Prog-Rock Politics

As far as socio-politics, I was never interested in the political
views of musicians, but Jethro Tull's lyrics could be quite effective
anti-establishment tracts.

The review excerpted above I suppose is just proof that boring ideologues a/ can be fans of any music genre and b/ read their own meaning into any text.

I think this quote undermines any pretensions the reviewer has to intellectually challenging Mr Stump. As Pashmina said, s/he's just peeved cos he likes Soft Machine better than ELP.

Question fixed.

ELP and Crimson seemed kind of Tory.

Yes--I can discern not only no ideology but no ideas of any kind. Nice sounds, though.

I can kinda see the fellow's point, though. Henry Cow and the Cambridge school of proggers were pretty different from Yes/ELP/Tull. Henry Cow comes straight out of Zappa, Beefheart, various serialists and so forth. So I think they were definitely smarter. So I guess they were a species of English Marxism? I dunno. It's all rather boring to me. At least Kevin Ayers wrote extensively about drinking lots of wine in the south of France, and Robert Wyatt covered Chic...whereas Peter Gabriel thought he was getting funky by hiring the Memphis Horns. Yawn. It took Eno and Roxy to blow away all that bad air out of the "progressive" rock movement and give it back the people, as it were, so I hardly see how the Marxist ideals of either the players or the reviewers really means anything in the long run. Not that I'm not in agreement with Marx on several rather big issues...

Well, maybe not while he was in Soft Machine--but not too far off, either. Wyatt's ideologies were pretty overt by Matching Mole's Little Red Records (e.g. "Righteous Rhumba", "Gloria Gloom", "God Song").

Leftist, I should say

Canterbury?

This all smacks of a revisionist argument. Inasmuch as anyone at the time was classifying things by "ideology" (they weren't), all you really had, to the (smallish) extent it was even mulled over was UFO Club/International Times Young and Beautiful Progressive-leaning Hippies vs. the Old Guard (Harold Wilson and Cliff Richard and the like). The only explicitly Marxist - or, more specifically, Maoist - rumblings I can recall from the time (not that I was there) would be from AMM - and even that was more Cornelius Cardew than the rest of the group. True, this collectivist/ideological notion eventually did go into the heads of people like Robert Wyatt and the Henry Cow crowd, but these notions are not even explicitly addressed until later (after progressive rock's heyday). Henry Cow's "Marxist" lp, 'In Praise of Learning' came out in 1975; Wyatt really doesn't become an all-out Marxist on record until his Rough Trade period during the post-punk era, a time when other former "Canterbury"-associated people like This Heat and (ex-Henry Cow) Art Bears also exist.

Very informative comments above about the varities of English Toryism, thanks!

-- Squirrel_Police (goblinatri...), April 16th, 2004.

Maybe they should be, maybe they shouldn't, but these things matter in Britain

Rock On.

Btw 'small island'?? Do you realise Britain is the 6th largest island on the globe? Out of tens of thousands? You really are witless aint ya?

Why have some people on ILM become so hostile lately?

They weren't overt, Wyatt was not a confirmed Marxist until after the first part of his solo career was over, as you point out. He was kind of dipping his toe in the waters with Matching Mole and was more modishly lefty, "Little Red Record" was more of a cute joke than a serious political statement.

The only explicitly Marxist - or, more specifically, Maoist - rumblings I can recall from the time (not that I was there) would be from AMM - and even that was more Cornelius Cardew than the rest of the group.

Not strictly true as Keith Rowe was involved in the same political group as Cardew and gave up playing "elitist" music in AMM to play dreadful "workers'" music alonside Cardew. Silly boy!

Now who is Edward Macan?

http://gnosis2000.net/

http://www.progressiveears.com

http://gnosis2000.net/reviews/magma.htm

and those Jestersaurus web-zines that they did for a while (and which are on the site) are great. really informative stuff. and some of the reviews are great! really funny stuff.

Good site for multiple stances on the same albums - just wish they updated more often. (oh and I have reviews there too)

Gnosis is a great resource - especially check Eric Lumbleau and Craig Shropshire if you're into prog on the avant end.

btw, just clicking through on some of these sites led me to this non-sequitous discovery and I can't think of any other thread to post it to, so:

Maestro exists because the Gravitars say it must.

