Conservative Music / Conservative Politics

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This is a Kate post from the artrocker thread (emphasis mine):

"Although I did actually like their club, and enjoy much of the music they promoted, I had to stop getting the Artrocker mailout because the creeping right wing politics was getting too much for me.
This is not the first time I have had fallings out with Garage Rock scenes over this sort of thing. I don't know why it continues to amaze me that some people who are conservative in their music tastes might be socially or politicall conservative as well as culturally conservative.

Me, I loved the freedom and the experimentalism and the DIY attitudes of much of 60s garage and psych. Some people want to return to the music of the past as a metaphor for just returning to the past. They take the "Be A Caveman" line quite literally."

I thought this was very interesting. Having no experience of garage rock scenes and not much interest in any culture surrounding 'old' music and its collection/propagation I don't know if she's right to draw the link or not. What do you think?

(Kate sorry for pulling yr quote out of that thread, I thought it deserved its own space.)

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Friday, 23 January 2004 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Well Screaming Lord Sutch invented garage rock, possibly, and he was somewhere to the right of Hitler as I recall

― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Friday, 23 January 2004 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Most of the garage/psych fans I know via Terrastock and related connections are pretty damn left, in some cases very actively so (occasional ILX poster Nick Ring was thinking about running for local government at one time). But I won't claim that's everyone in the scene!

Besides which, all I have to do is look around me at people here in OC, hell at UCI, and think, "Okay! Bright young things who enjoy That Hip Music of Today that ILX Talks So Much About Lately and a huge chunk of them are right wing assholes."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:00 (twenty-two years ago)

This is my personal experience of a very limited scene. In no way do I wish to broaden this experience to describe (taint?) other scenes surrounding 'old' music.

For example, the folk scene, which my father was very involved with, was incredibly culturally conservative - they didn't even want to get involved with the Demon Electricity! yet they were capable of being very politically liberal. (Perhaps that in itself was a throwback, because many of them were hippies, and they were re-living their radical politics of the 60s.)

As I started to say, I was drawn to the 60s garage scene because I was attracted to many of the elements of psychedelic music, the amazing technological leaps of the time (hey, amplified music, feedback, effects pedals, that sort of thing were technological advances!) leading to experimentalism. Also to the expanding social consciousness of music and culture to encompass the budding of womens lib, racial equality, the pacifist movement. I liked the forward thinking and radical-ness of that music scene WITHIN ITS TIME AND SOCIAL CONTEXT. This stuff was radical in 1965.

However, flash forward to 1995, and many of the people who were attracted to it were attracted to the conservatism of the scene. I found myself dating men who would talk about enjoying the "purity" and "social innocence" of the time, as a code-word for wanting a society where there had been no progress since 1965, where minorities were only there to provide "soul" and women were there to do the housework.

In 1965, a Vox amp with a tremolo was the cutting edge of musical technology. In 1995, it CAN BE pure reactionary fetishism. (I say can be because lots of people just like them cause they sound nice.) "Ooh, samplers and computers and pro tools are EVIL in music" sayeth these people. Disregarding the fact that the tremolo and phasing and other George Martin studio trickery WAS the sampling and computer and pro tools of their day.

Yes, that's getting distracted by the music, but really. It's a misunderstanding (to me) of what the 60s were about.

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

The only "right wing, national front members" I ever met (long story) had great musical tastes. It does not necessarily go.

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:07 (twenty-two years ago)

If you want to really get your teeth into some right-wing cretins talk about hardcore (especially in the 80s)

― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Wow, that was long.

But then again, isn't it amazing how the same musical movement (hardcore punk) can produce the screaming lunatic left wing fringe of Crass and Conflict, yet also produce Oi and Nazi Skinheads?

Damn... x-post...

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Most fascists I know like Willie Nelson (who is not a fascist).

― Luigi Vampa (Horace Mann), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I think in the case of hardcore especially, the issue is kind of one of zealots from both sides of the political spectrum coming full circle to meet and finding they have more in common than they otherwise believed. That and kids wanting to blow off steam of course.

I would try and illustrate this in slightly greater detail but I'm going home in about ten minutes.

― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

"...the screaming lunatic left wing fringe of Crass and Conflict,"

Isn't this a bit of "rightist" comment in itself tho'?

― flowersdie (flowersdie), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:30 (twenty-two years ago)

No, it's not a rightist. Crass and Conflict are as far to the loony left as Combat 84 et al. are to the Nazi right. It's a centrist comment if anything.

― HRH Queen Kate (kate), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:34 (twenty-two years ago)

In my copy of 'Feeding the 5000' by Crass they reprint Garry Bushell's original review of the LP. He totally rips into them, and it's pretty much the only thing he's said that I've agreed with (apart from when he says that almost all new comedy is shit, but then we all know that)

― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Friday, 23 January 2004 16:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't see any reason why radical or progressive aesthetics would go together with radical or progressive politics. (The whole history of modernist art, in the broad sense of art, teaches otherwise.)

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 23 January 2004 16:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Because aesthetics can reflect attitudes and ideals that go beyond aesthetics alone? Even if the connections aren't universal?

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 23 January 2004 17:06 (twenty-two years ago)

But there's enough flexibility in interpreting how politics might be reflected in aesthetics that it's not possible to predict what politics will go with what aesthetics.

Actually, maybe political extremes go with aesthetic extremes--but the same aesthetic exteme can be put to service by entirely different ends of the political spectrum.

It reminds me of when people act surprised that Chomsky is politically "radical" but has a "conservative" concept of hard-wired cognitive capacities, and some sort of relatively consistent human nature and Reason (along Kantian lines).

Even the various issues that line up under the heading of "progressive" or "leftist" politics don't all seem to necessarily, logically, go togther.

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 23 January 2004 17:16 (twenty-two years ago)

"Crass and Conflict are as far to the loony left as Combat 84 et al. are to the Nazi right.It's a centrist comment if anything. "

subjectivity.

― flowersdie (flowersdie), Friday, 23 January 2004 17:18 (twenty-two years ago)

the same aesthetic exteme can be put to service by entirely different ends of the political spectrum.

Look at the similarity between fascist Italian futurist art and communist Russian constructivism.

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 23 January 2004 17:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Even true political conservatives (who aren't revolutionaries, unlike fascists) can come to embrace a slightly dated aesthetic radicalism, rather than going back even further in time to something clearly traditional. Look at the combination you get in a journal like the New Criterion (if that's still around), which embraces political conservatism and modernist aesthetics. (I'm not sure what it's take on postmodernism is.)

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 23 January 2004 17:26 (twenty-two years ago)

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), January 23rd, 2004.

NED, for that quote alone, I'm placing you in my Personal Jesus Hall of Fame.

― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Friday, 23 January 2004 18:07 (twenty-two years ago)

re. Screaming Lord Sutch; he was hardly a serious politician himself, but he ran a pirate radio station circa 1964/65, and therefore was part of the movement which stripped British Conservatism of its distancing cultural imagery (and attendant snobbery about "Americanism" etc), and was directly responsible for Thatcherism.

One of the many interesting things about Tom's pop music / folk music dichotomy in the (most recent) Dizzee Rascal thread is that, about 45 years ago, an awful lot of folk music fans in Britain came from the stubbornly culturally conservative and insular, know-your-place wing of the Left who were at least partially responsible for Labour's disastrous 1959 election. A very similar position, dare I say it, to Dave Stelfox's slant.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Friday, 23 January 2004 18:13 (twenty-two years ago)

NED, for that quote alone, I'm placing you in my Personal Jesus Hall of Fame.

*bows in acknowledgment*

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 23 January 2004 18:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Now, take off your top!

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 23 January 2004 18:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I ONLY DO THAT FOR THE FANS

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 23 January 2004 18:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I always thought the righty-wingiest people had the most mediocre music taste. Jam bands, top 40, and "alternative band of the week" stuff. There's also lots and lots of righty-wingy "trustafarians" who like raggae and Phish.

― sucka (sucka), Friday, 23 January 2004 19:41 (twenty-two years ago)

nice thread.

There was a divided right/left discourse in 80's hardcore but no more so than was around in the county at the time. I am not sure saying hardcore was full of right wing cretins was entirly accurate. It did seem to promote some degree of political discourse though.

― hector (hector), Friday, 23 January 2004 19:43 (twenty-two years ago)

But why did the Ramones vote for Reagan?

― sym (shmuel), Friday, 23 January 2004 21:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Carmody are you completely fucking insane or what?!

― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Friday, 23 January 2004 21:10 (twenty-two years ago)

"D-U-M-B! Everyone's accusing me!"

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 23 January 2004 21:23 (twenty-two years ago)

(That's not directed at anyone or meant to me anything much.)

― Rockist Scientist, Friday, 23 January 2004 21:25 (twenty-two years ago)

robin, i am NOT a conservative or a Conservative. i simply firmly believe, along with a few other sensible souls, that when making a critical judgement on something, it helps to know what you are talking about.
of course, you can have an opinion on something and you can still make judgements on the worth of anything, but as it is my JOB nad paeople pay money to read my stuff and even put their faith in what i tell them, i am therefore obliged to do it in the best way i can think of and that's by having half a clue about the subject in hand (i also happen to love the music i write about, for the most part, so it something i would do anyway).
this means understanding the cultures it comes from, what it's about where possible, what functions its performative aspect fulfills, the environment springs from/helps to form, its history and its internal and external discourses etc.
now, you're evidently a well-read chap, you must have read books telling you the things you quote so readily. you also obviously have faith in their veracity in as musch as you are comfortable quoting them. if it turns out that the people who you quote, or in turn the sources they quote, had no fucking idea what they were talking about, but were arrogant enough to believe that their interpretations of events/opinions were of sufficient worth to be printed, then i'm sure you'd feel conned at some level.
Then of course there is also the equally important question of paying due respect to the people, cultures etc involved in the music i write about/express opinions about. this is not conservative, it is basic common sense, so please stop making harebrained judgements about my political stance based on my approach to criticism. i am not telling people what is "good" or "right" in a leavisite kinda way, all i'm doing is telling people as much as i can about the stuff i like.
sure, everyone's entitled to an opinion, but if you're expecting me to say all opinions are equal, you'll be waiting a long, long time.
a further point is the idea that my ideas put "everything in their place" and are conservative in that sense, well, that's balderdash because if i believed that i wouldn't exactly belistening to the music i do anyway. pasty white northern english guys don't have much of a "place" in dancehall.

