Ironic vikings
Dec. 20th, 2005 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIt's amazing how the career of my friend and fellow Berlin expat Jason Forrest (formerly known as Donna Summer, although clearly not the Donna Summer, since he's a male white American) seems to be mimicking the career of Bill Drummond, Julian Cope's old manager who became a Justified Ancient of Mu Mu and then masterminded novelty pop band The KLF. Then again, it's not terribly surprising. Bill Drummond, a man with a storm in his brain, seems to have brainstormed many styles in his time. When we were on Creation together (I think I was dating the woman Bill ended up marrying, the Sallie of my song "A Monkey For Sallie") he made a record called "The Man" which anticipated the Freak Folk scene of the noughts. He also made one of the first (and least sane) "plunderphonic" records, "1987, What The Fuck's Going On?", which married "The Lonely Goatherd" with Run DMC beats. After a series of novelty hits in the UK (a cover of the Dr Who theme tune, and some self-advertising Snap-type rap records using a fellow called Ricardo Da Force, not to mention a manual on how to have hits in the UK), Drummond attempted to break America with his concept of "stadium house". (Of course, Run DMC and Aerosmith could claim to have started the whole stadium-rap house party.) It was considered necessary to insert lots of ironic rock guitar into the recipe to please the Americans (who considered dance music inherently gay), and as I recall the video for "3AM Eternal (America, What Time Is Love?)" featured vikings. Lots of them. In black and white, playing guitars and gurning ferociously.
Well, those ironic vikings are back, this time in the amusing animated video for Jason Forrest's "War Photographer" track. The film, directed by Joel Trussell, shows a martial encounter between two viking ships, conducted entirely by means of stadium rock. Although it diverges into P-Funk and Godzilla, it could be seen as a bit of a comment on Teutonic culture, since "martial" rock (full sonic spectrum dominance), beer swilling, leather and rocking out seem to lead, inevitably, to Vikings, Valhalla, and all sorts of Nordic nonsense. And Jason does, after all, live in Berlin.
By the way, did I ever tell you how I made a record once with Lemmy's son? He plays the completely incongruous solo in "Murderers, the Hope of Women". He was a cute, skinny version of Lemmy, and the idea of cute baby versions of fearsome Nordic warriors is also appropriate to this video; fear is, after all, a matter of scale; what would be terrifying and murderous behaviour in a lion is cute in a kitten, and what would deafen us in a stadium tickles our ears coming out of the tiny built-in speakers on our laptops. As with scale, so with context: despite the fact that Jason is an American, "War Photographer" is very Berlin. It fits a template Ex-Berliner music journalist David Strauss has called "playback music", which includes Berlin-based artists like Chicks on Speed and Kevin Blechdom. Possibly even me. The playback artists (and they're often also visual artists, just as Bill Drummond was when he launched his K Foundation and burned a million pounds in a forest) perform a sort of pomo cabaret music, sampling and playing back selected music from the past, recombining it like curators. They're, inevitably, taking the piss, and never more so than when they feature their ultimate object of veneration, delectation and derision, the phallic electric guitar. That's why I call them chicks with dicks. They have ironic dicks firmly in their cheeks. Jason, aka Donna, is one of them, one of us. He calls it Cock Rock Disco, but it's the same difference, really. We don't play guitars! Yes, we do! But ironic ones!
All pop music is parody to some degree, but some are clever enough to disguise it and can therefore tap into the inherent fascism of rock audiences. Because, make no mistake about it, rock music is fascist. Anybody addressing a stadium is basically reliving the Nuremberg rally. But because Jason is a nice, intelligent, cultivated man, and because that's pretty apparent—come on, look at those cute vikings, the tasteful references to 1960s Czech animation!—I suspect his recontextualised rock riffs will strike American adolescent Nordic Supremacist ears—should they ever strike them at all—as gay. Because "gay" is the word the not-so-bright use instead of "ironic". Jason isn't gay, of course, but the dicks he's waving are ironic ones. His cute vikings, should they wish to conquer America, are bound to meet the same fate that befell the KLF's. Those vikings, voyaging through the distant mists of the early 90s, all perished just West of Iceland. Their ironic longships went down with all hands when a particularly heavy brainstorm lashed the Sea of Irony.
