Wooden horse

[imomus]

Yesterday I directed people to a wonderful programme on Resonance FM, a show where Alvin Lucier came into a studio and made a live version of "I Am Sitting In A Room".

Now, there are two basic attitudes you can take to this event, a microworld attitude and a macroworld attitude. In the microworld you could say that the show wasn't particularly difficult or daring. An elderly American music celebrity came into a British radio studio to play a live version of a piece he made in 1969, and plug his music by airing some CD tracks. To those who follow UK music chatter, Lucier is hardly an obscure figure: he appeared on the cover of The Wire magazine last year, and Paul Morley's Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City (2003) made a big deal out of finding the missing link between Lucier and Kylie Minogue. The book was widely reviewed, and the Lucier bits at the beginning much quoted. In the process, Lucier became cultural capital not just for Morley, but for a whole section of Britain's intelligentsia. In the Bricklayers Arms and the Foundry people could conceivably already be talking about "Lucier overkill" and rolling their eyes when his name comes up.

But in the macroworld Lucier's name means nothing. My first thought on hearing the Resonance show was "Wow, the controller of BBC Radio 3 must be gnashing his teeth and wailing that his network has been pipped to the post by this pipsqueak station operating out of two rooms on Denmark Street! Why isn't an important figure like Lucier doing this session for the BBC? Heads will roll!" But the sad truth is that the geography of BBC networks has shifted. BBC Radio 3, which I remember as a station which played (and commissioned) astringent, difficult or interesting new music (as well as fabulously intellectually demanding spoken word programmes produced by Piers Plowright, with BBC Radiophonic Workshop scores), has now become a deeply conservative place pumping aural valium alongside the likes of Classic FM, or a retirement home for ex-Radio 1 DJs like the unbearable Andy Kershaw. Even a relatively adventurous Radio 3 show like Mixing It probably wouldn't devote an hour to Alvin Lucier these days. But Resonance can, and does. For someone like me—I've only just become aware of Lucier's work, thanks to endorsements by Anne Laplantine—the timing is perfect. In fact, hearing his "Still Lives" pieces yesterday rekindled my love of adventurous, uncompromising, beautiful music. It's a feeling pop music hasn't given me for a long time.

So thanks to London's first radio art station for invoking the better part of me, for being demanding-yet-rewarding. But if Resonance seems like a strong station in terms of its content and convictions, it's also a weak station. It's weak materially (it depends on subsidy from the Arts Council, the London Musicians Collective, Moose Foundation for the Arts, and others) and it's weak contextually, because it's operating in Britain, and Britain is still an anti-intellectual place, a place where anything aesthetically adventurous and above all difficult will sooner or later get branded "pretentious, elitist, purist, up its own arse"... well, you know the drill. Funds will sooner or later be cut, and the press will, when they deign even to notice, serve bouquets of barbed wire. Management consultants will be brought in to converge the errant format towards more commercial, more mainstream models. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but every time I hit the Resonance page I expect to read that it's closing down. Every time I load the signal into RealPlayer I expect it to have abandoned experimental programming and to feature dull pop shows with personality DJs just like all the other stations.

If convergence doesn't come from the outside, it comes from the inside. Ambitious media types infiltrate the organisation, using it as a stepping stone, a vaulting pole, a wooden horse. After all, it has microphones, it has turntables, it has transmitters and a frequency, all the basic equipment of a radio station. Let's say I'm an ambitious young Turk, someone who might perhaps be happier with the value system and audience of a Capital or a Virgin FM or one of the BBC networks. Well, a little station like Resonance is always going to be a tempting resource. Because Resonance isn't that hard to infiltrate, even if I don't subscribe to its values. It may even be tempted to expand its audience thanks to my populist show, and tolerate me. I can pass off my mainstream values as comedy, or as irony.

Is rhodri a Resonance listener? It's hard to believe. He really doesn't fit the profile. Not a beard-stroker, if you know what I mean. But, weirdly, Rhodri is a Resonance broadcaster. Listen to this trailer for Rhodri Marsden's new Sunday show on Resonance. "Timewasting" starts November 13th and runs for seven 90-minute episodes, ending with a Christmas Day broadcast. The trailer features Starship's "We Built This City on Rock'n'Roll". Like Rhodri's love of Toto and Hall and Oates, it's "ironic" and yet sincere at the same time. Readers of Rhodri's blog (some of whom had to ask for Resonance's frequency; they don't fit the profile either) were stunned by the trailer: "It's a brand... You sound like a real DJ... You sound like a proper radio DJ... Blimey, the authority... Blimey you sound dead professional..." My own comment provided the only note of disharmony (and some hilarity): "DON'T TURN MY BELOVED RESONANCE FM INTO SOMETHING THAT SOUNDS LIKE EVERY OTHER RADIO STATION IN LONDON, PLEASE!" Which, of course, is exactly the same comment as "It's a brand... you sound like a real DJ... blimey, the authority!" But instead of "blimey, you sound dead professional" I prefer the phrasing "blimey, you sound professional, dead."

