attempt to sidestep certain blocked paths and dead ends. The original impetus of modernism subsisted in postmodernism in the very demand to keep on innovating; postmodernism was not about a simple return to tradition or classicism; it was a response to the becoming-tradition, becoming-canonical, becoming-institutionalised of modernism after WW2.
A similar kind of complex set of reactions and relationships with the precursor informs postpunk activity; there is a simultaneous move of keeping faith and breaking faith. From this point of view staying true to punk as a form (Oi!) or indeed in terms of a narrow idea of its content (Oi!, anarcho-Crass) would be to betray its spirit (change).
with the apparent fading-away or self-annulment of rockism-as-a-mode-of-discourse (at least in certain quarters, i suspect it's alive and kicking in many places) it seems like there's a bunch of other ways of talking-about-music that've stepped forward to take rockism's place (rockism of course not being a coherent, tidy scheme of value but a set of overlapping ideas: art-into-pop, rock-as-revolution, rock-as-folk, "fictions of community and resistance" (that's me, on post-rock, in 94, i have no idea where my head was at then!), anti-capitalist-energies-expressed-through-the-market, etc etc).
MODE 1: high seriousness. Treating music (certain musics: out-rock, post-rock, avant-jazz, avant-classical, experimental electronics -- Wire stuff, basically) as if it simply were high culture, outside the market (ignoring of course its own niche market economy etc), and simply taking for granted that it's superior to pop. You might say, well this is just rockism innit, but no actually, because a crucial part of rockism is populism (not pop-ism). True the approach is auteurist, but generally it lacks a social or political aspect, and the tone is quite mandarin. So I prefer to see it as straightforward substitution thing, various avant-gardes treated simply as if they were classical music. And the emergence of this mode is mirrored on the economic level by the alliance of this experimental fringe with various high art institutions (Queen Elizabeth Hall, etc), subsidies, the museum and gallery circuit etc.
MODE 2: pop as marketplace. pop as an entertainment product sold by stars-as-brands. You get a curious auteurist version of this in magazines like the Source (interviews entirely about career moves, the artist's rise through struggle and breaks and making contact with tycoon-benefactors etc etc; rap as the franchising of personality) but mostly it's consumer-oriented -- "I like this".
MODE 3: the quiet enthusiasm of the genre expert. I like this mode as far as it goes but what’s absent for me is the arguing-the-case-for element, ie, cos speaking to a readership of likeminds, the importance etc of the genre is taken for granted, one instinctively knows what is righteous, -- and so the proselytizing or justificatory element is absent. it stays relentlessly sub-meta and all great music writing must occasionally ascend to the meta level and the big questions of "what is all this worth? why does it matter?"
MODE 1: high seriousness. Treating music (certain musics: out-rock, post-rock, avant-jazz, avant-classical, experimental electronics -- Wire stuff, basically) as if it simply were high culture, outside the market (ignoring of course its own niche market economy etc), and simply taking for granted that it's superior to pop. You might say, well this is just rockism innit, but no actually, because a crucial part of rockism is populism (not pop-ism). True the approach is auteurist, but generally it lacks a social or political aspect, and the tone is quite mandarin. So I prefer to see it as straightforward substitution thing, various avant-gardes treated simply as if they were classical music. And the emergence of this mode is mirrored on the economic level by the alliance of this experimental fringe with various high art institutions (Queen Elizabeth Hall, etc), subsidies, the museum and gallery circuit etc.
MODE 2: pop as marketplace. pop as an entertainment product sold by stars-as-brands. You get a curious auteurist version of this in magazines like the Source (interviews entirely about career moves, the artist's rise through struggle and breaks and making contact with tycoon-benefactors etc etc; rap as the franchising of personality) but mostly it's consumer-oriented -- "I like this".
MODE 3: the quiet enthusiasm of the genre expert. I like this mode as far as it goes but what’s absent for me is the arguing-the-case-for element, ie, cos speaking to a readership of likeminds, the importance etc of the genre is taken for granted, one instinctively knows what is righteous, -- and so the proselytizing or justificatory element is absent. it stays relentlessly sub-meta and all great music writing must occasionally ascend to the meta level and the big questions of "what is all this worth? why does it matter?"
yeah the funny thing is that in a weird way, whatever you think of their music taste or bigotries, the surviving pockets of rockist values are in some ways also surviving pockets of recalcitrance in the face of market-oriented thinking. rockism is about loyalism, to a genre or whatever. so for instance the extreme form of rockism is blind loyalty to a single band as the Greatest Thing Ever -- which is directly opposed to consumerism, because once you've got the records, all you do is listen to them over and over. obviously the industry tries to exploit even this with double disc cd repackaging of beloved albums with a bonus disc of 'desirable' alternate versions etc, box sets, live dvds, etc but its real interest lies in encouraging a kind of genre-crossing, promiscuous consumerism that keeps moving on and on.
i was going to argue at one point on my blog that rockism had generated 1000s of bands etc but anti-rockism was utterly sterile. in fact that's not true and
the Pet Shop Boys are totally a product of that discourse that started with NME and Paul Morley. in fact neil tennant was a music journalist at Smash Hits!
it's difficult making this point of Neo-rockism though because people think you're talking about the Hold Steady. to me anyone from grime to Kanye West to Isolee is rockist in the sense of thinking there's something Art-like and therefore (however you define it) "improving" in their music -- improving might just mean a commitment to new sounds and new sensations
but then it's a mistake to think that rockism itself is only about rock. to me genres as various as hip hop, gabba, grime, freak-folk -- they're all rockist, in so far as they're about a certain set of values (undergroundism, notions of the 'real' and authenticity, ideas of rawness of sound etc).