"Technology has now advanced far enough for Maestro to exist," Mike Oldfield.

http://www.mikeoldfield.com/flash/maestro.html

check out the screenshots, I am losing my mind

or blaming a random a random Brit for belonging to a small island whose inflated
sense of importance is about 100 years out-of-date?

Inconsistency is such a useful thing.

Why do people still respond to Squirrel Police?
-- Tep (te...), April 9th, 2004.

More fool me. But you are the worst arsehole on this forum.

PS The adjective qualifies the noun you emptyheaded piece of shit!

x-post noodle okay that's it sorry. I am enjoying reading this thread, which is how I got myself onto it in the first place.

Web fans boost Marillion single

Rock band Marillion look poised to enter the UK top five with their new single after a sustained campaign among fans on their website.
Retailer HMV's online arm has received a record 4,400 pre-orders for the song You're Gone, which is out on Monday.

It could become their biggest hit since Kayleigh, a number two success in 1985, according to HMV.

Marillion singer Steve Hogarth urged fans to buy at least three copies of the single to get it into the top 10.

You could dig deep, get into eight quid's worth of debt and buy three copies or more of our single

Steve Hogarth
On the band's website, Hogarth said: "By our calculations, in the current UK single market, if you go out and buy one single each, we'll go top 40. If you go out and buy two versions, we'll go top 20.

"If, however, you'd like to make an old dog very happy, you could dig deep, get into eight quid's worth of debt and buy three copies or more of our single.

"We'd almost certainly go top 10 and I'd have my first ever top 10 single just before my 45th birthday!"

The song is available on two CD singles and a DVD single with a combined retail cost of almost £8.

'Loyal support'

Marillion spokeswoman Lucy Jordache said: "Whatever chart position You're Gone achieves will largely due to the fans' loyal support of the band.

"We hope that this will enable other people to hear the music and get into the band."

The band's fans are renowned for their loyalty. In 1997 they raised $60,000 (£32,000) to help finance a North American tour.

Marillion were among the first to embrace the internet as a means of marketing and selling their records, and communicating with fans.

HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said the campaign had led to the most orders on its retail website since its launch in 1997, beating the previous best of 4,000 for the Stereophonics' Moviestar in February.

Anyway, I lost interest when Fish left.

Wonder if Status Quo will try the same tactic.

>Inconsistency is such a useful thing.

Actually, I haven't blamed de or accused him of anything. I did call him
Mr. Douche Bag, but that's an honorific around these here parts. I simply
pointed out that Britain is an amusing little shithole, although no doubt there are
many sterling examples of humanity floating around on the surface.

Now TEP's an areshole. The grammar police takes no prisoners,
I see.

I give up.

Yet another potentially interesting ILM thread flushed down the toilet by you know who. (sigh)

...And there is no good book on Krautrock. ;)

Thanks!

Whats the story behind Toyal Wilcox's right wing leanings?

P and indeed shaw! what does this mean?

is anyone else here aware of the musical tastes of a cohort of John Tyndall (notorious British neo-Nazi leader) named Andrew Bower?

Actually, aren't we all full of contradictions, meaning that a) anti-asylum seeker racists will whole-heartedly cheer the liberation of France and b) listen to 'black people's music' while they do it and c) my local 'sexiest dance and r'n'b station uses Kula Shaker's 'Hey Dude' as backing for one of its things AND played Tattva during its golden hour segment recently.

i don't know which of the many prog threads to bump, so i'm going to bump this one

i was reading peter blegvad's wikipedia entry and came across this lengthy anecdote:

"Blegvad would later reveal (in an interview for the Hearsay fanzine) that "the piece that got me kicked out was "Living in the Heart of the Beast". I was assigned the task for the collective to come up with suitable verbals, and I wrote two verses about a woman throwing raisins at a pile of bones. Tim Hodgkinson just said, I'm sorry, this is not at all what we want. And he wrote reams of this political tirade. I admired his passion and application but it left me cold. I am to my bones a flippant individual, I don't know why I was created thus or what I'm trying to deny, but it clashed with the extreme seriousness. People who take themselves very seriously make me giggle, unless they're pointing a weapon at me or my loved ones".[1]"

1. "living in the heart of the beast" is a fucking fantastic song.
2. it would be better if it were about a woman throwing raisins at a pile of bones
3. i will never quite forgive henry cow for breaking up slapp happy.

