Toxic grandpa
Feb. 15th, 2004 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusA couple of weeks ago someone posted to some board somewhere the question 'How old is too old for youth culture?' and someone answered, nastily, 'Well, how old is Momus?'
I wrote a testy answer saying I had actually, you know, for your information, never really been interested in 'youth culture'. I'm interested in culture, and subculture. Now, the set of all culture contains the sets of youth culture and subculture, which overlap. And it's that tiny overlap I've paid attention to, because I was paying attention to subculture.
Subculture, minority culture, unpop, alternative, avant garde, call it what you like. It may borrow some of its idioms from mainstream popular culture, but really it's quite a different animal. In the 80s I never bought a single single, a single album by Madonna or Michael Jackson. But I did buy just about everything by Laurie Anderson and Scritti Politti. It all sounded pretty similar if you weren't really paying attention. It had drum programming and synths. It came on a circular format, a big black analog disc or a small silver digital one. Someone from Mars would say it was all the same thing. But the metapop I was buying and making was some new hybrid of high culture and subculture. It was not only aware of, but even mentioned, Kant, Derrida and William Burroughs. It said stuff like 'still support the revolution' or wondered 'which is more macho, pineapple or knife?' Madonna never did anything quite as subversive as that, even when she was 'subverting' the catholic religion by showing us her ass. In fact the closest she came was when she sang a Bjork song that went 'let's get unconscious'. And Madonna sounded very awkward indeed trying to be as eccentric, as arty, as otherworldly and as amateur as Bjork. When it came to art, Madonna couldn't busk or hack it to save her life.
Although it had accidental brushes with the mass market (both Laurie Anderson and Scritti Politti were in the Top 40 -- I even had a near miss myself in 1989) 80s metapop just wasn't playing the same game. It was what happened when postmodernism collapsed 'high and low' culture and a bunch of 'clever' and 'serious' artists started using the pop medium. Everyone knew that. It was like springing the odd conceptual artist from the substitutes bench onto the football pitch as a prank. It was interesting to watch what havoc they'd wreak with the rules of the game, but you couldn't really call them 'players'.
I remember in the late 80s going up to see Danny Kelly at the New Musical Express. I told him I wanted to write a series of articles about old artists who were still 'subversive' even though they were past 50. Now I think about it, it's kind of weird that my pitch took it so much for granted that young artists were all inherently subversive -- were all, in fact, part of subculture. That must have been a myth the NME was buying into at the time. Anyway, two of these articles actually appeared in the NME. The first declared Jacques Brel 'more thrilling and dangerous than a thousand Jesus and Mary Chains'. (In fact, that article got me signed to Creation Records. Alan McGee had recently lost the Mary Chain to Warners and perhaps thought a Scottish Brel fan might go some way towards replacing them.) The second was about Serge Gainsbourg and how he'd managed to popularize Bataille's idea of transgression by singing dirty duets with his daughter. The third was to have been about Jake Thackray, but I managed to cock up the interview, and anyway my relationship with the editor of the NME began to crumble after they ran my Gainsbourg piece in the World Music section. (Come on, guys, France is just twenty miles across the Channel!)
So old culture or young culture didn't matter to me, what mattered was whether a record was subculture or mainstream product. And the mainstream stuff I kept well clear of. It was made by these slick professionals and sold by these huge companies.It was so normal, so conservative, so convergent. It seemed to be trying to sum up the contracts of life-as-it-is rather than preparing our minds for life-as-it-might-be. It kept trying to rewrite the Christian marriage vows. Or comparing 'love' to property, guns, cars. It was toxic.
But from time to time I would hear a bit of this slick, huge, toxic youth culture and think 'Bien fait, maitre! That's well made.' Two singles recently made me applaud the scurvy puppet masters who pull the strings at big labels. Hey Ya by Outkast and Toxic by Britney Spears. They're great records in the way TaTu or Mylene Farmer are great, if a lot less 'subversive' than either. ('They're not going to get us' is a more rebellious sentiment than 'Your toxic gun, stick it under'. Countercultural points to Russia.) These records are big and silly and great in the way I tried to be when writing Shibuya-kei pop songs for Kahimi Karie in the mid-90s. They transcend the bad faith that permeates the whole system of their production. They may not be subversive, but they're charismatic.
I particularly like the production style that Bloodshy (aka Swede Christian Lars Karlsson) has given 'Toxic': I'd call his style 'orientalist' (the strings are sliding around in ways that pastiche Islamic and Indian pop) and '007-ish' (it would make a great Bond theme) and 'cameo-oriented' (each instrument is given its own guest spot for maximum impact).
You know, it's pretty obvious that the 'youth' and the 'popularity' of products like this is totally fake. Sure, Britney is young, but this product is driven by label moguls in their 50s and 60s. It wears their wrinkles and their cynicism on the face of its soul, however young Britney looks. Sure, lots of people buy this product, but it's not popular in the sense of being 'of the people'. It's made and marketed by a highly-trained popular culture elite. I have no idea what 'the people' sound like these days. Very quiet, I'd imagine, if you take away the noise that surrounds them -- the deafening, muting roar of a tiny handful of very large, very professional entertainment companies.
Anyway, here are the two records I bought at the Boxhagener Platz market today. German language word and music records featuring Goethe, Beethoven, and the cabaret clown Karl Valentin.
Here's a fantastic page of sound clips of the world's coolest octagenarian, the Jewish Scot, harmonium composer and Kafkaesque storyteller Ivor Cutler. And here's a link to a big photo of the old sea dog, also spotted at the market today. If you agree with me that old people are much cooler than Britney Spears (especially knitted ones) why not use him as desktop wallpaper?
