Talking to a picture of Green
Aug. 2nd, 2006 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusA person I haven't quite met has made a record I haven't quite heard. The person is Green Gartside, and the record is the new Scritti Politti album White Bread, Black Beer. When I was in London six weeks ago somebody gave me some quite detailed instructions on how to bump into Green, but I didn't follow them. Partly because I'd heard that Green might turn around and, without a word, walk away when I was talking to him. That's no good! I might as well talk to a picture! At least it wouldn't walk away!
So, well, if I were talking to a picture of Green, what would I say? First, I'd apologize for not having bought his new album. The picture would say nothing, so I'd continue. I'd ask how the new record fits into the Scritti Politti narrative. I have, after all, heard key tracks, session readings of the new songs on Scritti fansite Bibbly-O-Tek (what a wonderful name!). So I wonder how the Scritti keywords are playing out:
NARCISSISM / SICKNESS / SWEETNESS / EQUALITY
I don't just mean how they're playing out in the lyrics. Music and lyrics and production all hold each other in place in a subtle dynamic. For instance, there's always been a "mirrors and coke" element to Green's work ("I am my own ideal") which he's always offset by mentions of sickness, on the one hand, and political engagement on the other. So does this offsetting still work? Does he "still support the revolution"? Or has that part of the Scritti equation narrowed down to a vague nostalgia for Robin Hood? And if so, is the sweetness / narcissism / sickness part still bearable? Didn't it need to be held in counterbalance with something?
I'm able to ask these quite hard-hitting questions because the picture of Green hasn't talked back, but also hasn't walked away. But it does make them sort of rhetorical questions, like asking the meaning of the word "girl" and not getting any answer except some synthy reggae-chords.
Green's voice hasn't changed at all; what has changed is the way its sweetness was counterbalanced, before, by hardness. The hardness of Mos Def's rapping, on his last record Anomie and Bonhomie, or the hardness of Arif Mardin's Fairlight hits back in the 80s. Sweetness, when it isn't held in place by hardness texturally, gets "cloying". Is your new record cloying, Green?
There's no way the man in the picture hasn't thought about these issues. Any artist has to. And it would be interesting if, for instance, this album won the Mercury Prize, to see whether a decision on Green's part to let a sort of fragmented consumerist narcissism triumph, untempered by the equality and hardness parts he incorporated before, actually got massively endorsed by a fragmented, consumerist-narcissist Britain.
I see others have been talking to pictures of Green too. Simon Reynolds quotes Barney Hoskyns quoting Green in an NME interview back in 1981: "And as regards, say, the "sweetness" of 'The "Sweetest Girl"'... well, I think there is a dirt, a criminality if you like, in sweetness itself".
BOOM! There it is. A beautiful answer to some of my questions. "You don't need to counterbalance sweetness with hardness or dirt, or in fact anything else at all," the picture tells me (without moving its lips), "because sweetness is already taboo!"
You're already being deeply subversive by being sweet, friendly, fey or light. Isn't this close to my ideas for a "friendly album"? My ideas about why Japan is such a joyful society to move through? That gentleness, friendliness and social harmony are the ultimate taboos, the ultimate liberations?
Or is it, in fact, closer to the corrosive idea of "guilty pleasures"? Is Green in fact saying we should embrace sugary chart pop and slurp it up uncritically, unresistingly, building up a guilt which only makes the pleasures more pleasant? And if so, doesn't this simply re-inscribe puritanism, rather than offering us a way out of it?
The picture of Green says nothing, which is bad. But doesn't walk away either, which is good.
So, well, if I were talking to a picture of Green, what would I say? First, I'd apologize for not having bought his new album. The picture would say nothing, so I'd continue. I'd ask how the new record fits into the Scritti Politti narrative. I have, after all, heard key tracks, session readings of the new songs on Scritti fansite Bibbly-O-Tek (what a wonderful name!). So I wonder how the Scritti keywords are playing out:NARCISSISM / SICKNESS / SWEETNESS / EQUALITY
I don't just mean how they're playing out in the lyrics. Music and lyrics and production all hold each other in place in a subtle dynamic. For instance, there's always been a "mirrors and coke" element to Green's work ("I am my own ideal") which he's always offset by mentions of sickness, on the one hand, and political engagement on the other. So does this offsetting still work? Does he "still support the revolution"? Or has that part of the Scritti equation narrowed down to a vague nostalgia for Robin Hood? And if so, is the sweetness / narcissism / sickness part still bearable? Didn't it need to be held in counterbalance with something?