1. Yes.
2. No. I like the words.
3. Maybe.

fuck it, let's do this here, past the (whole) point of no return (cheeky Wyatt reference innit)

notwithstanding that the ukpol thread has radicalised its posters not into IS or any Baader-Meinhof cell but merely into being total wankers, it does seem that for the politically-straitened, any hint of prog or indie 'excess' codes as somehow centrist or anti-revolutionary, even when coming out of the mouth of someone as blatantly left-wing and anti-establishment as Richard Dawson

i don't really have much of a point beyond this, but it is curious how artists of bygone eras like Wyatt or the RIO gang are rightly hailed as firebrands, but contemporary artists who mix musical complexity with politics are being dismissed by a noisy subsection of the boards as posers

i think you're misreading me, obviously i can't speak for alph. most of my complaints have been "not interesting enough".

and that's fine on its own but that wasn't exactly what you said iirc

look i don't want to fight you NV and 'total wankers' is affectionate exasperation more than FRIENDSHIP ENDED WITH but we can't go cancelling all of indie rock is my point here

i'm not asking anybody else to cancel it but as a style now it's largely regressive and yeah reactionary and that seems to me at odds with bold claims about politics etc - which as far as i'm concerned are never really a reason to enjoy a piece of music on their own anyway.

it's not unlike some of the twee-er, keep calm end of let's be generous and call them the "nice" wing of the soft left. in amongst all the affectionate slightly self-lampooning takes on their own class status or vision of nationhood they end up reflecting or playing with the same ideas as the people they're allegedly against.

i was unnecessarily gruff yesterday which kind of started out as joke trolling but my hangover picked it up and ran with it, and i'm sorry for that. didn't mean to come across actually nasty. a couple of caveats tho. it's not unheard of for you and some of the other ilm friends of meat and potatoes rock and roll to be disparaging about other acts or genres you don't really get, so y'know, fair play. and really it's not hard to dismiss me or anybody else doing a tired old "lol indie" shtick on a bad day. i mean it's there to be lolled at, sometimes.

i reserve the right to draw idiosyncratic rules about what does or doesn't suck and personally i don't like most "this sucks" nonsense but sometimes i don't know what the hell, scratch the itch.

politics thread is a whole nother conversation for another time and place, all i can say is that some of the radicalisation and yeah tedious fucking repetition of the same angry sloganeering comes from a place of having felt under attack from alleged allies and genuine tiredness and despair and irl precarious terror.

...my point being that those emotions are precisely those being discussed in that indie rock song you repeatedly laid into

and sure, I've been known to be a bit quick to judgement before - even perhaps once or twice during this EOY rundown - but I'd like to think that having said my bit I've gotten more accustomed to both leaving it be and also listening to others' reasons for why I'm wrong

a more sophisticated musical style does not equate directly onto a softer and more collaborationist politics

The problem isn't political music, the problem is indie music.

"but we can't go cancelling all of indie rock is my point here"

Why not? If the music is bad then why do I owe any of my time to listen to it?

yeah i mean how many times can i say "it's not more sophisticated" and y'know sophistication be damned anyway, i wouldn't describe his prior stuff as sophisticated but it felt, at least, more personal

i mean i think the idea that lumbering along with a few off-tune blues chords is inherently "more sophisticated" than something else might be an ish for me

"notwithstanding that the ukpol thread has radicalised its posters not into IS or any Baader-Meinhof cell but merely into being total wankers"

Sure am a wanker for seeing through the bullshit of tactical voting. Maybe my politics will be actually radical someday, like the um, IS.

What's this all about >:(

It's from the tracks thread.

Not sophisticated, knew that was a bad word. I was in a hurry and being talked to by a client. More...idk, melodic? Knotty? Prog?

What about calling IS radical, was that bad too?

