Showing posts with label Ian Svenonius. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ian Svenonius. Show all posts
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Friday, August 25, 2017
Saturday, June 4, 2016
WHAT IS A GROUP? A film by IAN F SVENONIUS
WHAT IS A GROUP? A Film By IAN F SVENONIUS
"The first Sci Fi Documentary Rock 'N' Roll Exploitation Film"
Starring KID CONGO POWERS, KATIE GREER, DANIELE YANDEL, MICHELLE MAE, ALEX MINOFF, MARY TIMONY, FRANCY Z GRAHAM, ALYSSA BELL, ERICK JACKSON, IAN F SVENONIUS
With the voices of MADIE MCCORMICK & FRANCY Z GRAHAM
Produced, Directed, Written, and Edited By IAN F SVENONIUS
Camera & Lights by ERIC CHEEVERS & BRAD BAKER
Theme song By ALEX MINOFF
"Free Will" By CHAIN & The GANG
Sound & Noise by IAN F SVENONIUS
A STRAWBERRY CITY PRODUCTION
Thursday, November 19, 2015
There's Method To The Mad Satire Of 'Censorship Now!!'
(the new book from Ian Svenonius)
from NPR books
Ian Svenonius is a strange man. Anyone who's followed his career over the past 25 years knows he has a knack for incendiary sloganeering that often borders on the surreal, first as the singer in the legendary Washington, D.C. punk band The Nation of Ulysses (he currently leads the "crime rock" group Chain and the Gang) then as the author of the nonfiction books The Psychic Soviet and Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group. In his stylish, suit-and-tie persona as a pop-culture gadfly and revolutionary rhetorician — which may or may not be a self-caricature; part of his appeal is his Andy Kaufman-like commitment to character — he's put forth ideas as bizarre as comparing Fidel Castro to The Velvet Underground. Favorably, of course.
Svenonius' new book is Censorship Now!!, and the title alone shows just how provocative the author can be. A collection of essays previously published by Vice, Jacobin, and others, it sets up numerous enemies — both real and straw — for Svenonius to knock down. "The Historic Role of Sugar in Empire Building" comes across as a mini-parody of Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History; "The Documentary Crisis," which decries the truthiness of today's documentarians, is an uneven mix of undergrad opinion paper and Old-Man-Yells-At-Cloud rant. It's all couched in a style that's part anarchist tirade, part postmodern critique, and part punk-rock snottiness — yet it's addictively ridiculous.
Svenonius has many targets, but he saves most of his wit, grace, and savagery for mass media and pop culture. In "The Artist and Immortality," he sends up the entire pseudo-intellectual discourse surrounding rock culture (cutely citing his own former band The Nation of Ulysses as if he were a detached observer); in "The Rise and Fall of College Rock," he rails against the media outlets he feels have helped gentrify the radio dial (including, ahem NPR).
He slips earnestness inside the cartooniness, even when Censorship Now!!'s title essay lays out his most modest proposal — a universal censorship that will free humanity from all oppression. Swiftian and Stalinist in equal measure, it's a piece of logic-twisting polemic that serves what may be Svenonius' ultimate purpose: To jar us, like some Zen riddler, from our accepted ways of thinking.
The crazy talk just keeps on coming — except when it isn't. Here's his conspiracy theory behind the hard-to-read instruction manuals that come with cheap furniture, which he says sow discord between otherwise happy romantic partners: "Ikea wants couples to break up. Each breakup results in more bachelors and bachelorettes, which results in more Ikea products sold." And his reasons why people shouldn't tip service industry workers: Gratuity is "an exploitative business model," "an act of dominance," and "a guilt fee." The Ikea idea is gleefully ridiculous; the anti-tipping sentiment, on the other hand, is one that's actually gaining ground in places like New York City, where there's a trend of restaurateurs abolishing gratuity in favor of raising the hourly wages of their employees.
This is why it's difficult to tag Censorship Now!! as a wholesale work of satire — and why the book, for all its entertaining lunacy, sometimes muddles its own voice. For every burst of inspired argumentum ad absurdum such as "Music and the Struggle Against Sanity," there are maddeningly reflexive statements such as "For many poor souls, there is no alternative to the alternative."
It's as though the front and back covers of Censorship Now!! are two mirrors placed on either side of Svenonius, infinitely reflecting his prankish screeds and paradoxical theories. The greatest paradox of all, of course, is that Censorship Now!! itself would be banned under the outlandish plan proposed in its title, a clear shot at the arbitrary way we view and apply the ideals we hold most dear. It's Svenonius' strangest punch line — and his most playfully profound message.
Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A.V. Club, a Hugo Award-winning editor and author of the novel Taft 2012.
GET THE BOOK directly from the publisher HERE.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Ian Svenonius is (still) the most interesting man in Washington DC
from The Washington Post
Local punk music icon and author Ian Svenonius will discuss his newest book on Tuesday. (Photo by Linda Davidson / The Washington Post)
Ian Svenonius has led an incredible string of bands over the years — Nation of Ulysses, the Make-Up, Chain and the Gang — but the D.C. punk frontman’s bibliography is slowly catching up with his discography.
If you’re smart enough to have made room for his work on your shelves, Svenonius might consider you an ally in the fight against Apple’s cloud-based “anti-stuff” ideology. As he writes in his latest book, “The hit TV show ‘Hoarders’ (A&E) identifies people with things as socially malignant, grotesque, primitive, dirty, bizarre. In a word: poor. Apple has turned the world upside down in making possessions a symbol of poverty and having nothing as a signifier of wealth and power.”
