the THING about Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes is that, #1, it is one of the most melodically satisfying songs I've ever heard and that's why it was one of the first FOB songs I actually listened to of my own free choice, and #2, it makes people crazy insane bc so many of the lyrics simply make zero sense on a surface level EXCEPT "I'm half doomed and you're semi sweet" which IMMEDIATELY gets across its point and acts as a thesis statement to the song, thus allowing an understanding of the rest of the lyrics to fall into place

Why 'Smile' is The Beach Boys'- and Brian Wilson's magnum opus

The Beach Boys, for many decades have had something of an identity crisis- the band mainly seen in mainstream as the fun & sun loving surfer band, soon gained newfound acclaim for the landmark production of Pet Sounds and saw growing interest in the band's (and Brian Wilson's) extremely tumultuous and even tragic history simultaneously. Smile manages to touch upon all of this at once, as we see the stunning transformation from the small teenage-led garage band in Hawthorne becoming musical and cultural icons.

What was planned to be a album meant to top Pet Sounds & The Beatles' soon-to-be album Sgt. Pepper- Smile has seen one of the most consequential episodes in all of rock history, But beside the legends & the endless debates surrounding it...what about the album itself? (For numerous reasons I talk about here, the 19-track, three-movement version on The Smile Sessions is the version (I believe) people should go to to experience their first listen with if you want the Beach Boys version of it- and is what this review is based on).

Truth be told, I do think Smile actually ties Pet Sounds for their best work, because its existence makes it so hard for me to choose *just* one album considered to be their best. And even if you never knew the album's history, the original songs easily represent the absolute culmination of Brian Wilson's then-only 5-year long career as a songwriter, composer, producer, and innovator in the industry- and he was only 23 when he started Smile.

For all the growing concerns that the Boys weren't cool or heavy enough during the 60s, and even though the album leans more on the experimental- Smile is still unapologetically Beach Boys in its sound, staying on-brand and allowing us a comfortable way to listen to newer, even challenging musical ideas. Brian's radically experimental composition chops are shown in full, dizzying force- with Smile, Brian was creating editing and production techniques that were so new and novel at the time, it would rarely be attempted again until digital music editing was more common decades later. The music world was his playground, and he was ready to try anything.

Some people may lament certain tracks (like "Holidays") are majority instrumental (due to the album being unfinished)- especially in comparison to Brian's solo version, but this is nothing new: Most Beach Boys albums up to this point had instrumental tracks where Brian tried new compositions, and Pet Sounds & Smile was no exception. But where Pet Sounds evolved instrumentals into *compositions* to fit the album's flow- Smile takes it several steps further. It (unintentionally) sets a positive example that not every song in an album- nor the album itself, needs to be conventional in any way. It was a bold new world and experiment for rock music- why be dogmatic with established rules?

If "Good Vibrations" was a 'Pocket Symphony', then Smile is the symphony itself and these songs are Brian's compositions, and like with editing, tried everything and used various levels of instruments and non-instruments to create a raw, bold new sound- and with the other Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and The Wrecking Crew musicians, it would slowly (and painfully) be realized.

The array and variety of sounds and moods in Smile's very compositions are stunning- it's seen in the dizzying Americana and Western sound of "Heroes & Villains", the gorgeous baroque tones of "Wonderful", the monstrous and hypnotic industrial noise of "Cabinessence", and the freakishly apocalyptic orchestral breakdown of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow"- easily the most unnerving, intense, and horrifying song in all of Beach Boys canon. And like any good Beach Boys album- the more you listen, the more things that were hidden show themselves to you in Smile.

But that didn't mean that the vocals were neglected- far from it, and some of the best vocal and harmony work ever from The Beach Boys exist in Smile- and the opening hymn "Our Prayer" starts the album out reminding us this. And they're all utilized to terrific extent, especially with the songs mentioned above- the whole album wouldn't be the same with it all *completely* gone.

That leads into why the album- even though it's unfinished, sounds so weirdly whole and complete, and that was the incredible musical ingenuity of Brian Wilson as a songwriter & producer and his creative ways of breaking through the future of music with passionate and stylish brute force, while tastefully and lovingly honoring the old that inspired his musical world- going over countless genres & emotions in the process... and having it all still sound like it fits together.

Smile represents the most delicate balance of extreme contrasts, but this balance is miraculously pulled off for each one- quiet and loud moments, humorous & emotional, conventional songs versus songs with no rules, new instrumentals & old classical ones, and a dying old world versus the birth of something new led by impassioned youth...sometimes all in the same song.

The youth and vulnerability of Brian, however, was also unintentionally the project's downfall- He had too many ideas, so many aspirations and grandiose statements to make- but also had too much mental trauma and issues, and like many of his contemporaries, he flew too close to the sun and burned up his talents and energy in the process with a fiery glow.

Smile's purpose as a spiritual statement of youth surrounds all of the album- but even back then, Brian knew it could never last, he was slowly getting older, and reality- like it does with most people, birthed a brutal wake up call to his ambitions & outlook for the world- that more just future where the young could transform society & the world for better never came, and Smile's collapse would be an eerie warning to what the world would look like. After that- politics of love would turn into politics of conflict, as racial hatred and war loomed over America, and the Summer of Love would be violently torn apart by reality.

But while Brian eventually took a serious mental blow and had to scrap the project- he went down fighting tooth and nail, still believing that the band, and rock music itself can ascend to something more- the song "Surf's Up" encapsulates this entirely, declaring an end to the band's surfer image, and embracing a new and freer musical world. And while it's filled with dazzling (and even confusing) wordplay, the most simple, and easily understood part came at the end of it- the clearest message from the album and Brian himself, and tellingly- added years after the project's collapse:

A children's song, Have you listened as they played?, Their song is love, And the children know the way...

The fact that Brian would be able to actually live to see his vision fulfilled and completed on is own terms despite so much extreme trauma he went through- and see newfound love for Smile by younger folks listening to it for the first time 40 years later *and* make their own versions out of musical passion, shows that with time, these dreams can become reality- and planting those seeds for that world you believe in for the next generation to be inspired by... is always worthwhile.

Pop as a queer listener

As a queer person myself, I’ve always wondered where the idea that “this certain part of the LGBTQ+ community loves this artist” comes from. I get how musicians showing support to the community with their words, donations, by them holding up a pride flag or coming out can make people feel secure and welcome new listeners, but sometimes it’s not as easy as that to point out. Throughout history there’s always been genres that’ve attracted our demographic by being a safe space (until appropiated by straight white cis people as it happened with punk), but what’s so special about pop specifically?

Well, I’ve found that a big part relates to the fact that in pop music, everything’s a performance. From gender roles to feelings, everything’s exaggerated in a very specific way and I believe, in a biased opinion, that a lot of LGBTQ+ people can relate to it. Most of us were made to feel ashamed at a very young age so we learned to hide those parts of ourselves, so we free them through music and the fandoms that follow. For men, it taps into the femininity they’re boxed into by a misogynistic society the moment they’re attracted to the same gender but coming from women that try to celebrate the femenine and all of it's layers: Madonna, Gaga, Beyonce, Cher, among many more. For women, however, the biggest example that comes to mind from my lifetime at least is One Direction. While I went more of the emo kid route when 1D was at it’s peak, I was still fascinated by them and specifically Directioners. They were loud and surprisingly powerful, hacking into things and winning every single award that involved fan voting. Crazy from the outside maybe, but truly a force to be reckoned with. And funnily enough, a huge amount of those passionate teens ended up not being straight or cis. With One Direction and boy bands in general, the performance of gender equals to them being marketed to appeal romantically to their audience: Harry was painted out to be a heartbreaker even at his young age, Louis was the rebel jokester, Niall was the silly but sweet one, Zayn the mysterious bad boy and Liam a middleground between all those archetypes. They are a performance of masculinity and it’s hard for them to feel threating in a way that any day to day man would feel for women.

When it comes down to Kpop I see elements of both. Women see these non threathing but extremely attractive men with a different interpretation of fashion and masculinity (specially with fans in the west, where male artists do minimal makeup and wearing a skirt is groundbreaking) and relate to them to the point of naming some of them as wlw magnets (Yoongi from BTS or TXT all together) but also have this huge amount of girl groups to really see themselves in, even more so with physical touch between them being so normalized (Although it’s a topic that deserves a conversation of itself due to it’s fetishization of same gender attraction). The same thing goes for men, they can see these idols of boy groups hug and care for eachother in a consistent manner and find representation that we as a community hardly get in the music industry, but can also be part of the girl groups fandoms and be welcomed. Even with South Korea’s conservative stance in gender and sexuality, we somehow found ourselves a beautiful union worldwide where bit by bit it’s helping secure a place for ourselves and changing the industry itself.

The connection with hyperpop it’s something that also really sparks my interest and in my search of answers I discovered a book called “how pop music broke the binary” by Sasha Geffen and the interview about it by The Nation. In the interview, they’re asked about how hyperpop became such a prevalent genre for both trans artists and fans. She elaborates on how the processing and distortion that hyperpop is known for traces back to Wendy Carlos and her creation of the synthethizer. Trans artists found meaning in the transformation of their voices to reach new boundaries, breaking this binary of femenine and masculine voices by creating a new sound with it's own standard and giving us trans icons such as Sophie and Arca. I find this to be really important, as it finally gives credit to the trans community when often they’re invisibilized and used as tokens in the spaces where they’ve been the blueprint.

As a sort of conclussion to my thoughts, I belive pop has always been more than an easy marketable sound. It’s been a space for experimentation and creativity, where artists have defied the expectations of it being devoid of dept and only for money and have actually built a foundation of acceptance hand by hand with the community itself and created beautiful art. We’ve opened spaces that were made with such a heteronormative design to queerness, where we can now see a lot of us in the spotlight without having to hide the parts of ourselves that we were told bury, and we will do so as time passes because queer people have always been such a leading force in the media and the creative field.

Savka Polo Valdivia

This week on Great Albums: Ministry’s 1983 debut, With Sympathy! It’s not a metal album, and it’s not even an industrial album--it’s just some damn good synth-pop, despite who made it! Whether you’re curious where Uncle Al got his start and why he hates his first LP, or you just want some excellent New Romantic music, you should check this one out. Full transcript of the video under the break, as always.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be tackling the debut album of one of the best-loved industrial bands--though it actually isn’t all that “industrial.” This is With Sympathy by Ministry, first released in 1983. Ministry are one of those acts that have gone through many stylistic evolutions throughout their career, and if you’re familiar with some of their more acclaimed works, it may surprise you to learn where they started out. While With Sympathy was the first full LP released under the Ministry name, it’s not the very first thing in their discography--that honour goes to the 12” single “I’m Falling,” released in 1981.

Music: “I’m Falling”

With a springy post-punk bass line and a tinny mechanical rhythm, “I’m Falling” is a rough-edged piece of cold wave. It was released on the famous Wax Trax! Records, well-known as the home of many of the most illustrious industrial acts of the 80s and 90s, from Coil and Laibach to Meat Beat Manifesto. But for their follow-up LP, Ministry would work with a major label, Arista, and twist that bass-heavy sound into something with less hiss and more groove.

Music: “Effigy”

On the opening track, “Effigy,” a bright synth line artfully fences an electric guitar riff for dominance, showing the extent to which the sonic blueprint of British New Wave acts like A Flock of Seagulls prefigured With Sympathy. This is an album that could only have been conceived in 1983, in the full flush of synth-pop’s mainstream popularity, and it does feel like a cash-in on the success that imported European synth-pop achieved in the first few years of the 1980s--even in Ministry’s native America.

While I’ve covered some albums with somewhat controversial legacies before, With Sympathy probably sets the record for the work that’s most despised by its own creator: Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen has disowned this album even harder than Ralf Huetter did the Kraftwerk albums before Autobahn, even going so far as to claim its affable, fairly commercial sound was entirely the product of Arista’s executive meddling. As with all legends of how great art was made, I don’t particularly believe or disbelieve this legend, or think it’s possible to know if it’s “true”--I simply present it to you as a piece of context, a myth that informs the history of this work. It’s worth noting that the acerbic, aggressive track “Here We Go” is often held up as a form of evidence for this story.

Music: “Here We Go”

The lyrics of “Here We Go” seem to imply that the song is, itself, intended as some sort of offering to the pop charts, but the confrontational style of the vocals is hard to overlook. I suppose it’s somewhat catchy, but not exactly in the same way that a real hit song is--there’s a certain fetching incompetence behind it, that makes its energy that much more compelling. “Here We Go” was released as a single, but only as the fourth selection from the album to receive that honour. A similar quality of dissonance between words and music can be found on the closing track, “She’s Got a Cause.”

Music: “She’s Got a Cause”

Like so many pop-leaning albums by artists who belong more on the underground side of things, With Sympathy has this constant tension bubbling within, and that crass, subversive industrial mindset is straining within the soft prettiness of its synth textures. The darkly playful “She’s Got a Cause” presents us with a narrator who seems to enjoy an idealized abuse at the hands of their lover, in a manner that’s reminiscent of the common industrial preoccupation with sado-masochism. And yet, it sounds downright bubbly--surprisingly so for a closing track, too. The album’s third single, “Work For Love,” is another that plays with this dysfunctional relationship theme.

Music: “Work For Love”

With tight handclap percussion, a call-and-response hook, and even a rhythm break, “Work For Love” certainly delivers on a “work chant” feel. Like “She’s Got a Cause,” it’s a very fun track, on the surface, but the more you think about its gleeful commodification of love and intimacy, the more sour it seems. Given the expected hard R in “work,” this seems like as good a time as any to note frontman Al Jourgensen’s apparent decision to ape something of a working-class English accent, by far one of the most derided features of With Sympathy. Personally, though I’ve never found this all that offensive--there are many styles of music in which vocalists adopt something of a trade cant, and the conventional twang of country singers is as much of a stylistic convention of the music as country guitar. I tend to see a person’s art as a deliberately crafted creation, where the self might be re-imagined in creative ways, and I think the unrelenting demand for complete “authenticity” from artists is little more than rockist hogwash. But that’s just me.

The cover of With Sympathy is one that really puts the capital-R “Romantic” in “New Romantic.” An artfully splayed hand, with very vampish black nails, gestures ambiguously towards wilting, crumbling red roses, an iconic symbol of the impermanence of youth, love, and idealism. The out-of-focus backdrop for the image might be interpreted as veined marble, adding a classicizing touch, or perhaps a stormy sky filled with lightning, adding to the sense of melodrama. The title “With Sympathy” calls attention to the album’s gothic morbidity in a gleefully tongue-in-cheek fashion, and I wish it weren’t so easy to miss on the cover, placed as red-on-red text in the middle of the roses.

As I hinted at earlier, Ministry have never made anything else that sounds similar to With Sympathy. Their second LP, 1986’s Twitch, is a marked sonic departure, featuring harsh, mechanistic industrial assaults. An extremely different album, for sure, but one that I also like quite a lot, in its own way! By the 1990s, Ministry would adopt an increasingly guitar-driven sound, eventually blossoming from industrial into full-blown heavy metal--a transformation that makes With Sympathy look even more bizarre in the context of their catalogue.