Well, those ironic vikings are back, this time in the amusing animated video for Jason Forrest's "War Photographer" track. The film, directed by Joel Trussell, shows a martial encounter between two viking ships, conducted entirely by means of stadium rock. Although it diverges into P-Funk and Godzilla, it could be seen as a bit of a comment on Teutonic culture, since "martial" rock (full sonic spectrum dominance), beer swilling, leather and rocking out seem to lead, inevitably, to Vikings, Valhalla, and all sorts of Nordic nonsense. And Jason does, after all, live in Berlin.
By the way, did I ever tell you how I made a record once with Lemmy's son? He plays the completely incongruous solo in "Murderers, the Hope of Women". He was a cute, skinny version of Lemmy, and the idea of cute baby versions of fearsome Nordic warriors is also appropriate to this video; fear is, after all, a matter of scale; what would be terrifying and murderous behaviour in a lion is cute in a kitten, and what would deafen us in a stadium tickles our ears coming out of the tiny built-in speakers on our laptops. As with scale, so with context: despite the fact that Jason is an American, "War Photographer" is very Berlin. It fits a template Ex-Berliner music journalist David Strauss has called "playback music", which includes Berlin-based artists like Chicks on Speed and Kevin Blechdom. Possibly even me. The playback artists (and they're often also visual artists, just as Bill Drummond was when he launched his K Foundation and burned a million pounds in a forest) perform a sort of pomo cabaret music, sampling and playing back selected music from the past, recombining it like curators. They're, inevitably, taking the piss, and never more so than when they feature their ultimate object of veneration, delectation and derision, the phallic electric guitar. That's why I call them chicks with dicks. They have ironic dicks firmly in their cheeks. Jason, aka Donna, is one of them, one of us. He calls it Cock Rock Disco, but it's the same difference, really. We don't play guitars! Yes, we do! But ironic ones!
All pop music is parody to some degree, but some are clever enough to disguise it and can therefore tap into the inherent fascism of rock audiences. Because, make no mistake about it, rock music is fascist. Anybody addressing a stadium is basically reliving the Nuremberg rally. But because Jason is a nice, intelligent, cultivated man, and because that's pretty apparent—come on, look at those cute vikings, the tasteful references to 1960s Czech animation!—I suspect his recontextualised rock riffs will strike American adolescent Nordic Supremacist ears—should they ever strike them at all—as gay. Because "gay" is the word the not-so-bright use instead of "ironic". Jason isn't gay, of course, but the dicks he's waving are ironic ones. His cute vikings, should they wish to conquer America, are bound to meet the same fate that befell the KLF's. Those vikings, voyaging through the distant mists of the early 90s, all perished just West of Iceland. Their ironic longships went down with all hands when a particularly heavy brainstorm lashed the Sea of Irony.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 01:59 pm (UTC)Can I quote you on this?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 02:07 pm (UTC)Of course, a particularly good example of this might be the completely incongruous solo in "Murderers, the Hope Of Women".
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 02:24 pm (UTC)ITYM "America: What Time Is Love?". 3am Eternal featured lots of driving about, and not many Vikings at all.
As you're not keen on London, you'd probably hate The Foundry (http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/30/3000/Foundry/Shoreditch). Bill's pub.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 02:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 03:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 03:44 pm (UTC)I always refer to her as "That big blonde Viking chick."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 05:16 pm (UTC)Sounds like I have something to add to my next visit of London.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 05:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 05:24 pm (UTC)And I'm more of an appreciate from afar type with my barmaids anyway.