Because I'm "indie" I've seen the process a million times: Personal ambition => criticism of marginal 'elitist' forms => irony as expression of ambivalence (but mostly attraction) towards mainstream => indie media as wooden horse => insurgents converge indie media towards mainstream models => insurgents eventually gain place for themselves in mainstream media, but leave the vehicle of their entryism weakened and in identity crisis => indie media eventually acquired, predated, closed.

Resonance too is a brand, one which "ironic-sincere embrace of mainstream values" can only weaken. The Resonance brand contains ideas like "arty, difficult, unconventional, different, experimental, daring, avant garde." That's what it's been given its frequency for, and that's what it's funded by the Arts Council for. These are not values we see endorsed day in, day out on Rhodri's blog (although I know he harbours a love of Sudden Sway, whose "Let's Evolve!" session was one of the most adventurous John Peel ever broadcast). Call me an indie purist if you like, but, unless the Sudden Sway Rhodri is going to prevail over the Toto Rhodri, I can't see any good coming from a "Rhodrization" of Resonance. The Rhodri brand will profit from his new "Sunday roast" show, but the Resonance brand won't. If an army of Rhodris arrives in a whole carpark full of wooden horses, what'll eventually happen is that Resonance will become a two-tier station, with "populists" rather than the Arts Council subsidizing the risk-takers (and yes, I know, I know, in the microworld of Resonance Rhodri could well portray himself as the "risk-taker" and "mold-breaker" who's not "preaching to the choir", but in the macroworld outside it's a completely different story, and those "transgressions" are capitulations). And after that, if the process continues, Resonance will lose, well, all resonance, and a new station will come along eventually—after decades, and only if Britain is very lucky—to do the work Resonance is now doing, a station pretentious, elitist, purist, completely up its own arse... and wonderful.

Comments

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

The Rhodri brand will profit from his new "Sunday roast" show, but the Resonance brand won't.

That's a somewhat unfair assertion. Or has he already show you his playlist?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If this polemic succeeds in making him take one Toto track off that playlist and putting one Jandek track on it, it'll have been worth it.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Man alive, Nick, leave me alone. I wrote a lengthy response to this but just deleted it, because frankly, who gives a shit.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, Rhodri, I've told the world exactly when and where they can hear your new show, I've made them listen to the trailer, and I've set up opposition to it as "pretentious, elitist, purist, completely up its own arse". What more do you want?

[charleston.livejournal.com]

irony as expression of ambivalence (but mostly attraction) towards mainstream

What makes you so sure that a love of "We Built This City" is ironic?

I've always loved that song - on the whole I hate Starship, & I hated EVERYTHING "mainstream" in the late 80s, but that song sounded nothing like Starship, it just excited me. To dismiss it for being mainstream would have been snobbish. To suggest it's being used ironically is a bit patronising.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I said "ironic-sincere" and I described love of this kind of thing as an "expression of ambivalence (but mostly attraction)". You know, I'm a pop musician, I've dealt with this kind of ambivalence all my working life, as I'm sure Rhodri has. I like to compare it to Toad in "The Wind in the Willows"; a shiny major automobile knocks our canary-coloured indie horse and cart into the ditch, and instead of cursing it we stand there in a besotted daze, murmuring "Poop poop!"

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Oh for fuck: don't you know that disparaging Rhodri on LiveJournal is like attacking Jesus in America, or dissing a brotha's bitch in Philly? Abscond to Blogger, Mom's, before this gets ugly. o.O

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I know, it's like North Korea on his blog, it really is. "I was just saying Kim Jong-il's haircut could be a little tidier at the back..."