I don't want to speak on anyone else's behalf but I didn't get the impression anyone was arguing Richard Dawson's music was reactionary *because* it's complex (or knotty or 'difficult' or anything along those lines)? I mean there are aspects of the criticism I don't agree on (I like Dawson's recent stuff a lot!) but I don't think that was the gist of it.

No idea what this is about and not going to trawl through a 3000-post thread to find out, but:

1. "living in the heart of the beast" is a fucking fantastic song.
2. it would be better if it were about a woman throwing raisins at a pile of bones
3. i will never quite forgive henry cow for breaking up slapp happy.

1. Yes
2. I quite enjoy the clumsy didacticism of the lyrics but yes it would have been better on a raisin theme.
3. That's like blaming the new flame for breaking up a marriage, it was probably written in the tea-leaves anyway.

A friend read the Henry Cow book so I didn't have to, apparently Fred Frith was a king shagger and it was all a bit dysfunctional, so much for revolution eh

I don't want to speak on anyone else's behalf but I didn't get the impression anyone was arguing Richard Dawson's music was reactionary *because* it's complex (or knotty or 'difficult' or anything along those lines)? I mean there are aspects of the criticism I don't agree on (I like Dawson's recent stuff a lot!) but I don't think that was the gist of it.

― Gavin, Leeds, Friday, 31 January 2020 15:23 (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I guess this wasn't quite it either, although Weyes Blood also drew criticisms based on her musical stylings. While she and Dawson obviously hark back in their music, you can't call either reactionaries - there are far too many modern or idiosyncratic touches in the production and composition to say that they're simply rehashing old ground. What they certainly have in common is a way with a complicated melody, which is why I drew the inference that this might be the off-putting element. They're both very maximalist and they don't keep it simple - on top of them operating within supposedly dead genres, I really do think a lot of the opprobrium comes from a place of wanting music that doesn't fuck around

I think at the time Blegvad was quoted as saying, "The Cow is full of bull".

Matt DC and others were hailing Billie Eilish as sweeping in a new ultra-minimalist aesthetic that's supposedly going to dominate the 2020s - I do wonder if ILX might have bought into that narrative a bit much. I don't think the 2010 pop narrative was nearly as maximal ist as they think, and there's a lot of directions maximalist pop hasn't really tried yet (tt said to me last night that she thinks a big theme this year will be overt genre-blending, a la Poppy). And then there's yer Herndons and Gatelys and their computers. I'm not saying Eilish is leading us to a dead end, but...well, by definition there's less you can do with minimalism. Let's see

I think Dawson got attacked because comrade alphabet didn't read the lyrics and thought it was about exercising.

It's the first thing I do before listening to a song, read the lyrics.

I thought it was just because he's shit tbh

Probably a melt cunt as well! I heard he once talked to a racist!

stop embarrassing yourself.. Louis

I think Weyes Blood and Dawson are two really different artists. Dawson comes from a folk background, and at least his last few records has been made with community and solidarity in mind. 2020 might sound like a prog-influenced indie-rock album, but to me it's pretty clearly a leftist attempt to make a rock album that both sounds contemporary, and can actually matter to people today. Instead of just being a punk rehash or something. I'm not sure I can figure out where Weyes Blood fits politically, but it's more baroque retro-indie to me. Yeah, a few contemporary strokes, but I feel like it's less than some would like it to be. I think there was a pitchfork review where it was pointed out that she wore modern shoes on the cover, and that showed how the whole thing is a mix of new and old. It's not really, it really wouldn't sound that crazy on radio in the seventies. But the hits are undeniable to me.

She fits politically next to Bernie Sanders, hence the picture that got posted to the 77 thread, and comes from an explicitly folk background - listen to her last-but-one album The Innocents. Obviously there are differences in style and subject matter, but even there, both explicitly deal with issues of loneliness and fragmentation in late capitalism

They both also explicitly have drawn influence from medieval music

Working class music is the music the working class listens to. Which, as we all know, is homogenous and easy to pinpoint because all working class people listen to the same music. Glad to have cleared that up for y'all.

both explicitly deal with issues of loneliness and fragmentation in late capitalism

She got that bit from Harry Nilsson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sJj4KTFC_Y

Morton Feldman:

My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a proletarian street, on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. . . . He was on the second floor and we were looking out the window, and he said, “What about the man on the street?” At that moment . . . Jackson Pollock was crossing the street. The crazy artist of my generation was crossing the street at that moment.

listen to her last-but-one album The Innocents.