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 23 January 2004 22:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I hear Portillo felt like he'd had his "eyes opened" when he became a single-mum for a week and actually met some real working class people rather than just reading about them.

― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Friday, 23 January 2004 22:48 (twenty-two years ago)

But why did the Ramones vote for Reagan?
-- sym (shmuelm4...), January 23rd, 2004

I thought that was just Johnny who was a fervent Republican.

― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Friday, 23 January 2004 23:28 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, and what about bonzo goes to bitberg?

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 23 January 2004 23:30 (twenty-two years ago)

i just read an interview with a pre-tyranno marc bolan, from when he was a 15-yr old ace face mod. he's asked whether he supports a political party, he says he likes the tories because "they support the rich people" or something.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Friday, 23 January 2004 23:33 (twenty-two years ago)

whats the story with screaming lord sutch?
is he the guy who started the monster raving loony party?

― robin (robin), Saturday, 24 January 2004 01:23 (twenty-two years ago)

um Im a bit (ok very) drunk but I do want to say that when I talked about folk music I wasnt talking about, you know, actual folk music and I don't think that a 'folk' critical position is in any way reactionary - in fact a 'pop' one has much more of a risk of being politically supine than a folk one has of being retrograde. Hope that makes sense in the morning!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Saturday, 24 January 2004 02:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Wuts Ted Nugent doing these days?

― jim wentworth (wench), Saturday, 24 January 2004 04:49 (twenty-two years ago)

chainsaw hijinx

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Saturday, 24 January 2004 05:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Is "Let's Have A War" by FEAR conservative?

― Helltime Producto (Pavlik), Saturday, 24 January 2004 06:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Wuts Ted Nugent doing these days?

He had a reality show on VH1 I saw a commercial for where people had to live Nuge-style for a given amount of time.

― christhamrin (christhamrin), Saturday, 24 January 2004 08:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Okay,
did someone make the point earlier that right-wing radicals are
despised in the music scene while equally radical lefters are
embraced with tears of gladness?

If not
I think the only thing we learned here is that politics have
fuck-all to do with music tastes.

― squirlplise, Saturday, 24 January 2004 09:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Garage rockers in general are leftist in the Serb or North Korean sense. Not really 'bad', unless they get into foreign policy. Plus they're genuinely broke most of the time. People who are broke without also being liberal are always a source a great difficulty to well-intentioned pop ppl.

― dave q, Saturday, 24 January 2004 14:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I was in the loung / easy / exotica scene for a really long time (still love the stuff). What's funny is that scene had more left-wingers than any other I'd been in.

― Kerry (dymaxia), Saturday, 24 January 2004 15:13 (twenty-two years ago)

front all you like, Nick. I know you have criticised someone for abandoning what you call their "own class heritage", a statement that could have come straight from the mouth of any Tory landowning aristocrat in the 1950s - incidentally, would you also say a black broadcaster who played Elgar on Radio 3 should stick to his "own class heritage"? if you wouldn't then you're a hypocrite, if you would then Marcello was right and you really are right down there with the BNP.

class warriordom = an excuse for small-c conservatism in 99.9% of cases. that really is all I have to say on the matter.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Saturday, 24 January 2004 15:29 (twenty-two years ago)

note: i have never said that nick is "right down there with the BNP," though i have expressed the sentiment in general terms in various places.

i like both nick and robin so i'm keeping well out of this - but just to clarify...

― Phoebe Dinsmore, Saturday, 24 January 2004 15:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Social mobility is not the same as pretending to be something you aren't which in turn is also not the same as cultural tourism which is also not the same as patronising people by claiming to understand their culture better than they do without having ever experienced it first hand. You can listen to Radio 1 from your armchair all you fucking like.

― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Saturday, 24 January 2004 16:27 (twenty-two years ago)

PS. I am and always was and always will be a hypocrite - it's an unfortunate side product of learning about yourself and the world.

― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Saturday, 24 January 2004 16:30 (twenty-two years ago)

robin do you have any idea how offensive saying something like that to someone is? or how out of order it is to make sweeping judgements on MY politics when i have never spoken to you—i mean not so much as exchanged one single word, not even here. i resent this and i also really resent the fact that this thread started as a spin-off from some really dumb racist rant by tom artrocker and i open it to find you lumping me in the same bracket as him, simply because i dared to say that music often has a scene/culture attached to it, documenting people's lives and times, and this should therefore not be ignored. doesn't make me a hardline rightwinger does it, now really? it's actually people like you i'm referring to when i talk about certain elements of ilx/the blogosphere thinking they know the lot without *any* real-world experience to back up their profoundly misguided postulations. tell nick you think he's a wanker if you want, call me a jumped-up tosser, but please don't call people fascist elitists without knowing a little about them. the difference is that this is not just an opinion, it's an accusation - and one that really gets my back up.

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Saturday, 24 January 2004 19:25 (twenty-two years ago)

robin, i think you're missing the role of context in your comparisons

nick, claiming to understand their culture better than they do without having ever experienced it first hand

doesnt this tie into the recent relevancy and grime threads? While you didnt claim to do this, you did seem to dismiss the role of culture in those threads? the subjectivist position you took there, wouldnt that render the argument in italics invalid?

― Stringent (Stringent), Saturday, 24 January 2004 19:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I certainly never meant to come across as dismissing the role of culture. It's a difficult position as I live in a semi-rual area that is very far removed from London, and though I work in the largest city in the area we're talking Exeter here, so a; it's not large at all and b; it's very, very different to any other large town/city I've spent time in in this country (Sheffield, Northampton, Birmingham, London, Manchester, Bristol, Blackpool even!). My involvement in the grime thread was very minimal, and I've deliberately said very little about Dizzee, say, anywhere, because literally all I have as reference is the music and what I read in papers/on blogs (I'm more than aware that I'd look like a complete twat if I were to start spouting off about Dizzee's relevence or whatever - the one thing I did do was report what my ex girlfriend's teenage brother (who's a huge hiphop fan but, again, at a massive remove from London or whereever) had said about Dizzee, which was that he thought he sucked, and I found this amusing when it was Simon Reynolds, middle class, 40-something, living in NYC, who'd brought Dizzee to my attention in the first place); and as we all know, you should never believe everything that you read. My extreme subjectivism on the 'relevence' thread is partly role playing, devil's advocate, to try and further the debate. Being at the remove I'm at, I almost cannot understand/comprehend social relevence in many of the terms it was being discussed in; my background, though far from affluent, is comfortable, and I work with (for, I guess, being support staff at a university) a lot of people who are extremely priviliged. The type of lower class that exists in Devon is radically different to that which you'd experience anywhere in London. I guess my role on the relevency thread was to say that for many people (i.e. me and my friends) music is a very subjective thing, almost disassociated with culture/society, and that this needn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Robin's accusations have upset me more than anything else I've come across on ILX that I can remember. His first reference to me (and Dom) on his blog blindsided me; I'd never read Robin's stuff before and wasn't really aware of who he was outside of an occasional poster here, so to suddenly find myself specifically mentioned by name as being a conservative, or whatever he was insinuating, was a shock, as I'm sure it was for Dom (who pointed out the initial reference to me) and Dave. To be equated with the BNP and therefore fascism when Robin has never, to my knowledge, communicated with me in any way, certainly never beyond the confines of a fucking internet messageboard, is something I can neither understand or countenance. I feel like I'm being demonised (by one person whom I do not know) and I have no idea what for. It's not just upsetting; it's offensive. Two of my best friends are black (I know that's an awful fucking faux-liberal cliché) - the guy who directed the film I was in last summer and the guy who's lived down the road from me since we were five and four years old and who's now doing a physics degree at the university where I work - and they'd be horrified if I was in any way associated with fascist politics; likewise the italian, irish, french, tunisian and french-african people I played football with on Thursday: a; they'd be disgusted to share a pitch with me if I was BNP and b; I'd be disgusted to share a pitch with them if I was.

I'm not some kind of class-warrior and I object to being categorised as such. Class isn't something I ever write about for Stylus and it only ever creeps in on my blog in reference to things other people have said about or to me.

― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Saturday, 24 January 2004 20:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Carmody, it was me that Marcello referred to as being like a BNP member. I think that was just some polentone vs terrone ish though.

I would be interested to know why you seem insistent on picking a fight with people you only know through message boards? If you want a fight, you've got one, but yet I don't understand why.

would you also say a black broadcaster who played Elgar on Radio 3 should stick to his "own class heritage"?

Carmody, the only reason you'd approve of such an action is because it'd prove what you set out to argue in your original blog posting that started this whole sorry mess: namely, that the middle class are the idealised classes, the right classes. Said black broadcaster would be approved by you because he would acting in *your* culture. As you stated in your blog, the C2, C3, D, and E classes are just dress up.

You really are a fuck-up, though.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Saturday, 24 January 2004 20:55 (twenty-two years ago)

three years pass...

i thinks i get it now

― acrobat, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:13 (nineteen years ago)

OMG this was THIS thread.

