Pickled, salted, dried and candied rock
Sep. 2nd, 2009 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusPlayground column
September 2009
The Old Revolution
You're at the airport, queuing for security. Next to you are four individuals who look different from everybody else. They're traveling together, but they aren't a family; they're all male, all about the same age. They aren't businessmen either. At first sight they appear to have been beamed in from the past; their hairstyles and clothes are the essence of 1972; shaggy, fluffy, forward-combed hair, tight, exotic materials like velvet and satin.
The four men speak English, and their sentences are peppered with in-jokes delivered in street slang hardly heard these days outside the yellowing pages of beat novels: "man" and "chick" and "groovy" and "heavy" and "trip". They're making jokes about drugs: "Did you remember to flush your stash, Eric?" Their sense of humour is cheeky and surrealist, it reminds you of films of Beatles and Dylan press conferences in the 60s, or John Lennon's whimsical nonsense book A Spaniard in the Works.
The four men have already checked their luggage, but it's easy to guess that it included several square black cases containing electric musical instruments; basses and guitars in designs and colours little modified since the 1950s: sunset yellow, starburst orange, chocolate brown. They are, of course, a rock band: men from "the Old Revolution".
Ah, The Old Revolution! The term comes originally from Mexico; the skulls and skeletons of artist José Guadalupe Posada, used during the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations, became a symbol of death as the ultimate equaliser, a jubilant defiance of the strict social hierarchy which prevailed before the revolution that lasted from 1910 to 1920, the Old Revolution. But we're using it today to indicate our own Old Revolution, the rock revolution that lasted from the mid-60s to the mid-70s.
Now, I'm as fond of that Old Revolution as anyone. With the possible exception of Spain, I think people in the West, circa 1970, were probably more funky, experimental, free and liberal than they are now. It's a time of extraordinary creativity and rebellion in the arts, a time when Modernism is rubbing up against Post-Modernism, globalisation is just beginning, 747s and Concordes are plying back and forth, men are walking on the moon, and there's an airline called Braniff which uses Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali in its adverts and paints its aircraft orange (in fact everything in 1970 seems to be orange, or mustard yellow, or pink).
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What's sad is when the Old Revolution becomes a ghetto forty years later, a series of reflexes, a snow shaker ornament encasing, in miniature, a scene that was once vital and widescale. You cannot make a revolution pocket-sized, and preserve it in aspic. But that's what's happened to rock music's Old Revolution.
Let's take a specific example: a type face. We have to go back to Mexico for this one; designer Milton Glaser spotted some fat, funky handpainted lettering in Mexico in the mid-60s and photographed it. In 1968 he made his own hand-drawn version for a poster of Bob Dylan. Later the same year he turned the font into a commercially-available typeface called Baby Teeth. By the 1980s Baby Teeth had fallen out of favour, but recently a revival of interest in the excess of the 1960s and 1970s -- especially in the rock world -- has led to various imitations and variations on Glaser's Baby Teeth font appearing, with names like Bebit and Constructivist Block. You can see these fat fonts on album sleeves released this decade, including the new Jarvis Cocker solo album. Trace the history of that particular gesture back and you reach Bob Dylan in the mid-60s. Trace it further and you reach Mexico and the original Old Revolution.
Or how about clothes? Look at these pictures of the The Kings of Leon and The Killers. They're 2009 people, and yet they dress like 1969 people. Now, 1969 was a great year, but isn't that a little sad? Can you imagine people in 1969 dressing like it was 1929? They would be considered conservatives, even if they were aping the most progressive parts of the Weimar Republic. I think we can safely say that if people in 1969 had been aping people in 1929, people in 2009 would not now be aping people in 1969. Certainly nobody in 2049 will be aping these people in 2009. Well, not unless the Old Revolution becomes some sort of timeless tradition, some sort of cultural bubble.
It might happen. Societies are sentimental about their music. Even when they update and renovate everything else, societies designate certain zones, certain times in which the old music -- protected and tolerated no matter how different its values are -- can linger on as if all the intervening time never happened at all. Christmas is such a time; at Christmas melodies from the 14th century come drifting back and hang in the air above tables laden with foods pickled, salted, dried and candied in ways which refrigeration has long since made unnecessary. There are other festivals -- fire festivals, mystery plays, church rituals -- in which the ancient past is preserved, and there are populations of traveling people still wearing medieval motley as they perform feats of juggling and acrobatics in designated areas of waste ground on the outskirts of cities.