I'm sorry, but I only listen to music if it's been bnm'd by p4k.

No, just kidding, I'll give it a listen.

I don't want to speak on anyone else's behalf but I didn't get the impression anyone was arguing Richard Dawson's music was reactionary *because* it's complex (or knotty or 'difficult' or anything along those lines)? I mean there are aspects of the criticism I don't agree on (I like Dawson's recent stuff a lot!) but I don't think that was the gist of it.

― Gavin, Leeds, vendredi 31 janvier 2020 10:23 (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This certainly came up, though (not specifically wrt Dawson):

Prog is the word here. Middle-class notions of complextiy.

Anyway, I definitely don't think this stuff is more reactionary and regressive than retro-80s Eurotrash or tbh commercial pop music but the dumbass 'stuff white people like' conflation of anything that seems 'cultured' or 'refined' with social/class privilege and, conversely, of vulgar aesthetics with some some kind of lower-class struggle, regardless of the actual class position of the people involved, is a longstanding peeve of mine.

the dumbass 'stuff white people like' conflation of anything that seems 'cultured' or 'refined' with social/class privilege and, conversely, of vulgar aesthetics with some some kind of lower-class struggle

It's also unspeakably condescending.

Richard Dawson serves imperialism

Working class music is the music the working class listens to. Which, as we all know, is homogenous and easy to pinpoint because all working class people listen to the same music. Glad to have cleared that up for y'all.

― pomenitul, Friday, 31 January 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I thought working class music was juvenalia?

For the 95834903th time, you may want to *read* other people's comments before replying to them.

If only because I didn't use that word and it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Rubbing salt in the wound, or is that a joke? I can't tell anymore.

Richard Dawson serves imperialism

― frederik b. godt (jim in vancouver)

In general I am going to steer clear of this argument but I got this! I did a lol!

(Also Art Bears rule as much as Slapp Happy do, so I would be totally unable to make a real choice there)

Anyway, I didn't vote in the poll but this butthurt revival is bought to you by the same person who basically said your choices in that poll were, more likely than not, terrible. The bigger joke is that all along were batting for THIS.

And when anyone (such as myself) had a problem with it was basically oh it's just our LJ now casting himself as the poor soldier in a fight for so called complex music us lot can't begin to comprehend.

Well I've seen no evidence to the contrary

that kenny g article in jacobin made a big impact on me too

You want evidence-based discussions talk to Fred

Anyway, I didn't vote in the poll but

Alphie, I'd like you to demonstrate to us, the audience, how and why 'Baby Are You Coming?' is essentially 'working class music'. I would also like you to clarify your grounds for arguing that merely disliking that song and deeming it 'juvenile' – and 'unsexy' (can't leave that one out) – as I did on the tracks rollout thread is an instance of elitist contempt towards the proletariat in general.

― Wuhan!! Got You All in Check (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 31 January 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I just want to read the thread without the pain!

Super awesome that you're totally not trolling imago yet can't keep from tripping over your own feet when responding to literally anyone else

you guys really don't like Family Feud huh

Can somebody tell poster Drugs A. Money I am not replying to him? Thanks. No offence, just don't want to trip.

Smooth😎

👍

was dreamily hoping for 54 new posts about the henry cow book but I'll take what i can get

no dunts
no libs
no prog-rock politics

we kick LJ just for fun?

We kick starmer/lj/rentoul/fred b for fun?

From Cardew to Dog Eat Dog, I'm a man of catholic tastes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progg

pleased to meet you, I hope you know my name

xp

no dunts
no libs
no prog-rock politics

― frederik b. godt (jim in vancouver), Friday, January 31, 2020 8:10 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

underrated post

it wasn't!

you never know where your prog will go
prog politics
prog politics
prog politics
prog politics

Cheers,
Raindancer.