― Groke, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:17 (nineteen years ago)

whole lotta history.

i don't think i read this at the time but there were a lot like it.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:28 (nineteen years ago)

Uppity working class kids reprezent.

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:30 (nineteen years ago)

i accidently found it searching for the words "class" and "matter"...

― acrobat, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:35 (nineteen years ago)

"I would be interested to know why you seem insistent on picking a fight with people you only know through message boards?"

Haha.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:36 (nineteen years ago)

esp. interesting since trife is MUCH more guilty of doing the kind of slanderous shit-talking that robin was accused of by nick southall -- but he gets away with it b/c some folks like him (for god unknown reasons).

― Eisbaer, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:38 (nineteen years ago)

There's a difference between doing that on a thread where people can answer back and defend themselves and doing so on an entirely separate blog without any moderation or right-to-reply though.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:42 (nineteen years ago)

Is this the thread where trife turns up to defend robin, and in doing so calls dom and stelfox medocre, shitty writers, or something?

I miss both Robin and Stelfox.

― Pashmina, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:43 (nineteen years ago)

I'm STILL not a fascist.

As I recall, Carmody's beef with me was founded on my quoting Noel Gallagher's statement about how Chris Martin didn't "need to get into rock 'n' roll [to escape] because he could have had a very nice job as an accountant" and saying that Martin would probably be better at an office job than he is at being a pop star. I stand by that; he's a fucking rubbish pop star!

x-post - Eisbaer that may be the case (that IS the case) but Trife, to my knowledge, though he's slanderously shit-talked me, has only ever done it to me here, plus a; I have no idea who the fuck he is and b; his anonymity of username on this board means that about 75% of the time I don't realise who he is because I'm not around here often enough.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:45 (nineteen years ago)

I miss both Robin and Stelfox.

same here.

There's a difference between doing that on a thread where people can answer back and defend themselves and doing so on an entirely separate blog without any moderation or right-to-reply though.

i agree -- though if one isn't participating in, or hasn't been alerted to, a thread where one is being slandered then the effect is similar.

― Eisbaer, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:46 (nineteen years ago)

Also, what MattS said.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:48 (nineteen years ago)

it's weird how short the thread was. these days it would be about 800 posts, and funnier.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:48 (nineteen years ago)

assuredly not funnier

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:49 (nineteen years ago)

http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/images/hovis.jpg

Old ILX, yesterday

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:50 (nineteen years ago)

i forgot to say it would be 80% zings at lex's expense.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:51 (nineteen years ago)

The thing that really beefs me with Carmody is that he occasionally still does mention me and Dom by name on his blog or wherever, FOUR YEARS LATER. I've emailed him about this and never got a reply. He wont communicate to try and resolve things but he will occasionally use my name in a very negative sense; it may be infrequent but I've got paid work as a writer from a national newspaper and other publications; he's slandering me (or is it libel when written?) with no basis and on a professional level this is a concern. Admittedly I would guess that bugger-all people know who he is or read his blog, but it's the principle of the thing.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:51 (nineteen years ago)

bucketofwater.jpg

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:53 (nineteen years ago)

i agree w/ you 100%, nick. i don't know how to answer your concerns -- though if robin's comments haven't harmed you professionally yet, there may not be much that you CAN do. (i'm not familiar with british defamation laws, other than that they are stricter than they are over here in america.)

― Eisbaer, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:55 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe he's waiting for you to apologise for Sharpeville first, Nick.

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:56 (nineteen years ago)

Quit guy: I think it was locked.

― Groke, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:57 (nineteen years ago)

wtf re; Sharpeville?

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:57 (nineteen years ago)

JOKE! (Re: ludicrousness of BNP comment)

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

Hahaha, yes, I just about saw the funny side when Wikipedia opened.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

I fell out with Robin some time ago for reasons which need not be of concern here but nearly everyone here including myself has done as bad or worse so let's all calm down.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 15:59 (nineteen years ago)

southall: agreed carmody's behaviour is odd and maybe hurtful but... that noelly g quote is so loaded, it's not just saying chris martin is a crap pop star is it? check out his later comments about bloc party and kele o's very otm response in this months uncut. i'll try and find the quote.

― acrobat, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:17 (nineteen years ago)

Kele Okereke has retorted back to Oasis' Liam Gallagher's jibes that Bloc Party look like a 'University Challenge team' by labelling them 'stupid Luddites.'

In an interview with Ben Marshall in this month's Uncut magazine, Okereke says: "Why is it bad to look like you might have been to university? why is it bad to better yourself? It's all about the weird way in which this country chooses to view the working clases. It really is daft to reinforce the idea that there is something cool about being dumb.

When asked if Oasis deserved to win the BRIT Award for 'Outstanding Contribution To Music,' Okereke replies:
"Absolutely not. I think Oasis are the most overrated and pernicious band of all time. They have had a totally negative and dangerous impact upon the state of British music. They have made stupidity hip. They claim to be inspired by The Beatles but - and this so saddens me - they have failed to grasp that The Beatles were about constant change and evolution. Oasis are repetitive luddites."

We await Liam's response...

― acrobat, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:18 (nineteen years ago)

Absolutely not. I think Oasis are the most overrated and pernicious band of all time. They have had a totally negative and dangerous impact upon the state of British music

KELE OKEREKE FULLY OTM

he should carry on saying things like this, instead of 'singing'

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:21 (nineteen years ago)

I can go along with that. Shame BP made such a shitty second record by bowing to trends set by Oasis (on a sonic level).

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:22 (nineteen years ago)

"dangerous?"

i hate bloc party.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:22 (nineteen years ago)

Kele's mostly right. I take issue with "better yourself". But he's responding to the stupid twat when the only answer to the question should've been "Noel who?"

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:22 (nineteen years ago)

Kele's one of the few people to have written worse lyrics than Noel though and I actually *like* Bloc Party.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:28 (nineteen years ago)

Confusing Noel and Liam, whether intentional or not, is disingenious.

The difference between Martin and Okereke is that Martin has no pretention (in his music) of being intelligent or educated; for someone with a degree he writes embarassingly imbecilic and platitudinous lyrics. He has precious little concept of innovation in music. Okereke may be fucking it up, but at least he's trying to push things. Coldplay are closer to Oasis than they are to Bloc Party. And Bloc Party are (now) closer to Coldplay than they ought to be.

x-post - Kele's lyrics can be terrible, granted, but at least, again, he's TRYING. Martin's lyrics are abominable empty-headed nothings.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:29 (nineteen years ago)

oasis do shitty stock 'good times' indie, bloc party do shitty stock 'arty' indie.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:30 (nineteen years ago)

(I wasn't being disingenous, I just misread the original post)

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:35 (nineteen years ago)

chris martin's lyrics are the best of the three! they're not, like, good or anything, but i don't see anything particularly wrong in vague, generalist, not especially profound clichés which allow the listener to map their own experiences on to the song - you can see exactly how people might find a coldplay song personally resonant. i don't but there are parallels with how i listen to, i dunno, someone like alicia keys, whose lyrics follow much the same form (but she does it much much better).

gallagher/okereke lyrics are really ghastly, one for trying too hard, the other for not trying at all. nevertheless okereke is right here.

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:36 (nineteen years ago)

i think pushing kele o as some kind of innovator or even "arty" is pushing it but for all his faults the reason bloc party do seem to connect strongly with a lot of people is teh emos. i.e. they are the band that'll save your life for some kids, but then so are coldplay. nick sure you can hate on coldplay but denying that boneheaded platitudes can't be taken to the heart seems wrong. coldplay are a band seemingly designed for the listener to write their own meanings upon. bloc party are just slightly more targeted. i think in a political sense thou chris martin is bad thou, he seems to do that "i'll back who ever 'll get the job done" geldof style "pragmatism" which i feel will lead us, as it seeps into the wider culture, into a cameron government.

― acrobat, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:39 (nineteen years ago)

Cute little brit indie bands might be conservative musically but do you really consider them conservative politically? Are they not classic late-capitalism liberals to a tee?

― frankie driscoll, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:44 (nineteen years ago)

i think in a political sense thou chris martin is bad thou, he seems to do that "i'll back who ever 'll get the job done" geldof style "pragmatism" which i feel will lead us, as it seeps into the wider culture, into a cameron government.

-- acrobat, Tuesday, April 17, 2007 7:39 PM (6 minutes ago)

bit of a leap from one thing to another! also blair's catchphrase is "what works" in re pfi etc. so martin could go either way.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:48 (nineteen years ago)

i mean your perceived sense of martin's politics will somehow seep into the voting choices of the people out there -- really? i doubt even a lennon could have that effect.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:49 (nineteen years ago)

And why is conservatism in music so bad? Anti-conservatism is the preserve of the individual..and the fragmentation of society

Conservatism in music can be a good thing..without conservatism you would have no genres, no continuity, no shared culture, no framework, no community, no belonging

― frankie driscoll, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:49 (nineteen years ago)

in britain conservatism means destroying communities in favour of the atomized individual. most conservatives are too stupidd to realize this.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:51 (nineteen years ago)

The difference between Martin and Okereke is that Martin has no pretention (in his music) of being intelligent or educated; for someone with a degree he writes embarassingly imbecilic and platitudinous lyrics. He has precious little concept of innovation in music.

But, Nick, how do you judge intentions? For all we know Chris Martin thinks he's writing The Waste Land.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:51 (nineteen years ago)

i think the lex is right re. martin. he does what he does and as a non-fan of all three bands, coldplay's lyrics are less grating -- simply because they're barely there at all -- than bloc party's or oasis's.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 16:56 (nineteen years ago)

If he does, Alfred, then he's a complete and utter moron.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:26 (nineteen years ago)

I'd posit that Martin's enunciation makes his vocals and thus his lyrics too prominant for me to ignore. Okereke's on the new BP album, too. With Liam (and Noel) these days I am so astonished that either of them bothers to sing at all when they each honk like a throat-cancer victim with asthma that I don't notice the lyrics. Also I just don't fucking listen to their turgid unmusical shite anymore.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:30 (nineteen years ago)

"Whatever", that was a good song.