At a more philosophical level, rockism encompasses a range of attitudes (it's not really an ideology but a field of discourse, with disagreements within it -- Greil marcu's rockism is different from Lester Bangs is different from... ) that include Auteurism, ideas of change-through-music and change-in-music (so that includes all celebrations of music in terms of progression, whether it's an artist like the Beatles changing from album to album, or prog rock, or drum'n'bass with all its talk of the future); ideas of danger and trangression, of subversion and rebellion, etc.
A lot of the anti-rockism advocates seem to regard any reference to concepts like these as rockist. So for instance to talk about the Neptunes or Timbaland as exceptional producers is rockist because it's treating them as privileged auteurs.
Certain judgement position are forbidden (like the fake/authentic distinction); indeed at the extreme judgement itself seems to be looked down on as something "we don't do".
One definition of Rockism as criticism i came up with is any approach that takes into account Context, Content, Intent, Integrity, and Form (meaning in this case, formal Innovation). as far as i'm concerned, if you take ALL these off the table there's not that much to discuss really. Integrity is an optional extra for me as obviously a lot of scoundrels make good music, but i mean more a kind of aesthetic integrity i think.
your analogy with anti-rockism and deconstruction is bang on the money -- there's certain parallels (derrida et al retreating from the disappointment of 1968 into this self-mutiliating philosophy that doesn't create anything new in terms of values but just picks apart the enlightenment) and the anti-rockists retreating from the failure of rock to change the world (first in 68/69, and then again in 1978 with the failure of punk) and coming up with a kind of anti-criticism that seeks to prove it was a mistake to ever consider that pop was art in the first place, or that rock had transformative power. For me while it's useful to correct some of the biases and bigotries of "rockist" thinking (e.g. that people have to write their own songs for the songs to be meaningful; that songs have to be meaningful to be powerful or interesting), it's ultimately a really sterile stance.
i was going to argue at one point on my blog that rockism had generated 1000s of bands etc but anti-rockism was utterly sterile. in fact that's not true and
the Pet Shop Boys are totally a product of that discourse that started with NME and Paul Morley. in fact neil tennant was a music journalist at Smash Hits!
it's difficult making this point of Neo-rockism though because people think you're talking about the Hold Steady. to me anyone from grime to Kanye West to Isolee is rockist in the sense of thinking there's something Art-like and therefore (however you define it) "improving" in their music -- improving might just mean a commitment to new sounds and new sensations
but then it's a mistake to think that rockism itself is only about rock. to me genres as various as hip hop, gabba, grime, freak-folk -- they're all rockist, in so far as they're about a certain set of values (undergroundism, notions of the 'real' and authenticity, ideas of rawness of sound etc).
At a more philosophical level, rockism encompasses a range of attitudes (it's not really an ideology but a field of discourse, with disagreements within it -- Greil marcu's rockism is different from Lester Bangs is different from... ) that include Auteurism, ideas of change-through-music and change-in-music (so that includes all celebrations of music in terms of progression, whether it's an artist like the Beatles changing from album to album, or prog rock, or drum'n'bass with all its talk of the future); ideas of danger and trangression, of subversion and rebellion, etc.
A lot of the anti-rockism advocates seem to regard any reference to concepts like these as rockist. So for instance to talk about the Neptunes or Timbaland as exceptional producers is rockist because it's treating them as privileged auteurs.
Certain judgement position are forbidden (like the fake/authentic distinction); indeed at the extreme judgement itself seems to be looked down on as something "we don't do".
One definition of Rockism as criticism i came up with is any approach that takes into account Context, Content, Intent, Integrity, and Form (meaning in this case, formal Innovation). as far as i'm concerned, if you take ALL these off the table there's not that much to discuss really. Integrity is an optional extra for me as obviously a lot of scoundrels make good music, but i mean more a kind of aesthetic integrity i think.
your analogy with anti-rockism and deconstruction is bang on the money -- there's certain parallels (derrida et al retreating from the disappointment of 1968 into this self-mutiliating philosophy that doesn't create anything new in terms of values but just picks apart the enlightenment) and the anti-rockists retreating from the failure of rock to change the world (first in 68/69, and then again in 1978 with the failure of punk) and coming up with a kind of anti-criticism that seeks to prove it was a mistake to ever consider that pop was art in the first place, or that rock had transformative power. For me while it's useful to correct some of the biases and bigotries of "rockist" thinking (e.g. that people have to write their own songs for the songs to be meaningful; that songs have to be meaningful to be powerful or interesting), it's ultimately a really sterile stance.
generally, I've tended to be skeptical of the musicological approach when applied to popular music… perhaps because there's often a bias within the discipline towards complexity …. An idea that more complicated = better… People doing this often seem to be doing to prove the magisterial brilliance and profundity of Rush or Zappa or Spock's Beard or something… somehow I imagine these kind of tools and techniques being used to "prove" that Buzzocks's "What Do I Get" or Ray Keith's "Terrorist" are "boring" pieces of music…
another doubt is the fact there's an imputing of intrinsic properties to the music that will have infallible effects on all listeners… this downplays the ability of listeners to over-ride these properties of the music owing to other, socially-driven factors (their general antipathy to a style of music, say, or a visceral response to its more surface qualities: noisiness, angriness, etc). I always think of Susan McLary's famous book on pioneering musicological analysis, a great read, but often there's a moment like where she's breaking down what's going on with harmonic language and the musical structure etc in Madonna's "Live To Tell", talking about how the structure of it creates apprehension and tension -- all stuff that completely bypassed this listener! Similar analysis is done of a Whitesnake song ("Here I Go Again", I think) with a section of it deemed to signify a dizzying plunge into the threatening abyss of female sexuality or something -- could have fooled me!