Music: “Over the Shoulder”

While I’ve provided a lot of contextual information about With Sympathy, I do want to mention that when I first discovered this album as a teenager, I didn’t know much about industrial music at all, let alone Ministry. And I loved the album! At the end of the day, I think With Sympathy is a very enjoyable New Romantic album, in a vacuum, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in early 80s synth-pop. Don’t let those later metal albums scare you away from some damn good pop.

My favourite track on With Sympathy is “I Wanted To Tell Her,” the album’s second single. It gets off to a great start, playfully introducing us to an impressively groovy bass guitar, and features a duet between Jourgensen and one Shay Jones, who’s also credited as a co-writer on the song--the only writing credit on the album besides Jourgensen. While Jones would later release some house singles under her own name, she seems to have been a session musician at this point in her career, but does an astounding job for a hired gun. The instrumental of “I Wanted To Tell Her” is almost identical to a bonus track from the “I’m Falling” single called “Primental,” albeit with a bit more studio polish--but that extra bit of professionalism, and its superbly bitter and bitchy duet, push it over the top for me. That’s all for today--thanks for listening!

Music: “I Wanted To Tell Her”

Week 9 : Fandom and Fan Communities

In today’s world, everyone has had a memory of a significant impact on pop culture with a varied choice of interest of different parts of the industry. Undoubtedly, we have all come across a point in life where we have watched our favourite cartoons/series/movies with our eyes glued to the screen or listened and sang to our favourite songs out loud or didn’t mind playing our favourite games all day or read our favourite books. We were fascinated as well as influenced and, in some way, had been affected by it in our daily lifestyle. Almost, everyone has been a fan of something since we shared a deeper connection with our favourites. This week, I will be shedding light on the topic of fandom and further elaborate with definite examples.  

So What is Fandom? 

Fandom simply refers to a community or subculture of fans that share mutual deep emotional interests towards a particular section of pop culture such as music band, movie, comic, video games, book, etc. According to (Rutherford-Morrison 2016), fandom is “a space where fans create their own language and communities, and where they reimagine characters and worlds into something that is uniquely theirs.” Fandom originated very early on but was official with the emergence of ‘sci-fi cons’ during the ’30s, now known as ‘the first fandom’. Then around the ’60s, the media fandom began at a ‘Beatles’ concert where “crazy fanatics” were seen. Media Fandoms are dedicated to expressing their passion through fan art, fan-fiction, cosplay, etc., through which their obsession sometimes leads them to alter their lifestyle and create their own reality revolving around their chosen fictional characters.

How Does Fandom Work? 

Fans are vocal as well as loyal towards their engagement in source materials. Fandoms are the consumers/audiences also known as the ‘unofficial media producers’. According to (Distillery 2021), in 1977 when the first Star Wars movie was released, the fandom increased quickly as fan clubs were created and increasing in number as more people were influenced and wanted to be a part of the excitement. Their creative versions of fan art and fanzines and actively expressing their understanding for the movie was worthy to not be ignored. “Fans with their passion and sense of solidarity can be so powerful that they need to be managed and cared for.” (Distillery 2021). Lucas Films has dedicated an entire department for fans since then. Gradually as the digital era began, many fandoms have been committed to the unique content they create and influence on various social media sites such as Tumblr, Instagram whilst conveying their feedback or opinions through Twitter. Fandoms are a strong clan and hold a lot of power and are capable of changing not just their community but also the society in the modern world. The businesses are moulding their marketing campaigns according to the fandoms. For instance, Mary Franklin a Star Wars fanatic was contacted by LucasFilms for consultation on the likes and dislikes of the Star Wars Online Fan Club (Penas 2020). Along with being the first film to hop into marketing, after the release of the first film in 1977 “LucasFilm has licensed nearly $25 billion worth of products for action figures to videogames to books.” (Togerson 2017). This initiative was taken to have active fan participation in sales and good publicity. According to (Togerson 2017), “In the 2011 census, the United Kingdom had 177,000 people declare themselves as Jedi (followers of Jediism) making it the 7th most popular religion in the U.K.” That is really cool. Here’s a video for a more visual and elaborate understanding. 

Fandom Can Sometimes Get Really Scary!

Social Media in itself is a rocky place where everybody put ahead of their candid perspectives on the table without thinking if the person might be impacted negatively. Often the use of speech is very wrong and a certain character is called out or bullied until the person takes uncertain measures due to immense stress and anxiety. Sometimes the fictional hatred can cross too many lines and the outcomes are often very unsettling. Back in 2017, the Star Wars movie ‘The Last Jedi’ had starred Kelly Marie Tran as mechanic-turned-Resistance fighter Rose Tico, had faced a fierce backlash from some fans who pointed fingers at her for her ethnicity and appearance as she was the first woman of colour to play a lead role in the iconic series (BBC 2018). The Vietnamese-American actress had been criticized her Star Wars character and directed their hatred at her personally receiving abusive comments, her character name from the Star Wars encyclopedia, Wookieepedia, was changed only to replace a racial slur used to mock the East Asian accent and also numerous comments that were critical of her weight (BBC 2018). Fandoms do help artists succeed but also pulls them down. Tran had later deleted her posts on Instagram.

In Conclusion

I believe that Fandom has its pros and cons. Specifically, in a pool of people, most of them are only expertise in the field of the shared source of interest, not vice versa. I think it is very important to put ourselves in other's shoes and give it a thought before stepping onto others. Fandom is wonderful and will continue to be so till it is kept that way but as long as the immature mentality isn’t fixed it could get toxic after a certain period of time.

References : 

BBC 2018, Star Wars actress Kelly Marie Tran deletes Instagram posts after abuse,  BBC, viewed 11 May 2021 <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44379473>.

Distillery 2021,  The history of fandom, viewed 11 May 2021 <https://www.wearedistillery.co/we-think/the-history-of-fandom>.

Penas, E D 2020,  Fan engagement: Why businesses should target fandoms, Ambidextr, viewed 11 May 2020 <https://ambidextr.media/fan-engagement-why-businesses-should-target-fandoms/>.

Togerson, D 2017, Why is Starwars so Popular?, NBC, viewed 11 May 2020 <https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/why-is-star-wars-so-popular/14225/>. 

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🎅 THE STORY 🎅 As a more extensive assortment of scholars started to work with cyberpunk ideas, new subgenres of sci-fi arose, playing off the cyberpunk name, and zeroing in on innovation and its social impacts in an unexpected way. Numerous subsidiaries of cyberpunk are retro-advanced, in view of on the modern dreams of past times, or later extrapolations or distortions of you see, the innovation of those times. Recorded period dramatization: a work happen a previous time span, normally utilized with regards to film and TV. It offers sentiments, experience movies, and swashbucklers. A period piece might be happen an obscure or general time like the Middle Ages or a particular period, for example, the Roaring Twenties. A strict work can qualify as period dramatization be that as it may, not as authentic show. presents an alternate story and an alternate arrangement of characters in every scene. These typically have an alternate cast each week, however a few arrangement already, for example, Four Star Playhouse, utilized a never-ending company of character entertainers who might arrive in an alternate show every week. Some compilation arrangement, for example, Studio One, initiated on radio and afterward extended to TV. Writing that centers around packs, criminal associations offering an even of association, and assets that help a lot greater and more specialized criminal exchanges than an individual criminal could accomplish. Hoodlums will be the subject of numerous films, especially from the time somewhere in the range of 1930 and 1960. A restoration of hoodlum type films happened since the 1990s with the blast of hip-bounce culture. Dissimilar to the previous hoodlum films, the more current movies share comparable elements to the more seasoned movies yet is more in a hip-bounce metropolitan setting. This term has periodically depicted a subgenre of theoretical fiction that is like steampunk, however digresses in its innovation. Much like steampunk, it depicts trend setting innovation dependent on pre-present day plans, yet rather than the steam intensity of the Industrial Age, the innovation utilized depends on springs, precision and comparable. Clockpunk is arranged seriously on crafted by Leonardo da Vinci and accordingly, it truly is regularly set during the Renaissance. It is believed to be a sort of steampunk. Like collection of memoirs, other than it truly is told more “from memory”, for example it is the manner in which the individual actually recollects and feels about their life or a phase inside their life, more than the specific, recorded data on that period. In spite of the fact that journals will in general be more abstract than personal history works, diaries are normally still viewed as verifiable works. There are additionally some fiction works that indicate to be the “journals” of anecdotal characters aswell, done in a comparable style, notwithstanding, they are in another type from their genuine partners. A spine chiller in which a lawbreaker or band of crooks imagines and executes a significant theft. The robbery as a rule includes accessing assets put away in a high-security area, and the criminals might utilize ploy to fool their way into or potentially out from the fortification. 🎅 COPYRIGHT CONTENT 🎅 Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[1][2][3][4][5] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][7][8] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States. Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][9][10][11][12] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[13] Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[14] Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[5] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration. It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[15] 🎅 ADAPTATION 🎅 Sadly, not everything is accessible to be unadulterated and strictly artistic in the film as I Still Believe gets overloaded with a few significant purposes of analysis and execution in the component. In what way? First off, the film feels a little inadequate in Jeremy Camp’s excursion. What’s introduced works (to some degree), in any case it doesn’t hold up, particularly becausae the Erwin Brothers have a troublesome us in making certain about the best possible story way for the film to take. Obviously, the string of Jeremy and Melissa are the fundamental focal center (and legitimately so), however essentially all that else gets totally pushed aside, including Jeremy’s melodic vocation ascend to fame and a few of the different characters and their significance (more on that underneath). This likewise makes the film have a specific pacing issues through the whole film, with I Still Believe run us of 6 minutes (one hour and 56 minutes) feeling longer than it must be, particularly with exactly how much story that the Erwin Brothers avoid (for example a few plot lumps/parts are left unanswered or missing). Moreover, regardless of whether a watcher doesn’t know about Jeremy Camp’s story, us does, regardless, follow a sensibly unsurprising way that is very standard for religious film. Without perusing anything about the genuine existences of Jeremy and Melissa preceding seeing the component, it’s plainly concerning where the story is going and precisely what will eventually play out (for example plot beats and dramatic account act Bookmark this siteprogression). Essentially, on the off chance that you’ve seeing several Christian religious film, you’ll realize very well what’s in store from us. Along these lines, the Erwin Brothers don’t generally attempt to inventively accomplish something diversely with the film… . rather they strengthen the optimisms of Christian and of confidence in an equation based account way that turns out to be very customary and almoBookmark this sitest somewhat languid. Addititionally there is the moBookmark this present sitevie’s discourse and content dealing with, which gets dangerous in the film’s execution, which is hampered by some wooden/constrained exchange at specific scenes (getting extremely sermonizing and messy at us) in addition to the sensation of the film’s story being somewhat deficient. There’s a halting point where the Erwin Brothers choose, however I felt that there could’ve more added, remembering more development for his musaic vocation and a few different characters. At that point there might be the idea of the film being very common in its allure, which is truly justifiable, yet depends overweight on its strict topical messages which can be somewhat “off-putting” for a couple. It didn’t trouble me so much, yet subsequent to seeing other religious films preceding this (for example I Can Only Imagine, Overcomer, Indivisible, and so forth), this particular film doesn’t generally ascend to Cursed in Love and falls prey to being somewhat nonexclusive and level for practically the entirety of its run us. As you can envision, us, while surely genuine and important in its narrating, strules to locate a glad equilibrium in its story and execution introduction; ending up being troublesome in passing in general “higher perspective” of its message and Jeremey Camp’s excursion.

Thoughts For the Aspiring Musician

by Christopher Knab

I have been watching, studying, and analyzing why some musicians ‘make it’ and others don’t for a long time, and I have given up trying to come up with some magic formula that every up and coming musician can follow on some imaginary road to success. It doesn’t work out that way. Today more than ever there are countless advisors like myself who offer tips to developing acts and ‘struggling musicians’, and all too often we try to inflict some ‘step by step’ process on musicians that will help them become tomorrow’s superstar. In fact, I think as Americans in general, we are addicted to self-help books and formulas for success. What is missing in our day-to-day lives that demands such lofty goals from us? Is there a difference between the attitude of successful, well known acts and the attitude of upcoming acts? Why do some musicians make it big, while other equally talented people songwriters and musicians never get their music heard by the masses? What specific skills and/or inherent talents do the successful artists embody that so many ‘wannabees’ do not? Is it charisma? That special something that many artists seem to exude the minute they walk into a room? I think that is part of it, but many successful acts have as much charisma as a pitcher of milk, and yet do quite well for themselves. How about a lot of money? Yeah that seems to be the one sure thing behind every star. There are always major labels with deep pockets who know how to spend the money to push their acts into the hearts and minds of the public, right?…well lets talk about that for a moment. Money can only push something out to the public for their acceptance or rejection…that’s all it can do. Nobody reaches into their wallets and purses and spends their hard earned money on anything….unless there is some real value in what is being offered to them. Think about it. Today there is a lot of what some observers call ‘shallow and immature’ lyrics and disposable pop music out there on the charts….and yet, no one who bought that music would cop to that criticism. The people who buy the latest sounds on the pop charts bought that music because it gave them some kind of pleasure. It meant something to them. I think we should look at what sells and what is successful from this standpoint; music fulfills the needs, wants, and desires of any group of fans because they identify with it. And they like a song because they can hum it in the shower. The ONE thing that all successful acts have in common when they cross over to mass appeal is great songs! This is true as well for the more edgy artists who seem to eek out a living from smaller fanbases, they still write compelling songs that touch the hearts and minds of their fans. Whether or not you personally ‘like’ hit songs or not has nothing to do with it. Enough somebodys coughed up $15 each to prove your tastes are not always the most accurate barometer for what other people may enjoy. What other thing is it that successful artists and bands have that separates them from those who struggle. My answer is business savvy. Yup…that’s it. Somebody somewhere in every successful acts history had enough business savvy people behind them to make them the stars that they are or were. NOW….listen up! It isn’t as simple as you think. Historically that business savvy may have been solely the talents and skills of a weasel-like manager, or record label executive. It may have been the unscrupulous business practices of shady lawyers and booking agents, as well as greedy club owners, or money hungry publishers. My point is that no matter what the behavior of a particular music business gatekeeper may have been…they got a certain part of the job done…they broke on through to the other side of the competition, and got their act’s song into the ears of the thousands of music fans. And to do that, I can assure you they had a plan. There are no short cuts to success, and there just isn’t enough room at the top for everyone who makes music to make a living from their music. But there is a balance that can be obtained in ones life. With the tools available on the Internet, and the technology of downloadable music now an every day reality, no musician who writes great songs should have that much problem realizing modest successes with their music. Be careful of the "10 Steps To Musical Success" and the " What every A&R Rep Is Looking For" articles and books. I have written some articles with such titles, only because they are my way of getting the attention of an ever growing group of music star ‘wannabees’. Once I get their attention, I try to give them proven tactics and strategy tips that are time-tested ways that record labels and industry professionals work. In reality, there are no 10 steps to anything! There is the conscious involvement, and commitment to your music and the business of music. That, and relentless dedication to the art of making music. Remember that the world of commercial music is a world of dollars and cents, whether you like it or not. But that does not mean that Art and Commerce cannot walk hand in hand…they must do that. I teach a history of popular music course, and it never ceases to amaze me how often history repeats itself when it comes to the question of artistic achievement and music business savvy. Most ‘artists’ in the truest sense of the world are narrowly focused people who never take no for an answer. No matter what challenge comes their way, they have no recourse but to turn to their creative side and get lost in their music as a way of staying alive, in the truest sense of the term. Then, along comes a business person who either is or is not ethical, but knows the music business inside out, and hears the magic in their music, and does what it takes to get that music heard. More and more as the decades unravel however, those people are becoming the artists themselves. We live in a capitalist, consumer driven society. The successful musicians of tomorrow will be those people who either attract dedicated, knowledgeable business men and women to do the marketing and promotion for them, or take that responsibility on themselves and realize that no artist has to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of their music to make some money with their music. Being a musician/business person means you have to be able to write and perform great songs, and then produce them with a contemporary sound, AND you have to take the time to read Billboard and other music business trades and tipsheets, AND also find time to call club bookers (over and over), read bad and good music reviews, stay in touch with your fans on a regular basis, AND still put on a great show when you're exhausted or sick. Do you know what being a professional musician is really all about?…entertaining people. Entertaining the public as a life commitment involves getting yourself into a deep sense of personal commitment to your art. It seems to me that artists who are able to that have come to grips with the notion that success is more an internal experience, and not necessarily one that will be satisfied by a money-hungry music industry that defines success only in dollars and cents calculations. Looking at the work habits of most big stars, I think they all have an ‘Entertainer’ inside them. That's what allows them to succeed in all areas of the business. That is what keeps them going during the fifth press interview of the day, and all the other crap that has nothing to do with music and everything to do with the business of music marketing. When an upcoming artist finally ‘makes it’, the pressure to keep producing sellable music is huge. So the ‘artist’ has to be healthy and ready to create on demand. You may be asked to hit the road for nine straight months, then make a world-class album immediately following the grueling tour. What it all boils down to is that stars have to be on top of their game, both artistically and business-wise. It is essential to create a balance between music and business early on. First make sure your psyche is in the right place. You know, screw your head on right! Be honest with yourself regarding what things you are and aren't willing to do to be successful with your music. Then, make a plan. Map out how you will improve your skills in both business and art. Put it on paper. Try living the 50% business - 50% music rule. Make sure you honor your business commitments and always act professionally. Make sure you keep your artist side healthy and creative. Take days off, take walks in nature, take time to noodle around that song idea that just popped into your head. Such activities will help keep the artist inside you healthy and able to nourish your creative juices. Being a famous musician is not a "normal" life. To survive and thrive requires a special set of skills. The good news is those skills can be learned and developed. Every bit you learn now will benefit your career plan down the road. Believe in yourself, and never stop improving. Your hard work will pay off, if not at the cash register, at least with a sense of personal satisfaction for having done the best work creatively and business-wise, that you could.