[pressurised.livejournal.com]

In every milieu there are the Dalis and then there are the Bretons, the public faces and the true hearts, or is it the talented and the wannabes, or perhaps the free spirited innovators and the conservative priest-cops? The process you are describing is inevitable but also something of a half-empty argument. Perhaps it is your mistake to imagine that the avant garde may appear twenty four hours a day, every day. By its nature what resists the general character of production does not have the infrastructure to back up or sustain its vision, the avant garde is a mirage, it is irruptive and transitory. We can’t flick a switch and have it appear where we say, we are provided with only what is channelled, and the products of this channelling are defined by their capacity to be channelled. But we can also be certain that the whirling spirit is appearing elsewhere, anywhere, even occasionally on Radio 1, occasionally on X Factor, but usually not. There is something going on, and we don’t know what it is.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. You can't have 24 hour extraordinariness, and you can put magic on tap.

Down the Pan

[(Anonymous)]

Well as you know thing are always better right at the start; and then... Does anyone remember X FM when it was still a pirate? It wasn't breathtakingly good but it played decent enough stuff, listen too it now and its the epitome of capitalist alternative culture. Resonance has a long long way to go before becoming anything like that, but I too have noticed that the new schedules seem safer and more professional than before. Fumbling bumbling incompetence isn't a guarantee of artistic success but the dreaded professionalisation of culture with its goals and outcomes has a habit of smoothing out the rough (and usually more interesting edges). Arts organisations are encouraged by funders to build risk taking into their strategic plans but risk taking in this context becomes like reform something that ends up with conservative connotations. Risk taking often means being entrepreneurial, but then the question is asked why should the taxpayer fund what is available in the commercial mainstream anyway?

There is nothing wrong with parody and irony just as long a you remember that that is what it is. People have a habit of forgetting. Look at early Roxy built on a loving send up of the crooner and all thing suave. Somewhere after ENO departed Bryan began to believe he was that crooner and the whole thing began to stink.

As for TOTO there is no reason ironic or otherwise to play carp like that bring back the unlistenable poetry now.
http://stormbugblog.blogspot.com/

[muffledsqueak.livejournal.com]

If I'd realised it was going to be used as ammunition I'd have put more thought into my rather lazy comment, I must say; although I wasn't being sarcastic, I didn't intend it as a ringing endorsement of Rhodri's faithfulness to the Hairy Cornflake ideal of radio DJing either. Oh well, I should think before I type I suppose.

Sour grapes

[(Anonymous)]

Why dont you get your own show on their? I'm sure you can practically walk in from off the street and broadcast. Well that is on the good nights.

Re: Sour grapes

[imomus.livejournal.com]

They once offered me a "Clear Spot", the artist's slot where you can fill 90 minutes up with just about anything. I was planning to get something together, but, well, you know...

in praise of auntie beeb

[dr--ben.livejournal.com]

resonance is great, but to be fair, the BBC's coverage of new music is pretty great too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/experimental_promo.shtml

mixing it, hear and now, late junction and the rest are all on my weekly list, and long may they remain so, since the beeb is still commissioning and funding new pieces, new performances, and all that. what i quite like about the enormity of the bbc is the way it seems to be able to sustain it's own little underground.

Re: in praise of auntie beeb

[tycho-b.livejournal.com]

Nice to see Little Atoms getting a namecheck in this thread,

don't forget we want your ass in the new year!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Before the thrust of my attack gets lost in attempts at self-deprecating humour or damage limitation exercises for the sake of Rhodri's ego, though, I want to make some serious and heartfelt points. It's tempting to use the "Resonance must have internal variety" argument to defend the kind of show Rhodri seems to be proposing, but the bigger picture is that Britain desperately needs more variety in its radio landscape, because most of what gets broadcast is middlebrow and follows the basic format of "a man playing pop records". To provide that wider variety, Resonance must keep a strong identity and limit its own internal variety. Because rebelling against rebellion is not rebellion, and providing an alternative to the alternative is not providing an alternative. I think Rhodri needs to ask himself "Am I a Resonance listener?" and "Is there another radio network my show might work better in?" Above all, I want to say that we should avoid a situation where the subsidised sector is just a failed, ironic copy of the commercial sector.

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

Isn't it kind of inevitable that Resonance, given enough time will, for lack of a better word, resonate? Seems to me that it is already having some influence in the emurgence of new mainstream trends.

I'm not denying that Britain needs to have a space for pure art, replete with all its pretensions, but how can you really institutionalize that without the institution itself eventually becoming a beloved part of the mainstream?