― Dom Passantino, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 17:32 (nineteen years ago)

heh enrique i'm not saying chris martin himself is influencing vast swathes of people but summat like live 8 and all that apolitical vaguely self-agrandizing humanism must have some meaning, some effect. whether it'll go all the way to the ballot box who knows. maybe it's a positon beyond mere voting. that's a bit kpunk innit.

― acrobat, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 18:51 (nineteen years ago)

it already happened when labour decided to ditch being labour in the mid-nineties and natural tories voted for them because they were embarrassed to follow their true calling.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:05 (nineteen years ago)

It would be interesting to see Kele Okereke explain exactly why recycling The Beatles is worse than recycling Gang Of Four.

― Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:09 (nineteen years ago)

(Other than Kele Okereke's own personal taste probably suggests Gang Of Four is a better band)

― Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:10 (nineteen years ago)

in britain conservatism means destroying communities in favour of the atomized individual.

In politics, yes. This has absolutely zero to do with conservatism in music though.

― Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:10 (nineteen years ago)

Did anyone see Stelfox's "Epiphanies" piece on the back page of the Wire this month?
"Real music listened to by Real people" - laughable.

― bidfurd, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:37 (nineteen years ago)

no. please tell more.

― acrobat, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:56 (nineteen years ago)

"In politics, yes. This has absolutely zero to do with conservatism in music though.

-- Geir Hongro, Tuesday, April 17, 2007 11:10 PM (Yesterday)"

yeah i know. i don't think political conservatism is that easily tracked to musical conservatism. both terms are woolly anyway, and music's relationship with technology (which isn't necessarily un-conservative) makes it even more complicated.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:02 (nineteen years ago)

Cultural conservatism mightn't be directly trackable to political conservatism. But they sure do wear similar shoes.

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:16 (nineteen years ago)

"Cultural conservatism" seems like a very, very wooly term to me.

― Scik Mouthy, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:23 (nineteen years ago)

Okay, longhand during boozy inaccuracy. Fear of "complicated" ideas feels reactionary to me.

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:28 (nineteen years ago)

Cultural conservatism mightn't be directly trackable to political conservatism. But they sure do wear similar shoes.

But then, recent political conservatism is considerably more about economical liberalism and capitalism than it is about cultural conservatism.

― Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 23:54 (nineteen years ago)

Not on ILX.

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 23:56 (nineteen years ago)

ILX (or at least ILM) is about music, not politics.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:36 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmurphy/JPT3500file/JPT3500.imagefile.4/Artfile.14th/Portrait.ikkyu.jpg

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:44 (nineteen years ago)

[img][Removed Illegal Link]

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:44 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.bruteprop.com/v1/brutemag/stories/twat/twat_03.jpg

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:46 (nineteen years ago)

Did anyone see Stelfox's "Epiphanies" piece on the back page of the Wire this month?
"Real music listened to by Real people" - laughable.

I saw that -- I usually really like Dave's stuff, but there were a couple of things in that piece that bothered me too.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 03:36 (nineteen years ago)

"Fear of "complicated" ideas feels reactionary to me"

Reactionary doesn't necessarily means conservative. And "complicated" doesn't necessarily rhyme with "modern" - very often modernity is just reductionism.
But maybe its just the conservative in me. :)

― Marco Damiani, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 05:36 (nineteen years ago)

It would be interesting to see Kele Okereke explain exactly why recycling The Beatles is worse than recycling Gang Of Four.

Geir, did you actually read the quote from Okereke?

― Billy Dods, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:15 (nineteen years ago)

Geir sees a black person mentioning The Beatles and assumes it was a derogatory comment.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:26 (nineteen years ago)

He mentions Oasis, from what I can see, and it looks like the typical critique of Oasis for revisiting the past.

Personally I like both Oasis and Bloc Party, for the exact same reasons that fans of "modern" music styles don't.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:33 (nineteen years ago)

So my point is Okereke should rather defend Oasis rather than attack them, because he is doing exactly the same thing himself. Except I suppose he is one of those Beatles haters.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:34 (nineteen years ago)

Shut the fuck up you fucking idiot.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:36 (nineteen years ago)

Geir's very presence on this thread is akin to him painting himself luminous orange and dancing about on top of 30ft illuminated letters reading 'HI MARCELLO, CALL ME A NAZI PLEASE!'

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:38 (nineteen years ago)

So, do we think that Geir's trolling adds to the gaiety of the ILx nation or do we regard it as a tiresome encumbrance to otherwise interesting discussion which needs to be dealt with formally?

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:41 (nineteen years ago)

In a world we have Montgomery Gentry can Oasis really be called politically conservative?

― frankie driscoll, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:44 (nineteen years ago)

I can't deal with Geir at all anymore. He reduces me to incoherant profanity. His ridiculous nonsense is completely intolerable to me now. It's not funny anymore and it doens't stimulate debate. Can I kill him, please?

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:47 (nineteen years ago)

Political conservativism and political liberalism aren't relevent in Britain anymore. There's what encourages capitalism and what doesn't; the Tories tried it with small government in the 80s, and Labour are doing it with big government now, the end result is the same. A rich, amoral country teetering on a tipping point.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:50 (nineteen years ago)

Just don't reply to him.

I want to know more about the Stelfox Wire piece!

― Groke, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:50 (nineteen years ago)

That reminds me, I must go and find the university's copy now.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:54 (nineteen years ago)

Both conservatism and liberalism encourage capitalism. The only difference being that liberalism encourages it more

― frankie driscoll, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 08:57 (nineteen years ago)

It's all very well saying "just don't reply to him" but it's inconvenient and rather depressing for him repeatedly to hijack otherwise good threads with his one post, rephrased in forty thousand different ways. There's been an epidemic of it this week for whatever reason, and I'm not the only one getting fed up with his constant butting in.

Although he is admittedly responsible for a few good and interesting views when he chooses to stick to his field, I'm bored with his continuous crashing in. We know he likes the Beatles and white guitar music. We know he's not keen on hip hop. We don't need to be told five million fucking times per day.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 09:13 (nineteen years ago)

Well, I feel very much at home here, because I am a cultural conservative belonging very much on the political left. Which is not at all hard to combine considering the political right has absolutely nothing to do with cultural conservatism.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 09:23 (nineteen years ago)

nick you don't think some socially liberal / conservative things still play a role? i mean the daily mail is still in business. not all the identity battles have been won...

― acrobat, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 09:24 (nineteen years ago)

That's kind of my point - the identity battles haven't been won or lost, they've been superceeded and thus ignored. The guffaw over William getting dumped at the weekend is evidence enough of that.

I think... a certain type of person who might have once been politically active possibly is not now, because politics has evolved (or devolved) into being almost entirely about economics.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 09:56 (nineteen years ago)

i went to an anti-bnp rally fairly recently. the thing that struck me was that the hardcore (Nf types / trade union types on the other) on both sides were two sides of the same coin. both totally disenfranchised.

― acrobat, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:01 (nineteen years ago)

Did anyone see Stelfox's "Epiphanies" piece on the back page of the Wire this month?
"Real music listened to by Real people" - laughable.

I fail to see what the problem with this piece is, having just read it. Dave's describing a very personal set of experiences and feelings, detailing what it is that really drives his passion for music - he's not saying "all music should be made on a guitar or by authentic black peasants" or whatever. Yes, he confesses to having had a "very middle class, very white" upbringing and education, but if you're trying to accuse him of cultural tourism then his clear knowledge of the cultures he's moving in obviously comes from a kind of immersion that goes way beyond tourism.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:06 (nineteen years ago)

I want to know more about the Stelfox Wire piece!

Dave talks about 'his unshakable belief that the best sounds are always found out in the world, where folks actually live. It could be shimmering highlife mixes played by Ghanaian taxi drivers in Toronto, dancehall and grime blaring out of bedroom windows in Hackney, a bus ride in Egypt unveiling the thunderous joys of shaabi, a first encounter with Puerto Rican reggaeton wandering through Brooklyn or the squalling dhols of desi tunes thumping out of 4x4s in Southall'. It's qualified by the next sentence 'But the best thing about it is that there's probably something similar causing a racket on a street corner near you, loudly and proudly telling our stories and saying that we're alive' but I still have the following problem:

where is NOT out there, where are people NOT 'actually' alive? If the qualifier is supposed to tell us to look in our own backyards and not become musical backpackers, then what does the first implied distinction between 'out in the world' and 'inside, away from the world' mean?

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:09 (nineteen years ago)

hard fi on headphones in orpington

― acrobat, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:11 (nineteen years ago)

Just to clarify: my only query is with the sentence 'the best sounds are always found out in the world, where folks actually live' because I can't square it with the rest of the piece, or with Dave's other writing. In context it kind of fits with his description of other musical worlds opening up his rural upbringing, but generalising this seems problematic. It could just be a badly written (or rewritten by editorial) sentence, though.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:12 (nineteen years ago)

All he's doing, as I see it, is praising the idea of music as cultural goods rather than music as capital goods. And I'm totally alright with that. Dave has very different tastes and approaches to me but I think philosophically we're starting somewhere similar; we're both concerned with how and why people consume music, I'm just way more solipsistic than he is.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:17 (nineteen years ago)

Actually the description 'the purest form of pop - real music that real people listened to' suffers from the same problem. Either he is making an unexplained value judgement or this is trivial (all music is 'real', all people are 'real'). If he means that he only likes music by people he perceives to be 'more real' than him, that would be a very interesting and honest thing to say, but it isn't clear that this is what he is getting at, and I wouldn't want to presume it is.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:21 (nineteen years ago)

x-post

But what is an 'unreal' person?