Source: Music-Articles.com

#8yrsago David Byrne's How Music Works

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

Byrne's touring the book now, and as his tour intersects with my own book tours, I'll be interviewing him live on stage in Toronto on September 19th, at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html

FEEDBACK LOOP #1: Armand Hammer’s “Flavor Flav”

What are the Black purposes of space travel?

—Amiri Baraka, “Technology & Ethos”

Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix that thrives on opposites and oppositions, flowing lines and nonlinearity, conflict resolution and asymmetrical warfare. It prefers the mad dash on shifting sands while in pursuit of higher ground and safe havens.

—Greg Tate, “Kalahari Hopscotch, or Notes Toward a 20 Volume History of Black Science and Afrofuturism”

Welcome aboard our spaceship, it’s so nice to have you here. —Newcleus, “Space is the Place”

Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but      for all times, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. —Walt Whitman

I’m so tired of being forced to promote the myth of white supremacy by performing works by old white men like Whitman who said blacks...didn’t have a place in the future of America. —Timothy McNair

Today is the shadow of tomorrow, today is the future present of yesterday, yesterday is the shadow of today. —Sun Ra, “Secrets of the Sun”

This highly allusive track from billy woods and ELUCID toys with itself—that is, allusions are a figurative means of collapsing time in and of themselves. Past and present history & culture don’t contend so much as support one another. A set of stilts to do the Dance of Death on, if you will. “Start downhill running.” The Seventh Seal hilltop silhouette danse macabre steez, though. The whooshing, metal-creaking beat—with all its haunted psithurism charm—is the backdrop for this sleeper Shrines track.

The name “Flavor Flav” is used metonymically here to mean time. This isn’t a braggadocio, low-key threat in the spirit of OC’s “Time’s Up.” This isn’t a Grandmaster Flashian “You Know What Time It Is” (though the hands on the clock tower do spin clockwise and counter-). Neither is this a Kool Moe Dee-esque rhetorical “Do You Know What Time It Is?” Armand Hammer are frustrated by time, by the “ideals and dreams that don’t work.” woods laments his “time machine [that] don’t go backwards.” This no-good lemon of a H.G. Wells contraption he’s steering. This isn’t some Christopher Lloyd-cum-El-Producto Delorean. There’s no Great Scotting going on, just stubbornness.

Progress isn’t made. Time stagnates. Like the “list of ill-fated quick licks under ’frigerator magnets.” And that “school trip permission slip”—likely a bus ride to a museum: a carefully curated collection of artifacts, most notable for its colonial muscling. The question remains: What is left out? What is excluded? What is ignored, discarded, or co-opted so as to not withstand the test of time? woods’ short-i assonance speeds the delivery up only to slow it down:

list | ill | quick | licks | ’frig | nets | trip | mis | slip | lick | split | skin | spliff

billy woods, son of a revolutionary, redefines Afrofuturism (re-re-re-defines—its brilliance is in how it remakes itself unconditionally). Afrofuturism becomes about birthing the next generation of Black revolutionaries, so he subverts the line and expectations when “big hand captured” refers to the clock, but “little man [not hand] chasin’” refers to a youngin. (Try to keep up.) Put the faith in the youth when our “ideals and dreams” stall out—when the days, months, years are fleeting and forceful (“It do tick faster / The hour coming rough”). The spliff that’s “[skinned] like an onion” turns the cypher into Perrault fairy tale “pumpkin,” Cinderella style.

“Don’t come ’round with that ‘Go slow’” is in conversation with Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” of course. It’s Nina who said “[she] can’t stand the pressure much longer,” who objected to those who “keep on saying ‘Go slow,” who had her band ironically chanting Do it slow. billy woods, like Nina Simone, decries reformism, incrementalism. Don’t do things gradually. We’re at the point where Nina stands up from her piano bench and shouts That’s it!

Forego the telephoto lenses, he insists, this is the “Battle of Algiers with the GoPro.” Urban guerrilla warfare uploaded and disseminated via YouTube. Again, time collapses. The struggle to decolonize continues. Watch for the This video is no longer available dead-end.

billy woods’ Nietzschean “loathing and fear” reverses the hallucinogenic time-warp of Thompson’s (and, in filmic relation, Gilliam’s) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “History is hard to know,” Thompson writes, “because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash.” That flash will reappear in ELUCID’s verse.

If “all roads lead to Rome,” we’re settling into the inevitability of our moves. It’s a fatalistic shrug, but homophonically, all roads lead to roam—that is, the journey is prolonged interminably. It’s nomadic. Much static. So, naturally, you’re going to “[shake] the hourglass like a snowglobe,” distort time, and splurge on the “JC Penny Timex,” which is appropriately “flooded with rhinestones.” Flooded, because no more water: the fire next time. Don’t “lose track” and don’t “get trapped in the future.”

The chorus quotes the Rolling Stones’ “Time is On My Side,” but it ain’t that simple, no. The history is as messy as we’ve come to expect amerikan music to be. “Time is On My Side” was originally penned by Norman Meade (Jerry Ragovoy), and trombonist Kai Winding first recorded it. Jimmy Norman, a Black songwriter, fleshed out the lyrics significantly, and Irma Thomas recorded that version in the same year as the Stones. The song followed a path similar to that of “Strange Fruit”—a composition written by a white Jewish man under a pseudonym (Abel Meeropol as Lewis Allan) but popularized by a Black female jazz singer (Billie Holiday). As author Jess Row has said about jazz—hip-hop applies, too—it is “by its very nature multi-racial, intermingled, and collaborative across color lines.” But this cognizance must always be contextualized with views of Black artists like that of Art Blakey: “the only way the Caucasian musician can swing is from a rope.” Hip-hop has always had its Paul Cs and Rick Rubins, but the racial heterogeneity of a genre, or even a single recording, can’t cloak the power dynamics still in play. The Stones’ version of “Time is On My Side”—undoubtedly the most popular version—is a rip-off of Irma Thomas’ version. Mick Jagger even jacks Thomas’ ad-libs, which is to say, her rawness and spontaneity. Even the band’s shadowed faces on the cover of 12 x 5, the album on which the track appears, suggest the racial problematics, the minstrelsy heist. Armand Hammer mock the British Invasion blues filchers by adding “they” to the chorus line: “They said time is on my side.” They being white institutions (especially within music publishing, production, and recording industries) who promised enough airtime for everyone. They who urged patience. (Go slow!) But, as history shows, the profits only lined certain pockets.

ELUCID begins at the “golden hour,” which is both the photogenic beauty of the sky after sunrise and before sunset—a beauty too good to behold. It’s the sun glare shining in your face on the winter commute from work. It’s your high-speed accident and then the golden hour is the paramedics and doctors trying to salvage your corporeal existence. ELUCID’s verse is a hypnagogic jerk, gasping for breath as he takes a “portal to Orangeburg, ’68.” It’s a reference to the campus shooting of young people in protest—South Carolina State University. Unlike Kent State, which came afterwards, Orangeburg didn’t get the attention keening white women in Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs do, despite “live ammunition,” three dead, 28 injured, and “nine acquitted assassins.” Unnoticed. Black invisibility. Not that H.G. Wells type of invisibility—the Ralph Ellison kind.

We’re told what this is: it’s the aggregate stress (“the load of the allostatic”) of Black life. It’s one’s personal Extinction Agenda, the “post-traumatic” of the gunfire “flashes” that double as flashbacks. The pain, stress, the brain that can’t rest, the pressure on the chest.

“The center won’t hold” lets us know this isn’t all PTSD reverie—it’s a rebel poem: surely some revolution is at hand. ELUCID channels Achebe channeling Yeats. Things might fall apart but not without struggle. The “Flavor Flav clock spins centrifugal,” as a gyre, as an apocalyptic (91…) voice. Turning and returning. The words have an air of insurrection, proclamation.

He misses “watching how a flat circle fold”—it won’t budge, won’t wrinkle. We’ve been here before: on “Hunter,” on Paraffin, when billy woods was on that “time is a flat circle” shit. That Nietzsche eternal recurrence shit:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain…will return to you. […] The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

“Can you find the level of difficulty in this?” suggests game playing, arcades. Calls to mind more Walter Benjamin’s Arcades, though. billy woods and ELUCID are gleaners and magpies of cultural cadavers in Benjamin’s way. Their bars are play and critique both. We’re left with a modicum of optimism at the song’s end. Even “only [moving] the pen six inches” is something, is struggle. The “pale faces beyond the fire” are ever-present, though. The “flinching, panic, [and] confusion” are committed to continue.

Is it the fool or the insurgent who thinks time is on their side? We want the life we live to be “more brilliant than a sunbeam.” That’s to say, we don’t want to wait for the golden hour or the golden years. We want what they say we can’t have. We want what they say we shouldn’t imagine. But Armand Hammer helps us take solace in the “drum skin stretched”—the rhythm, the rebel. The oft-quoted Douglass gem, If there is no struggle, there is no progress, is played out for a reason. The reason is because it needs to be played again, and again. Like a mantra, like a song.

Images:

Sun Ra’s Space is the Place (screenshot) | Flavor Flav (detail), courtesy of archivist Sean Stewart | Grandmaster Flash “You Know What Time It Is” music video (screenshot) | Kool Moe Dee “Do You Know What Time It Is?” single cover | Nina Simone live at Antibes Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festival 1965 (screenshot) | The Battle of Algiers (screenshot) | The Rolling Stones 12 x 5 album cover | Flavor Flav, courtesy of Stewart

https://datacide-magazine.com/from-subculture-to-hegemony-transversal-strategies-of-the-new-right-in-neofolk-and-martial-industrial/

From Subculture to Hegemony: Transversal Strategies of the New Right in Neofolk and Martial Industrial

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Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial are two sub-categories of Industrial Music, which developed in the 1980’s. Industrial as such was a direction that – parallel to Punk Rock – worked with the latest electronics in order to create an aesthetic of futuristic noise machines of the late 20th century and research extreme zones of contemporary society and history. Throbbing Gristle already thematized concentration camps, serial killers, Aleister Crowley etc by using cut-up techniques of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin and thus with strategies of liberation from brain washing. Similarly, Cabaret Voltaire were said to wage a “propaganda war against the propaganda war” (Industrial Culture Handbook). With SPK this was combined with a critique of Psychiatry and a presentation of extremes of the body and death. In the 80’s there were agitational and critical bands such as Test Dept., Nocturnal Emissions and Bourbonese Qualk which were often associated with the ever broadening spectrum of “Industrial”. However, with Laibach the critique of totalitarianism became more ambivalent. This ambivalence was at first seemingly shared by Death In June, the band that in many ways was at the origin of what is now considered Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial.

Death In June has already been the subject of an article in datacide by Stewart Home. Although the band’s name derives from the “night of the long knives” when the SA leadership and other elements in German fascism were liquidated by Hitler and the SS in June 1934, DIJ’s left wing origins as well as their collaboration with a number of musicians not suspected to have far right leanings seemed to suggest to followers of 80’s industrial that their use of fascist imagery had some sort of critical element to it. There was a romantic and fetishistic element to it and and when Tony Wakeford was sacked from the band (supposedly) for his membership in the National Front it seemed to show that indeed they were rejecting politics and their use of fascist themes and imagery was on the level of aesthetic provocation.

In the course of the late 80’s and throughout the 90’s a number of other bands flocked to the use of this strategy creating a small sub-culture heavy with far right symbolisms and content, sometimes more, sometimes less explicit and politically oriented. Although there is no doubt that this scene harbours a lot of entirely “unpolitical” elements, there are definite personal connections to some elements of the organized far right who are trying to use a “metapolitical” strategy of intervention to fight their fascist kulturkampf.