A final point worth making is that a musicological approach is an extreme form of formalism/genreology/auteurism, it is formalism with actual skills and technical jargon to back it up. but it it has little to say about affect or vibe, nothing to say about scene-oriented aspects of the culture, about the wider resonances.
i wouldn't want to go all the way towards a consumer-makes-meaning, social construction of taste/ affect / meaning /reception is all-powerful type argument.... i believe music has intrinsic powers, but they seem to affect certain classes and groups of people more powerfully than others, and there must be a social dimension to why that it is, and why other people respond with aversion or indifference.... some are ripe to be mobilised by the music's intrinsic powers, some not...
another doubt is the fact there's an imputing of intrinsic properties to the music that will have infallible effects on all listeners… this downplays the ability of listeners to over-ride these properties of the music owing to other, socially-driven factors (their general antipathy to a style of music, say, or a visceral response to its more surface qualities: noisiness, angriness, etc). I always think of Susan McLary's famous book on pioneering musicological analysis, a great read, but often there's a moment like where she's breaking down what's going on with harmonic language and the musical structure etc in Madonna's "Live To Tell", talking about how the structure of it creates apprehension and tension -- all stuff that completely bypassed this listener! Similar analysis is done of a Whitesnake song ("Here I Go Again", I think) with a section of it deemed to signify a dizzying plunge into the threatening abyss of female sexuality or something -- could have fooled me!
A final point worth making is that a musicological approach is an extreme form of formalism/genreology/auteurism, it is formalism with actual skills and technical jargon to back it up. but it it has little to say about affect or vibe, nothing to say about scene-oriented aspects of the culture, about the wider resonances.
i wouldn't want to go all the way towards a consumer-makes-meaning, social construction of taste/ affect / meaning /reception is all-powerful type argument.... i believe music has intrinsic powers, but they seem to affect certain classes and groups of people more powerfully than others, and there must be a social dimension to why that it is, and why other people respond with aversion or indifference.... some are ripe to be mobilised by the music's intrinsic powers, some not...
oh yeah totally, in the process of initially reaching an opinion, that can naturally be directed by reading/hearing others views ... there are certain bands that were totally opened up for me by pieces of criticism, where the first reaction or impression had been indifference (eg. the smiths which on superficial first listen seemed a little plain-sounding, were made extremely interesting-seeming by a piece by one of my writer-heroes, and eventually they became my favorite band of the 80s and possibly ever).
but i'm not talking about an initial impression or reaction, i'm talking about a firm opinion, and arguments that ensue based around that opinion, once it's been formed
and i can't think of any argument in my experience (at least one based on taste or passion or attachment) where one side has convinced the other out of the initial opinion
i mean maybe i just know some stubborn people but...
see i don't think that is really the goal of such an argument, although--by mutual consent or understanding--the debate will of course take the form of a reasoned argument, it will be conducted as if one of us just so happened to muster an overwhelmingly convincing and unassailable argument then the other would graciously concede and surrender the value judgement.
as if!
there's nothing that i could say that would make you relinquish your burning ardour for Paris Hilton's whatever-it's-called, and vice versa
it's much more like a legal case in that sense, except that whereas the defence and prosecution are arbitrarily assigned the case they have to argue, our "cases" are based on passion/allegiance
so what is the goal of the argument if not to convince the other?
convince oneself, perhaps...
or simply sharpen one's ideas on the stone of the other's argument?
a test of wills
but i'm not talking about an initial impression or reaction, i'm talking about a firm opinion, and arguments that ensue based around that opinion, once it's been formed
and i can't think of any argument in my experience (at least one based on taste or passion or attachment) where one side has convinced the other out of the initial opinion
i mean maybe i just know some stubborn people but...
see i don't think that is really the goal of such an argument, although--by mutual consent or understanding--the debate will of course take the form of a reasoned argument, it will be conducted as if one of us just so happened to muster an overwhelmingly convincing and unassailable argument then the other would graciously concede and surrender the value judgement.
as if!
there's nothing that i could say that would make you relinquish your burning ardour for Paris Hilton's whatever-it's-called, and vice versa
it's much more like a legal case in that sense, except that whereas the defence and prosecution are arbitrarily assigned the case they have to argue, our "cases" are based on passion/allegiance
so what is the goal of the argument if not to convince the other?
convince oneself, perhaps...
or simply sharpen one's ideas on the stone of the other's argument?
a test of wills
the conjuring up of "authenticity" as a bogey-man or Aunt Sally or something to be distrusted or as something that immediately makes you reactionary -- that seems a rather played-out manoevure at this point. 'wow look we're all free to be inauthentic' is a well-established, almost middlebrow stance -- as much as it's still important to poke holes in reified notions of the 'authentic', it's ore temping at this juncture to mount a devil's advocate case for authenticity -- i'm not denying the fact that all authenticities are constructed, are figments, but i'm proposing a reckoning with the passion to be authentic, the desire behind constructions of the authentic. (e..g samba in Brazil, which was constructed as the national music of Brazil and embodiment of the ideology of mixing and hybridity that became dominant in the 1930s). this is just one example of the way discourse(s) of authenticity actually might have started for very good reasons, noble reasons. the discourse of the 'real' in hip hop this decade has a very interesting energy behind it, it matters, the stakes are high -- which again makes problematisations or deconstructions of it seem rather academic
i believe to a certain extent one is obliged to respond to the intent and passion behind the concept or the discursive trope of real-ness/the authentic
that said my own investments in dance music have very little to do with the idea of the authenticity, of certain kinds of dance music being more "true" than others.. the assessments and allegiances are based in responses to levels of energy and intensity -- with dance music it's all about the energy-field you want to step into ... what creates the best vibe
i believe to a certain extent one is obliged to respond to the intent and passion behind the concept or the discursive trope of real-ness/the authentic
that said my own investments in dance music have very little to do with the idea of the authenticity, of certain kinds of dance music being more "true" than others.. the assessments and allegiances are based in responses to levels of energy and intensity -- with dance music it's all about the energy-field you want to step into ... what creates the best vibe