I wrote a testy answer saying I had actually, you know, for your information, never really been interested in 'youth culture'. I'm interested in culture, and subculture. Now, the set of all culture contains the sets of youth culture and subculture, which overlap. And it's that tiny overlap I've paid attention to, because I was paying attention to subculture.
Subculture, minority culture, unpop, alternative, avant garde, call it what you like. It may borrow some of its idioms from mainstream popular culture, but really it's quite a different animal. In the 80s I never bought a single single, a single album by Madonna or Michael Jackson. But I did buy just about everything by Laurie Anderson and Scritti Politti. It all sounded pretty similar if you weren't really paying attention. It had drum programming and synths. It came on a circular format, a big black analog disc or a small silver digital one. Someone from Mars would say it was all the same thing. But the metapop I was buying and making was some new hybrid of high culture and subculture. It was not only aware of, but even mentioned, Kant, Derrida and William Burroughs. It said stuff like 'still support the revolution' or wondered 'which is more macho, pineapple or knife?' Madonna never did anything quite as subversive as that, even when she was 'subverting' the catholic religion by showing us her ass. In fact the closest she came was when she sang a Bjork song that went 'let's get unconscious'. And Madonna sounded very awkward indeed trying to be as eccentric, as arty, as otherworldly and as amateur as Bjork. When it came to art, Madonna couldn't busk or hack it to save her life.
Although it had accidental brushes with the mass market (both Laurie Anderson and Scritti Politti were in the Top 40 -- I even had a near miss myself in 1989) 80s metapop just wasn't playing the same game. It was what happened when postmodernism collapsed 'high and low' culture and a bunch of 'clever' and 'serious' artists started using the pop medium. Everyone knew that. It was like springing the odd conceptual artist from the substitutes bench onto the football pitch as a prank. It was interesting to watch what havoc they'd wreak with the rules of the game, but you couldn't really call them 'players'.
I remember in the late 80s going up to see Danny Kelly at the New Musical Express. I told him I wanted to write a series of articles about old artists who were still 'subversive' even though they were past 50. Now I think about it, it's kind of weird that my pitch took it so much for granted that young artists were all inherently subversive -- were all, in fact, part of subculture. That must have been a myth the NME was buying into at the time. Anyway, two of these articles actually appeared in the NME. The first declared Jacques Brel 'more thrilling and dangerous than a thousand Jesus and Mary Chains'. (In fact, that article got me signed to Creation Records. Alan McGee had recently lost the Mary Chain to Warners and perhaps thought a Scottish Brel fan might go some way towards replacing them.) The second was about Serge Gainsbourg and how he'd managed to popularize Bataille's idea of transgression by singing dirty duets with his daughter. The third was to have been about Jake Thackray, but I managed to cock up the interview, and anyway my relationship with the editor of the NME began to crumble after they ran my Gainsbourg piece in the World Music section. (Come on, guys, France is just twenty miles across the Channel!)
So old culture or young culture didn't matter to me, what mattered was whether a record was subculture or mainstream product. And the mainstream stuff I kept well clear of. It was made by these slick professionals and sold by these huge companies.It was so normal, so conservative, so convergent. It seemed to be trying to sum up the contracts of life-as-it-is rather than preparing our minds for life-as-it-might-be. It kept trying to rewrite the Christian marriage vows. Or comparing 'love' to property, guns, cars. It was toxic.
But from time to time I would hear a bit of this slick, huge, toxic youth culture and think 'Bien fait, maitre! That's well made.' Two singles recently made me applaud the scurvy puppet masters who pull the strings at big labels. Hey Ya by Outkast and Toxic by Britney Spears. They're great records in the way TaTu or Mylene Farmer are great, if a lot less 'subversive' than either. ('They're not going to get us' is a more rebellious sentiment than 'Your toxic gun, stick it under'. Countercultural points to Russia.) These records are big and silly and great in the way I tried to be when writing Shibuya-kei pop songs for Kahimi Karie in the mid-90s. They transcend the bad faith that permeates the whole system of their production. They may not be subversive, but they're charismatic.
I particularly like the production style that Bloodshy (aka Swede Christian Lars Karlsson) has given 'Toxic': I'd call his style 'orientalist' (the strings are sliding around in ways that pastiche Islamic and Indian pop) and '007-ish' (it would make a great Bond theme) and 'cameo-oriented' (each instrument is given its own guest spot for maximum impact).
You know, it's pretty obvious that the 'youth' and the 'popularity' of products like this is totally fake. Sure, Britney is young, but this product is driven by label moguls in their 50s and 60s. It wears their wrinkles and their cynicism on the face of its soul, however young Britney looks. Sure, lots of people buy this product, but it's not popular in the sense of being 'of the people'. It's made and marketed by a highly-trained popular culture elite. I have no idea what 'the people' sound like these days. Very quiet, I'd imagine, if you take away the noise that surrounds them -- the deafening, muting roar of a tiny handful of very large, very professional entertainment companies.
Anyway, here are the two records I bought at the Boxhagener Platz market today. German language word and music records featuring Goethe, Beethoven, and the cabaret clown Karl Valentin.
Here's a fantastic page of sound clips of the world's coolest octagenarian, the Jewish Scot, harmonium composer and Kafkaesque storyteller Ivor Cutler. And here's a link to a big photo of the old sea dog, also spotted at the market today. If you agree with me that old people are much cooler than Britney Spears (especially knitted ones) why not use him as desktop wallpaper?
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-15 10:19 am (UTC)Ah, but how old is too old for livejournal? Many people have said to this thirty-six year old 'isn't it just full of teenagers?
I ike the fact that it isn't, or at least there's enough of us who aren't...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-15 11:18 am (UTC)(By the way, no, there isn't currently any way to read the Brel article. It was published some time in the summer of 1986, if want to dig through the stacks at the British Library!)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-15 12:26 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-15 12:27 pm (UTC)