Increased levels of chatter

[imomus]

I'm posting this morning to message boards on three subjects.

1. On the Stirling Prize for Architecture:

'The Grauniad has a long piece on the gherkin today entitled A Fine Pickle. Jonathan Jones got me onside in the first half with pep talk about what a nice shape it is and how London needs skyscrapers. Then he completely lost me by saying that contemporary art has lost architecture's vision of Modernism, and that Modernism and the Renaissance have a lot in common, and modern art hasn't yet been understood and therefore can't be supplanted by post-modern art...

'In the end the article just seems symptomatic of the tendecy of Britain to pick up on art movements very, very late and then knock their successors on the head for daring to have evolved somewhere else while the critics were fumbling about, trying to decide whether to jump on the bandwagon or not. When Britain adopts the Euro I fully expect them to start complaining to the European Central Bank 'But why have you changed the design of the notes when the original was so good?'

'In other words, what I really object to in Jones' piece is his need to propose Modernism as a new Classicism.'

2. On Musicians working in genres they have contempt for:


'Coupla points. First, it's an interview cliche for musicians to say they hate the genre their band is associated with, because they've always got a 'Don't fence me in' attitude and an eye on the long game, and genre is very subject to fashion. See, for instance, The Cardigans on 'Easy Listening' or Blur on Britpop.

'Second, all pop musicians nevertheless work in a genre which is, to some extent, contemptible, and that genre is pop music. So it's inevitable that a highly ambivalent mixture of contempt and respect -- held in taut and suggestive tension with each other -- should mark their attitude to their medium. You could cite any pop record ever made and locate contempt/respect ambivalence in it, but just for fun I'm going to cite Beck's 'Midnite Vultures'.

'I'd add that as we get deeper into the post-modern period, one of the hallmarks of pomo -- its refusal to make distinctions between 'high' and 'low' culture -- will rob pop music of some of its vital energy, which comes precisely from its contempt for itself. In an era where even the prime minister was in a rock band, where pop music is taught in pop music colleges, where pop music is played by the authorities in 'social control' situations like planes on runways, and where cultural studies legitimizes pop as a serious academic subject, pop can't retain its component of self-contempt, and therefore will start to take on the dead, fusty, respectable, museum-like mantle of classical music or jazz.

'This is an extension of the attitude (which we now laugh at) of Noel Coward, who talked in one of his plays about 'the strange potency of cheap music'. My argument is that the potency is all tied up with our feeling that pop music is 'cheap'. Once pop music starts to feel 'expensive' and 'valuable' and 'endorsed by all the authorities', it loses the potency of its 'otherness'.'

3. (Not unrelated to 2) Marc Almond fighting for life after motorcycle accident:

'This is very bad news indeed. One does not usually make a full recovery from 'head injuries' which are 'critical'.'

Comments

still

[mustt.livejournal.com]

The vehicles were a Suzuki bike and a Vauxhall car, the spokesman added. He could give no information about Almond's injuries.

It's still unclear if it were Almond who was badly injured or it was his friend.

Re: still

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Almond was the one critically injured.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3751996.stm

Re: still

[nickink.livejournal.com]

Just read on a Marc Almonsd message board that his condition is now 'stable'.
Hoping for the best.

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

>Once pop music starts to feel 'expensive' and 'valuable' and 'endorsed by all the authorities', it loses the potency of its 'otherness'.'


Yeh. Live Aid made sure of that.

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

How many pop 'sirs' are there now? Elton John, Paul McCartney, Cliff Richard... How long before we have Sir Nick Currie...for services to counter culture, or something crazy like that?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It. Will. Never. Ever. Happen. Unless Japan decides to set up a semi-medieval system of pseudo-aristocratic titles, and makes gaijin eligible.

[everybabyweeps.livejournal.com]

i can't believe that news about marc almond :(

[sakuraamplifier.livejournal.com]

...where cultural studies legitimizes pop as a serious academic subject, pop can't retain its component of self-contempt, and therefore will start to take on the dead, fusty, respectable, museum-like mantle of classical music or jazz.

It seems to me that pop could still be considered contemptible by its practitioners if they think that all the respectability is undeserved. Of course then you'd need some pop stars unwilling to accept accolades for their work...

[nonsequar.livejournal.com]

One doesn't usually, no. But, one might. My father survived a, well, "nasty" head injury. And apart from the epilepsy, schizophrenia and panic disorder, he's all right. Being an artist, I think Marc Almond can handle a few handicaps just as well.