The Ukranian section of Chicago has a great bar with a lovely ruddy cheeked Polish bar tender that I like to frequent. It's nice to have something to look at while you drink your beer other than just the beer itself.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 08:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 03:31 pm (UTC)May I point you to an excerpt from the upcoming book by Ian Svenonius: THE PSYCHIC SOVIET, concerning the responsible use of rock and roll?
http://weirdwarworld.com/ian/
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 03:33 pm (UTC)I have to be the second to praise this. By far, the most insightful quote of the year!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 03:45 pm (UTC)"While the old world still cultivates the traditions of painting, poetry and dance, the United States of America and its spiritual godfather Great Britain have implemented an institutionalized disregard for these forms. In these protestant neo colonial mercantile capitals, only "art" which is commercially viable and populist is a respectable pursuit, ala Rock N Roll music, movies and commercial or "Pop" art.
"The Beatles, Scorsese and Warhol are exalted while the old forms of bourgeois culture such as poetry, painting, symphony, etc (the "High Arts") are despised as effete and boring. This actually echoes the cobosh Stalin put on "elitist" art forms in his institutionalization of social realism. This is no whim of culture, but an officially enforced arbitration designed to maintain an uncomplicated triumphalist narrative as the national expression. England led the way in this philistinism..."
I don't think I can agree that rock is closer to Wagner than the triumphalist and philistine popular culture that Ian seems to be deploring here, though. To me it's all the same thing. Rock is pastiche, rock is just pop with the triumphalism turned up to 11.
Its Norway, not Berlin that is being referenced.
Date: 2005-12-20 04:51 pm (UTC)I would rather listen to Gabber or Heavy metal than something that was laden with ironic contextual layers. Donner Summer live rocks!!! That video rocks!!!!
Lord whimsey doesn't rock - Ironic Vikings ROCK!!!
Its as simple as that. That is why rock is both touch by genius and dumb at the same time.
You can be as Deleuze and Guitare as you want but in the end, unless it moves you it will never have the qualities of great pop / rock!
I wonder what Beavis and Butthead would have said about a Momus video?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 05:45 pm (UTC)Re: Its Norway, not Berlin that is being referenced.
Date: 2005-12-20 06:06 pm (UTC)No "e" by the way.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 05:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 06:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 05:43 pm (UTC)I think the KLF's "Justified & Ancient" with Tammy Wynette is a piece of genius still, especially getting her to do the video.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 06:12 pm (UTC)Although I do realise METAL is like Kryptonite to Momus. I remember the 'grunge' songs. Its a road that he is never meant to walk. The nearest he can get is 'prog'.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 06:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 06:59 pm (UTC)I would recommend the band Ulver to anyone. They sound like My Bloody Valentine - it isn't what you would expect from a 'black metal' band.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulver
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 07:31 pm (UTC)Look at a band like 'High On Fire' - they are a metal band who have a noticeable homosexual following. Its just about seeing past the metal cliches.
If you strip Black Sabbath of all the cider drinking and metal cliche you have an essentially 'experimental' band but its a working class experimentalism that is not a million miles away from The Beatles. Its about the musicianship.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 11:16 pm (UTC)I guess that's what happens when a style evolves through experimentation, becomes well known, is left to stand until it becomes a cliché and then joins the palette of options available to stylists and copyists.
www.cockrockdisco.com
Date: 2006-01-06 03:50 am (UTC)Momus- thanks for the headspace... Although, technically, last time you called me fat and obnoxious, and this time you are calling me gay... I do appreciate it. HA!
But to reply to this actual post- I played a show with Wolfmother, and I honestly thought they rocked, and were a great band, but in the end totally useless imitation. They had nothing to say with their mockery. I always feel that if you compare my music (and nicks too, really) against so many pop and more "famous" indy-pop bands, that their music shows how derivative and unconsidered it really is. Basically its all simple math: take A + B=C.. and where's the fun in that?
ok, also, just a quick mention that this video was not made by me at all.. the credit goes to Joel Thrussel... google him! he rocks!
thanks...
JF
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 08:47 pm (UTC)That strikes me as very apt. I once attended a book launch of his in Dublin and got to talk to him for a while. At the end of the night me and a friend drunkenly made off with one of apparently only 5 copies he'd made of his book about going to the north pole with Zodiac Mindwarp.
I' not proud of it. Oh no wait, yes I am.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-20 11:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 09:27 am (UTC)