Increased levels of chatter
Oct. 18th, 2004 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'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'.'
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'.'
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 09:51 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 10:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 10:54 pm (UTC)Silenus is a primitive Phrygian god of woods and springs. He's the son of Pan, and teacher and faithful companion to the wine-god Dionysus. He's said to have taught Dionysus vine cultivation and bee-keeping. Some think Silenus even invented music, but they might be getting him mixed up with someone else. He possesses the gift of prophecy, but, like Proteus, will only impart information on compulsion -- when surprised in a drunken sleep, he can be bound with chains of flowers and forced to prophesy and sing. Silenus is always drunk, often sleeping slumped astride his wine skin. Satyrs usually have to prop him up, and he's often seen half-conscious on a donkey. When King Midas took the drunken Silenus into his house, Dionysus rewarded Midas for his hospitality by giving him 'the Midas touch' (a mixed blessing). Silenus has much wisdom and if captured by mortals he can reveal important secrets. For instance, than man is happiest unborn, and, if born, happiest if he dies soon. Just as there were supposed to be several Pans and Fauns, so there were many Silenuses, whose father was called Papposilenus (Daddy Silenus), represented as completely covered with hair and more animal in appearance. The usual attributes of Silenus were the wine-skin, a crown of ivy, the Bacchic thyrsus (a staff covered in pine cones, vines and ivy leaves), the ass, and sometimes the panther. In art he generally appears as a bearded little pot-bellied old man, with a snub nose and a bald head, riding on an ass and supported by satyrs; or he is depicted lying asleep on his wine-skin. Oh, and he has a horse's tail.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 11:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 11:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 01:09 am (UTC)W
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 11:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 07:22 am (UTC)Has seen us...
He runs like the rough satyr Sun.
Come away!"
Dame Edith
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 12:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 01:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 01:39 am (UTC)http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/rams/thu1130.ram
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 02:14 am (UTC)H.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 02:52 am (UTC)Dead and unwell
Date: 2004-10-19 07:32 am (UTC)The lyrics and production on the EP truly do update Brel to the Age of Reason, helping me appreciate the Belgian on a level that even the Almond versions, as worthy as they are, couldn't approach. ("Nicky" might be Nick's funniest song ever.)
Nevertheless, Marc Almond is at his best in French and Russian, I love his voice and much of his work, and I am saddened by this tragic news.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-19 08:19 am (UTC)I always saw 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' as a painfully ironic song -- it's almost assuredly the desperation shown by the lyricist that drives his lover away.
The BBC says Marc Almond is "critical but stable". That doesn't sound incredibly promising to me.
Marc Almond's website has the following:
Marc Almond was involved in collision between a car and a motorcycle yesterday and is currently in hospital in London. He was the passenger on the motorcycle and suffered serious injuries. Last night he underwent emergency surgery and today is in intensive care where his condition remains critical. We will bring you updates on his condition as soon as possible. We're all very shocked at this news and our thoughts, as we know yours will be, are with Marc and his family right now.
If you wish to send a message for Marc please use the following address: thinkingofyou@marcalmond.co.uk (mailto:thinkingofyou@marcalmond.co.uk)