Rock music may well become -- and may already have become -- just such an ancient tradition, as it draws further and further away from the golden age of its Old Revolution. The problem is that 1970 has, for rock music, a gravitational pull that makes it more and more difficult to rip up the old rules and start again. Henrik Franzon is a Swedish statistician who fed all the rock critics' Best Of lists he could find into his computer and came up with a list of the 3000 most recommended albums and songs of all time. When I broke down Franzon's figures by decade, I discovered that almost half of the 100 most-acclaimed albums of all time were made between 1967 and 1976.
It's the magnetic pull of the styles and attitudes associated with these all-conquering albums (by people like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan) which causes the men in the airport queue to dress the way they do. They want to look like rock stars, and rock stars look, stereotypically, the way everybody looked in about 1970: long hair, tight clothes, bright colours. Normal people long ago moved on to other styles, but rock stars are supposed to look like that forever. Which is great. And terrible.
There's something valuable about preserving the styles of 1970, but also something pathetic. Rock stars in 1970 weren't so different from everyone else. Their revolution was a widespread social tendency, and their social power came from articulating widely-held attitudes. Now, though, rock stars are a bit like the animals that we gawk at in zoos. Separated from us by security staff, up in the coloured lights on the stage, our rock stars enact a pantomime caricature of the values of 1970. Their pelvic thrusts and androgynous clothes reflect nothing going on in the wider culture (which has retreated from 1970s radicalism back to something more like the 1950s). Rock stars have become mannerists, pastiche artists, actors. The Old Revolution, stiffened into pantomime, is grinning like a papier maché skull.
This column first appeared in Spanish in Playground magazine.
September 2009
The Old Revolution
You're at the airport, queuing for security. Next to you are four individuals who look different from everybody else. They're traveling together, but they aren't a family; they're all male, all about the same age. They aren't businessmen either. At first sight they appear to have been beamed in from the past; their hairstyles and clothes are the essence of 1972; shaggy, fluffy, forward-combed hair, tight, exotic materials like velvet and satin.
The four men speak English, and their sentences are peppered with in-jokes delivered in street slang hardly heard these days outside the yellowing pages of beat novels: "man" and "chick" and "groovy" and "heavy" and "trip". They're making jokes about drugs: "Did you remember to flush your stash, Eric?" Their sense of humour is cheeky and surrealist, it reminds you of films of Beatles and Dylan press conferences in the 60s, or John Lennon's whimsical nonsense book A Spaniard in the Works.
The four men have already checked their luggage, but it's easy to guess that it included several square black cases containing electric musical instruments; basses and guitars in designs and colours little modified since the 1950s: sunset yellow, starburst orange, chocolate brown. They are, of course, a rock band: men from "the Old Revolution".
Ah, The Old Revolution! The term comes originally from Mexico; the skulls and skeletons of artist José Guadalupe Posada, used during the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations, became a symbol of death as the ultimate equaliser, a jubilant defiance of the strict social hierarchy which prevailed before the revolution that lasted from 1910 to 1920, the Old Revolution. But we're using it today to indicate our own Old Revolution, the rock revolution that lasted from the mid-60s to the mid-70s.
Now, I'm as fond of that Old Revolution as anyone. With the possible exception of Spain, I think people in the West, circa 1970, were probably more funky, experimental, free and liberal than they are now. It's a time of extraordinary creativity and rebellion in the arts, a time when Modernism is rubbing up against Post-Modernism, globalisation is just beginning, 747s and Concordes are plying back and forth, men are walking on the moon, and there's an airline called Braniff which uses Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali in its adverts and paints its aircraft orange (in fact everything in 1970 seems to be orange, or mustard yellow, or pink).
[Error: unknown template video]
What's sad is when the Old Revolution becomes a ghetto forty years later, a series of reflexes, a snow shaker ornament encasing, in miniature, a scene that was once vital and widescale. You cannot make a revolution pocket-sized, and preserve it in aspic. But that's what's happened to rock music's Old Revolution.