WE OPPOSE ALL ROCK'N'ROLL: further jottings on Vampire Weekend
thoughtbomb #1
As a raw thought "more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years" popped into my head unbidden months before writing about them for Pazz and Jop: my bodymind simply couldn't help registering the fact that the rhythmic delight rippling across this music, its frisking swerves and twisting dips, were something I hadn't felt from hip hop in a long while. I just trust what my senses tell me but such an unformed proto-idea--midway between sensation and perception--needs to be dressed up for public viewing. I chose my words carefully (like I always do). "Interesting" is a pointed choice: I'm definitely not claiming the beats on this records are body-shocking or block-rocking, obviously none of these here Vampire joints would cut it as a club banger (what a thought!). Hip hop still commands that particularly terrain, albeit these days in only the most pedestrian, gets-the-job-done kind of way. What I am saying is first of all comparative/contextual: the use of rhythm on Vampire Weekend is, in the context of--let's say the last ten years of-- indie-rock, more unusual and ear-catching than the use of rhythm on any recent rap track (that I've heard) has been in the context of the last ten years of hip hop. But I further contend that in absolute terms there's more rhythmic panache and liveliness exhibited on the best Vampire Weekend songs than any hip hop record that's crossed my ears path these past two or three years. Now it's quite possible I've missed some mind-bending groove lurking out there in some corner of the hip hop world. I invite you to point it out to me. I'd be really surprised if you could, though. The reason is that in hip hop the most radical beats rise to the top, it's the most rhythmically audacious stuff that conquers the streets and thereby reaches the commercial heights (whereas the backpacker underground always lags behind with oldfashioned grooves). And I simply cannot remember the last time I heard one of those makes-your-head-swivel-round jawdropper beats that were an almost weekly occurrence in the early years of the Noughties. What you get now is the groove equivalent of comfort food: rote fulfillment of basic shake-that-ass requirements, dependable but plodding. Another indication I'm on-base here is the fact the "beat-raptured nerd" discourse that once obsessively and auteuristically tracked all this post-Timbaland groove-warpage... it's pretty much dried up, hasn't it? Nobody really talks about the beats in rap anymore, because what would you say? And actually if you look at the P&J ballots of people who are generally considered to be authorities and champions of rap, what you notice is a rather striking absence of…. any hip hop at all.
I'm not the only one to remark on VW's rhythmic facility, incidentally…
Like their melodic gift it's one of the unavoidable things about them if you're someone with any real feel for … music! It's rhythm in a wider sense than what the rhythm section is up to, able and agile as those guys are,… it encompasses everything going on in the music, from the darting keyboards and flickering guitars, to what the vocals are doing and the way the lyrics are phrased. It's mischievous and alive. Moroever I'd say that this rhythm flair appeals not just to the body but to the mind (rhythm and structure as something to contemplate, the pure rapture of form) and to the heart too. Which seem strange except that's what the Smiths (another rhythmically under-rated group) did too. Of course the kind of body and gait--sprightly, springheeled, almost fruity--that this rhythm creates, it may well not be a body and a gait that you care to step inside and inhabit.
Thoughtbomb #2
"Just an indie group": VW expose the absolute poverty of the kneejerk anti-indie stance, reveal it as barely more than inverted racism (like those people who think it a very "sharp" stance in 2008 to have a end of year faves list consisting entirely of rap and R&B… a gesture that might have had some bite in 2001, maybe..). Because here is a group that departs from every standard-issue hallmark/reason-to-reject that characterizes indie rock as pejoratively understood, from the range of rhythms they draw on (reggaeton, turned inside out, on one tune ), to the non-Western influences on the sound, to (conversely) the equally unlikely Old European influences, to the lyrical concerns (the lifestyles of the upper class have almost never been a subject for indie bands, even approached from the ambivalent perspective of VW )… NONE of this is bog-standard indie territory. Even the vocal style is as close to Rufus Wainright as to Edwyn Collins. If this band is "indie" then the term has just been made a nonsense of. Indeed it's quite probable that at this point the term no longer has any real purchase on the present musical landscape; its content is entirely social (internecine war among the middle class!) and worse, the antagonisms it represented have long faded away. In all honesty, people who continue to use it as negative term (and jump shrieking on a chair every time their ears spy a guitar) remind me a lot of ex-colonial returned-to-Blighty brigadier types, pickled on whisky 'n' sodas and fulminating about "darkies" and "the bally bosche".
^^^^^^^^^
Initially I wanted to create an argument that was a complete inversion of M.I.A, a different spin on those trigger issues of appropriation and authenticity. However on close inspection it seemed like VW and M.I.A. had as much in common as they had not-in-common, starting from the simple fact that both conceived of what they do as a "project". I guess where there is a complete inversion, a sort of concave/convex relationship, is the fact that with M.I.A. there seems to be a sort of a priori assumption of/conferral of "good guy/we're on your side" (feisty female goes-for- it; person of colour; subaltern credentials, etc) whereas with Vampire Weekend there is conversely an a priori assumption of "bad guys/not one of us" (Ivy League-North East-privilege-ruling class/anal-retentive white boys, etc). These allegiances decided, or heavily slanted, people's responses even before the music is actually assessed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
"we oppose all rock'n'roll": suddenly it struck me that VW were a band that Vic Godard would have approved of. Specifically the fact that in their initial joint conceptualization session/mission statement, they decreed that no band member would ever appear onstage or in a photograph wearing a T-shirt! But I also remembered Godard's bookishness and vision of rock as a kind of higher education system; of how he talked about wising "I'd lived fifty years ago or something. I wish I had been born in the aristocracy. I wish I had been born rich." Of how he was into playing golf and even spoke of admiring the Royal Family for doing a great job for the country.
I can also hear parallels with a certain kind of New Pop: Haircut 100's slicked-up, hand-percussiony take on Postcard/Orange Juice, Bow Wow Wow's Mahotollah Queens meets Monochrome Set Afro-bop. On which subject it's interesting how they've gone through indie's ultra-whiteness (its severance from the blues, from heaviness, but also from funk and soul) and right out the other side to where the spangled/jangled guitar pop style joins up with a different kind of blackness, a non-American blackness: the music of Africa in all its buoyancy and rhapsody.