Right wing sub-cultures are still mostly associated with White Power rock, Skinhead and Oi!-music. This has historical reasons. Central in this is the band Skrewdriver around Ian Stuart Donaldson. The first couple of 7”s and the first album came out on the pub/punk rock label Chiswick Records in 1977. Lack of success however made the band dissolve twice until they reformed again in 1982 and released a 12” on Last Resort’s Boot and Braces Records and then a couple of 7”s on the National Front’s White Noise Records. By now they had become the quintessential White Power band and played numerous “Rock Against Communism” festivals, the NF-answer to the much more popular Rock Against Racism festivals at the time. In 1987, Ian Stuart fell out with Patrick Harrington and Derek Holland of the White Noise Club, the National Front’s “musical” arm, and founded his own Blood & Honour network, in which he played a leading role until his death in a car accident in 1993.

Two things have to be stated in our context here: 1. The ludicrous paranoid race hate ramblings present in the lyrics of Skrewdriver and a host of other like-minded bands that joined them just didn’t lead them anywhere in terms of commercial success, which is something Stuart by his own admission wanted to achieve. 2. With that avenue barred, this scene didn’t and doesn’t have problems outing themselves as National Socialists. To present their political ideas they can do without references to obscure authors of the “conservative revolution” or völkish occultists, and are quite happy to chant their primitive slogans undiluted. The same is true with “National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM), the openly neo-nazi section of the Black Metal scene and certain White Power Noise Bands. There seems to be a competition to pronounce the most inhuman, brutal and anti-Semitic messages. Song titles as “Die Juden sind unser Unglück”, “Systematische Judische Vernichtung” (Deathkey), “Sieg Heil Vaterland”, “Europa Erwache!” (Der Stürmer), “The Whitest Power”, “Blood Banner SS”, “Juda Verrecke” (Streicher) are quite common.

With Neo-Folk and other outgrowths of the Industrial scene this is different. A great importance is attached to avoid being easily associated with the brown swamp. Their attitude is intellectual and elitist with adoration for Ernst Jünger and Julius Evola not Hitler and Mussolini. Even with key figures who have undeniably been members of far right political groups (in Britain this is crystallized around the mid-80’s National Front and its “Political Soldier” faction), there is a surprising eagerness to distance themselves from allegations of “fascism”. This has a historical precedent in the French “Nouvelle Droite” (see appendix) who, motivated to get out of the neo-Nazi cul-de-sac, and on their march through the institutions, tried hard to avoid being tagged fascists while serving old wine in new bottles, or old ideology in new phraseology for to the present day.

Troy Southgate, head of the group HERR, seems particularly eager not to be branded a fascist despite his history as a wanderer from one group of the extreme right to the other (such as the National Front, the International Third Position, the English Nationalist Movement, the National Revolutionary Faction etc). Presumably this is a tactical move not to scare away potential recruits to his more recent “National Anarchist Movement”. With a list of his favorite authors including pre-cursors like Bakunin, Proudhon and Nietzsche, “classic” fascist and National-Bolshevik authors such as Julius Evola, the Strasser Brothers, Ernst Jünger, Martin Heidegger, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Ernst Niekisch, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Karl Haushofer, and finally more contemporary fascists and esoteric Hitlerists like Francis Parker Yockey, Miguel Serrano and Savitri Devi, one wonders why he pretends to be so allergic to the f-word. While this is not necessarily a homogenous bunch of authors, and most of them are not “Nazis” in the sense of toeing the line of the NSDAP, all of them (minus the 19th century pre-cursers) can reasonably be called fascist in the sense of using “fascism” as an umbrella term for tendencies including the conservative revolution, national bolshevism, the Hitler-Nazis to the various strains of the contemporary New Right.

Armin Mohler, a historian and speaker of the “conservative revolution” said: “Fascism for me, is when disappointed liberals and disappointed socialists come together for something new. Out of this emerges what is called conservative revolution.” He somewhat modifies this point in 1973/74: “Apart from a few extras from the ‘lunatic fringe’, no one was defining themselves as ‘fascist’ anymore.” He then tries to define what “fascist” means. He chooses a procedural method he terms the “physiognomic approach”: “In any case all attempts to understand fascism from its theoretical declarations, or (which is not the same) to reduce it to a theory, are doomed to fail (…) In this area of politics the relationship to the concept (Begriff) is just instrumental, indirect, retrospective. Preceding there is a decision for a gesture, a rhythm, in short: a style. This style can of course express itself in words – fascism is not mute, on the contrary. It loves words – but they are not there to communicate a logical context”, rather, according to Mohler, they lead “most of the time” to “random and arbitrary results”. “To summarize we can say that fascists can obviously easily accept discrepancies in theory, because their communication is happening in a shorter curve, exactly through ‘style’”. (Von Rechts gesehen, 181f.) Mussolini declared in an almost more radical fashion: “Fascism is to the highest degree a relativist movement, because it never made the attempt to clothe its multi-layered and powerful mentality in a defined program. Its success lies rather in the fact that it has followed constantly changing individual inspirations (…) Us fascists have always expressed our complete indifference towards any theory…” Mohler (1920-2003) himself was increasingly openly calling himself a fascist towards the end of his life, while the younger “new right” adepts on the contrary try to utilize an ideological fog machine to obscure their positions.

While Southgate only more recently added a musical “career” to his CV, his former comrade in the NF, Tony Wakeford, has been involved with music longer than his involvement with far right politics. In fact, Wakeford did have roots in the far left scene as a member of the Socialist Workers Party when he was in the band Crisis (see Datacide 7). Douglas Pearce was simultaneously in the International Marxist Group, a competing Trotskyist group. Crisis was dissolved apparently out of disillusionment with the left, and Death In June was founded in 1981.

Shortly afterwards Tony Wakeford joined the National Front. The NF had been the most important party of British neo-fascism in the 1970’s. However, in the early 80’s it already was in a state of decline and internal factional disputes. There was soon a de facto split between the “Official NF” and the “Flag Group”. In control of the “Official NF” was the “Political Soldier” faction around Nick Griffin and Patrick Harrington, and it was with this latter faction that Wakeford was sympathizing. Supposedly Wakeford had to leave the band DIJ for this reason, although this seems strange, given that this was right at the point when the NF took a turn to Strasserism, the so-called “left wing” of National Socialism. Douglas Pearce himself said in 1992 that when “searching for a new political perspective we stumbled across nationalist Bolshevism (…) people like Gregor Strasser and Ernst Röhm, who were later known as the ‘second revolutionaries’”. This is a position that would have been compatible with the “Political Soldiers” from the NF.

The question has to be inserted here: why wasn’t DIJ immediately recognized as a far right band by most people? There are different reasons for this. Their background was explicitly left, texts and imagery seemed to be ambivalent, one wanted to recognize not a glorification but also a critique, and when the band was singing the Horst Wessel Lied, it was seen as a provocation embedded in a historical collage. One could and should have been more critical, but songs like “Death of the West” were serving both “left” and “right”-wing anti-Western resentment. People like John Balance and David Tibet, who seemed unsuspicious, were playing on DIJ records and Douglas Pearce was working for a time in Rough Trade record shop, which was supposed to be politically correct – hadn’t they banned Whitehouse records for the fact the band shared the same address as the fascist League of St. George? And last but not least hadn’t Wakeford been sacked from the band for his involvement with the NF?

After leaving DIJ, Wakeford founded the band Above The Ruins with the bassist Gary Smith of No Remorse, which was an openly neo-nazi band similar to Skrewdriver both in terms of musical style and ideological direction. Above The Ruins released one album and became effectively the first line-up of the new band Sol Invictus, in which Wakeford is still active. Sol Invictus first album was called “Against The Modern World” in homage to Julius Evola, on which Smith still played bass, and was joined by Ian Read and Liz Gray. Wakeford has denied this connection for many years, although there was a re-release of the album in 1996 which was also sold through the Sol Invictus mail order. Above the Ruins featured on a National Front benefit sampler called “No Surrender” alongside the likes of Skrewdriver on the Rock-o-Rama label, who have as recently as 2008 released a track by No Remorse on a 30 years anniversary compilation. Interesting detail: The track “Waiting” had not previously been released on Rock-o-Rama, but was on the “Songs of the Wolf” album. This album, released originally on cassette tape in 1984, then on vinyl in 1986, had already reaped praise in Scorpion magazine from Michael Walker, who is another figure of the British New Right as former NF member.

What is certain is that Wakeford makes some sort of effort at damage control concerning his involvements with the far right. His strategy seems to be to make flimsy disclaimers and otherwise deny everything (see his “Message from Tony” on his website). The legend that he was only briefly involved with far right politics in ca. 1984 doesn’t hold up. His involvement with the NF went back at least two years during which he was a member of DIJ. Wakeford has had many personal involvements with important figures of the far right till at least 1999 when Richard Lawson was best man at his wedding, which also include figures like Patrick Harrington and National Socialist Movement leader Tony Williams. We already encountered Patrick Harrington as one of the organizers of the White Noise Club in the mid 80’s, and he was also a part of the Political Soldier faction of the NF. When this faction split at the end of the decade (leaving the small rump of the NF to the “Flag” group), it produced the International Third Position (Griffin, Holland) and the “Third Way” (Harrington), which is posing as a “think tank” rather than a political group. Harrington remains a confidant of Griffin as the chairman of the fake trade union Solidarity, which is essentially a BNP front. Wakeford was good friends with Harrington and Tony Williams, the future leader of the National Socialist Movement and the person who would issue his NSM membership card to London nail-bomber David Copeland. Wakeford’s other close friend Richard Lawson had a career in the extreme right going back into the 70’s. He was editor of “Britain First” together with Dave McCalden, who became known as a holocaust revisionist, followed the Strasserite split of the short lived National Party. In the 80’s he returned to the “Strasserized” National Front, founded the IONA-Group (Islands of the North Atlantic) and wrote for Scorpion, the magazine of Michael Walker (who was one of the people who safe-housed Italian neo-fascist terrorist Roberto Fiore). In the mid-90’s, Lawson founded the fluxeuropa website and was involved along with Southgate in Alternative Green, the nationalistic spin-off from Green Anarchist. As we can see, Wakeford was surrounded by key figures of the extreme right until the end of the 90’s at least. So it’s not surprising that he spouts on about Europe in true new right fashion in an interview with Jean Louis Vaxelaire, which was published on Lawson’s fluxeuropa site. Wakeford said that Europe was “one of my obsessions”, and slightly distanced himself from 19th century concepts of nationalism by preferring to see “Europe as a collection of regions”, but he then in accordance with the new right decried the “unstoppable” “americanization of European culture.”

Wakeford and Southgate are by no means the only ones involved in the far right. Ian Read, a founding member of Sol Invictus and occasional member of Current 93, who featured on Death In June’s “Brown Book”, founded his own project Fire & Ice in 1990. Known in occult circles for his editorship of Chaos International, his interests are focussed on runes, odinism, nordic mythology, and he thinks of himself as one of the most important occultists of the British Isles. But he too has a history as a far right militant as he acted as security for Michael Walker and Michèle Renouf at events around 1990.

Renouf is one of the leading figures of British holocaust denial and anti-Semites. Amongst other things, she participated in the Teheran holocaust conference, and is one of the most active supporters of David Irving. She also pops up in our context again in 2007 when she spoke at an event of Southgate’s New Right groupuscule, as reported by the anti-Fascist magazine Searchlight. This (and a looming leadership contest) led to disputes within the British National Party, since its culture commissioner, self-declared “philosopher” and “artist” (who made garish oil paintings with titles such as “Adolf and Leni” or “Freud was wrong”) was simultaneously Southgate’s partner in the New Right grouplet. This was at a time when Nick Griffin (former Political Soldier, now BNP chairman and recently elected to the European Parliament) tried to create a more “respectable” image for the party. Of course if leading functionaries rub shoulders with radical anti-Zionists and anti-Semites, who, as Renouf does, believe that “Hamas fights for us all”, then Griffin’s attempt to clear the BNP from charges of anti-Semitism have little credibility.

Back to Neo-Folk: In contrast to “Battlenoise!”, the book titled “Looking For Europe” was received with praise in the scene. The 500 page convolute is stuffed with information on bands and records. It functions a bit like a film documentary cut with snippets of interviews in between the text, and amended with “essays” on the “philosophical” background of the artists. The book title of course is taken from a song by Sol Invictus. All sides of the scene are presented and indeed all kinds of references are mentioned and quoted, but the overall agenda seems to be to discredit the anti-Fascists who are active in monitoring and counter-acting the fascist tendencies in neo-folk. Thus, “Rik” from the fluxeuropa web site comments on whether the Neofolk-scene in England has the reputation of being politically incorrect: “The witch hunters of Political Correctness have their very own and narrow minded political agenda – a kind of ‘social marxism’ – and are not satisfied with anything less than complete compliance with their own values and aims. To justify oneself towards these people would be to play their game, and is ultimately futile. This is why I think we shouldn’t even pose this question.” (p 24) This “Rik” can be none other than Richard Lawson, who we already encountered as NF cadre and IONA founder, but the reader is kept in the dark about these facts. It would be interesting to know if the authors of the book knew this information. If the answer is yes, it would show that they are manipulating the reader on this question; if no, it means they didn’t do their research properly. Either way it illustrates well how the book operates – consciously or not – in its quest to create a whitewashed encyclopedia of Neofolk. Why left wing authors like Martin Büsser or Lars Brinkmann let themselves be instrumentalized remains unclear, but it makes it possible that pretend-equilibrium is created. Most importantly, the involvement of the far right in Neofolk is trivialized and reduced to footnote status.

One other method in this strategy is to present authors such as Ernst Jünger and Julius Evola as heroic mavericks and mystical sages. It is worth briefly looking into their relationships with fascism. Ernst Jünger was active as a publicist and author from the 1920’s onwards on the fringes of the furthest right of the Weimar Republic. He was never a Hitlerite National Socialist, but still he was one of those intellectuals who expected to be the helm of intellectual life after the “German Revolution”. Benn and Heidegger are other examples of this. In 1964, Jünger wrote in his book “Maxima-Minima”: “Revolutions also have a mechanical side”, complaining that the result is that “subaltern” types are coming to the fore. I’m sure he is thinking of the mediocre writers that became national authors of Nazi Germany. Of course Jünger is a stylistic “genius” compared to a Herbert Böhme. It was beneath him to formulate cheap adulations of the “Führer”. Much has been made of Jünger’s supposed refusal to join the Deutsche Akademie der Dichtung when it was purged and then filled with Nazis in the spring of 1933. Fact is that he wasn’t actually invited to join it in May ‘33. One month later, when the NSDAP was already consolidating its power, five more writers were nominated to the Academy. Besides Jakob Schaffner, this also included Jünger. However Jünger got the least number of votes. The poet was insulted and penned a letter of refusal even before the actual invitation arrived. He wrote: “The character of my work lies in its essentially soldierly character, which I do not wish to compromise with academic ties… I ask you therefor to see my refusal as a sacrifice which my participation in the german mobilisation is imposing on myself, in which service I have been active since 1914.” He was obviously offended by the preferential treatment lesser authors were receiving. In any case there is no anti-fascist attitude that can be projected into this statement, and is rather a position that is still consistent with his critique of the Hitlerites from the right.