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:21 (nineteen years ago)

If a tree is playing bhangra in a forest and no one around to hear it, is it real music?

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:22 (nineteen years ago)

Oh OK, that's always been a big motor in Stelfox's writing - it was one of the things that distressed him about ILM when he quit ages ago, he's never liked the idea of dilettantism, or the idea of imaginary communities (or even real virtual ones) as spaces where music lives and happens, at least not in comparison to street music.

― Groke, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:23 (nineteen years ago)

Even though all the examples he quotes are de facto impure hybrids with much dilettante input.

But again it all comes down to consumer's absorbing/assimilation of music > input of actual musicians.

Depends on how loudly the tree was playing the bhangra.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:29 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know but I'm very fodn of saying to (culturally conservative) associates who trip out "real music" cliches when faced with anything not from stock bread+butter rock origins that the idea of "unreal music" sounds much more interesting than "real music". They're all totally loaded terms and take in much more than just aesthetic building blocks, social background, and even the relationship between production and consumption.

I can agree that the concluding para is perhaps unsatisfactorily reaching for something meta when it should have got more personal.

X-post with MattDC, Tom and Marcello.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:29 (nineteen years ago)

I don't necessarily draw that conclusion.

i read 'real music by real people' as an oppositional to eclecticism, dilettantism, the endless muddying of the waters, where everything is like everything else

I read 'real music by real people' as genre-purist. Not trying to cross-fertilize with other things. For me the best reggaeton/country/jungle sticks within its boundaries, doesn't attempt to become something else. it represents a constituency, cohesion, togetherness, sociality

I dont think it implies some people are 'more real' than others at all. I think it implies that reggaeton people are 'more reggaeton real' than interlopers and outsiders, and that country people are 'more country real' than others. its a constituency, a cultural community, its real, and the music that comes fromm it, and speaks to it, should also be real

i read it as wanting to hear reggaeton music done by reggaeton people, not outsiders 'experimenting' with the form, 'make it better'

Music ISN'T just music. its not in a vacuum. Music is people too

― frankie driscoll, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:29 (nineteen years ago)

Oh OK, that's always been a big motor in Stelfox's writing - it was one of the things that distressed him about ILM when he quit ages ago, he's never liked the idea of dilettantism, or the idea of imaginary communities (or even real virtual ones) as spaces where music lives and happens, at least not in comparison to street music.

See, I think I agree with this slightly, which is why a lot of music that I love is solipsistic in itself (Patrick Wolf, Battles, Talk Talk, whatever).

X-post.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:31 (nineteen years ago)

i had a period where i was more interested in unreal music than real music. It has its place. But everything i come back to, everything i love in music, i think of as as real music

perhaps community or consensus music is a less loaded term

― frankie driscoll, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:32 (nineteen years ago)

though on the other hand Marcello is correct to point out that most of these genres (actually, surely ALL genres) started life as hybrids.

There is room for innovation, novelty, dilettantism. I wouldn't want to get rid of it completely. but by and large i like music that sounds the same and is easily defined, more than that which is individual and undefined

― frankie driscoll, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:34 (nineteen years ago)

It's not an unsympathetic position at all - I mostly don't agree with it because it doesn't fit with how I like to live my own life.

What interests me about Dave S is how he feels how own contribution to the music - writing it up, hyping it, loving it - affects its 'realness', or rather how he balances doing that with not being an 'outsider/interloper'

― Groke, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:37 (nineteen years ago)

"how own" = "his own"

― Groke, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:37 (nineteen years ago)

I read 'real music by real people' as genre-purist. Not trying to cross-fertilize with other things. For me the best reggaeton/country/jungle sticks within its boundaries, doesn't attempt to become something else

yeah i basically agree with this, but this often metamorphoses uncomfortably into condemning dilettante listeners - i feel that the musicians i listen to should be confident enough in their genre not to strive to pretend it's something else, or at least when they are influenced by other genres, what they borrow should be assimilated into what they are rather than a pathway out of it which turns into a dead end. the best hybrids are the former rather than the latter - eg bubba sparxxx's 'nowhere', that borrows so heavily from country to such good effect, but it's ultimately fundamentally hip-hop. but timbaland working with the hives is a conscious attempt NOT to be hip-hop...which makes me think, why don't you want to be hip-hop? are you unconfident in it as a genre? are you ashamed of where you came from? etc.

but as a consumer/listener i think it's incumbent on anyone who is fascinated by MUSIC, generally, to be a dilettante, to dip into reggaeton and house and r&b and hyphy and everything, i can't imagine anything more cluastrophobic as a listener then shutting myself into one genre. which is why i approve of genre specialists but don't want to be one myself (though uh oh i am heading in this direction anyway).

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:39 (nineteen years ago)

but timbaland working with the hives is a conscious attempt NOT to be hip-hop...which makes me think, why don't you want to be hip-hop? are you unconfident in it as a genre? are you ashamed of where you came from? etc.

Yeah, Lex, black people need to learn their place and keep it, don't they?

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:43 (nineteen years ago)

but timbaland working with the hives is a conscious attempt NOT to be hip-hop...which makes me think, why don't you want to be hip-hop? are you unconfident in it as a genre? are you ashamed of where you came from? etc.

Surely the Timbaland thing is a result of overconfidence? Eg "I am the best producer ever, I can do everything, look at me rock out". Rest of world "please stop, this is rubbish".

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:45 (nineteen years ago)

Timbaland/Hives is admittedly the equivalent of Nile Rodgers/Duran Duran in '86 - producer long since past their peak/doing it for the money - but he's pop and avant-pop before he's hip hop. Given the generally miserable state of current hip hop it's perhaps just as well.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:45 (nineteen years ago)

Marcello that is such half arsed sub-C4rm0dism even when not directed at THE LEX of all people who would hardly recognise making a rock record as 'bettering oneself' or whatever cobblers this argument is about again.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:47 (nineteen years ago)

I agree with MattS there, BUT Timbaland's oft voiced fondness for Coldplay suggests that he may view rock as some kind of superior form.

X-posts.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:47 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think he views rock as a superior form - but the kind of sweeping gestural lighter-waving emotionalism of Coldplay is something his own music has generally not been able to do so I can see why he responds to that, or is at least curious about it.

― Groke, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:49 (nineteen years ago)

He does it very well on the JT album! Better than Coldplay do at any rate.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:51 (nineteen years ago)

Good point! Maybe that came out of his study of Coldplay though.

― Groke, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:51 (nineteen years ago)

maybe timba perhaps not the best example? actually a good example would be the press release i got about the new digitalism album - basically went on and on about how, yeah, they tore up dancefloors with 'zdarlight' et al, but what they really wanted was to be a ROCK BAND.

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:52 (nineteen years ago)

Haven't they learned from past ignominious failures like Jesus Jones and the Klaxons? All speed into the future but hey we still want to write songs like the Kinks in '65 'cos we're eclectic/need that all important Radio 2 airplay.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:53 (nineteen years ago)

Good point! Maybe that came out of his study of Coldplay though.

timba's been doing it for ages! continuum goes from brandy's afrodisiac through a couple of kiley dean songs through the new nelly furtado ballads through, yes, the justin album. and yes it's all come out of his study of coldplay, from the samples and namechecks on the brandy album to working with chris martin himself on the furtado album.

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:55 (nineteen years ago)

the justin album is probably the worst timba-does-coldplay material yet (though it's been a v successful sound for him generally i think)

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:56 (nineteen years ago)

Anyway here's where I don't agree with Stelfox (huge apologies to Dave if he does read this for using him as a straw man).

My model of liking music: there is the music, and there is my experience of the music - which is necessarily influenced by what I understand of the context of the music, its provenance etc. If I decide that I only want to hear non-eclectic or 'community' or 'real' music, that's an aesthetic and possibly an ethical choice, but it doesn't change the music/experience flow.

My understanding of Dave is that he goes further though by including someone *else's* experience of the music as a defining factor in his response to it - the 'real people' who listen to the 'real music'. And I feel sometimes he wants those experiences (as he understands them) to override and overwrite his own. The anthropological approach to music has a self-erasing component which I just don't feel comfortable with.

― Groke, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 10:59 (nineteen years ago)

i read 'real music by real people' as an oppositional to eclecticism, dilettantism, the endless muddying of the waters, where everything is like everything else

I read 'real music by real people' as genre-purist. Not trying to cross-fertilize with other things. For me the best reggaeton/country/jungle sticks within its boundaries, doesn't attempt to become something else. it represents a constituency, cohesion, togetherness, sociality

I understand where FD is coming from here - the kind of non-committal bland global broth which usually arises, as opposed to the natural societal evolution of genres, e.g. Parker doubling the tempo in '39 just because he felt like it. Though on many occasions it only takes one strange, distant accident to change things, e.g. Elvis wanting to sound like Dean Martin for his mum and inadvertently inventing something else in the process.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:02 (nineteen years ago)

frankie are you gareth?

First paragraph from Lex re bubba sparxx/timbaland pretty much accords with my view on purism vs dilettantism, at least in music production. That said Lex youre critical rupture w/r/t justin seems misguided. I prefer the works of the younger lex on this topic.

The choice between purism vs dilettantism as a listener seems to me like an imaginary one - only dilettantes have this debate, and what they're debating is different forms of dilettantism.

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:03 (nineteen years ago)

Tim OTM.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:09 (nineteen years ago)

i don't know much about stelfox, so is his position here coming from a "reactionary" place i.e. "know yr place" or something more progressive i.e. respecting and understanding other cultures? also tieing in with nick's stuff up thread, is his point perhaps about taking music outside of economic consumption, celebrating music which seems to have functions above generating profits?