^^^^^^^^^^
The "coolest" response to anything of course is the what's-the-fuss-here, not-bothered-either-way option. That's where I dwelled, re Vampire Weekend, to the point of not even hearing the album until the summer. A young friend's virulent dislike finally sparked my intrigue and sent me off to eMusic. Just one "spin" and I was ambushed. "Fresh" and "clean" are words easy to use in any discussion of Vampire Weekend, but it was actually me that felt refreshed, cleansed. Bliss comes at you from unexpected angles and adjectives like "blithe" and "sprightly" that would once have sent me lunging for the toilet bowl were here transfigured, redeemed, exultant. The sensation reminded me of hearing The Smiths's "Charming Man" the first time, and that sensation isn't related to any aesthetic particulars so much as the abstract wonderburst of being confronted by a singularly original voice (the band-voice, not the vocalist, good as he is). As so often (and as with The Smiths) this hit-by-lightning sensation of Newness has nothing to do what's conventionally regarded as "innovative" (emphasis on "convention"--since nearly all noise/drone/improv/abstract-electronic operators today are slogging away in settled, close-to-stagnant traditions, making modest incremental contributions, challenging or surprising absolutely nobody.) It's quite a trick to make music that's instantly melodically appealing but doesn't wear out with repetition, come to seem cheap.
^^^^^^^^^^^
As anti-VW invective goes I enjoyed mightily Julienne Shepherd's principled opposition to the band, fiery and categorical in the grand rock critical tradition, brooking no qualification. I have no idea what her background is, educationally or otherwise, but I do wonder more generally if a lot of the squeamishness about VW comes from the fact that the higher echelons of US rock criticism is positively crawling with Ivy League graduates. In other words, one way or another, a lot of the band's haters are actually pretty familiar with the world VW lyrics describe. (The distaste must be given a further edge of sourness from the fact that being a rock critic these days means having chosen a path that promises disembourgeoisment; it's proved to be a poor career choice compared with others that people in your year in college might have chosen after graduation). But nobody suggests you shouldn't read Evelyn Waugh or F. Scott Fitzgerald because their books are about posh people, the wealthy self-made and the inheritors of fortunes. It's a stratum of society that's as interesting as any other, a rich terrain for the ambivalent observer (which is what I think Koenig is). And that zone where old money and new money meet and mingle has after all long been part of the fantasy life of rock and pop. But it's only okay when rappers and Roxy do it?
^^^^^^^^^
I've talked before about my deficiencies as a lyric interpreter, but VW present special challenges--meaning tantalizes and glistens but so often skips gaily out of reach. Half not really wanting to know but unable to resist the urge for understanding, I visited one of those "lyrics debated" message boards to see what people made of "The Kids Don't Stand A Chance". The interpretations were bizarre, but one of the most common takes seem to be that it's about corporate recruiters coming to colleges and luring the soon-to-be-graduates into conventional high-flying career paths. Whether it's true or not, the perception is interesting in itself. I wonder if this makes it a sister-song to Animal Collective's "You Don't Have to Go To College".
thoughtbomb #1
As a raw thought "more interesting rhythms than any hip-hop record I've heard these past several years" popped into my head unbidden months before writing about them for Pazz and Jop: my bodymind simply couldn't help registering the fact that the rhythmic delight rippling across this music, its frisking swerves and twisting dips, were something I hadn't felt from hip hop in a long while. I just trust what my senses tell me but such an unformed proto-idea--midway between sensation and perception--needs to be dressed up for public viewing. I chose my words carefully (like I always do). "Interesting" is a pointed choice: I'm definitely not claiming the beats on this records are body-shocking or block-rocking, obviously none of these here Vampire joints would cut it as a club banger (what a thought!). Hip hop still commands that particularly terrain, albeit these days in only the most pedestrian, gets-the-job-done kind of way. What I am saying is first of all comparative/contextual: the use of rhythm on Vampire Weekend is, in the context of--let's say the last ten years of-- indie-rock, more unusual and ear-catching than the use of rhythm on any recent rap track (that I've heard) has been in the context of the last ten years of hip hop. But I further contend that in absolute terms there's more rhythmic panache and liveliness exhibited on the best Vampire Weekend songs than any hip hop record that's crossed my ears path these past two or three years. Now it's quite possible I've missed some mind-bending groove lurking out there in some corner of the hip hop world. I invite you to point it out to me. I'd be really surprised if you could, though. The reason is that in hip hop the most radical beats rise to the top, it's the most rhythmically audacious stuff that conquers the streets and thereby reaches the commercial heights (whereas the backpacker underground always lags behind with oldfashioned grooves). And I simply cannot remember the last time I heard one of those makes-your-head-swivel-round jawdropper beats that were an almost weekly occurrence in the early years of the Noughties. What you get now is the groove equivalent of comfort food: rote fulfillment of basic shake-that-ass requirements, dependable but plodding. Another indication I'm on-base here is the fact the "beat-raptured nerd" discourse that once obsessively and auteuristically tracked all this post-Timbaland groove-warpage... it's pretty much dried up, hasn't it? Nobody really talks about the beats in rap anymore, because what would you say? And actually if you look at the P&J ballots of people who are generally considered to be authorities and champions of rap, what you notice is a rather striking absence of…. any hip hop at all.
I'm not the only one to remark on VW's rhythmic facility, incidentally…
Like their melodic gift it's one of the unavoidable things about them if you're someone with any real feel for … music! It's rhythm in a wider sense than what the rhythm section is up to, able and agile as those guys are,… it encompasses everything going on in the music, from the darting keyboards and flickering guitars, to what the vocals are doing and the way the lyrics are phrased. It's mischievous and alive. Moroever I'd say that this rhythm flair appeals not just to the body but to the mind (rhythm and structure as something to contemplate, the pure rapture of form) and to the heart too. Which seem strange except that's what the Smiths (another rhythmically under-rated group) did too. Of course the kind of body and gait--sprightly, springheeled, almost fruity--that this rhythm creates, it may well not be a body and a gait that you care to step inside and inhabit.
