imomus | Music at the Armory

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On Monday I saw The Armory Show, a vast and rather exciting art trade fair held annually on two piers on the Hudson. Ran into all sorts of people I knew from Berlin and Tokyo. Here's a selection of photos of artworks relating to music. Brian Dewan and his brother make primitive electronic sequencers that look like grandfather clocks. (Dewan is also a brilliant composer of folk songs about idol-worship and maker of slide presentations illustrating the prohibitions of the Book of Leviticus.) The highpoint of the show for me, though, was getting to watch Luke Fowler's brilliant film about composer (and communist) Cornelius Cardew. I'd already enjoyed Fowler's film about R.D. Laing, which I saw at the ICA in London. Fowler makes documentaries about counter-cultural figures from the 1960s and 70s. They work as documentaries you might see on TV, but his techniques are much more radical, his textures much more aesthetic.

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From:

imomus.livejournal.com

I'm inclined to agree with him about punk rock! Who could deny that, by switching to reggae, the Slits made a less "fascist" debut album than they would otherwise have done?

From:

tassellrealm.livejournal.com

Oh I disagree, entirely!

The Slits Peel Session, the bootleg I've got (Live at G'bus Jan 1978), The Don Letts film of them doing the gig at Dee Generates Comprehensive School (This is the most fantastic thing I've seen in my life - please somebody put it on the You-Tube!) has far more of the organically incendiary divine she-spark about it than the essentially male-led and critic appeasing "Cut" and "The Return of The Giant Slits."

It was a real shame that they fell in with that Bristol gang.

Like all the best punk rock groups, (Rob Myers era Subway Sect, X-Ray Spex etc) by the time they got to record, it was in the slipstream of such a gargantuan waterfall of entropy that their records were strained, forced rubbish - this is why the Peel sessions all sound so good.

I knew Viv and Ari (in different eras). Viv married a friend of mine.

I don't think Punk Rock is any more fascist than Cornelius Cardew was.

But it depends what you mean by fascist, doesn't it?

If a symptom of fascism is the panic-obsessive burning up of human resources to reach some kind of point-zero purity thing, then perhaps that's right, perhaps punk rock is fascist - but if that is right, then so is Maoism.

There was a programme on TV a while ago about The Red Guard era in China - it really reminded me a lot of Punk Rock.

From:

henryperri.livejournal.com

Rather than than anarchist or fascist, I think punk is the most populist-democratic form of music; even more so than folk. This is why I dislike punk for the most part. It brought everything down to the level of the common man. Music that takes skill to create is unfair, elitist and oppressive.

From:

tassellrealm.livejournal.com

Multi-dimensional argument though, isn't it?

Fr'instance, it would be very difficult to call The Desperate Bicycles fascists. Despite the lyrics and Johnny Ramones Bush fetish - it would be very difficult to call The Ramones fascists.

Music that takes skill to create is unfair, elitist and oppressive.

Oh, I don't agree at all. I think it's best to judge something on its qualities.

To me, music should have the quality of a gift.

Something that I often experience when I have the misfortune to hear an Elton John record is that it 'sucks the life out of me' as opposed to something that nourishes me.

High art, low art, I don't care. It's got to have the quality of a gift.