In his post war writings there is clearly a different tone, and Jünger may well have learned something from the horrors, but it is also possible that a very similar message was encrypted in a different way for a different cultural climate (see the box on “Der Waldgang”). Whatever may be the case, there is definitely no self-critical analysis of his own role in the “german mobilization”. Instead, he often revised his older writings including those versions in his collected works making the texts more compatible for the cultural climate of the post war era. In passing it should be mentioned that Armin Mohler, who was Jünger’s secretary for a while in the early 50’s, turned away from the author exactly for this reason.

Julius Evola was one of the main inspirations for the extreme end of Italian post war fascism. Marginally involved with avant-garde art after WWI, he soon became an ideologist of a radical and anti-Semitic “traditionalism”. That he was not just some random occultist will be clear from the following quote from the preface of the English edition of “Men Among the Ruins”: “… for us as integral advocates of the “Imperium”, for us as aristocratically inclined, for us as unbending enemies of plebeian politics, of any ‘nationalistic’ ideology, of any and all party ranks and all forms of party ‘spirit’, as well as of any more or less disguised form of democracy, “Fascism is not enough”. We should have wanted a more radical, more fearless, a more absolute fascism that would exist in pure strength and unbending spirit against any compromise, inflamed by a real fire for imperial power. We can never be viewed as ‘anti-Fascists’ except to the extent that ‘super-Fascism’ can be equated with ‘antifascism’.” Despite this, various protagonists of the neo-folk scene are allowing themselves to present Evola only as an eccentric mystic in order to trivialize what he is really about: “super-fascism”.

Not everybody sees it like that. For example, the Ukrainian academic and fascism scholar Anton Shekhovtsov wrote the article “Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘Metapolitical’ Fascism”, which appeared in “Patterns of Prejudice” magazine in December 2009. His starting point is that in the post war years the radical right had to switch from openly political forms to what he calls “apoliteic” form. Here, he is particularly referring to Evola, Mohler and Jünger. These conservative revolutionaries find themselves in an interregnum until the time would be ripe again for the “glorious” national re-awakening. The metapolitcal fascism of the New Right manifests itself less in the form of parties than in networks of think tanks, conferences, journals, institutes and publishing houses. Shekhovtsov demonstrates how this strategy is at work in Neo-folk and Martial Industrial with bands such as Folkstorm, Death In June, HERR and others. Of course, record labels and distributors, venues and festivals, fashion and fetishism also add to the cohesion of the scene and operate as transmitters of ideas.

We have seen how certain activists of the scene have roots in the political milieu of British neo-fascism, and that their later activities appear not to be “sins of the youth” but rather a conscious change in strategy. This makes it easier to sell records and exert influence, and also makes is possible that the Antifa can be portrayed as “intolerant” and “totalitarian”. The examples shown in this article are by far not the only ones. From the US, examples such as Michael Moynihan, Boyd Rice or Robert Taylor could be examined and would show deep involvement with far right politics, just as the band Von Thronstahl from Germany would. There are numerous other examples. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that everybody involved in this scene is automatically to be seen as a far right activist. There are even members with years of involvement who seemed to be unaware of the political components. The right wing Gramscian strategy works best when the recipients of the ideas don’t identify them with the hard right, but with “common sense”. This is a very small scene which tries to ennoble its consumers into being supposedly part of some “elite”.

One of the more prevalent opinions on this topic is: as long as these are just the quirks of some pseudo-eccentrics, we shouldn’t care. However, the danger of lies in a camouflaged and sneaking popularisation of ideas as concepts of the New Right can not be underestimated. Caught in the cul-de-sac of “straight” neo-nazi politics, the individuals involved in the far right and neo-folk switched to “metapolitical”, sub-cultural strategies. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to expose these actual connections, to prompt those in the “grey zone” to distance themselves, and especially to expose the actual arbitrariness and banality of fascist thinking.

So several days ago I came across this video from a christian who was making valid complaints about the christian music industry and it’s a really thoughtful take and one I mostly agree with. I’ve always found the genre to be incredibly stale and formulaic even more so than so called ‘secular’ music. 

But watching this video actually made me reflect on my own history with christian music and christian music ministry. I mean the thing of it is, it’s an industry, just like everything else...

Now I grew up in the church and from an early age I felt like I was being brainwashed. I went through the motions because I felt like that’s what I had to do, but I really didn’t fully believe what I was being told. What I was being told was that I was going to hell on a daily basis. Not directly of course, but when you’re sitting in a pew and someone behind the pulpit is telling you that if you have questions, if you feel a certain way you’re doomed to fire and brimstone. So, if anything, my experience with the church made me feel dirty. Like I was disgusting. A monster. I felt like a monster because the church as a whole was telling me I was one through the messages they were preaching.

But anyways, this is about the music side of it, right.

So I come from a family of musicians and those musicians were a part of music ministry in various churches. I’ve played with tons of different groups. And by the time I was brought in though to play with people, I stopped believing in any of it. Like I was done hating myself, denying myself and for who, and for what. But again it was still all I knew and I saw this as a way to make connections. It was just something for me to do, it was a job to me basically.

And the thing that you have to understand is that music ministry is a big deal. The big churches, the churches who wanted to market themselves as new, hip and cutting edge, it’s important for them to have cool, hip, youthful in house musicians. It’s a way to market your church, your brand. Again, it’s an industry and music leaders can make a lot of money with the right church. 

During my time I worked with several band leaders. During the last few years I was doing it I was working/playing with a very notable name. It was a feat if I’m being honest, like, the fact that I was in this person’s band working as his guitarist just automatically made people respect me as a musician. He was a very popular figure in the christian music ministry scene here. This was someone you would hear on the radio. I won’t say his name because I’m done with all of that and I don’t want to make it a thing but my point is, it was a big deal to be playing with this person and it should’ve made me happy.

Because when you’re around someone or connected to someone with popularity like that, it’s fun, it’s exciting, people think you’re a part of something big. Even if I didn’t believe in any of the songs I was playing there was a sense of validation there. 

But while there was validation and perks the truth is, it wasn’t very challenging or fulfilling creatively speaking. The songs were paint by numbers, very tired, very formulaic, all of that. The same could be said for mainstream music, the difference to me was mainstream music never tried to market itself as having this spiritual or moral high ground. I also felt like all of the songs we were told to play were obvious knock offs of much more popular, much more interesting ‘secular’ songs. I questioned why if the ‘secular’ world was so evil, why were you taking all of this inspiration from it and trying to emulate songs that came from it. 

It was an interesting time where I was doing things and playing with really cool and a few notable people but...I was so dead inside. I really felt like it was beneath me after awhile. These tired empty songs with hollow messages. I was done with it for a number of reasons but I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was when I was told to play a Mercy fucking Me song, and inside I was like ‘nah I’m done’ because god the suck so hard. 

It’s not like I was making a ton of money from it like others (although I do have a story about how someone in the church absolutely stole money from me) but it was pretty easy to say goodbye to all of that. I don’t regret it. If I had kept going and went even further yeah, I do wonder what that money could’ve been like (if you can land a cushy gig, you can make a damn good living) but then I ask myself, would I actually be happy having to play those songs and the answer is no. The most soulless music I’ve ever heard, is christian music.

The Final Vans Warped Tour: legacy, history and future

The Vans Warped Tour ended in West Palm Beach, Florida, not with a bang, but with an anthem and a guitar toss. 

For those unfamiliar with the festival, it was the longest-running touring summer music festival since first launching back in 1995. And punk elders Pennywise, who were a reoccurring staple since their first slot on the tour in 1996, played the last set of the day on the last show of the tour, closing with their classic “Brohymn.” As the entire crowd and everyone on stage sang along with the iconic “whoahs” at the end of the song, guitarist Fletch Dragge tossed his guitar into the crowd.

And just like that, after fostering an entire community and subculture, the Warped Tour was finished.

The vacuum that Warped Tour has left is easier to understand for veterans of the punk rock summer camp. For anyone who has watched the tour grow from year to year, it’s an undeniable fact that there’s nothing else like Warped Tour, from all its faults to all its triumphs.

For the alternative crowds, Warped Tour was a little haven where you felt at home. It spanned musical generations. It outlasted entire bands’ careers. The festival fertilized brands such as Volcom and Hurley. It broke bands out – one oft-mentioned example is pop superstar Katy Perry who, yes, cut her teeth Warped Tour. And, it participated in large philanthropic initiatives – one such being the canned food drive that would get fans skip-the-line passes and collect thousands of cans of food per day.

Warped Tour itself rarely took credit for any of these things. It always sort of chugged along, always in the background of the summer festival season as other names came and went. Yet, Warped Tour’s impact is immeasurable.

In the mid-2000s, after household names such as Green Day, Blink-182, and Sublime had gone through the festival, there was something magic going on. Music fans who were lucid and paying attention during that time were witnesses to something spectacular: pop-punk and emo broke out into the mainstream. You could find My Chemical Romance – a band whose gothic-dyed, theatrical music was all at once the biggest thing – on MTV’s music video rotation. Pop-punk brats Fall Out Boy were catching everyone’s ears. A band called Paramore had a girl with bright red hair, and they were stealing hearts. The 2005 Warped Tour (the only year to ever make a profit on ticket sales) featured all three of these bands at one point. Merch sales that year were through the roof. School let out for that summer, and everyone was dying to lose their shit at Warped Tour.

Brooks Betts of Mayday Parade, a tour staple over the years. Mayday Parade earned a name for themselves like many other bands: by talking to fans in line at Warped Tour before the show and asking them to check out their music.

Punk rock stays the same, but culture changes at an alarming pace these days. Yet, Warped Tour had remarkable consistency. It’s also really easy to get caught in the mindset that the mid-aughts were the tour’s wonder years. Thanks to nostalgia and clear indication of what was popular at the time, Warped Tour back then seemed to be the glory days. But to write off the tour’s recent years would be a huge misstep.

Granted, angry internet warriors have roasted the annual Warped Tour lineup announcement since trolling has been a thing (founder Kevin Lyman has taken to shamelessly referencing and baiting these trolls in recent years), but the only serious criticisms it deserves are for certain policy decisions the tour made, rather than the lineup. In the 2010s, Warped Tour may not have had the same overall cultural draw, but it didn’t suddenly turned to C-rate, has-been bands to fill out the roster. All the cultural buzz that came with bands such as My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy may have faded, but Warped Tour kept trucking along and being the gatekeeper to tremendous music.

The Maine. Vocalist John O’Callaghan is singing with a fan who he brought up on stage for “Girls Do What They Want” - something the band does almost every show.

The generation gap is important to why Warped Tour mattered, even in its last show. As the physicality of the music industry faded away, pop-punk left the mainstream, and social media introduced sweeping cultural attention deficit, it’s easy to think that Warped Tour’s impact also faded over the years. There was less of a fanfare to it, sure, but Warped Tour still had a finger on the pulse of alternative talent. What made it all different was that these bands were not blasted on TV or moving tons of CDs – they counted album streams and posted daily to social media. Relevant to our age, but arguably less visible. Bands could still make a name for themselves on Warped Tour, but it didn’t come with the same explosion of popularity as in the 2000s. Echosmith is one example of a recent Warped Tour alumnus. After playing a one-off in 2013, they were asked to join the whole tour, and they found success after the fact (they currently just finished a tour with acapella superstars Pentatonix).

In fact, in many ways, as the mainstream popularity of this style of music has faded, Warped Tour has felt like the last stronghold for the scene. When you have all these splintered shards of musical sub-communities created as a result of social media diaspora, it’s hard to see the whole picture except when Warped Tour brought it together. That’s why Warped Tour mattered, even in its later years, and why the void created in its absence is the definitive end of an era. No one knows what’s coming next or if anything will be created to fill in that magical space from June to August. Warped Tour wasn’t just the festival – it was the “everything else” around it: the artist-to-fan interaction, the constant sound of a band you don’t know playing, the endless amounts of merch, the dozens and dozens of tents, people hawking at you with megaphones, fans promoting band set times, the Buddhist guys, the running into friends, the bands trying to make a name for themselves hustling CDs in line before doors. Labels and bands would plan album releases solely around this summer run. It was make or break for a huge number of aspiring musicians.

Walking into my first Warped Tour in 2007 was the culmination of a few years of anticipation (I had wanted to go to the 2005 tour, but I was too young and it would have been way too much for my parents). I’d like to think everyone’s first time with the tour was like this, but who knows? It was exhilarating, though. This subculture and community of music that I had only just started discovering a few years prior somehow took over a couple city blocks and was just there. People were handing out Monster energy drinks like candy. Some guy showed up to do the same for Trojan condoms. There were dudes with mohawks. I went to see a lot of bands, but I barely got halfway through the day when I realized that Warped Tour was so much more than a festival. It was keeping a subculture alive. Hell, it was keeping many multiple subcultures alive. I doubt the guys seeing The Casualties in 2010 were the same guys interested in watching Breathe Carolina. But both groups of people were there. This effect became increasingly noticeable in later years, when bands who were once on top were on a downswing, touring smaller club venues in the fall and winter and playing to 300 people, but playing to thousands at Warped Tour. Warped Tour got everyone out.

Eleven years later, on the eve before the beginning of the end in Orlando (I went to Orlando, Tampa, and West Palm Beach, the last three shows in Florida), I had the exact same sense of anticipation as I had when I was a 15-year-old kid.

The vast majority of “regular” things in life don’t last even half as long. I can think of a total of one friend I’ve been close to during that entire length of time. But almost everything else has come and gone.

Also over those years, I went from an excited kid who was into alternative music to an independent journalist and photographer, gaining a sense of attention toward the trends and motifs of the tour. This peaked last year, when I attended Full Sail University’s live stream of the 2017 lineup on behalf of sonder. I sat in a room with a group of my peers, mostly other independent media outlet reporters, and participated in a Q&A with Lyman. In that room, there was no indication that next year’s tour would be the last, but I found myself believing for the past couple years that the tour was living on borrowed time anyway. All good things must come to an end, and despite maintaining good lineups, Warped Tour’s critical mass had been reached already. That’s why, when the announcement did come, it was a sad moment, but not unsurprising.

Warped Tour’s final moments occurring in Florida seemed a bit strange. Florida is a deeply unpleasant place in the summer. Our heat is high, our humidity thick. The sun is unrelenting and harsh. Aggressive electrical rain storms can and will sidetrack the day (which has happened plenty of times). Bands hate Warped Tour in Florida. Why not end the tour in California? Despite all of this, moods remained stable. Wandering around load-in and side stage, there was definitely a detectable presence of “the end.” There was some relief, some sadness, and some nostalgia. Crew members shook hands and hugged. But there was also a sense that this was all arguably a formality, and that this had been something coming for a while.

In Tampa, I walked into one of the main stage equipment trailers and taped on the walls were photos taken by Sean Stitt, one of the truck drivers who’s been with the tour for years. The sadness of the last Warped Tour hit me in that moment, as I realized it was the last time this trailer would be making its way around the country for the festival. Would the photos stay up? They’re just monuments to a past era now.