― Raindancer, Thursday, April 15, 2004 2:53 AM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Richard Dawson serves imperialism

― frederik b. godt (jim in vancouver)

OTM

"Here you go, a steaming plate of imperialism"

-Richard Dawson

no dunts
no libs
no prog-rock politics

A+++

"We shall now demonstrate our solidarity with the proletariat by playing a bassoon solo in 13/8 time" - Robert Wyatt (or was it Ian Anderson?) on Henry Cow.

It's off-kilter, just like economic precariousness.

'It's off-kilter, just like economic precariousness'

I'm stealing this line for an article on the cinema of Sean Baker

As long as you also compare it to prog-rock, you have my blessing.

"We shall now demonstrate our solidarity with the proletariat by playing a bassoon solo in 13/8 time" - Robert Wyatt (or was it Ian Anderson?) on Henry Cow.

Slightly embarrassing, but I thought it was me who said that on ILX?

Hi Robert, it's an honour to make your virtual acquaintance.

Haha I might be confusing a couple of quote sources there! Shall we not mention Magma btw?

ok, i'm gonna put it out there, i think this whole line of criticism is bullshit. "making art for the proletariat", fucking hell you'd think none of us had the example of socialist realism. it's kitsch, ok? socialist realism is kitsch, it's frequently demeaning and insulting propaganda. the sarcastic cardew references in this thread - you know, does anybody really think his post-scratch orchestra music was a good idea?

this idea of a "bassoon solo in 13/8", how is this different from looking at arugula or whatever as somehow an "elitist" food? lindsay cooper wasn't "a bassoon", she was lindsay cooper, she was expressing her truth as a radical queer woman and what, that's somehow less valid because she played the bassoon?

does anybody really think his post-scratch orchestra music was a good idea?

It has its defenders. John Tilbury for one.

rush utterly otm, of course.

Just to play devil's advocate, I guess you could come up with a statistics-based argument about the listening habits of specific socioeconomic communities and extrapolate from there but I don't find that very helpful if the conclusion is an eminently essentialist and conservative one, i.e. 'this is what background x listens to', as though there were no room for variation and, indeed, queer life experiences in particular.

I mean, if we were just going by anecdotal experience, I would probably say that Rush and Pink Floyd ARE working class music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIGKlicb8n0

(Rush and rush both obv OTM, though.)

lol, well played.

tilbury's biography of cardew reminds me a bit of THE CROWN actually: a deep dive into a life which quietly but mordantly outlines its increasingly isolation within absurdity and i think sadness while paying mind to the rich complexity (and immobility) of many of the issues surrounding it, and doing justice to cardew's own seriousness of mind even when he was wildly wrong. so i'd push back a bit against rush's "obviously he was a patronising idiot! nothing to see here!" -- well, no, he really wasn't, he was struggling with an issue which it's easy to run away from, which is basically education. to argue that other ppl are being patronising i think you have to engage with the strongest version of their thinking (even when it's extremely tangled and contradictory in its evolution) and not just a message-board cartoon (even then that's excellent handy fun and i am as kneejerkily prey to it as anyone reading lol). it's not as if cardew dispensed with the combative high-seriousness and polemical rigour of the darmstadt avant-garde -- he just transferred his wars into the intra-party squabbling of the ever-shrinking splinter groupuscules of the UK maoist movement of the 70s. probably it was a waste of mind in both places, but it's not like it's something the classical avant-garde was otherwise innocent of -- stockhausen said and believed a bunch of dumb things about the motral-political value of his work also. and actually didn't the guiltiest parties when it comes to very rude message-board beef (ok i mainly mean boulez, permanbanned from ilx in the very early days) also run into a creative wall innovationwise at some point in the 70s?

as far as i know cardew never broke with the scratch orchestra or with the idea of the scratch orchestra -- and one of the SO's hinge-points, aside from the help that the better musicians gave the weaker ones, and the unskewed insight that the weaker musicians occasionalt gave the overttained ones, was the question of *which* works were good works for SO to perform (it's interesting for example the riley's in c was a staple, a piece that relatively unsophisticated players can give excellent (as in interesting) performances of, bcz its subtleties are generative and unexpected rather than on-page complex, present in the output rather than best grasped via score-reading on (= opaque if you don't read music and if ordinary music education omits to engage with them anyway).