Thoughtbomb #2
"Just an indie group": VW expose the absolute poverty of the kneejerk anti-indie stance, reveal it as barely more than inverted racism (like those people who think it a very "sharp" stance in 2008 to have a end of year faves list consisting entirely of rap and R&B… a gesture that might have had some bite in 2001, maybe..). Because here is a group that departs from every standard-issue hallmark/reason-to-reject that characterizes indie rock as pejoratively understood, from the range of rhythms they draw on (reggaeton, turned inside out, on one tune ), to the non-Western influences on the sound, to (conversely) the equally unlikely Old European influences, to the lyrical concerns (the lifestyles of the upper class have almost never been a subject for indie bands, even approached from the ambivalent perspective of VW )… NONE of this is bog-standard indie territory. Even the vocal style is as close to Rufus Wainright as to Edwyn Collins. If this band is "indie" then the term has just been made a nonsense of. Indeed it's quite probable that at this point the term no longer has any real purchase on the present musical landscape; its content is entirely social (internecine war among the middle class!) and worse, the antagonisms it represented have long faded away. In all honesty, people who continue to use it as negative term (and jump shrieking on a chair every time their ears spy a guitar) remind me a lot of ex-colonial returned-to-Blighty brigadier types, pickled on whisky 'n' sodas and fulminating about "darkies" and "the bally bosche".
^^^^^^^^^
Initially I wanted to create an argument that was a complete inversion of M.I.A, a different spin on those trigger issues of appropriation and authenticity. However on close inspection it seemed like VW and M.I.A. had as much in common as they had not-in-common, starting from the simple fact that both conceived of what they do as a "project". I guess where there is a complete inversion, a sort of concave/convex relationship, is the fact that with M.I.A. there seems to be a sort of a priori assumption of/conferral of "good guy/we're on your side" (feisty female goes-for- it; person of colour; subaltern credentials, etc) whereas with Vampire Weekend there is conversely an a priori assumption of "bad guys/not one of us" (Ivy League-North East-privilege-ruling class/anal-retentive white boys, etc). These allegiances decided, or heavily slanted, people's responses even before the music is actually assessed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
"we oppose all rock'n'roll": suddenly it struck me that VW were a band that Vic Godard would have approved of. Specifically the fact that in their initial joint conceptualization session/mission statement, they decreed that no band member would ever appear onstage or in a photograph wearing a T-shirt! But I also remembered Godard's bookishness and vision of rock as a kind of higher education system; of how he talked about wising "I'd lived fifty years ago or something. I wish I had been born in the aristocracy. I wish I had been born rich." Of how he was into playing golf and even spoke of admiring the Royal Family for doing a great job for the country.
I can also hear parallels with a certain kind of New Pop: Haircut 100's slicked-up, hand-percussiony take on Postcard/Orange Juice, Bow Wow Wow's Mahotollah Queens meets Monochrome Set Afro-bop. On which subject it's interesting how they've gone through indie's ultra-whiteness (its severance from the blues, from heaviness, but also from funk and soul) and right out the other side to where the spangled/jangled guitar pop style joins up with a different kind of blackness, a non-American blackness: the music of Africa in all its buoyancy and rhapsody.
^^^^^^^^^^
The "coolest" response to anything of course is the what's-the-fuss-here, not-bothered-either-way option. That's where I dwelled, re Vampire Weekend, to the point of not even hearing the album until the summer. A young friend's virulent dislike finally sparked my intrigue and sent me off to eMusic. Just one "spin" and I was ambushed. "Fresh" and "clean" are words easy to use in any discussion of Vampire Weekend, but it was actually me that felt refreshed, cleansed. Bliss comes at you from unexpected angles and adjectives like "blithe" and "sprightly" that would once have sent me lunging for the toilet bowl were here transfigured, redeemed, exultant. The sensation reminded me of hearing The Smiths's "Charming Man" the first time, and that sensation isn't related to any aesthetic particulars so much as the abstract wonderburst of being confronted by a singularly original voice (the band-voice, not the vocalist, good as he is). As so often (and as with The Smiths) this hit-by-lightning sensation of Newness has nothing to do what's conventionally regarded as "innovative" (emphasis on "convention"--since nearly all noise/drone/improv/abstract-electronic operators today are slogging away in settled, close-to-stagnant traditions, making modest incremental contributions, challenging or surprising absolutely nobody.) It's quite a trick to make music that's instantly melodically appealing but doesn't wear out with repetition, come to seem cheap.
^^^^^^^^^^^
As anti-VW invective goes I enjoyed mightily Julienne Shepherd's principled opposition to the band, fiery and categorical in the grand rock critical tradition, brooking no qualification. I have no idea what her background is, educationally or otherwise, but I do wonder more generally if a lot of the squeamishness about VW comes from the fact that the higher echelons of US rock criticism is positively crawling with Ivy League graduates. In other words, one way or another, a lot of the band's haters are actually pretty familiar with the world VW lyrics describe. (The distaste must be given a further edge of sourness from the fact that being a rock critic these days means having chosen a path that promises disembourgeoisment; it's proved to be a poor career choice compared with others that people in your year in college might have chosen after graduation). But nobody suggests you shouldn't read Evelyn Waugh or F. Scott Fitzgerald because their books are about posh people, the wealthy self-made and the inheritors of fortunes. It's a stratum of society that's as interesting as any other, a rich terrain for the ambivalent observer (which is what I think Koenig is). And that zone where old money and new money meet and mingle has after all long been part of the fantasy life of rock and pop. But it's only okay when rappers and Roxy do it?