JR of Less Than Jake. The ska band played an enormous number of shows during Warped Tour’s run, and those shows were usually filled with shirt cannons, toilet paper launchers, and more.

Warped Tour chose to express its longevity in the lineup of its final run. Many of the bands had a history with the tour: Bands such as Every Time I Die, Mayday Parade, Chelsea Grin, and Reel Big Fish have been repeats for years. The Maine and 3oh!3 were scene wunderkinds during the tail end of that MTV era. One-off and short-run bands such as Sum 41, Taking Back Sunday, Underoath, The Used, and Four Year Strong all helped define the scene in the new millennium. Less Than Jake had the accomplishment of being the band to play the most amount of shows in the tour’s history – nearly 440 at the final count in West Palm Beach.

It wasn’t just nostalgia, but there was certainly a strong element of it. Mayday Parade played plenty of songs from their 11-year-old breakout record A Lesson In Romantics. The Maine played a few songs from their 2008 neon piece Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop (but with decidedly less emo hair swoops). 3oh!3 moved the entire festival with scene crunk songs “DONTTRUSTME” and “STARSTRUKK.” Warped Tour was never a place for deep cuts, but there seemed to be a deliberate emphasis on some “old” stuff.

A focus on nostalgia is understandable given that it was the last. After all, there’s so much history in the tour. Trying to parse it all is a monumental task. But you can enjoy looking back on the whole of it. Most of the bands and crew have been on it before, so there’s memories lurking in the venues of different times.

Of course, most people didn’t dedicate their lives to this tour. The folks who can say they’ve been to every Warped Tour as a fan are few and far between, and they’re not young anymore. And there are certainly those who feel the tour’s end is far past due. And even more who were just plain apathetic. In West Palm Beach, I overheard a guy talking about how he’s “so glad this shit is over. The lineup hasn’t been good in 10 years” and how he “met Katy Perry when she was jack shit.” Warped Tour is certainly due certain criticisms, and has been yelled at for years for “selling out,” but it endured, even when the culture changed to accommodate weekend blowout festivals as opposed to traveling ones.

Travis Clark from We The Kings joined 3OH!3 on stage. Both bands had played Warped Tour a number of times before.

This is why there’s a sense people aren’t hung up over its end. People are tired. People are aging. Things have changed. Engagement is down. Warped Tour was due an explosive end, anyway – much more fitting than a slow fizzling out.

That fatigue and burnout is may have contributed to the tour’s end, but it reflects the industry at large, and you have to wonder if Warped Tour’s end will refresh the system we currently have. There’s certainly an argument to be made that bands have gone for a “Warped Tour-ready” sound and that the tour having a monopoly on most of the United States during the summer often meant the only way you’d be seeing your favorite band was by seeing their 30-minute Warped Tour set. No Warped Tour means that the summer touring slot has suddenly opened up to a reality more like fall, spring, and winter tours, where bands often stack bills and get to play more than eight songs.

That being said, these are small prices to pay for the function Warped Tour fulfilled. Warped Tour was the stitching that’s been holding our little alternative community together. There was almost always a sense of camaraderie at Warped Tour, whether back stage or in the fields. That was camaraderie on a person-by-person level, but also in a much deeper, communal sense. I think this is what kept Warped Tour around so long – over time, you could develop a sense of bond to both the festival, the people around it, and the music within it. In the end, there’s only so much you can say to try to convince people into the experience. It’s sort of a “you had to be there” thing. A lot of people don’t “get it;” it’s the “it’s not a phase, mom!” of tours.

All of this considered, it’s mostly the unknowns that stir curiosity in this post-Warped Tour era. The tour did a lot of things, kept a lot of machines moving, stood tall as the last big traveling festival in the United States (even on a basic logistics level, what Warped did every summer is astounding), but now it’s gone, and there’s a vacuum. Things will survive without it. Punk rock isn’t going anywhere. But all of the questions that it leaves in its absence are really the interesting part of the story. We’ll start seeing answers come next summer. But you also have to wonder, in a fast-paced world that already feels nostalgic toward the likes of My Chemical Romance, 2000s neon pop-punk, and the shtick of that all, if that same yearning will bring Warped Tour back from the dead in a decade or so. Or maybe we’ll get something entirely new. Either way, it’s a completely new era now. In the absolute final moments of the tour, when Pennywise finished playing, Lyman closed it out, handing the legacy to the fans:

“I still have lots of plans, but it’s time for you guys to take over the world. Take over the world.”

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Words and photos by sonder editor Andrew Friedgen. Like this? Sonder is an independent music, travel and photography publication at sonderlife.com. Give us a follow here or at our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook for more content like this!

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Also check out:

The Maine photo gallery - Vans Warped Tour in Orlando

American Football: The emo anomaly

All of our Warped Tour stuff ever

Taking Back Sunday - Tampa, FL - photo gallery

Shoegaze

a Bit background to one of the most underappreciated genres of the 90s, how the revival of the scene has brought a whole new generation of youth to redefine the genre and what impact the woozy, spinning, swirling, distorted guitar sounds has on me.  

I heard about shoegazing first time in 2015. I was listening to quite a lot of Sonic Youth at the time which I guess was the reason on how I found My Bloody Valentine through Spotify algorithm. First thoughts were okay this is nice but doesn’t really evoke any special feelings in me. I just thought it was less poppy and more ’indie’ spin on the 90s alternative rock and grunge scene. Surely now I know I will always go through a small fact and background check on artists, genres, labels and albums before I make any further assumptions on how artistically remarkable something is. Back then I was a bit ignorant on popular-cultures music history. I knew the basics, Elvis and The Beatles, how white men made Disco cool for the white audience, Punk Rock scene breaking out in UK and across the sea beginning of the Rap and DJ scene, synth sounds in your every favorite 80’s aerobic videos, Kurt Cobain’s sudden death shaking the whole rock world, shiny pop stars rising and falling.

I thought back then that good music is good music. Music being boxed into a certain genre didn’t bring any new artistic meaning into it and putting on labels was only limiting and blurring our minds from the actual sounds. Now it seems like the only way I know how to wrap my head around new music is to put labels on them. Maybe i’m not a free soul anymore finding only pleasures in sounds that elaborate with my every unspoken thought and emotion in the comfort of my own bedroom and in the warmness of my bed. Maybe i’ve become and seem to some of you like a boring music square who is ready to start battling you with my non-existing musical knowledge while being blissfully drunk at the que outside the entrance of a club. Maybe I’m overthinking and actually me taking interests in the backgrounds of different music scenes show that i’m passionate and appreciative towards this beautiful art form that has been given to us. In this world where I can’t see sense and find reason behind anything I find it calming that I can analyze and make clear distinctions between different musical styles. That sounds more like this and this sounds more like that. i’m not an absolutist but obviously through history people have always tried to find answers to their questions. We feel anxiety and nervousness when we’re on a mind puzzle we cannot solve. It being possible that music can be pinned down and defined brings me tranquility.

Well, Shoegaze is a bit different for me. I can’t completely pin down what it is cause it feels and sounds that it has gotten influence from so many genres and the origins of where it all began is very blurry.

Shoegaze began to rise somewhere middle of the 80s. In my last post I mentioned about this Scottish ethereal gothic band called Cocteau Twins. Robin Guthrie the guitarist of this certain band began to use the effect pedals in his guitar work. Back in the day he stated that the idea of using pedals came from the lack of sound and texture in electric guitars but later on admitted that it was actually the lack of his own technical skills that made him start to use the effect pedals. Whatever the reason behind it was I’m grateful that he began to use them. Pedals enabled the possibility to create guitar sounds that were atmospheric and otherworldly. Using effects like delay, reverb, distortion, fuzz etc created these layered textures called wall of sounds that combined many genres at the same time. Noise, Drone, Psychedelic, Progressive, Lo-fi even Ambient. Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated about it. It’s one specific genre but same time you also hear the inspiration coming from the 60s psychedelic bands, Gothic Rock, Noise Rock etc. You get lost because you think it’s a genre on its own balance but then you start to put the pieces together and find out that it has combined all these things together to make it as one. Then again you know it has its own definite style and not just any kind of music made with pedals can be defined as Shoegaze. You need that woozy, head spinning, swirling guitar that takes you on a musical trip. I feel like shoegazers are the ultimate music fans and their process of making something new was looking back at the bands and the music that they loved.

But besides Cocteau Twins or Jesus and the Mary Chain and their noise pop sound it was the defining moment of 1988 debut album Isn’t Anything by My Bloody Valentine and the single You Made Me Realise that a genre was born. From My Bloody Valentine bands like Slowdive, Ride, Chapterhouse, Swervedriver etc got inspiration for their work that on.

So, why is it called Shoegaze? The term was invented by music media, actually specifically by one NME journalist who referred the artists as shoegazers because of their way of performing on stage. They lacked of presence and connection with the audience due the heavy use of guitar effect pedals which led them to stare at their feet all the time so they could switch their pedals right. Often times they were kind of like step dancing through the sets because of the amount of effect shifting. Shoegazer was a slur word in that time and was only used in an offensive way. There wasn't really a lot of appreciation and understanding shown towards the scene. Grunge and Brit pop scenes were hitting hard on that time and music media was praising enormously acts like Nirvana and Oasis. Anything that was considered Shoegaze or related to it was doomed to get bad reviews when it was released. In the end supporters and gigs got smaller and smaller and labels like Creation had to let their Shoegaze artists go. 

The history with how Shoegaze was perceived saddens me. To me the music sounds and feels that it was a way ahead of it’s time. Electronica and the so called ’indie pop’ music we have now wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for Shoegaze. Music medias harshness made it hard to be taken seriously and made the scene look like wimpy angsty teens mocking rock music with their amateurish noise playing. Luckily the change of that has come.

Through the whole 00s Shoegaze and Dream pop stayed as an underground scene but in 2010s it began to come back on surface. In 2013 My Bloody Valentine released their 3rd album called MBV, 20 years later when Loveless the 2nd album was released. I think the most significant moment of how Shoegaze is being known again pin points to the digital era we’re living now and social media. Internet and the possibility to access information nowadays is easier and travels faster. You don’t have to go into a record store anymore and spend 8 hours of searching and listening to different albums you have probably picked because of the cover or the name of the artist or band or on what ever genre section it’s in. There is of course nice and authentic feeling into it but all i’m saying is that it takes time and what we have now you can be minutes away from your favorite music. Problem in the 90s was that they didn't have enough promotion and a proper platform to be shown on. Now people can make more decisions based on their own mind and not on what the industry and critics are promoting us. Of course you have to be willing to go searching different informative platforms because the music is not handed to you. Music that is handed has the most radio playing and pop on your recommended page on Youtube, Spotify etc. That music has the most skilled promotion and advertising which means the industry is placing more of their finances in them. It’s strictly business. On Spotify I’m not talking about the recommended artist page which can appear if I listen to a certain artist. That’s based on the algorithm of what other listeners who listen to that specific artist also listen to. I’m talking about the browse page where the first playlists you see are probably something like ”Hits right now!” or ”Top 50 Viral” which are promoted playlists including promoted artists.

Thanks to the internet as a platform Shoegaze has started spreading again without the help of the industry and critique reviews. New bands have come who are inspired of Shoegaze and are making music influenced by that genre. The musical form of the 90s movement has moved on to being Nu-gaze. Nu-gaze is a term to describe a new wave form of Shoegaze. New bands like Wild Nothing and Deerhunter are infusing the old characteristics with other genres and new producing techniques. Also the original form of the genre is very tied to the period it existed in and is a 90s youth scene more than an actual genre so there’s a reason it’s impossible to be a traditionalist in that sense.

Things are looking up. Literally. Because the media can’t crush these new up-comers with their name-calling or ridiculous criticism of being the ”scene that celebrates itself”.

They’re not consistently gazing at their shoes, they’re gazing at something new.

I’ve made a list of 4 essential albums which includes the so called Holy Trinity of Shoegaze. Imagine of having this family tree where these three bands are the founders and when you go up, the branches are separating into other sections of noisier -, dreamier - and ’indie rockier’  Shoegaze. Then there’s a 6 album list recommended by me which contains traditional Shoegaze and Nu-Gaze. The 4 essentials are a must-know if you want to engage with this scene and understand the stylistic features of the music.  

4 essential albums

1. Jesus and the Mary Chain - Psychocandy

Psychocandy isn’t actually a Shoegaze album more like Noise Pop and avantgardist Proto-Punk but I listed it here as an essential because of the impact this album did have on this genre that was about to come. The guitar lead blurred by noisiness in the whole album was one of the main

inspirations for Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine. Distorted Guitar leads are defining sound of Shoegaze and this album gives a wide spectrum of static sounds like the pixel rain in your old tv.

This 1985 debut album by band lead by two brothers Jim and William Reid is a wonder work of teenage I don’t give a fuck how I play, I just play. They didn’t care about the looks and actually about anything. Their style of playing and making music was messy, sloppy and lazy as they wanted it to be, it showed the rebelliousness they had against falling into the same patterns and roles as other musicians, not wanting to be molded as the rockstars with all the booze and women (even though they did get heavily drunk while performing). It doesn’t really contain the real social statements of punk rock but still has that familiar adolescent rebellion. Psychocandy found inspiration from 60s girl groups and was filled with easy poppy 3-chord progressions which were masterfully hid with all the noise.

Favorite tracks: Just Like Honey, Taste of Cindy, My Little Underground, Never Understand

2. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless  (Holy Trinity, part of the noisy side)

The 2nd studio album they released in 1991 after the Shoegaze pioneering album Isn’t Anything, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless makes you think of the bright vibrant intensive colors and hues burning out, melting and mixing together. It has a tense feeling of abstraction. it’s expressed in a way of mind you can’t express it, not with words at least. Kevin Shields work seems to come from some what sub-conscious mind that is trying to tell you emotions he has. Not with words but with sounds. The whole album is strongly based only on guitar leads and in the engineering of them. Which is probably why Kevin was obsessed with getting the effects and mixing into perfection. In one of Kevin’s interviews he stated that the problem was in the recording sessions, it was nearly impossible the get even the smallest frequencies heard. This album approximately cost 250 000 pounds, it took 2 years to record and the band visited 9 studios in total. After it’s release Creation Records went bankrupt and there has been a bit pointing fingers between both parties on who’s to blame for the downfall. What ever side your on Loveless is a well-deserved masterpiece and all the trouble that went along with it had a meaning into it. I’ll always imagine though if hypothetically financial problems wouldn’t be the issue would’ve there been even more different sound layers and textures? Would’ve it taken even more time to be released? 2 years or maybe even 5? Well we can tell that MBV the 3rd album took 20 years to be released so maybe we can count from that.