I'm able to ask these quite hard-hitting questions because the picture of Green hasn't talked back, but also hasn't walked away. But it does make them sort of rhetorical questions, like asking the meaning of the word "girl" and not getting any answer except some synthy reggae-chords.
Green's voice hasn't changed at all; what has changed is the way its sweetness was counterbalanced, before, by hardness. The hardness of Mos Def's rapping, on his last record Anomie and Bonhomie, or the hardness of Arif Mardin's Fairlight hits back in the 80s. Sweetness, when it isn't held in place by hardness texturally, gets "cloying". Is your new record cloying, Green?There's no way the man in the picture hasn't thought about these issues. Any artist has to. And it would be interesting if, for instance, this album won the Mercury Prize, to see whether a decision on Green's part to let a sort of fragmented consumerist narcissism triumph, untempered by the equality and hardness parts he incorporated before, actually got massively endorsed by a fragmented, consumerist-narcissist Britain.
I see others have been talking to pictures of Green too. Simon Reynolds quotes Barney Hoskyns quoting Green in an NME interview back in 1981: "And as regards, say, the "sweetness" of 'The "Sweetest Girl"'... well, I think there is a dirt, a criminality if you like, in sweetness itself".
BOOM! There it is. A beautiful answer to some of my questions. "You don't need to counterbalance sweetness with hardness or dirt, or in fact anything else at all," the picture tells me (without moving its lips), "because sweetness is already taboo!"You're already being deeply subversive by being sweet, friendly, fey or light. Isn't this close to my ideas for a "friendly album"? My ideas about why Japan is such a joyful society to move through? That gentleness, friendliness and social harmony are the ultimate taboos, the ultimate liberations?
Or is it, in fact, closer to the corrosive idea of "guilty pleasures"? Is Green in fact saying we should embrace sugary chart pop and slurp it up uncritically, unresistingly, building up a guilt which only makes the pleasures more pleasant? And if so, doesn't this simply re-inscribe puritanism, rather than offering us a way out of it?
The picture of Green says nothing, which is bad. But doesn't walk away either, which is good.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
The greenest girl
Date: 2006-08-02 12:09 pm (UTC)This is very Sartrean
Date: 2006-08-02 12:17 pm (UTC)Yes but a picture cannot turn away, reconsider, and then turn back around.
Do you really think Green would turn away from you momus? You're being silly. And if he did, so what. He's probably got gas.
I turn around and walk away a lot because I get bored.
Re: This is very Sartrean
Date: 2006-08-02 12:27 pm (UTC)momus,
Date: 2006-08-02 12:57 pm (UTC)the files are here
Date: 2006-08-02 12:58 pm (UTC)Re: momus,
Date: 2006-08-02 01:01 pm (UTC)1. If you own my trademark, it's all yours, not mine.
2. I don't have a lawyer.
3. I don't want my identity trademarked, by me or anyone else.
4. The trademark application process takes months and months and hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and is provisional on you talking on the phone to the trademark office to satisfy them that your claim is not facetious.
5. So stop your fibbing!
6. You were only joking? Good. We laughed last week.
Re: momus,
Date: 2006-08-02 01:04 pm (UTC)No. You have not been to the new site http://uspto.gov .
It costs 325 USD and takes like five minutes to file.
You do not need to be an attorney.
But, actually, I got all set up to register your good name, and then did not submit. So your name is still out there, for someone less scrupulous than I to take away from you.
I was only trying to protect you by pointing out that it is very easy to TM stuff now, and to do due diligence online, and to pick up artists' marks with very little effort.
Re: momus,
Date: 2006-08-02 01:05 pm (UTC)You are correct. An examining attorney makes a phone call, and you have to know what you're doing when s/he calls. You are correct on that matter.
I mean no harm. I'll shut up now.