^^^^^^^^^
I've talked before about my deficiencies as a lyric interpreter, but VW present special challenges--meaning tantalizes and glistens but so often skips gaily out of reach. Half not really wanting to know but unable to resist the urge for understanding, I visited one of those "lyrics debated" message boards to see what people made of "The Kids Don't Stand A Chance". The interpretations were bizarre, but one of the most common takes seem to be that it's about corporate recruiters coming to colleges and luring the soon-to-be-graduates into conventional high-flying career paths. Whether it's true or not, the perception is interesting in itself. I wonder if this makes it a sister-song to Animal Collective's "You Don't Have to Go To College".
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
listen with prejudice
Returning to the idea of "the cop in your head": I'd forgotten, until Carl mentioned it, that this was a Sixties concept --killing the policemen in your head,
Many at that time, in a fatal slippage, went one step further on from simply deposing the Super Ego… and proposed eliminating the ego too (wasn't that one of Charlie Manson's little mantras, "kill the ego"?). To be a "head" in those days was paradoxically to be one whose head had abdicated and let the body take over… not so much "free your mind and your ass will follow" but free yourself of your mind...
I think you see a kind of parody version of this would-be utopian trajectory in the progression we've seen in a certain critical milieu from overthrowing the aesthetic superego (no more guilty pleasures!) to the goal of self-erasure. Here identity itself is an obstacle to limitless enjoyment. Hence the oblatory tic you sometimes observe of people apologizing for their deaf spots, their limitations as listeners. Yet amidst this quasi-utopian tabula rasa, the Big Other somehow reconstitutes itself; it's Bourdieu in reverse; somehow one's uncontrollable revulsion, or simple indifference, to--let's pick an example out of thin air--the recordings of Celine Dion, is an insult to entire populations one was barely aware of (Quebecois proletarians).
But even back in the Sixties there was already a critique of the "kill the cop/topple the super-ego" party line, in the form of Herbert Marcuse's concept of "repressive desublimation"… Even though he was lumped in with the "sex radicals" of that era (the post-Reichian equation of libido as an intrinsically anti-fascist force), Marcuse twigged that removing the shackles on desire was not only compatible with capitalism but something that could be harnessed.
To see the truth of what Marcuse was talking about with "repressive desublimation", you only have to turn on the TV.
MTV is particularly interesting because at a certain point it's almost as though pop music wasn't vulgar and debasing enough for it anymore, it had to make the move into around-the-clock reality-porn and its ever more grotesque contest shows, gladiatorial spectacles of exposed emotion … the same ingredients that pop works up into art or entertainment--aggression, vanity, conflict, jealousy, lust, domination--but presented in raw form.
But then the same could be said of anything that's ever been called "the new rock'n'roll" -- comedy (just look at the Brand/Ross debacle), video games… they are all forms of id-unleashing. All pornographies.
Really, Herbert's term should have been "regressive desublimation" not "repressive desublimation".
Without going quite as far as Carmody, it does seem clear that the idea that rock/pop's traditional province (desire/hedonism/unrestraint/informality/Robert Pattinson's notion of rock as the triumph of vulgarity) is somehow intrinsically allied to the Left is no longer tenable… You don't have to reel off a list of right-wing rockers to prove that. You just have to look at whether mass hedonism has changed the fundamental organization of society in terms of production, the class system, the distribution of power and opportunity. Quite the opposite. It's not even made anyone happier.
In a way the old Left's puritanical streak -- it suspicion of America as font of consumer capitalism, its confusion about whether pop culture, desire, etc, was on the side of the angels--this was rooted in good sense, in sound instincts about the home economics of libido.
These notions and polarities seem oddly familiar and I realized that's because Stubbs and I played around with them in a Melody Maker thinkpiece called Indecency in 1986, in which "rock" was deemed dull and worthy, studious/stadium-ous and historically/politically conscientious ("decent") and pop was thrill-powered and heedless and barbarian.
From that we further posited pop as intrinsically wanton and socially destructive, wasteful, profoundly anti-ecological… "Pop or a better world" is how we posed the dilemma, but the difference then was that it still felt possible, intellectually, to side with the anarcho spirit of pop as disruptive of all things controlling.
(Perhaps I'm older now, have nonselfish reasons --two of them, sleeping twenty feet from me-- to want a better world, whereas at 23 it's easy to play-act the nihilist)
Some of the slogans of the Sixties now take on a different light… "take your desires for reality"… that's what the neo-cons did, famously scorning "the reality-based community" i.e. the responsible media, concerned liberals etc. They wanted a war in Iraq, that was their desire and it over-rode all obstacles (truth, good sense, realpolitik)
Or how about "Be here now, tomorrow never knows". The credit boom was the financial equivalent of "overthrow the super-ego". Bat (a Marxist who once worked as a financial journalist) explained it to me in terms of Capital needing wages to stay down but consumption to keep expanding. Solution: leash the unions and their capacity for collective bargaining over wages, but make credit really cheap. Encourage people to live beyond their means. Stoke the furnace of consumer desire and don't worry about the day of reckoning.
What I wonder is, if there is such a thing as "repressive" or as I'd rather put it "regressive desublimation"… does it logically follow there can be such a thing as progressive resublimation?
Strictly speaking, I'd say not -- sublimation can't be undertaken as a conscious decision or procedure. It's something instilled.
Nonethless, I think we are entering a phase of history where the idea of the symbolic restoration of the Super Ego seems relevant. That's what Obama represents*. Rectitude. Regulation. Words that mean something, are firmly affixed to referents. The idea that somebody is in charge. (Really with the last lot you felt simultaneously like the lunatics had taken over the asylum and that nobody actually had their hand on the steering wheel). Sanity, steadiness, caution, stability, stolidity. The Wise Father.
If this current of -- genuinely conservative and conservationist--sentiment continues to develop, maybe in our lifetime we'll see a World Government.