s/b even WHEN that's excellent handy fun plus some other stupid typos which are more easily decoded 🙄

as far as i know cardew never broke with the scratch orchestra or with the idea of the scratch orchestra

Not sure about this tbh, can't remember - however, apart from Stockhausen and Cage, the other person who gets a severe kicking in "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism" is Cornelius Cardew!

tbh i'm a bit rusty on the details of which very sharp corner was taken when -- i wrote a piece for a crafts council exhibition in 2013 abt the parallels between CC and his dad michael (who was a famous potter, if there can be famous potters) and how both of them chose to move from the high-profile high arts circuilt to small and local education (MC ran a workshop kiln in nigeria, CC did a lot of youth work). i think this is definitely extremely relevant to CC's latterday output. but i don't have the ideological details at my fingertips any more.

http://www.soundmatters.org.uk/content/documents/exhibition-guide/CC_SM_guide.pdf (you have to scroll down to page 7 for me, and the final sentence is weirdly screwed up)

(who was a famous potter, if there can be famous potters)

Careful there, you'll make Keith cry (it doesn't take much)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK_2t_kd5XU

It's the first thing I do before listening to a song, read the lyrics.

Before listening to a song? No. Before typing a sweeping dismissal of the lyrics? Perhaps.

Seeking out and reading lyrics to a song you don't like seems a strange pursuit though.

Mike Barnes - A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & The 1970s (March 5, 2020)
Music journalist Mike Barnes (MOJO, The Wire, Prog, and author of the acclaimed biography Captain Beefheart) goes back to the birth of progressive rock and surveys the cultural conditions and attitudes that fed into, and were in turn affected by, this remarkable musical phenomenon. He examines the myths and misconceptions that have grown up around progressive rock and paints a vivid, colourful picture of the Seventies based on hundreds of hours of his own interviews with musicians, music business insiders, journalists and DJs, and from the personal testimonies of those who were fans of the music in that extraordinary decade.

https://images.roughtrade.com/product/images/files/000/186/307/hero/Omnibus_Omnibus.jpg?1577747154

so i'd push back a bit against rush's "obviously he was a patronising idiot! nothing to see here!"

― mark s

hell, mark, i'd push back against that statement. "insincere" is one of the last words i would ever think of to describe cardew - he was very obviously sincere, excruciatingly so. the other side of my rejection of "authenticity" criticism is that I think music can be honest and sincere while at the same time being condescending, didactic, and trite. to put it in a fairly offensive and tasteless way, just because clapton's kid died doesn't mean i have to consider "tears in heaven" great art.

(for the record i'm not personally much taken with cardew's work with AMM or with the Scratch Orchestra! i recognize it's conceptually interesting but i don't find it particularly listenable - and that's not a blanket dismissal of EAI)

so if we're not going to talk about magma, how about univers zero, who i've seen described as doggedly apolitical. of course even that description is challenging - offshoot band present released that hamfisted "new atheist" track "delusions" in 1998, and honestly, less so in the '70s than now certainly but being inspired by lovecraft is an inherently political act, just like being inspired by wagner (or coltrane!) is.

lol i just found this in the youtube comments to HYMNEN

Paul Buckmaster (2 years ago (edited))
Maxwell Clark: It is Cardew who is the imperialist; he understands nothing of Stockhausen, whom I knew personally, and whose music I introduced to Miles Davis, May 1972, while collaborating with Davis on the "On The Corner" Sessions (including "Ife"). I had brought LPs of Gruppen, Mixtur, Hymnen., as well as Wuorinen's "Time's Encomium". Davis had them playing all day, over a week, on his autochanger. He couldn't get enough, and recognized KHS as the towering genius he truly is. Cardew, as typical of any dyed-in-the-wool British imperialist — cleverly, but not quite-so-cleverly — twists the discourse into falsehood and mere puerile calumny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buckmaster

(arranged the strings for space oddity among many other things, he actually died in 2017, maybe posting this comment finished him off)
(probably this belongs on another thread but this is where we were just talking abt cardew so)

Dayum.

this version of hymnen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDxpa-XPMTo

Ridiculous though it may be to portray Cardew as an accomplice to British imperialism, it is indeed remarkable to note that Stockhausen briefly mattered to one of the greatest African American musicians of all time (alternatively: to one of the greatest musicians of all time who happened to be African American).

honestly that's something i've never been able to understand, how it was _stockhausen_ of all the composers who blew the minds of the rock and jazz worlds collectively back in the late '60s, early '70s. i'd hire his press agent in a minute.