― acrobat, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:41 (nineteen years ago)

also i haven't actually read the article

― acrobat, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:42 (nineteen years ago)

i still remain to be convinced that 'virtual communities' are anything more than a representation of disassociativeness and anomie

take off the pegs and you have to throw your coat on the floor

― frankie driscoll, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:47 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know, maybe I do have more of a problem with this than other people seem to, but by 'problem' I mean 'I am intrigued' rather than 'I must protest'.

To me, it looks as if Dave is saying 'real music is elsewhere' and 'real people are elsewhere'. This implies that the critical intellectual or whatever you want to call him / her can only look from the outside at real life -- as if the function of being the observer who reports detaches you from life as it is lived, music as it is listened to. Now, I actually AGREE with this part of it: the one thing I cannot be when I write about music (or listen to it, pretty much) is un-selfconscious.

But it seems a partial argument. I am detached from life = I can observe it, or observing life detaches me from it: we need to go one step further, otherwise we risk implying that the 'real people' aren't themselves observers of their lives, or reflective and critical listeners.

(I don't think DS does mean this, it would be an unwarranted assumption on the basis of his piece which foregrounds his own point of view rather than making any grander claims, i.e. we could reasonably say that other people appear real to him.)

So the further step is to say that the other people aren't real either, because they are also critical/reflective listeners. Which doesn't mean 'OMG nothing is real' just that after we think the problem through, the difference between 'real' and 'not real' which seemed substantial at one point, can no longer be treated as such. But obviously the experience of other people's experience seeming 'realer' than one's own is itself real: this is where a useful Hegelian distinction comes in, and we might say that although it is real (I feel it, my senses don't deceive me) it is not actual (since feeling it implies a partial view of the situation, whereas if I could see it from the outside (which of course I can't, I can only conceive of this position rationally) I would see my feeling in perspective). Blimey, eh!

I think it's an interesting piece because it explores one side of this movement; I think it's (minor) weakness is in not completely following the dialectic through.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:58 (nineteen years ago)

i really want to read this piece...

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 11:59 (nineteen years ago)

it just makes me want to dig out the Pirosmani camel pic

― Ronan, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:02 (nineteen years ago)

Stelfox is very much about respecting and understanding other cultures, NOT "know your place" (which is what my very old misunderstood point re; Chris Martin was - he doens't "understand rock", and thus should either learn about it or leave it alone [only his success suggests he does understand it, in another way, obv.]).

I was thinking while out for lunch about the nature of the anthropologist - no matter how long the anthropologist spends ensconsed in an "other" tribe, how close the middle class ragga fan gets to ragga culture, he is ALWAYS observing as long as he is reporting back to whence he came, and thus is still disassociated in much the manner of the virtual-community dilletente, if not as solipsistic.

Triple x-post.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:03 (nineteen years ago)

To me, it looks as if Dave is saying 'real music is elsewhere' and 'real people are elsewhere'.

I think rather than "elsewhere" he's saying it's "everywhere" if we just look around a bit more.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:07 (nineteen years ago)

I think that's what he wants to say! What he actually says is 'out in the world' (which must imply 'as opposed to in here'). The 'street corner near you' thing says 'everywhere'.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:09 (nineteen years ago)

Of course, I also think he's wrong because the music on the street corners near me is The Proclaimers, and they're shit.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:10 (nineteen years ago)

sorry Leith.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:10 (nineteen years ago)

Don't hurt me when I go out to pick up a can of juice in a minute.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:10 (nineteen years ago)

You don't even wanna know what the music on the corner is here; my office is in the campus of Exeter University.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:12 (nineteen years ago)

Excellent post byebyepride - the longer one further up I mean.

I was thinking some of the same things about the "realness" of other people's experience - how it seems more real because we don't witness people reflecting on their enjoyment, feeling doubts about what they like and why...

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:13 (nineteen years ago)

Bonus £5 to anyone who hears any music championed in The Wire on any street corner.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:13 (nineteen years ago)

But yeah, who are you, byebyepride, and who is frankie?

X-post with Marcello - when I got my new amp last year I put on "Scum" by Bark Psychosis mega loud, opened the window and then went outside and listened to it from the public path underneath my bedroom. Cheating, I know, but still...

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:15 (nineteen years ago)

byebyepride is the poster formerly known as alext. I thought my increasingly Hegelian view of the world might have given me away!!

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:15 (nineteen years ago)

Bark Psychosis a tad too melodic for the Wire these days.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:18 (nineteen years ago)

Aye, I can imagine that - they berated Battles for being "easy listening" or some other such nonsense in the reviews this month! wtf?!

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:22 (nineteen years ago)

"byebyepride is the poster formerly known as alex"

of course! I thought i recognised the irresistible logic at work.

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:22 (nineteen years ago)

the idea of "street culture" is in play here, right? wouldn't he say you were being disengenuous to suggest the proclaimers were street music, that certain music for whatever reason are somehow closer perhaps to it's source of production maybe and thus more binding?

chris martin understands pop, nick.

― acrobat, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:23 (nineteen years ago)

I can go along with Martin understanding pop, I guess Paul.

But... no. As soon as I type that I think Sugababes and Timbaland and Iko Iko and Groove Is In The Heart and M/A/R/R/S and all sorts of other deranged "pop" music. Chris Martin understands something different.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:25 (nineteen years ago)

Chris Martin demonstrated little understanding of pop when Crazy Frog kept "Speedy Sounds" by the Cold Plays off the top slot!

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:27 (nineteen years ago)

Chris Martin understands AOR, if we can draw a lineage of that.

― Scik Mouthy, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:28 (nineteen years ago)

Chris Martin's logical lineage in reverse order would be:
Radiohead
U2
Tears For Fears
ELO
Smokie
Clifford T Ward
Herman's Hermits (circa "My Sentimental Friend")
Four Pennies
Craig Douglas
Dickie Valentine

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:30 (nineteen years ago)

xxxx-post. The Proclaimers was the only example I could think of of music that is genuinely 'popular' around here, i.e. liked by people who don't necessarily like much music, or follow the charts etc., i.e. it is 'street music'. So my argument was drawn from experience / observation rather than an idealist premise about what would be 'close to the people'.

I DO think there is a problem with DS's position in that although he may mean music is 'everywhere' (pace Nick) he really only means 'anywhere' i.e. it's not that all music is 'real' in his sense (otherwise why make the distinction), but that there aren't privileged classes / cultures who make 'real' music. BUT I think the obvious inference to draw from the piece (which I did when I first read it) is that that's what he DOES mean, because he appears to say it, and it's a pseudo-critical commonplace. Which is what got to me about the article in the first place!

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 12:43 (nineteen years ago)

Chris Martin understands rock, pop and comedy only too well and that is the problem.

― blueski, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:02 (nineteen years ago)

Are any of Stelfox's examples there not dance-oriented (in the broad sense of dance)? All the ones I recognize are dance-oriented, which makes me wonder if there is an additional agenda here beyond reflecting what real people listen to out in the streets or in everyday life or whatever.

― Rockist Scientist, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:55 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe real people like to dance?

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:59 (nineteen years ago)

It's pretty clear in the context of the piece that what links those examples is that DS likes them!! It's not saying 'these are the only important types of music' or anything like that, just 'these are moments that have made me passionate about music'. That's the purpose of the column he's contributing to (Epiphanies, at the back of the mag). I wouldn't read too much into it.

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 14:46 (nineteen years ago)

I think you're all giving Stelfox way way more credit than he deserves He means some music isn't "real" and some people aren't "real".
You'd be all over it, rightly, as the bullshit it is if he wasn't one of your own.

― bidfurd, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:38 (nineteen years ago)

If he meant to say some of the more nuanced things you are suggesting he meant he should have said those things, he had the room - a full page.
He's either a bad writer or a cretinous thinker.

― bidfurd, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:41 (nineteen years ago)

Corrected:

Chris Martin's logical lineage in reverse order would be:
Radiohead
U2
Tears For Fears
~~ELO~~ David Bowie
~~Smokie~~Pink Floyd
~~Clifford T Ward~~ Nick Drake
~~Herman's Hermits (circa "My Sentimental Friend")~~ Leonard Cohen
~~Four Pennies~~ The Beatles
~~Craig Douglas~~ Joe Meek
~~Dickie Valentine~~ Frank Sinatra (cirka "Sings For Only The Lonely")

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:52 (nineteen years ago)

Plus there's a bit of a-ha in there too, but a-ha and Tears For Fears aren't too different from each other musically.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:52 (nineteen years ago)

He means some music isn't "real" and some people aren't "real".

If this is what he means, then he also says that he is not real, which at least makes this worth talking about. Perhaps we could have asked him if he hadn't decided this board wasn't 'real' enough for him....!

― byebyepride, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:45 (nineteen years ago)

I've seen a rough draft of Stelfox's next Wire column. Here's an excert:

I'd like to welcome motherfuckers to the back of the mind of Bill
See I'm for real
When deliverin these M.O.P. tactics, I'll bury you bastards
I custom make caskets
The B.G. (told ya nigga) the Y.G. (soldier nigga)
Even the O.G. (cobra nigga) told ya nigga
I may come, with my gun in my hand
to make sure you motherfuckers understand

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:47 (nineteen years ago)

i'm still muddling over the concept of 'pure' hip-hop here. back in a few.

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:55 (nineteen years ago)

"If this is what he means, then he also says that he is not real, which at least makes this worth talking about. "

It might be worth talking about if such an obvious explanation for his thinking didn't present itself; It's Hackney, not Notting Hill and Dancehall not Roots Reggae but he's a trustafarian.