[no-pussyfooting.livejournal.com]

That's terrible about Marc Almond.

Some people need to wear iron body suits all the time to ensure their safety and well-being.

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Was he wearing a helmet?

[junkerr.livejournal.com]

Hey do you like blur?
out of curiosity.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Blur are okay, yes. Probably the Britpop band I've had most time for. Although I think I prefer Gorrillaz!

who wouldn't?

[jinty]

What with Gorillaz being a) utterly made-up and proud of it, and b) both short-lived & great.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

I agree with Mr. Jones about the building's beauty (although I haven't seen it in person) and I'm inclined to agree that 1860-1920 is one of the most inventive periods in European art history; HOWEVER, most of the work made today is still demonstrably (and, imo, inescapably) modernist (even post-modernist work is still pretty obviously modernist), and meets the criteria he set for the Foster building.

Specifically, he mentions Bruce Nauman's piece in the Turbine Hall, but fails to mention that his work is an extension of work made by the Dadaists (like Hugo Ball in the Cabaret Voltaire) in the 'golden age' he mentioned. He also fails to mention the large grandiose pieces made by Louise Bourgeois, Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor for Turbine Hall. All three of those works were grand and completly tied into modernist ideas.

Take this paragraph:

It is modern and ancient; it is site-specific; it sculpts the sky room. It is a monument and a mirror. It makes you see London Turbine Hall in a new way.

To me, that paragraph applies to Kapoor, Eliasson, and Bourgeois' works.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

And do you think that hip-hop has taken rock's mantle of 'cheapness,' 'dirtiness' and 'disposabilty'?

I think that almost all genres of rock (even metal and electronic music) have been successfully incorporated into everyone's understanding of 'art.'

My friends and I love hip-hop but I notice that we're always making apologies for it - "Yeah, it's misogynistic, but listen to his rhythm and flow!" or whatever... We love it, but with severe reservations (like rock of old, no?).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to work out whether all the killing, bragging and brash materialism that goes on in the average hip hop record makes it strange, subcultural and dirty or just an exaggerated version of mainstream capitalist values.

[(Anonymous)]

Your comments about contempt in that post remind me how compelling the Sarah Records sound was to me coming off a high school experience where I mostly listened to punk rock and loud indies like Nation of Ulysees and the Birthday Party. After all of that rage and posturing, twee bands seemed attractively self-abasing, embracing weakness rather than strength. I've never really thought through the attraction before, but I think it comes down to the fact that trength felt less complicated and less interesting than vulnerability to me. Reminds me, too, that early punk rock always seemed more about getting spit on than spitting, and seemed to use even aggression as a form of self-abasement. I think pop music's 'vital energy' has been diminishing for a while now--seems like the most interesting movements are those that construct musical identities in which people can feel ambivalent about themselves. Makes you realized how short-lived the interest can be--vide Belle and Sebastian, and every punk band still in existence...

-b

Ambivalent contempt

[fibdemetics.livejournal.com]

Is this ambivalence not precisely (or at least of the same moment as) that "refusal to make distinctions between 'high' and 'low' culture?" A refusal which is never quite wholeheartedly believed or enacted?

I imagine it started with the fairly earnest artistic pretension of, say, the later Beatles, and then evolved into the more knowing artistic pretension of, say, New Order.

But even New Order (looking back) was quite sincere...self-contempt has devolved into plain old contempt, and I think that this is another reason why most pop music fails to inspire anyone to anything.

Getting back to the utopian impulse, we should hope that the appropriative machine alluded to above can subsume form much more easily than the sincere content of (de)localized art such as yours.

Re: Ambivalent contempt

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Is this ambivalence not precisely (or at least of the same moment as) that "refusal to make distinctions between 'high' and 'low' culture?" A refusal which is never quite wholeheartedly believed or enacted?

This is a subtle argument, but it troubles me, because then my argument would be saying that the thing which gave pop its early momentum was the same thing that sapped it of energy later on. It would also postulate that the big vertical cultural differences of the modern era were the same thing, basically, as the horizontal superflatness of the pomo era.

I think I want to keep the notion that there was a radical shift to a new state of affairs in post-modernism, but I accept that a lot of the old ways of thinking persisted. That's obvious in Jonathan Jones' article. They persisted in Britain especially because the class system will never be replaced by any kind of 'superflat' social structure there. All that happened when Britain went pomo (and I date that to the Thatcher period, which makes punk the last modern, subcultural music movement) is that the high / low structures were reversed. There was a lot of inverse snobbery. Suddenly someone called 'Sid' owned shares in the old modernist public utilities, and educated people demonstrated their cultural capital with an encyclopedic knowledge of football, pop trivia and TV comedy reruns. This inversion allowed Britain to retain class distinctions while focusing contempt on refined, intellectual or aspirational values instead of abject ones -- something the country has always been depressingly willing to do.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I do like the Gherkin, as it isn't relentlessly angular or harsh--nice curvilinear, mild forms.