You mean, over and above Ligeti or Boulez or Carter or…?

MD's stockhausen fandom isn't new info particularly -- ian carr talks abt it pp258-59 if the 1984 paladin edn of his miles davis -- and actually i see that buckmaster is also mentioned on those same pages, inc.the possibility that PB introduced MD to those very records (he certainly caused them to be around at that point, and discussed knowledgeably, tho it's apparently likely MD was already aware of what KS sounded like)

buckmaster is accurately afaik described as a pupil of UK 12-toner humphrey searle but the all-important major tom/elton john connection is sadly not made :)

(i am listening to hymnen precisely bcz i'm currently looking into aspects of rushomancy's question: ignoring any specific musical conundra he was choosing to confront, i suspect two parts of the answer are KS's own personal charm and charisma (considerable, he was in many ways his own press agent) but also the wide availability of his work on deutsche grammaphon from c.1961

The hippie/proto-New Age stylings of his mid to late 60s 'intuitive' music in particular no doubt helped broker him a wider audience (cf. Aus den sieben Tagen and Stimmung).

*helped him broker

You mean, over and above Ligeti or Boulez or Carter or…?

― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul)

or cage! it seems like nobody would talk about cage without dismissing him as a cheap punchline. fucking ridiculous!

It is Cardew who is the imperialist; he understands nothing of Stockhausen, whom I knew personally,

I suspect Cornelius Cardew knew Stockhausen a lot better, personally, than Paul Buckmaster.

lol I deliberately didn't mention Cage because I find his music profoundly uninteresting as a listening experience, barring an exception or two. But the intervening years certainly haven't agreed with me, so perhaps it's some form of justice.

xp

Aside from the reasons given so far, Stockhausen also worked far more with electronics than any of those, except possibly Cage, so it makes sense that musicians who were exploring electric instrumentation might have looked to him. There's also just the powerful visceral impact of some of his music.xps

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Musique concrète's protagonists don't appear to have been as 'marketable' fwiw.

Wrt Cage, I can see why jazzers might not have been taken by a guy who scorned improvisation and rockers might not have identified with
ideas of non-expression/non-intention. That said, Zappa and Patrick Moraz appeared on the 1993 Chance Operation tribute and a number of rockers have worked with the prepared piano.

Stockhausen was a pioneer wrt live electronics, which seems significant.

lol I deliberately didn't mention Cage because I find his music profoundly uninteresting as a listening experience, barring an exception or two.

― toilet-cleaning brain surgeon (pomenitul)

this is how i feel about stockhausen!

That's totally fair. The thing too is that both composers' outputs are so massive that there is likely much that could tip the balance either way were I to hear it.

Love both, although it took me a little while with Stockhausen.

To go back to this thread's original premise, part of me feels like Stockhausen is a prime candidate for proggiest major postwar composer, if only because of his penchant for high-minded yet unintentionally silly conceptual grand narratives. Berio, too, but for completely different reasons (mostly having to do with proto-polystylism).

also his penchant for quilting together traditions, which is key to what makes prog "progressive" imo: not just the world-music tape-tapestries (telemusik and hymnen are distortion-heavy cousins to all you need is love) but also his constant drive towards at combining competing elements in the avant-garde (composed serialism, musique concrete, electronic composition, live electronic manipulation of all the above, plus some cheekily unacknowledged thefts from the early minimalists, and -- post his starvation-tantrum to persuade his wife to return to him in 1968 -- free improvisation)

Played not bad jazz piano, in his spare time, so I believe.

Wouldn't be surprised given his son Markus's musical path.

also indeterminacy of course