― bidfurd, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 21:06 (nineteen years ago)

HELLO HE'S WRITING FOR "THE WIRE"?

the orpington comment was otm -- it just sounds like a posh travel piece to me. "i have travelled to new york and egypt."

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 21:08 (nineteen years ago)

I think there's a very heavy conflating of "urban AND other" with "real" in the graf in question, as others have noted - this is old news of course, but worth keeping at the front of a reading I think

― Hans Rott, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 22:06 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

Which ageing rock star is among the donors to Conservative Party?
Chris Rea
24.30%
Chris De Burgh
54.49%
Chris Squire, of Yes
21.21%
7761 answers so far. It's Chris 'On The Beach' Rea, who has given £25,000.

just so's you know...

― Mark G, Monday, 1 September 2008 09:22 (seventeen years ago)

What is it about the Conservative Party that is so attractive to aging rock stars called Chris?

― DavidM, Monday, 1 September 2008 09:36 (seventeen years ago)

What a lovely thread.

― Scik Mouthy, Monday, 1 September 2008 10:10 (seventeen years ago)

So he's voting for the people who built the road to hell. Wadda twat.

― Marcello Carlin, Monday, 1 September 2008 11:37 (seventeen years ago)

Tedious petrolhead votes Tory, story at 10.

― The stickman from the hilarious "xkcd" comics, Monday, 1 September 2008 11:48 (seventeen years ago)

Well Screaming Lord Sutch invented garage rock, possibly, and he was somewhere to the right of Hitler as I recall

-- DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Friday, 23 January 2004 15:56 (4 years ago) Link

wow the first post on this thread is like mindblowingly wrong and off the money. (about him inventing it, have no idea about his politics

― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 1 September 2008 18:52 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah can't help you with that one, I think I was trying to be funny but who the fuck even knows. (He wasn't "to the right of Hitler" either, oddly enough, just sort of right-wing)

― DJ Mencap, Monday, 1 September 2008 18:58 (seventeen years ago)

I have sometimes found that the Audities list contains a bit too many typical Southern Bible thumping reactionary Middle Americans. But I guess that's the case with most anything that includes Americans, maybe with the exception of ILM.

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 1 September 2008 19:04 (seventeen years ago)

helpful guide to right-wing rock:

http://taylor-parkes.livejournal.com/22733.html

― internet person, Monday, 1 September 2008 22:39 (seventeen years ago)

Interesting list. The inclusion of The Kinks is a bit unfair though, and it might have been replaced by "Another Day In Paradise" by Phil Collins, which is a perfect example of what it may look like when conservatives are pretending to be "socially conscious".

Also, some of Bob Dylan's most "Bible Thumping" moments. And wasn't there a 50s hit named "Get a Job"?

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 1 September 2008 23:12 (seventeen years ago)

And, hey, no "Ballad Of The Green Berets"? Why? I mean, that is the most obvious inclusion of all!

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 1 September 2008 23:13 (seventeen years ago)

I have sometimes found that the Audities list contains a bit too many typical church-burning reactionary Satanists. But I guess that's the case with most anything that includes Norwegians, maybe with the exception of ILM.

― i fuck mathematics, Monday, 1 September 2008 23:56 (seventeen years ago)

The satanists have never had a major influenced on the outcome of Norwegian elections...

― Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 08:34 (seventeen years ago)

I hope Rea enjoys those Tory rally jam sessions with Busted and Madness.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 08:40 (seventeen years ago)

Hey, it's all the chicken dippers you can eat.

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 09:46 (seventeen years ago)

The satanists have never had a major influenced on the outcome of Norwegian elections...

-- Geir Hongro, Tuesday, September 2, 2008 9:34 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

but they have had some influence? mind boggled.

my Grandad had a side-job delivering yachts to rich people, which was great because they were effectively very well-paid sailing holidays. once in norway he moored the boat and struck up a conversation with a weatherbeaten man standing on the jetty. after a good 30 minutes chat about boats, fish, weather and so on, he asked this chap "what do you do then?" - "Oh, I'm the king of Norway".

</digression>

― Thomas, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 10:08 (seventeen years ago)

This may well be true. The former king, Olav, was even an Olympic sailing champion. :)

― Geir Hongro, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 10:23 (seventeen years ago)

Have you read Pale Fire Geir? I always think of Olav when I read that for some reason.

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 10:42 (seventeen years ago)

six months pass...

hi-caliber, the right-wing rapper.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Monday, 2 March 2009 15:00 (seventeen years ago)

I think I predicted the recession on this thread. And bought a house three months later.

― Sickamous Mouthall (Scik Mouthy), Monday, 2 March 2009 15:41 (seventeen years ago)

"Literally it was like an epiphany, I mean... ten minutes of listening to Michael Savage and my whole views on the world changed."

― ilxor, Monday, 2 March 2009 16:02 (seventeen years ago)

maxpower1013
hahahahahahah
An uneducated guy accidently listens to Savage one day and becomes "conservative." At this point at just feel sorry for them

― Pfunkboy in blood drenched rabbit suit jamming in the woods (Herman G. Neuname), Monday, 2 March 2009 16:04 (seventeen years ago)

camfield

I've always hated rap. It's a cheap way of getting the attention of dim minds. It's definitely not music, and it's a far cry from poetry. To me, it's sort of in the same category as some idiot driving by in his car with the windows down, fancy speakers, and some senseless bit of modern "music" playing at full volume and the bass all the way up.

I suppose next, we'll be having a rap version of the Star Spangled Banner forced upon us at the beginning of sporting events.

― whiney gangrene wit (and what), Monday, 2 March 2009 16:06 (seventeen years ago)

anonymous ad hominen: rap music is the equivalent of some idiot playing rap music

― schlump, Monday, 2 March 2009 16:17 (seventeen years ago)

five years too late, but anyone describing Crass as "extreme left" doesn't know a goddamn thing about their philosophy, their albums, or their lyrics. they hated the extreme left in general and commies in particular.

― sleeve, Monday, 2 March 2009 21:28 (seventeen years ago)

Uhm, you can't get further left than anarchism, sleeve.

― i fuck mathematics, Monday, 2 March 2009 21:38 (seventeen years ago)

so, so wrong. read some more.

― sleeve, Monday, 2 March 2009 21:45 (seventeen years ago)

I suggest Edward Abbey's book of essays for starters, can't remember the title but it's the one with the "In Defense Of Anarchism" essay.

― sleeve, Monday, 2 March 2009 21:47 (seventeen years ago)

If anything, Anarchism is very very very extremely right. Abolish government rule, every man for himself.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, 2 March 2009 21:52 (seventeen years ago)

ten minutes of listening to Michael Savage and my whole views on the world changed.

to be fair, 10 minutes of michael savage could fuck up a lot of people's brains.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Monday, 2 March 2009 21:57 (seventeen years ago)

the social darwinism aspect of anarchy is rather right, but then you've got absolute individual liberty (w/r/t speech, assembly, sexuality, religion, privacy, reproductive rights etc.) which is pretty left.

― now is the time to winterize your manscape (will), Monday, 2 March 2009 22:02 (seventeen years ago)

When you get as far right as anarchy, the morality component is removed.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, 2 March 2009 22:03 (seventeen years ago)

reproductive ~~rights~~ i 'spect with anarchy tho 'rights' don't necessarily come into play

― now is the time to winterize your manscape (will), Monday, 2 March 2009 22:04 (seventeen years ago)

I don't know that many anarchists are that into hyperindividualism (well maybe lots are, but I don't think it's the majority of it), it's often more about small collectives than every man for himself.

― Ralph, Waldo, Emerson, Lake & Palmer (Merdeyeux), Monday, 2 March 2009 22:10 (seventeen years ago)

Because pack mentality is inherent. And in any pack, there's a leader. And out of that comes rules and government. Thus, anarchy is flawed at its core.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, 2 March 2009 22:13 (seventeen years ago)

Actually, if we're looking at anarchism historically (i.e. the beliefs of those who have described themselves as anarchists in the past), it's just as much about the abolition of capitalism as it is about the abolition of the state. In the late 19th and 20th centuries most anarchists tended to support leftist causes such as unionism, anti-fascism, anti-globalization, etc. Anarchism would more literally mean lack of rulers or lack of hierarchy than lack of government per se -- and most anarchists seem to believe in a kind of democratic-socialist collectivism rather than some sort of extreme laissez-faire capitalism (a form of government that, if anything, would lead to even more rigid hierarchies).

― i fuck mathematics, Monday, 2 March 2009 22:44 (seventeen years ago)

I mean, there ARE self-described "anarcho-capitalists", but they're a very recent phenomenon and pretty much hate the sort of anarchists Crass would be. The fact is, whether they want to admit it or not, Crass-style anarchists are pretty solidly on the left, considering the causes they tend to support (anti-capitalism, anti-militarism, anti-racism, etc.).

― i fuck mathematics, Monday, 2 March 2009 22:52 (seventeen years ago)

two years pass...

This goes a but beyond music, but I thought I'd just revive this thread rather than create a 1-reply wonder.

Are there any creative fields/groups/genres, other than maybe country musicians, that are generally conservative? Or even just not liberal-leaning? I ask because everytime someone whines about "liberal Hollywood", it's wonder why creative artists in Hollywood should be any less liberal than artists everywhere else. It's like whining that nuns in the Vatican are religious or something.

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:02 (fourteen years ago)

National Socialist Black Metallers

― dave lool (Noodle Vague), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:04 (fourteen years ago)

NV, as I said above, this goes a but above music

*throws iPhone at the wall*

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:06 (fourteen years ago)

"a but"?