* Whereas Sarah Palin, his true opponent, was pure id. Much, much more rock'n'roll
(image, raw animal magnetism, grotesque sexual charisma (Paglia the pagan loves her), all about gesture and vanity and bling; inarticulate and non-cerebral like rock'n'roll should be, driven by aggression and will to power, American through and through, the perfect fusion of politics and reality-TV).
Returning to the idea of "the cop in your head": I'd forgotten, until Carl mentioned it, that this was a Sixties concept --killing the policemen in your head,
Many at that time, in a fatal slippage, went one step further on from simply deposing the Super Ego… and proposed eliminating the ego too (wasn't that one of Charlie Manson's little mantras, "kill the ego"?). To be a "head" in those days was paradoxically to be one whose head had abdicated and let the body take over… not so much "free your mind and your ass will follow" but free yourself of your mind...
I think you see a kind of parody version of this would-be utopian trajectory in the progression we've seen in a certain critical milieu from overthrowing the aesthetic superego (no more guilty pleasures!) to the goal of self-erasure. Here identity itself is an obstacle to limitless enjoyment. Hence the oblatory tic you sometimes observe of people apologizing for their deaf spots, their limitations as listeners. Yet amidst this quasi-utopian tabula rasa, the Big Other somehow reconstitutes itself; it's Bourdieu in reverse; somehow one's uncontrollable revulsion, or simple indifference, to--let's pick an example out of thin air--the recordings of Celine Dion, is an insult to entire populations one was barely aware of (Quebecois proletarians).
But even back in the Sixties there was already a critique of the "kill the cop/topple the super-ego" party line, in the form of Herbert Marcuse's concept of "repressive desublimation"… Even though he was lumped in with the "sex radicals" of that era (the post-Reichian equation of libido as an intrinsically anti-fascist force), Marcuse twigged that removing the shackles on desire was not only compatible with capitalism but something that could be harnessed.
To see the truth of what Marcuse was talking about with "repressive desublimation", you only have to turn on the TV.
MTV is particularly interesting because at a certain point it's almost as though pop music wasn't vulgar and debasing enough for it anymore, it had to make the move into around-the-clock reality-porn and its ever more grotesque contest shows, gladiatorial spectacles of exposed emotion … the same ingredients that pop works up into art or entertainment--aggression, vanity, conflict, jealousy, lust, domination--but presented in raw form.
But then the same could be said of anything that's ever been called "the new rock'n'roll" -- comedy (just look at the Brand/Ross debacle), video games… they are all forms of id-unleashing. All pornographies.
Really, Herbert's term should have been "regressive desublimation" not "repressive desublimation".
Without going quite as far as Carmody, it does seem clear that the idea that rock/pop's traditional province (desire/hedonism/unrestraint/informality/Robert Pattinson's notion of rock as the triumph of vulgarity) is somehow intrinsically allied to the Left is no longer tenable… You don't have to reel off a list of right-wing rockers to prove that. You just have to look at whether mass hedonism has changed the fundamental organization of society in terms of production, the class system, the distribution of power and opportunity. Quite the opposite. It's not even made anyone happier.
In a way the old Left's puritanical streak -- it suspicion of America as font of consumer capitalism, its confusion about whether pop culture, desire, etc, was on the side of the angels--this was rooted in good sense, in sound instincts about the home economics of libido.
These notions and polarities seem oddly familiar and I realized that's because Stubbs and I played around with them in a Melody Maker thinkpiece called Indecency in 1986, in which "rock" was deemed dull and worthy, studious/stadium-ous and historically/politically conscientious ("decent") and pop was thrill-powered and heedless and barbarian.
From that we further posited pop as intrinsically wanton and socially destructive, wasteful, profoundly anti-ecological… "Pop or a better world" is how we posed the dilemma, but the difference then was that it still felt possible, intellectually, to side with the anarcho spirit of pop as disruptive of all things controlling.
(Perhaps I'm older now, have nonselfish reasons --two of them, sleeping twenty feet from me-- to want a better world, whereas at 23 it's easy to play-act the nihilist)
Some of the slogans of the Sixties now take on a different light… "take your desires for reality"… that's what the neo-cons did, famously scorning "the reality-based community" i.e. the responsible media, concerned liberals etc. They wanted a war in Iraq, that was their desire and it over-rode all obstacles (truth, good sense, realpolitik)
Or how about "Be here now, tomorrow never knows". The credit boom was the financial equivalent of "overthrow the super-ego". Bat (a Marxist who once worked as a financial journalist) explained it to me in terms of Capital needing wages to stay down but consumption to keep expanding. Solution: leash the unions and their capacity for collective bargaining over wages, but make credit really cheap. Encourage people to live beyond their means. Stoke the furnace of consumer desire and don't worry about the day of reckoning.
What I wonder is, if there is such a thing as "repressive" or as I'd rather put it "regressive desublimation"… does it logically follow there can be such a thing as progressive resublimation?
Strictly speaking, I'd say not -- sublimation can't be undertaken as a conscious decision or procedure. It's something instilled.
Nonethless, I think we are entering a phase of history where the idea of the symbolic restoration of the Super Ego seems relevant. That's what Obama represents*. Rectitude. Regulation. Words that mean something, are firmly affixed to referents. The idea that somebody is in charge. (Really with the last lot you felt simultaneously like the lunatics had taken over the asylum and that nobody actually had their hand on the steering wheel). Sanity, steadiness, caution, stability, stolidity. The Wise Father.
If this current of -- genuinely conservative and conservationist--sentiment continues to develop, maybe in our lifetime we'll see a World Government.
* Whereas Sarah Palin, his true opponent, was pure id. Much, much more rock'n'roll
(image, raw animal magnetism, grotesque sexual charisma (Paglia the pagan loves her), all about gesture and vanity and bling; inarticulate and non-cerebral like rock'n'roll should be, driven by aggression and will to power, American through and through, the perfect fusion of politics and reality-TV).
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