Let's take a specific example: a type face. We have to go back to Mexico for this one; designer Milton Glaser spotted some fat, funky handpainted lettering in Mexico in the mid-60s and photographed it. In 1968 he made his own hand-drawn version for a poster of Bob Dylan. Later the same year he turned the font into a commercially-available typeface called Baby Teeth. By the 1980s Baby Teeth had fallen out of favour, but recently a revival of interest in the excess of the 1960s and 1970s -- especially in the rock world -- has led to various imitations and variations on Glaser's Baby Teeth font appearing, with names like Bebit and Constructivist Block. You can see these fat fonts on album sleeves released this decade, including the new Jarvis Cocker solo album. Trace the history of that particular gesture back and you reach Bob Dylan in the mid-60s. Trace it further and you reach Mexico and the original Old Revolution.
Or how about clothes? Look at these pictures of the The Kings of Leon and The Killers. They're 2009 people, and yet they dress like 1969 people. Now, 1969 was a great year, but isn't that a little sad? Can you imagine people in 1969 dressing like it was 1929? They would be considered conservatives, even if they were aping the most progressive parts of the Weimar Republic. I think we can safely say that if people in 1969 had been aping people in 1929, people in 2009 would not now be aping people in 1969. Certainly nobody in 2049 will be aping these people in 2009. Well, not unless the Old Revolution becomes some sort of timeless tradition, some sort of cultural bubble.
It might happen. Societies are sentimental about their music. Even when they update and renovate everything else, societies designate certain zones, certain times in which the old music -- protected and tolerated no matter how different its values are -- can linger on as if all the intervening time never happened at all. Christmas is such a time; at Christmas melodies from the 14th century come drifting back and hang in the air above tables laden with foods pickled, salted, dried and candied in ways which refrigeration has long since made unnecessary. There are other festivals -- fire festivals, mystery plays, church rituals -- in which the ancient past is preserved, and there are populations of traveling people still wearing medieval motley as they perform feats of juggling and acrobatics in designated areas of waste ground on the outskirts of cities.
Rock music may well become -- and may already have become -- just such an ancient tradition, as it draws further and further away from the golden age of its Old Revolution. The problem is that 1970 has, for rock music, a gravitational pull that makes it more and more difficult to rip up the old rules and start again. Henrik Franzon is a Swedish statistician who fed all the rock critics' Best Of lists he could find into his computer and came up with a list of the 3000 most recommended albums and songs of all time. When I broke down Franzon's figures by decade, I discovered that almost half of the 100 most-acclaimed albums of all time were made between 1967 and 1976.
It's the magnetic pull of the styles and attitudes associated with these all-conquering albums (by people like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan) which causes the men in the airport queue to dress the way they do. They want to look like rock stars, and rock stars look, stereotypically, the way everybody looked in about 1970: long hair, tight clothes, bright colours. Normal people long ago moved on to other styles, but rock stars are supposed to look like that forever. Which is great. And terrible.
There's something valuable about preserving the styles of 1970, but also something pathetic. Rock stars in 1970 weren't so different from everyone else. Their revolution was a widespread social tendency, and their social power came from articulating widely-held attitudes. Now, though, rock stars are a bit like the animals that we gawk at in zoos. Separated from us by security staff, up in the coloured lights on the stage, our rock stars enact a pantomime caricature of the values of 1970. Their pelvic thrusts and androgynous clothes reflect nothing going on in the wider culture (which has retreated from 1970s radicalism back to something more like the 1950s). Rock stars have become mannerists, pastiche artists, actors. The Old Revolution, stiffened into pantomime, is grinning like a papier maché skull.
This column first appeared in Spanish in Playground magazine.
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)))
Date: 2009-09-01 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 08:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 10:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 10:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 10:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 11:00 pm (UTC)I'd call that "a block off the old chip", baby!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-01 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 12:02 am (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
"Of course, there's an inherent beauty in soup cans..." The self-parody reminds me of the lines Bowie had in Extras: "He was an A&R man at Decca Records -- you won't remember Decca, it's before your time..."
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 12:02 am (UTC)I think the way music has progressed from genre to genre is not only by rejecting previous styles, but adopting elements that current musicians still consider relevant and interesting.
I think if there's something to be salvaged from rock music, it's not distorted guitars and three-chord songs, but the concept of the rock band. I think, if done properly, the rock band still represents community, and gives a sense of being part of a movement.