― o. nate, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:08 (fourteen years ago)

Writing novels.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:12 (fourteen years ago)

a but beyond

I'm really good at thread revives btw

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:13 (fourteen years ago)

xpost do you think novelists in general aren't left-leaning?

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:14 (fourteen years ago)

quilters

― Hell. to. the. No. (Matt P), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:14 (fourteen years ago)

scrapbookers

― Hell. to. the. No. (Matt P), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:15 (fourteen years ago)

oh this is ilm i guess

― Hell. to. the. No. (Matt P), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:16 (fourteen years ago)

Quilters and scrapbookers otm, although I bet their relative conservatism is influenced by their being 75 years old.

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:17 (fourteen years ago)

Yes. Ted Nugent immediately comes to mind. He's a right wing extremist which only means he aligns now directly with the Tea Party and radical GOP.

I had a couple videos from a fiat money/goldbug kook who was also a folk artist singing at Ron Paul rallies. Paul attracts lots of musicians. I did a few blog posts on a heavy metal band, Pokerface,
who were extreme right Holocaust deniers who campaigned for him. This became a small source of embarrassment.

The Tea Party attracts a motley collection of artists. All of them generally bad. But it's not restricted to one genre. The badness extends across everything.

There are a lot of confused musicians in the mainstream who are attracted to the weird politics of Alex Jones.

― Gorge, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:20 (fourteen years ago)

There's a lot of Conservatives in Metal if you factor in the apolitical guys with the outspoken wingnuts.

― dave lool (Noodle Vague), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:21 (fourteen years ago)

Or even just not liberal-leaning? I ask because everytime someone whines about "liberal Hollywood",

I hate this phrase because there are tons of movies that have had mad conservative leanings.

― kkvgz, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:24 (fourteen years ago)

yeah, most of them

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:27 (fourteen years ago)

― kkvgz, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:28 (fourteen years ago)

The Nuge, yeah, and there are other isolated examples - chuck norris, charlton heston, that one really unfunny early 90s SNL actress, etc. But I mean entire creative fields. Like if you picked a random sample of 20 playwrights or sculptors or architects, I'm assuming (wrongly) that they would generally lean left. And I think that's true of most artistic/creative pursuits, except for maybe country music, quilters and scrapbookers. So I'm asking, why in the world would anyone expect that Hollywood would be any different?

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:30 (fourteen years ago)

I hate this phrase because there are tons of movies that have had mad conservative leanings.

Yep. This whole stupid revive was brought about by thinking around Dangerous Minds.

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:32 (fourteen years ago)

Because there are many prominent actors and a few prominent directors who talk about their political views to the national news media.

― kkvgz, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:32 (fourteen years ago)

Not many sculptors who do that.

― kkvgz, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:33 (fourteen years ago)

I've never seen Dangerous Minds. What's the conservative slant on it?

― kkvgz, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:34 (fourteen years ago)

Ha, I haven't seen it since it came out, but I just remember that there's a school full of dangerous minds, and only a courageous white woman can teach them how to live

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:37 (fourteen years ago)

I suppose that's not conservative, just really awkward to watch

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:38 (fourteen years ago)

I dunno, the main deal is that most creative fields don't lead to big cash for most practitioners, and big cash and conservatism are positively correlated to say the least.

― Euler, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:39 (fourteen years ago)

I suppose that's not conservative, just really awkward to watch

I was gonna say, "white person gives the minorities a VOICE/DIRECTION" is liberal boilerplate

― Spotify, Spotify me (DJP), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:41 (fourteen years ago)

lol liberal Hollywood

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:42 (fourteen years ago)

Hollywood still makes comedies and dramas starring heterosexual couples getting married, right?

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:44 (fourteen years ago)

xposts Sure, but it seems like the creative-liberal connection comes first, long before money enters the equation.

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:48 (fourteen years ago)

If big cash wasn't involved Hollywood movies would be way more liberal

― President Keyes, Friday, 15 July 2011 17:51 (fourteen years ago)

I dunno about that

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:57 (fourteen years ago)

it's one of the most sexist/racist divisions in the entertainment industry, for one thing

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:58 (fourteen years ago)

how are we defining "liberal" and "conservative" here

― Spotify, Spotify me (DJP), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:58 (fourteen years ago)

From what I've seen so far in the most conventional fashion.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 17:59 (fourteen years ago)

well it just seems so far that "liberal" = "stuff I like" and "conservative" = "stuff I don't like"

― Spotify, Spotify me (DJP), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:00 (fourteen years ago)

Well I don't know, aren't country musicians generally conservative leaning? I could be wrong, but I remember patriotic Toby Keith being huge, and heretical Dixie chicks getting shunned from the community

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 18:10 (fourteen years ago)

we're making vast generalizations here, none of which are really accurate, country included. I could rattle off a bunch of country guys who have held liberal positions about various things over the years.

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:11 (fourteen years ago)

... including Toby Keith, which is the hilarious thing

― Spotify, Spotify me (DJP), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:11 (fourteen years ago)

^^^exactly!

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:12 (fourteen years ago)

I would venture to say country musicians are more liberal than their audience on the whole

― davon cuul II (m bison), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:13 (fourteen years ago)

what's going on here?

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:15 (fourteen years ago)

life

― Spotify, Spotify me (DJP), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:16 (fourteen years ago)

Well I don't know, aren't country musicians generally conservative leaning?

yeah no

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:17 (fourteen years ago)

Tim McGraw's a Dem.

― kkvgz, Friday, 15 July 2011 18:23 (fourteen years ago)

Brad Paisley

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:24 (fourteen years ago)

MIranda Lambert and Blake Shelton

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:24 (fourteen years ago)

there's certainly enough jingoism to go around country music but I wouldn't even call that a conservative trait, really (mostly thinking of Michael Moore's "why didn't we bomb the Saudis?" stance in "Fahrenheit 9/11" here)

― Spotify, Spotify me (DJP), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:25 (fourteen years ago)

What kinds of music do Republicans genuinely enjoy?

― buzza, Friday, 15 July 2011 18:30 (fourteen years ago)

SST always had a pretty strong strain of i guess uh...stoner libertarianism or something...but I always though Chuck Dukowski's quote "anarchy for me, facism for you" was a good a description of modern convervatism as anything

really ugly strains of right wing stuff and racism and stuff throughout thrash and metal, some of the thrash stuff i would imagine being handed down from hardcore punk

― van ingalls wilder (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 15 July 2011 18:35 (fourteen years ago)

cf. Lester Bangs' "The White Noise Supremacists" about racism in the underground punk scene circa 1980.

― o. nate, Friday, 15 July 2011 18:41 (fourteen years ago)

there's certainly enough jingoism to go around country music but I wouldn't even call that a conservative trait, really

I would! but then again I have been nothing but rong in this thread so

― Z S, Friday, 15 July 2011 18:46 (fourteen years ago)

that one really unfunny early 90s SNL actress, etc

She had this hilarious -- but not in the way she meant -- video song called "There's A Communist Living in the White House" which was part of the Pasadena Tea Party operation.

― Gorge, Friday, 15 July 2011 20:30 (fourteen years ago)

"Only Glenn Beck understands me"

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Friday, 15 July 2011 20:52 (fourteen years ago)

"Spread the wealth" is not actually a direct quote from the Communist Manifesto, at least not the translation I have.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Friday, 15 July 2011 20:55 (fourteen years ago)

If big cash wasn't involved Hollywood movies would be way more liberal

― President Keyes, Friday, July 15, 2011 1:51 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

But "Big Business" is always the bad guy in Hollywood! The venal capitalist out to screw everyone over so he can get paid is a trope!

― BIG HOOBA aka the stankdriver (Phil D.), Friday, 15 July 2011 21:35 (fourteen years ago)

Yeah he's usually played by Michael Ironside

― Race Against Rockism (Myonga Vön Bontee), Friday, 15 July 2011 22:51 (fourteen years ago)

The last anti-"big business" movies i can think of are alien trilogy and robocop. i'm trying to think of a more recent example, like maybe jurassic park, but they made attenborough too lovable in that.

― Philip Nunez, Friday, 15 July 2011 23:47 (fourteen years ago)

Generalization from personal experience: all metalheads are stoner libertarians

― thewufs, Saturday, 16 July 2011 00:20 (fourteen years ago)

The last anti-"big business" movies i can think of are alien trilogy and robocop.

What, are you kidding? Off the top of my head I can think of Avatar, Erin Brockovich, A Civil Action and Michael Clayton (three of which were Best Picture nominees), sci-fi crap like Death Race and Rollerball, the Bond flick Quantum of Solace, the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movies . . . if I sat and gave it some thought I bet I could easily come up with 50 or more from the last 10 years.

― BIG HOOBA aka the stankdriver (Phil D.), Saturday, 16 July 2011 00:29 (fourteen years ago)

Wall-E...

― Josef K-Doe (WmC), Saturday, 16 July 2011 00:35 (fourteen years ago)

victoria jackson is a vintage ws of shame

― dave barry (absolutely clean glasses), Saturday, 16 July 2011 00:40 (fourteen years ago)

Obviously a lot of conservative people like "conservative" music, just as a lot of radicals like "conservative" music as well. And the other way round too.

― Hongroe (Geir Hongro), Saturday, 16 July 2011 07:34 (fourteen years ago)

Suggest Ban Permalink

MIranda Lambert and Blake Shelton

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 15, 2011 2:24 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

Is he for real liberal though? I just checked out one of his records from the library and it had some dumb line about "rebel flag flying" that didn't sound too apologetic about it. What's his deal, really?

― grit of ad hominem (kkvgz), Friday, 22 July 2011 23:20 (fourteen years ago)

Hollywood lol. Isn't it Hollywood career suicide to come out too early?

― owenf, Friday, 22 July 2011 23:48 (fourteen years ago)

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