Prog-Rock Politics

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).