Of course, some people take it too far and don't realise that the hippie, grunge or glam rock movements are finished. But I like how bands like Soulwax or Animal Collective keep experimenting with the rock band format with a fresher sound.
This seems somehow relevant
Date: 2009-09-02 12:59 am (UTC)Monkey melodies inspired by the animals' calls had a calming effect, hinting at how human music may have evolved":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/23/monkey-music-tamarins
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 01:58 am (UTC)Do any of Lady Gaga's outfits appear groundbreaking to you? You can literally cover yourself in frogs and still just end up looking like a typical pop star.
How do we progress from this?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 02:21 am (UTC)Sadly, a pop star in the US can be groundbreaking in these neo-50s days just by telling teenagers to embrace their sexuality, adulthood, etc. (to bounce off Momus's last post). Sometimes groundbreaking is visual, sometimes it's content. usw.
Sadly, Elvis is probably more groundbreaking than Lady Gaga's public domain frog ensemble.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 02:47 am (UTC)Incidentally I've just come to realize that where I live, long shaggy 1970 hair has become the standard hairstyle for pre-teen boys. It's often quite longer than most kids would've worn theirs in the mid to late '70s, creating many an androgynous effect.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 02:52 am (UTC)Wouldn't any attempt to be really different (Paradigm shift different even) just come across like extreme outlandishness à la Lady Gaga's suit of frogs though? Think about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 04:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 05:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 05:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 06:34 am (UTC)the 1960's style was formed from another age
Date: 2009-09-02 06:35 am (UTC)ok...
Date: 2009-09-02 06:41 am (UTC)anyways, Rockstars were useful, once, when we were actually questioning our freedom. But now, we are past our prime, and only using these ideas to express our shared memory of our better, more vital times.
This is ok, and actually healthy for a culture to do, it gives us a place to rest our heads as we slumber....
You've internalized the Time magazine version of things
Date: 2009-09-02 07:18 am (UTC)What was really great about the 1960s, one of the true indications of its triumph, was that there were actually so many different styles going on; dandies in duster coats next to dashiki wearing black power chicks next to wild-eyed, bearded scholars in tweeds next to bare-footed, angel-headed jesus freaks who passed out free food on the streets. And on and on and on and on and on. There was a real spirit of do your own thing, but do it together somehow.
The govt, the corporations and by proxy the TV always wants to cherry pick and boil down people and movements so they can pigeon hole them, define them and then marginalize them, eventually. But eclecticism was alive, truly, in more ways than just fashion, since there really wasn't this monolithic, calcified version of the "hippie 60s." That came after the fact.
Ginsberg used to talk about this, when people asked him questions that clearly showed the person was going on the mass marketed version of the times---what he used to call the CIA version of the 60s.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 08:44 am (UTC)As for the "rock" look - youth fashions were drawing on the past right from the beginning of rock with the Teddy Boys. The rock look is in itself just a take on the Byronic regency look, as the frilly shirts of the psychedelic period testify. Long hair on men has been a signifier of sexual decadence for generations - take a look at photos of Oscar Wilde in his prime.
Re: the 1960's style was formed from another age
Date: 2009-09-02 09:41 am (UTC)Do any of Lady Gaga's outfits appear groundbreaking to you? You can literally cover yourself in frog
Date: 2009-09-02 10:01 am (UTC)Even the whole recent noise/improv/'free' scene is often heavily indepted to all things Krautrock. Where do you/we draw the line? This idea of 'rip it up and start all over again' is great, but just not that simple now, when you have waves of previous generations having done just that. Perhaps kids want to explore the zones opened up for them by previous generations? Look at f@cking Billy Childish! Mr Authentic apparently, you decide, but his whole drive is that things don't have time to truly develop (before moved on from,due to media/audience attention spans)- so he continues to 'explore' 3 chord music based in US 60s garage, and paint as if the European expressionists were the last word in art, and everything else is pointless elitist rubbish. And look at the respect he commands / demands!
As Alan Vega said- kids have more behind them than in front of them now. Of course, easy for him to say that, but I think it makes sense. Why do we expect the radical to always have to exist in the north-western pop/rock world? Of course that world is going to use the surface of such things to sell it's product.
Why are you implying Lady Gaga ever is/was anything more than a typical pop star?
i think this post is anyway about rock rather than pop.