Favorite tracks: Only Shallow, When you Sleep, Sometimes

3. Slowdive - Souvlaki (Holy Trinity, part of the dreamy side)

Souvlaki is personally my favorite Shoegaze album. Brian Eno the godfather of ambient worked on three songs here and you can hear the ambient touch he gave into it. This 1993 released 2nd studio album by Slowdive is beautifully made timeless classic that stands out with it’s capability to unite heart-breaking melancholy with the optimistic hopefulness of the future. This kind of music can only come out from a teenagers or young adults mind. It brings that authenticity of emotionality that carries through the younger years when you haven’t build a thick skin yet. The way how the dreamy and hazy sounds and vocals have been tied together with Neil Halstead’s sensitive song-writing builds up into this climax of a cry baby music, in a good way. Souvlaki is a breakup album between the two band members Rachel Goswell, the guitarist and vocalist and Neil Halstead, the second guitarist, vocalist, producer and song-writer. It’s like reading their open diary posts. Their love of writing, playing and producing music was bigger than the personal issues they had so they decided to push them aside and stay professional. All that was kept unsaid transformed into poetic song-writing. Both of them showed truly artistic behavior while noticing the circumstances they were working on. Unfortunately media hated it and called it a soulless and outdated piece of work. After the 3rd album Pygmalion they were signed off and left to pay the rest of the US tour on its halfway. At least they’re getting now the credit they deserved and are back on touring. 2017 they released a new Self-titled comeback album Slowdive which is highly recommendable also.

Favorite tracks: Alison, Machine Gun, When the Sun Hits, Dagger (I could pick them all though)

4. Ride - Nowhere (Holy Trinity, part of the 90s more typical alternative side)

Ride’s 1990 released debut album is a dynamic work of guitar distortion that creates a crashing wall of sound. Like the waves moving upwards and downwards while growing into spirally holes which speed up and eventually shatter when they hit the seashore. And in that same scenery the sounds of the rumbling wind that pierce your eardrums. That is the main feeling that Nowhere contains. It’s an album focused on high energy. It has more melodic and rhythmic patterning and simple song-crafting compared to the other Shoegaze essentials. Ride was signed to Creation Records in 1989 when Alan McGee found interest in them after one of their demos Jesus and Mary Chain’s Jim Reid had a hold on. They were the few Shoegazing bands that had the opportunity of experiencing commercial success and Nowhere hit 11. place in the UK charts. Andy Bell and Mark Gardener had artistic differences between what style direction the band should move on. Their childish arguments and battling with it eventually broke the band in 1996 and the members Bell, Gardener, Laurence Colbert and Steve Queralt moved on to different projects. Bell for example became the bassist of the Brit-Pop band Oasis. In 2015 they reunited on touring and released a new Album Weather Diaries in 2017. Like many other Shoegaze bands Ride wasn’t and still isn’t a fan of being categorized as a Shoegaze band stating that it’s a boring tag. They still have a place on being one of the most influencing and essential bands in shoegazing history.

Favorite tracks: In a Different Place, Vapour trail, Dreams Burn Down

6 albums i recommend:

1. Asobi Seksu - Citrus (Nu-Gaze)

This 2nd studio album released 2006 by the Brooklyn based band is lyrically a smooth mix of english and Japanese language together with poppy candy-colored tunes flourished with happiness. Citrus is a refreshing take on Shoegaze. Yuki Chikudate’s adorably pitched and pretty vocals are a candy topping on a pile of upbeat guitar leads that are washed out with loads of effects and drums which are equally noticeable. In total it’s a catchy album with some jingly-jangle Nu-Gaze pop-tunes.

Favorite Tracks: Red Seas, Exotic Animal Paradise, Thursday

  2.  Loveliescrushing - Bloweyelashwish (Shoegaze)

Recorded with a simple four-track recorder, 1993 released debut album Bloweyelashwish by Loveliescrushing is an innovative work of otherworldly and precisely structured fuzzy sounds with some interesting choices of additional instruments. Often mistaken of using keyboards Scott Cortes the guitarist and second vocalist used forks, knives, vibrators, paint scrapers and so on to find new creative ways to make his guitar work even more stretched out. His extremely reverbed and lushed guitar leads, thanks to the technical additions, builds up a gothic atmosphere into the sound landscape. The noisy sounds are hectic, evolving and moving towards to this chaotic drone that feels like it’s eating up all the space and becoming a massive blackhole of squeaky static sounds that create a sonic boom. Paired up with softly haunting and beautifully ethereal vocals of Melissa Arpin the duo has made an impressive first album that’s an escape to other world where soothing hypnotizing sounds are waves where you can float on and sink into the bottom of deep ambience.

Favorite Tracks: Moinaexquisitewallflower, Sugaredglowing, Crushing, Darkglassdolleyes

3. Pinkshinyultrablast - Everything Else Matters (Nu-Gaze)

St. Petersburg based band called Pinkshinyultrablast which is named after one of Astrobrite’s albums is a band thats inspiration runs deep in the waters of Shoegaze. 2013 released debut album Everything Else Matters is a strong mix of electronica with extremely delayed vocals of the singer Lyubov Soloveva that bounces between the walls until the ever-growing guitar lead comes in-front of it all with adrenaline pumped kiddy sort of energy. Playful melody and thunderous pop styling of the album makes it one of the many Nu-gaze albums that give a solid ground to it’s genre.

Favorite tracks: Wish We Were, Holy Forest, Umi

4.  Medicine - Shot Forth Self Living (Shoegaze)

The noise bottom of shoegazing, Shot Forth Self Living the 1992 debut album by American band Medicine is definitely not suitable for everyone but which has such an intensive and massive static explosion that it has to be noted. The screeching textures of guitar feedback seem to claw their way through your skin until it’s scratched into burning and flaming red rash caused by the noise extremeness. Medicine was the first American band that got a record deal from the British independent label Creation Records. It has been praised of being one of the closest american acts to My Bloody Valentine but I like to think that they brought their own unique touch to the noisy shoegazing scene and weren’t just a follow-ups. They dig deeper into the distorted, fuzzed almost intolerable noise sounds. I shall warn you: do not listen to this album with maximum level of volume. Especially with headphones, i’m pretty sure your hearing would get a bit damaged.  

Favorite Tracks: Love You Anywhere, To Your Friends, The Powder

5. Lilys - In the Presence of Nothing (Shoegaze)

Lilys is an interesting band considering the stylistic changes it has gone through the years. First album starting of with the My Bloody Valentine inspired Shoegaze where it took its next direction to another spaces of dream pop, then sudden not-expected obscure change to Mod Revival and the latest releases go back to the bands early roots of more psychedelic rock and shoegazing style. Also it consists only one permanent band member Kurt Heasley and ever-changing visiting members. 1992 first studio album In the Presence of Nothing is characteristically clear Shoegaze album. It has that up-front woozy and distorted guitar with vocals hid underneath that are the main basic shoegazing style My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless defined. It might be a wave rider but it has that alternative rock’s charm that stands on it’s own.    

Favorite Tracks: There Is No Such Things As Black Orchids, Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Tone Bender

6. M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (Nu-Gaze)

Unlike the other Nu-gaze or Shoegaze picks I’ve selected in here 2003 released 2nd studio album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts by M83 focuses on heavy robotic synthesizer sounds instead of more organic and analogically produced guitar effects. French Electronic Group assembled together by producers Anthony Gonzales, Nicolas Fromageau, Nicolas Barlet and Morgan Daguenet have concentrated producing more of instrumental tracks than ones backed up with vocals. The small amount of vocals this album has are filtered with effects that create an artificial human sound. Signature move of creating heavily breath-taking and majestic chord-progressions which overflow into softly tuned harmonic static until peacefully vanishing away Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts is a standout piece of electronic noise producing. Last song of the album Beauties Can Die floats gently into this complete silence near middle of the song and rises back up from the dark void with evolving synth strings. Something that I haven’t heard more in music producing. Don’t know if it’s just the cheap quality of my speakers that can’t capture all the frequencies of the sound waves or is it just meant to be that way, it brings a fascinating structure to the song anyways.  

Favorite Tracks: Run Into Flowers, Be Wild, On a White Lake Near a Green Mountain

Last Words:

In this album listing I tried to focus on recommending albums where you can clearly hear the layered guitars. Especially with the Nu-gaze picks where you can tell it’s definitely influenced by shoegazing. This time there was more experimental albums than albums that could reach a pop success. The focus mainly still was on guitar textures and producing. There’s a bit mixed opinions between what is and what can not be considered Shoegaze. I switched up the albums back and forth from the list cause I wasn’t satisfied with the guitar textures and felt like they were too distant from shoegazing after all which is the reason this post took time to come out. Also back a while ago I found this Tumblr post that was a take on one of Kevin Shields interviews where there is revealed that the actual inspiration for shoegazing was drawn from the american grunge scene. I tried to search how legit it was but couldn’t find a source proper enough in my opinion so I decided to stick with the story that media and all the music enthusiasts support. Went through podcasts, interviews with the artists and old concert footage to find more information. I’m obviously not a skillful writer but I focus on giving accurate information and I hope I managed to get to the bottom of this genre in the most simplest way.

Rey

Hit & Run Commentary #135

Cal Thomas is now flagellating himself over the specter of White privilege as lamented in his column titled “America’s Reckoning With Racism”. If he is really so concerned about this why doesn’t he surrender his influential position in the media to a minority? Readers should also note that he selected the luxury of Florida in which to live out his golden years rather than the squalor of one America’s ghettos in which he would have been able to actualize the values he demands of the rest of us such as the willingness to be verbally denounced and berated by those we have allegedly oppressed.

So do media propagandists jacked out of shape over the use of tear gas and pepper spray to disperse riotous protesters intend to articulate condemnation as rigorous of Antifa’s strategy to gouge out eyes?

Do those claiming to support Black Lives Matter really support the cause when asked or fear bodily harm and vandalized property?

Regarding municipalities and jurisdictions threatening to disband police departments in order to placate riotous mobs demanding astronomical welfare handouts categorized as social programs: will those breaking the law in such areas still be apprehended or taken into custody? If so, even if under the banner of another name, aren’t those still the functions of a police department?

With the abolition or defunding of police departments, Whites have even more justification to flee urbanized areas leaving them to further decay and blight.

Apparently mobs marching through the streets are enough to get technocrats to ease the rigors of the plague cult. Perhaps churches ought to begin holding mass decentralized public worship meetings not directly linked to any one congregation surrounded by armed militias. If left unaccosted, such would not be violent.

Given that Black Lives Matter only gets jacked out of shape when those of a certain ethnic composition get mistreated by the police, doesn’t that expose how inherently racist that movement is?

If protesters carry signs with language deemed linguistically inappropriate, the media shouldn’t blur the image. Don’t these liberal journalists any other time insist upon how obligated oppressors are to listen to these disenfranchised COMMUNITIES expressing THEIR TRUTH unfiltered?

During protest coverage, media propagandists informed that certain images had to be blurred to protect viewers and their families from alleged profanity. Too bad the media is not as decisive about rendering judgment against the destruction and theft of private property

Media propagandists said that the profanity on protest signs had to be blurred so as not to harm viewers at home. But is it about protecting viewers or out of concern that seeing such might shock the average American that usually doesn’t consider the implications of this subversive element regarding how there is an effort underway to implement a worldview of demoniac tyranny formulated in the bowels of Sheol itself.

Protesters are demanding funds from cut police budgets be redirected towards jobs and education. Yet those calling for such will barely work or pursue academics as it is. Often these behavioral choices are denounced among such demographics as “acting White”.

Veggie Tales creator Phil Vischer has criticized the conservative response to violent protests as valuing property over lives. Wonder if he would respond the same way if the target had been a warehouse full of his anthropomorphized produce DVD’s and related licensed merchandise?

In its streamed service, a church posted a slide that in person worship would not resume until later in the summer. Then perhaps the next song sung by the worship band should not have contained the lyric that to die for Christ is gain? Because doesn’t that propositional juxtaposition indicate they really don’t mean it and are just as much afraid to croak as nearly every other slob on the street?

As much as these churches are harping about race, don’t be surprised if after lock down quite a few White pewfillers simply don’t come back.

If the government and private enterprise imposing the policies of such (the definition of fascism) can coerce you into wearing a mask in the name of public health, what is so wrong with assorted laws and regulations intended to punish sexual contact outside of heterosexual marriage in the name of disease prevention? Granted, such laws would be near impossible to enforce from a standpoint of practicality. However, that is not usually the position that they are argued against. Rather, it is claimed such regulations infringe upon matters of personal choice even when the health of another individual is involved, the very principle that has been curtailed to a disturbing extent in the Age of Plague.

It it was immoral to stoke fear of disease in the name of promoting abstinence, why is it moral to stoke fear of disease to coerce compliance with a variety of social distancing measures?

A Confederate monument was preemptively demolished in Decatur, Georgia on the grounds that allowing an incompetent band of hooligans that had probably never even held a powertool prior to being overcome with the current fit of revolutionary madness could imperil public safety. So wouldn’t it be prudent to also remove assorted Martin Luther King or Barack Obama commemorative statuary for similar reasons out of an abundance of caution?

At the Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, attendees were allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they would wear a mask. Medical establishment functionaries (many of which no one elected to office or not even employed as part of the civil service) issued numerous pronouncements decreeing that those deciding not to conceal their countenances in the proscribed manner were threatening the lives of those with compromised immune systems. But unlike a supermarket, one does not possess a compelling necessity to attend a political rally in order to continue one’s existence or maintain one’s quality of life. As such, so long as the individual is fully cognizant that masks will not be required at a particular venue or event, doesn’t there come a point where the individual needs to shoulder some of the responsibility for their own healthcare maintenance rather than to pawn that obligation off on everybody else? After all, haven’t we been told for decades now that if you don’t want your mind or soul soiled by filthy media, then don’t tune into such productions? Likewise, if you are afraid of picking up a disease in a place that the purpose in being there is more of a pleasure than a necessity, perhaps you ought consider not going there in the first place.

Commissar Cuomo is categorizing the removal of the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the Museum of Natural History in New York as an act of love. How long until mass executions or the seizure of the property of designated counterrevolutionary thought criminals will categorized as an act of love?

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace remarked that, in light of the NFL’s reversal on the national anthem and the call to rename a number of military bases, a cultural shift is underway. But are these changes something that the vast majority want? Or is it that they afraid to question such proposals out of fear of riots and looting on the part of violent subversives?

If we are to be so gripped with fear of violent retaliation on the part of apoplectic activists (for that is rather the reason than belief in diversity and inclusion) to the point that White thespians can no longer be allowed to perform voiceovers for cartoon characters of color, do the producers of the musical Hamilton intend to replace the Black actor that performed that eponymous role with a White one to more accurately depict the historically documented image of that particular Founding Father?

Perennial rabble rouser Al Sharpton insists it is an outrage to have someone to pay taxes to provide for commemorative statues of individuals that fought to keep that taxpayer enslaved. Maybe so. But given that it has been documented that Sharpton is profoundly delinquent in regards to the taxes he owes, he obviously doesn’t have as much going towards that particular budgetary outlay as he dupes his deluded followers into believing. Shouldn’t this multimillionaire having flouted his fiscal obligations be the even greater outrage?