Re: momus,
Date: 2006-08-02 01:07 pm (UTC)my lip is zipped
Date: 2006-08-02 01:10 pm (UTC)Re: my lip is zipped
Date: 2006-08-02 01:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 12:27 pm (UTC)Oh, and I don't think he'd walk away. Maybe just look around the room :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 12:31 pm (UTC)I agree with you about the odd song structures and chords and things. In fact, I much prefer the demo version of "Wood Beez" (http://bibbly-o-tek.com/audio/) to the shiny hit version, because, although it's quieter and more gentle, it has some very weird harmonization going on. The backing vocals on the chorus, for instance, are beautifully weird, and that got lost in Arif Mardin's version, with all its batter and splash.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 12:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 12:48 pm (UTC)Sweetness...
Date: 2006-08-02 12:41 pm (UTC)Gentleness, friendliness, and social harmony certainly have the same "breath of fresh air" feeling these days--- and they don't feel cloying at all-- they are a subtle yin retaliation to all the intense, rampant yang going on all over the place. Recentering things back to a homeostatic point. The US, in particular, could be seen as having a lot of explosive yang growth, with nothing to support it-- sort of like the US is the world's drunk, abusive husband (shades of Mel Gibson, sugartits?) Yes, I know you can't get more "New Age" than that... is that cloying?
Re: Sweetness...
Date: 2006-08-02 12:51 pm (UTC)Not at all, but it doesn't explain why the Chinese love sweet-sour sauce.
Re: Sweetness...
Date: 2006-08-02 01:06 pm (UTC)Re: Sweetness...
Date: 2006-08-02 08:43 pm (UTC)Absinthe, yum~
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 02:30 pm (UTC)"Each night I go to bed I pray like Aretha Franklin."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 03:11 pm (UTC)>"Each night I go to bed I pray like Aretha Franklin."
Sorry, but WHY is that an offensive line? Or am I just too startlingly secular a pop lover to have grasped the (apparently) obvious?!
alex
Songs To Forget
Date: 2006-08-02 03:23 pm (UTC)Either that, or your olfactory system's blown, old chum.
"Pooooooooooooooooooohhhhh!!!!"
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 06:02 pm (UTC)Harumph. Really, Mr. Momus. Sweetness.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to Luke Haines and scour myself with a cat o' nine tails whilst staring longingly at a picture of my uncle dressed like Jesus. Maybe I'll bite my finger off while staring into the sun, as well.
...is what I'd say if I didn't agree with you.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 06:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 06:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 06:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 06:50 pm (UTC)...what have ye done to me, ye vile dandy?! It's just so cute! Waaaaah!!
(blubbercryrunrunrun)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 05:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 07:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 07:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 05:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 06:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 12:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 07:54 pm (UTC)Morley had this "series" if i remember correctly of subversive popstars
Green was one, Billy Mackenzie may have been one..
oh he lusted after David Sylvian's "mirrors and coke" one week..
there may have been another pale Scotsman in the mix..
so long ago and yet...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-02 08:10 pm (UTC)It's a much better parody than if I'd been trying consciously to do it, because I was never once tempted to say "Green Gartside: the missing link between Antonio Gramsci and Lady Di" or "Green Gartside: the missing link between Michael Jackson and Jackson Pollock".
When I connect to LiveJournal
Date: 2006-08-03 12:44 am (UTC)What does it mean that my own blog is less interesting than every one else's?
Re: When I connect to LiveJournal
Date: 2006-08-03 12:46 am (UTC)Re: When I connect to LiveJournal
Date: 2006-08-03 06:46 am (UTC)Maybe in an immersive media culture where production is as cheap as consumption we've expected a shift in the cycle with online diaries. They're all composed of the lives lived by their authors, and Momus's life is very interesting.
Re: When I connect to LiveJournal
Date: 2006-08-03 06:55 am (UTC)just looked at your blog
Date: 2006-08-03 04:48 pm (UTC)2. Herpes
3. LOUD
No joke, orange blob.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 08:59 am (UTC)I love the album. As others have noted, there are some excellent "wrong" notes, excellent "wrong" song structures. Guilty pleasure - no I don't feel guilty about pleasure! "There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law." (Debussy).