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

I also like Resonance FM, but speaking as a bit of an outsider on British culture -- I have dual citizenship, but grew up in America -- I always saw Resonance as more than just elitist, purist, and up its own arse. Resonance also reflects the British streets, its underground culture, and, to some extent, the modern-day equivalent of the whole DIY punk aesthetic. That, however, does not mean that something which Resonance likes cannot break through and be adopted into the mainstream.

It's telling that Resonance FM grew out of John Peel's Meltdown Festival (http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/behind_scenes_resonance.asp).

I don't think it helps to suggest that good art / music can never achieve mainstream popularity on its own merits. That's too much like suggesting that those who are mainstream can't challenge themselves and their audience and do something different. BTW, did you hear that Kate Bush is doing what appears to be essentially a modern-day version of a double-vinyl prog rock album (http://www.livejournal.com/community/gaffa/171737.html)?

What is that elusive defining boundary between art and widespread commercial acceptance? Momus, perhaps?! ;-)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I just scanned through the BBC radio networks (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/) to hear what's on. Here's what I found:

Radio 1
a man playing pop records (Oasis, as it happens)

Radio 2
weather forecast, news, two men chattering about how you should always assume speed cameras are watching you

Radio 3
Early 20th century classical music, would have been considered "difficult" a century ago

Radio 4
Afternoon play, "The Ugly American": "An American student is desperate to absorb the British theatrical tradition, but instead falls into shady fringe theatre." Shady fringes, eh? Beware!

Radio 5
Simon Mayo, "analysis of the day's top stories, plus a celebrity interview"

Radio 6
a woman playing pop music. Sounded more like Prefab Sprout than Oasis.

Radio 7
comedy drama, man with posh voice.

Resonance FM
someone playing a whole Parliament album, one track after the other, no comment. Just like they've put the CD on and forgotten about it. But, according to the listings, at 3.00 there's Radio Miso (http://www.resonancefm.com/listings/20051012.html) with my old friend Shintaro Taketani (he used to be in a band called Lucky 15 (http://www.blowup.co.uk/records/artists/lucky15/lucky15.htm), and we made a version of Jobim's "Children's Games" together) presenting a "Japanese Entertainment Show (http://www.resonancefm.com/) from London introducing top Japanese pop tunes from the 20-21st centuries." Yum!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not Parliament, it's the Soul Searchers.

Cents and sensibility

[(Anonymous)]

Nick, I think you have been very unfair to Rhodri, given that his show has yet to be aired and his 7 shows are unlikely to diminish the "Resonance" brand. The show he co-presented on Resonance before ( called "Big Ears") mixed the incidental music of Thunderbirds with Dada recordings. There is no reason why he can't be a risk taker and splice the likes of Hall and Oates with Lucier.

I get your points about indie trojan horses, irony and populism but John Peel successfully combined the leftfield and soon to be mainstream on a subsidised channel. The fact that "Resonance" has survived for as long as it has on handouts and enthusiasm means it must be doing something right and I think that is due to the fact that it is open to eclecticism. Elitism for its own sake is just the same cul de sac as the blinkered values of the commercial. "Ambivalence" (as I mentioned in your last entry ) is one of the reasons that your own music has been rejected by the pretentious likes of 'The Wire" magazine. Perhaps ambivalance would be better called a pop music sensibility (which is what you bring to all of your work, even the more avantgarde moments) which is why I enjoy what you do. I think Rhodri has the same pop sensibility and comedic tendencies that you have and your critique of him as a "trojan" horse is exactly what could have happened if you had infiltrated the top 40.

Richard

Re: Cents and sensibility

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I dread to think what would have happened if I'd infiltrated the Top 40, actually. I'd probably have a bad coke habit and a nasty case of acquired situational narcissism (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8213-1812369,00.html).

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Friendly album", indeed.

Good luck, Rhodri.

~W

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

thank you.

[jond.livejournal.com]

Here's one in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, USA (commercialism/consumerism quite possibly at its worst--that's a "go-kart" track running through the belly)...

Warts & All

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, dont forget many of the people who you surround yorselfe with or praise as forward thinking asrtists are huge pop fans- Digiki,O.lamm, even the black dice openly admit to loving mainstream hiphop. My point is that its a bit silly to single out R beacuse he wants to play "pop" on Ressonance. They have their values and I think they would be hard-pressed to simply buckle under from one outside force.

All of this, Avant-Garde inclinations included, is part of pop culture. Why not except it warts & all?-Jed

[(Anonymous)]

An American station to contrast Resonance with that you might already know about:
www.wfmu.org - freeform radio from new jersey.
It's excellent, and (to my mind) more diverse and crazy (musically, if nothing else perhaps)than Resonance.