Upon a first skim, I have to say that like yourself I am in full accord with his first few paragraphs, but I must say that I also agree in part with Jones's later assertions in the article. I'm not entirely convinced that what he is arguing for is a reactionary return to an eternal age of modernism; perhaps he just misses the play with form in art, as I do. Doubling back and trying a new direction is not necessarily a crime against art; sometimes, it's the most interesting way forward. To my feeble way of thinking, new and old are beside the point, and linear progression in art is a dubious proposition at best.

I find the forms in this capsized caterpillar delightful:





Although I have misgivings. It seems that while these buildings take on natural forms, the contemporary architecture seems unable to allow itself to be subject to the natural process (plants, decay of materials, etc.). What I mean to say is that the Petronas Towers would look marvelous with a network of hanging flower gardens and cascading waterfalls on it's network of terraces and spurs--I would like to see artificial reefs for people and animals, akin to Paolo Soleri's wonderful pipedream, Arcosanti. In addition, as we can see above, contemporary architecture seems unable to reconcile itself with its surroundings, especially when surrounded by older architecture; It's like a symphony in which everyone is a soloist--in many cases, there is no relationship of context of form, just blaring contrast. While I would cheer on new, innovative architecture in places like Berlin or New York, I must confess that I would be in tears if such brash, shiny beasts sprouted in the center of Florence. The Parisians, in corraling off their modern buildings, might have gone too far, but perhaps they have a point. Or not.

W

[fibdemetics.livejournal.com]

That's an impressive structure. Looks like an early artificial heart with too many undersized valves, about to spew its contents, whatever they may be, over the quaint roofline that surrounds.

What is the cultural meaning...?

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

I've actually wondered before whether you were a fan (or a bit of a parodist) of Marc Almond at times. After all, he has his Jacky, and you have your Nicky. You've both done Brel, too, though I prefer your versions, actually.

What did you use as an influence on your versions of Brel, if I might ask? Did you do your own translations, or rely upon existing ones?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm enough of an Almond fan to have bought one of his solo records, 'Mother Fist', which I liked. We share a francophilia and a love of sexual provocation; Brel, Bataille, Pierre et Gilles, Juliette Greco and sea shanties. I worked with Dave Ball once (he made a remix of 'The Hairstyle of the Devil' with his partner in The Grid, Richard Norris) and I met Almond once at a Pierre et Gilles art gallery opening in London. He was friendly but surprisingly shy.

The influence on my versions of Brel was a negative one. I thought Mort Schuman's translations were dreadfully florid sixth-form poetry, and wanted simply to make English versions which restored Brel's own Voltairean vituperation. I see Brel as a singing Enlightenment philosophe rather than the semi-gothic 'dark romantic' he passes for in the US. Measured rationalism is much more devastating -- and much more progressive -- than doomy, fruity poetry. Brel is opinionated and pointed, Voltaire but also Cervantes and Moliere. His writing is precise and satirical, not gushy and impressionistic, as Schuman renders it.

The references were updated and Anglicised, and the arrangements electronicised. In fact the recording was vaguely 'experimental'. On 'Nicky' I used a guitar with unusually loose and bendy strings, tuned low. On 'Don't Leave' I recorded the original onto tape then simply improvised several tracks of freestyle Moog over it, then erased the original. On 'See A Friend In Tears' I used a simple sequencer riff that wandered off the chords of the song, contradicting them sometimes and clashing with the guitar part. It was supposed to sound like cancerous cells dividing, because Brel had lung cancer when he recorded the original.

Word came through at the time that Almond was miffed that my record came out before his album of Brel covers, because we put my EP out without the approval of Brel's widow, whereas he went through the official channels and had to wait over a year, I think, for approval.

The last time I heard a lot about Almond was when I was in Moscow this spring. The agency who organised my show also did his. They told me he earns something like 7000 euros per show there, and just sings over CD backings. He's so successful in Russia that he rents an apartment and spends several months a year there.

[gorillabiscuit.livejournal.com]

i think you may find this interesting.....

www.showandtellmusic.com

enjoy.

-tomas