On the Five, establishmentatian mouthpiece Dana Perino called for a moratorium on all conspiracy theories. In other words, we are obligated to believe without question any information handed down to us by government or those institutions in league with it at the highest levels such as academia, multinational industry, and the mainstream media. Who is to say what constitutes a conspiracy? This time several years ago, had someone pronounced that a virus would be invoked to keep you under near house arrest, your face swaddled like a jihadist concubine, and vast swaths of the economy nearly destroyed, they would have also been denounced as a conspiracy theorist.

By Frederick Meekins

‘Exile in Guyville’ at 25: Still, if not more, relevant

It feels like we’re living through the ‘90s all over again right now. Everywhere you look, reboots of shows like Twin Peaks and The X-Files, slip dresses and Dr. Martens in Urban Outfitters, and reunions of bands like the Breeders and Smashing Pumpkins dot the current pop culture landscape. This is not unusual; we’ve found ourselves in these throwback eras before (think the ‘70s obsession with the wholesome ‘50s, or the ‘90s homages to the swinging ‘60s). Pop culture is cyclical, and when faced with uncertainty and turbulence (which we have in abundance), recalling “simpler times” of decades past provides some sort of semblance of familiarity and comfort.

And so, in the midst of this ‘90s resurgence, Liz Phair’s explosive and divisive 18-song debut Exile in Guyville turns 25 years old. The album came at the right time and place: in the midst of the (mostly male) rise of indie rock and trailing on the riot grrrl movement. Nearly three years in the making, it emerged as a fully-formed articulate, confident, and cutting concept — a track-by-track response to the Rolling Stones’ 1972 tome Exile on Main St. — paired with unpolished and imperfect vocals and instrumentation. It was an enormous “fuck you,” as Phair once recalled in an oral history on its making, to “people say[ing] ‘you can’t do this, you aren’t good enough to do this, you don’t know what you are doing’” giving Phair “enough rage in me to say, ‘I have as much of a voice as anyone.’”

Guyville topped the Village Voice’s esteemed Pazz and Jop poll the year of its release and thrust Phair into the role of an artistic wunderkind, even though she never thought of herself as a one, much less as a serious musician. “I was just a neighborhood kid who wanted to show the boys I could do it, too,” she told Mojo in 1994. In the decades since its release, the album has served as both a boon and a ball and chain: a critically-lauded record most artists dream of making, but one all of her subsequent work would be unfairly measured against.

Marking its anniversary is a new, expanded box set and short U.S. tour that will revisit the series of demo tapes that informed the album’s sound and concept. Revisiting emblems of pop culture from years past, and celebrating their milestone anniversaries, often drips with rose-colored nostalgia. But Exile in Guyville’s anniversary is different. To revisit Exile in Guyville in 2018 is to reckon with something that is not nostalgic, but something that strangely still feels current and all too relevant.

Exile in Guyville is a coming of age album, one that grapples with what it’s like to be a modern 20-something American woman: supposedly liberated, but not much better off than her mother, facing an insurmountable amount of societal pressures to look, act, and think a certain way. Phair wrote the majority of the album in ‘90s suburban Chicago, which the band Urge Overkill had previously deemed “Guyville”: a wasteland of “alternative” bros who, for all their feigned enlightenment, made it more than clear that, even though women were, in theory, their equals, in practice, in they would never really be their equals.

What if, in the 25 years that have passed, Guyville didn’t change or even get better? What if it just moved and grew? Women face just as many threats as they did in the early-90s. Guyville still very much exists in 2018, only now it’s come to encompass other gentrified, creative communities, be it by geography (like Bushwick) or industry (like the studio film system), or even digitally (like Twitter) — pockets where women are oppressed in some way or another.

“There’s a million Guyvilles,” Phair told the Washington Post this April. “‘Guyville’ could be a catchphrase for any oblivious community that has no idea that they’re shoving people to the side. I don’t know where it isn’t.”

Listening to Exile in Guyville today, I constantly have to remind myself that this album is almost as old as I am. It is not lost on me that I’m the same age as Phair was when it was released. Its words feel like they easily could have been written by me, by a friend, by other young, female artists coming up today, like Angel Olsen, Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, or Frankie Cosmos — all musical daughters (or maybe younger sisters) of Liz Phair. For me, and perhaps for many young women my age, Exile in Guyville is one of those albums that feels more fitting now than ever before.

Phair recently compared her album-making process to creating historical documents. “I’m doing these things to log on to history,” she told The Cut. “Like, ‘A woman lived in this time, and this is what it was like for her back then.’”

While Exile in Guyville does carry the weight of its time in some senses, its tie to a specific period lies mostly in the details: the paper map in “Divorce Song,” the stereo in “Help Me Mary,” the tight blue jeans styling of the titular “Soap Star Joe.” For the most part, Exile in Guyville seems to resist the trappings of history. Her words still sting, the taste of hurt and disgust and shame and anger in all of her words remain vivid, prescient, even. Art that both defines an era and transcends it is rare and worthy of discussion: What does that sort of status say about the art itself? More, perhaps, what does it say about our collective society?

In her 2014 book on Exile in Guyville for the 33 ⅓ series, critic Gina Arnold wrote: “Phair’s record brought out the uglier side of the indie rock scene, in the process highlighting the way that women artists, both there and elsewhere in the popular music world, are often undervalued as both listeners and consumers.”

Exile in Guyville pointed out that these problems existed then, but listening to the album now, I’m still hit with a stream of remembrances of offenses — some big, some small microaggressions that add up — that have come with being a woman in the music scene today.

I think about the conversation I once had with a male music writer who had just earlier asked me on a date. He ranted about why I was wrong to dislike a prolific male musician with a history of misogynistic behavior: “Most musicians are huge dicks,” he said. “Just put your gendered prejudices behind you.”

I think about the record store clerks who ask me if I’m looking for something “as a gift for my boyfriend.” The guy behind the counter at a used shop who rolled his eyes and told me to “just order a reissue at Urban to go with your Crosley” when I asked if they ever sell Sonic Youth.

I think about all the music dudes I meet at concerts, in record stores, and on dates, who always seem to test me, the ones who ask me what the rarest vinyl I own is, tell me that if I’ve never heard this or if I like X over Y, then I’m not serious, and I don’t know what I’m talking about. The ones who try to make me feel like I don’t belong.

I think about one of the most recent shitstorms of male @s I’ve brought upon myself on Twitter — the ones that happen every now and then when I casually denounce specific men or say simply that their art does not excuse their bad actions. Instantly, I recall the grown man telling me that a heavily researched piece I wrote wasn’t valid because I’m a woman, and that he saw my agenda as playing the victim card: “I get it. It’s the era of #MeToo and righting wrongs from 30 years ago. Getting justice for all those slighted for being female in a male world.”

“I was so disrespected,” Phair told Rolling Stone in 2010. “Being a woman in music back then, at least the level I was, was like being their bitch. Sit there, look pretty, bring us drinks and we'll talk about what music is good and bad. And it was almost understood that women's taste in music was inferior. [...] I was so angry about being taken advantage of sexually, being overlooked intellectually.”

Did Phair know something as a 25-year-old then that those of us living out our mid-20s now still have yet to figure out? A way to rise above her situation, maybe? Did she think that calling it out then would maybe lead to a change for now? How many of us girls listen to her today and wish we could wrap our arms around her like a friend and say, “Oh, but Liz, things are going to get so much worse”?

They make rude remarks about me / They wonder just how wild I would be / As they egg me on and keep me mad / They play me like a pit bull in a basement, and for that / I lock my door at night / I keep my mouth shut tight / I practice all my moves / I memorize their stupid rules

It takes Phair barely over three minutes on Exile in Guyville before she rips into the types of men who have tried to keep her in her place in “Help Me Mary.” They’re the ones who overrun her home — in her case, Wicker Park’s indie scene — and trap her, reducing her to a mothering role. Their ridicule is just barely above that of a schoolyard “you can’t play with us” taunt, nagging her with “you can’t do this” and “you don’t belong here” to her face incessantly. Instead of biting back, she swallows her anger, internalizes it and uses it as a fuel to learn their game, to get so good at it that she ends up besting them in the end. But can she really best them in the end? No matter how good Liz Phair got, she is still, at the end of the day, a woman.

In a recent essay on the prominent gender biases present in music criticism for The Outline, critic Leah Finnegan argues that perspective when writing about art matters: “How does the journalist see the world, and how do they place art in it? If you’re paying attention, an article will reveal those biases. It will sometimes tell us more about the writer than what the writer is writing about.”

Early criticism of Exile in Guyville and profiles of Phair were primarily written by men who missed the point entirely. Rolling Stone’s initial review lumped it in with PJ Harvey’s not-really-all-that-similar Rid of Me, describing both as albums by angry women exacting a strange sort of revenge, exploring “the toxic consequences of intimacy with lacerating explicitness [...] relationships don't just end, they splatter. Yet listen closely, and you'll hear these women laughing under their breath.” Meanwhile, Spin pushed their criticism further, calling Phair a “well-off Winnetka, Illinois brat” who wrote an album of “songs about all the boys she’s fucked and how soon they fucked her over.”

Attempting to follow an album that had set such a high standard would be difficult for anyone. Yet while many of Phair’s later records — Whip-Smart, whitechocolatespaceegg, and Liz Phair — were solid works, full of tender, piercing, tough, and smart songs about being a woman in this world, each faced subsequently fading reviews that placed more emphasis on her looks than her music — mostly written by male critics. Her career withered.

“Men can make middling, maudlin art and be celebrated, and women artists face harsher scrutiny while doing the same thing, and usually better,” Finnegan wrote in the same Outline piece. I can’t help but wonder how Phair’s career could have been altered if more women were writing about her back then. Women who understood what she was talking about, who didn’t reduce songs about complicated issues we face to maudlin drivel or the shallow venting of a girl who is simply angry.

But more distressing than the theme of how female artists continue to be mistreated is the theme that life as a young woman in America continues to be, more or less, the same. Maybe even worse.

Whatever happened to a boyfriend? / The kind of guy who tries to win you over. / Whatever happened to a boyfriend? / The kind of guy who makes love ‘cause he’s in it. / I want a boyfriend. / I want a boyfriend. / I want all that stupid old shit / Like letters and sodas / Letters and sodas

In 1968, Virginia Slims famously began marketing their cigarettes to women with a tagline “You’ve come a long way, baby!” The strides Gen X’s mothers had made for women’s liberation in the ‘60s and ‘70s had allowed women of the ‘90s to boldly own their sexuality as something casual, their wants and desires equal to a man’s. Except it wasn’t that simple, and on the song “Fuck and Run,” Phair laments the disposable turn that dating life had taken. Had we really come a long way? Hardly.  

Twenty-five years later, on an unusually warm April night, a friend and I were explaining Tinder to two parental figures over dinner. This was not the first time we’ve had to break down the State Of Meeting Men in 2018 to people who are our elders, but the first time I was struck by how exhausting it is, how demoralizing, how my resigned, yet defensive, argument that this swiping and scheduling our way to hookups thing just is the way it is makes no sense.

“Guys don’t talk to us in real life,” I insisted. Sitting back in my chair, I dropped my fork on the plate in front of me as defeated punctuation. “The only way to meet a guy now is on an app, and they pretty much all just want to have sex and nothing else.” They looked at us incredulously.

Millennial women share a desire planted by Baby Boomers and driven home by Gen X: That we can be independent women who don’t need men in our lives. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t times when independence becomes tiring; times when you know that even though you can do it all by yourself, you don’t really want to. Millennials are 48 percent more likely to have sex before even going on a first date with someone, even though we’re 40 percent more likely than Boomers to think sex is better with an emotional connection. Virtually having access to sex at any time is making us feel increasingly more hollow.

Sitting across from a couple who had been together for nearly half a century, Phair’s “Fuck and Run” lyrics came to mind. We both find ourselves wanting what the women who came before us have and had: stability, a relationship, affection, love. That admission terrifies us, in a way. It makes us feel like we’re betraying our generation and the freedoms we’ve earned, when, really, we’re just allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, allowing ourselves to be human.

So don’t look at me sideways / Don’t even look me straight on / And don’t look at my hands in my pockets, baby / I ain’t done anything wrong

In “Never Said,” Phair’s powerlessness against pervasive gossip and doubts recalls the strains of #MeToo. While Phair centers the track around adamance that nothing happened and #MeToo is focused on the insistence that something happened, what they both share is the painful sense that being a woman and being a person believed to be telling the truth are, at times, mutually exclusive.

When faced with doubts, both Phair and women today are forced to aggressively defend themselves as they see their reputations ruined. Past actions are called into question, personality traits turned against us, and our repeated insistences — done to keep our names “clean as a whistle” — are seen as lies or exaggerations, at best, admissions of guilt, at worst.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that a frustrating number of people think women are making false #MeToo claims: 31 percent categorized false claims as a major problem; 45 percent called them a minor issue. Do we really still think that women lie more often than not?

Why does it seem that men are believed unequivocally, but when women tell the truth, they are wrong until proven right? Why do we have to work extra hard to fight suspicions? It’s a frustrating sticking point. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. We’re not always seeking justice against aggressors, not always seeking revenge, as Phair may have been in “Never Said.” Sometimes, all we want is to be heard and accepted.

But for all its anger — and Exile in Guyville is an album full of a specific form of women’s rage — it still holds quiet moments of vulnerability. Its songs still depict evergreen, nuanced feelings so specific to this strange time period of delayed adult womanhood. The reflections on the city in which you live, the uncertain hope for a relationship with someone better than what you’re used to, the growing pains of doing and being what you want versus what is expected of you, and the encounters with the more realistic, perhaps sadder, side of elders you once considered heroic — all of those complicated situations live in the softer in-between moments of the album, from “Stratford-On-Guy” to “Shatter”, “Canary” and “Flower” to “Explain It To Me.”

It’s in these ebbs and flows that Exile in Guyville resonates. Guyville helped to usher in the transition between punks like Debbie and Viv and Siouxsie, who reached the bedrooms of young girls listening and made them feel like they weren’t so alone in their emotions and their anger, and alt-girls like Alanis and Fiona and Shirley, who built upon that rage, but let listeners know they, too, sometimes felt strange and misunderstood and were still struggling to figure everything out.

Listening to the album today can, on certain occasions, feel like listening to what the inside of your brain sounds like over the course of 24 hours, the rollercoaster of rushing thoughts and feelings that go through it. Angry. Excited. Sad. Hopeful. Complicated. So, maybe not much has changed in 25 years. Maybe being a 20-something girl still sucks in so many ways. But there’s a silver lining: At every step, we have this album in our ear, there to tell us that someone else, who is now older and wiser than we are at this moment, has been through all of this before and knows exactly how we feel.

#7yrsago David Byrne's How Music Works

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere.  At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings  would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

Byrne's touring the book now, and as his tour intersects with my own book tours, I'll be interviewing him live on stage in Toronto on September 19th, at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html