Eli

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I know WFMU, yes, excellent station. They even broadcast my "Fakeways Manhattan Folk" documentary once!

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

oh you men.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

can i borrow a feelin'?

[mo-no-chrome.livejournal.com]

irony as expression of ambivalence (but mostly attraction) towards mainstream
Do you think your harsh rejection of 'moronic cynicism' and the (as yet undefined) phenomenon you call 'fashion goth' might be the same process as the one you describe here?

After all, it's not the actual/i> mainstream who hate the current powers-that-be without having any solutions, nor is it the actual mainstream who wear black and skulls; in each case, it's the mainstream within a minority.
So it seems that, as with fashionable irony, you can simultaneously kick against the majority and against the mainstream of the minority, by espousing these positions, thus having your cake and eating it too. But in fact the espousal of mainstream values in such a position outweighs that of what we might call oppositional or countercultural values.
Just a thought.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Do you think your harsh rejection of 'moronic cynicism' and the (as yet undefined) phenomenon you call 'fashion goth' might be the same process as the one you describe here?

I think I often do the thing I described with "rebelling against rebellion is not rebellion, and providing an alternative to the alternative is not providing an alternative". For instance, I reject the Christian god, but I reject the Christian devil even more vehemently. And given the choice between mainstream cliches and indie cliches, I might well prefer mainstream cliches, motivated not just by personal ambition but also by "the narcissism of minor differences".

Trojan Horses

[(Anonymous)]

According to this article, Troy was actually just outside Cambridge....

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/Laura-Knight-Jadczyk/article-lkj-04-03-06-f.htm

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

I don't think we have to worry about dear old rhodri. Who listens to the radio on Sunday, anyway?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's just that if people are not-listening, I'd rather they were not-listening to something unpopular rather than something popular, if you see what I mean. "Optimize your marginality" has always been my slogan. There's nothing worse than unpopular populism.

some call it conflict some call it marking one's stance..

[svenskasfinx.livejournal.com]

Resonance will lose, well, all resonance, and a new station will come along eventually—after decades, and only if Britain is very lucky—to do the work Resonance is now doing, a station pretentious, elitist, purist, completely up its own arse... and wonderful.

It was the wonder of this statement when I read this whole thing yesterday that stood out.. reading both bloggs it seemed obvious to me that if Momus was going to insult anyone seriously, personally, he would have been more caustic in his commentary... this didn't at all seem so here. It just seemed to be an opinion. I see an opinion as a good thing.

Having stated that; I did read the play list.. it didn't thrill me and I thought I was "open minded" guess not. Liked XTC at the top there but that was about it... but what does this say about a future of radio WITHOUT John Peel? (Robert Plant singing "Ever fall in love with someone you shouldn't fall in love with?" Huh? WTF?) what next?

I've been always so enthusiastic about "college radio" up until I saw that Radio Head was "marketing" to the college radio listening types on FIU's Campus..but showing an advert (just a video clip before a film on a university campus but still MARKETING).. how much of what we see, love and know have the puppet strings in back of them being pulled.. yes music and radio broadcasts are things to be sold, and marketed.. I'm idealistic so it sickens me to think that so much of what I love won't go anywhere without them having to either play the game or pay other's to do it for them..

When they speak of broadcast constraints, what is it that they really mean? What is it that makes radio "pay for itself"... or am I just missing the real point?

Momus, your blogg, your personal opinion, not too harsh, critical yes, but I've seen you slam much harder..

It doesn't seem to much for all the attention Rhodri is getting... they say, attention is attention.. just think you may have increase the number of listener's he's going to get by an exponential number...

(I hope I don't sound too critical of you Rhodri, you are only one man inside of a system.. under considerable constraints.. and radio isn't FREE as far as I know)

Dorian

Micro World/Macro World

[(Anonymous)]

Two different worlds
We live in two different worlds
For we've been told, that a love like ours could never be

So far apart
They say we're so far apart
And that we haven't the right to change our destiny

When will they learn
That a heart doesn't draw the line
Nothing matters if I am yours and you are mine

Two different worlds
We live in two different worlds
But we will show them as we walk together in the sun
That our two different worlds are one.

Engelbert Humperdinck - 1967

[(Anonymous)]

So... Anybody heard the show broadcasted last sunday?