[Ian Svenonius, the most interesting man in rock-and-roll]
That kind of anti-authoritarian, half-winking intelligence fills every page of “Censorship Now!!,” Svenonius’s newest collection of essays. To answer your first question, yes, he really argues for censorship in hopes that it will “stop the radio from spewing its vomit” and prevent the mainstream media from creating “a fantasy version of world events and the intellectual framework for mass murder.” And to answer your second question, yes, he is serious — but also maybe not, in that Svenonius’s writing always has blended academic bluster and conspiracy theory into a sophisticated and singular brand of satire that ultimately points toward the truth.
And while putting a copy of this book on your nightstand would be a sign of good taste, who cares about good taste? Are you willing to be seen reading a book titled “Censorship Now!!” in public? If so, your skin might burn with funny glances from squares, scolds and looky-loos. But on the inside, you’ll feel your brain throbbing as it swells to accommodate some hilarious, absurd and radical new strategies on how to live in our ridiculous world.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Ian Svenonius:
Modern Pop Music Is ‘The Voice Of Wall Street’
By Ally Schweitzer
from "Bandwidth"
photo above of the Make Up circa '95 (GEF)
from "Bandwidth"
photo above of the Make Up circa '95 (GEF)
Chain & the Gang leader Ian Svenonius has a new record out: the self-titled debut of XYZ
Ian Svenonius is one of D.C.’s most magnetic frontmen. He’s also an admitted rock ‘n’ roll despot.
The former vocalist for Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War and Scene Creamers has been on an anti-freedom kick for years. The 2009 debut from his now-main band, Chain & the Gang, was called Down With Liberty… Up With Chains! A song on its third LP, In Cool Blood, chanted, “I don’t believe in free will!” And this fall, Akashic Books publishes Svenonius’ latest book, titled Censorship Now!
xyz-radical-eliteBut Svenonius doesn’t practice much self-censorship, at least not when it comes to art. Right now, he’s got several creative outlets — a solo act called Escape-ism, various speaking engagements and writing ventures, regular gigs with Chain & the Gang and now, a (somewhat) new record: XYZ, his one-off synth project with France-based rocker Memphis Electronic.
The self-titled album first came out last year on Memphis Electronic’s label, Mono-Tone, and today Svenonius drops a limited edition on his own imprint, Radical Elite.
XYZ contains 10 tracks, most of them skeletal and sermonlike, with Svenonius fully in character. “Everybody wants to be poor,” he intones on the record’s eighth track. “But some people are rich. They can’t help it. That’s just the way they were born. Don’t judge them.”
It’s not always easy to square Svenonius’ philosophies when he vacillates between sincere and provocative, as I was reminded when I spoke to him on the phone Monday. He moves easily from decrying gentrification as “undemocratic” to calling himself “anti-democracy.” But Svenonius seems ever-strict on the idea of artistic value, and the importance of preserving what he thinks is left of it.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Bandwidth: Tell me about XYZ and when you started getting that together.
Ian Svenonius: When I play in France, I sometimes get to play with my friend’s band, my friend Didier [Balducci], aka Memphis Electronic. I’ve played with his band over the years, and one of them is this group Non! I’ve toured with them and I toured with another one of his groups called Dum Dum Boys, which are an historic French band. He lives in Nice, the French Riviera… the Cote d’Azur. It’s kind of like the Florida of France. It’s right-wing and beautiful. And weird, ’cause I think it’s a tax haven for English rock stars and stuff. And Monaco’s right there.
So he lives down there and it’s kind of anomalous because there’s not a lot of cool culture happening. The French don’t think of it as very cool. So it just seemed interesting to go down there and work with him on some songs. We have similar tastes, but maybe he’s more sophisticated than I am. He played with Kim Fowley, his bands played with Johnny Thunders back in the day.
You know, the French, they just love pointy shoes. Everything’s gotta have a little bit of sexy. They’re kind of like naturally camp, the French. They have a very particular perspective on rock ‘n’ roll and I think it’s interesting.
On this record, you have 10 interludes. What is the utility of the interlude?
Its supposed to create the ambience of being in an arcade. Didier is like a pinball champion in France, and there’s a little town that we visited right across the border right near Monaco in Italy. There’s just a lot of pinball and arcades down there because it’s a beach town. So the idea was just to create this ambience of a pinball arcade.
Wait, Didier is a pinball champion?
He’s a champion. I mean he’s not the champion. But he’s a pinball champion.
You always have so much going on. How do you keep track of all your ideas?
Did you ever see that Woody Allen movie [Crimes and Misdemeanors] where Alan Alda walks around with a dictaphone?
Yes!
“Idea for sitcom!” [Laughs] No, I don’t know… I think you have to write things down or record them, and then you can always go back to them when you’re feeling stuck.
Do you really do that — record your ideas into your phone?
Oh yeah, sure, of course. Or you just write ‘em down. It’s so sad what they do to these people, though, these people they excavate your journal, like Kurt Cobain. Think of how horrible that is. Can you imagine that? Someone publishing your notes? That’s so disrespectful. Whatever scumbag vampire did that should really be haunted eternally. But it’s normal — it’s the treatment the artists get.
Are you worried that someone is going to find your thoughts one day? Ones that you didn’t want publicized?
No. I’m not too worried. First you have to have success.
“Right now everybody loves pop music. It’s kind of the vogue to be accepting, and not only accepting, but enthusiastic. But I feel like if you get involved in the conversation about the Grammys, you really should go see your therapist. ‘Cause that s**t is just horrifying.”
Did you read those comments from the Google executive who said we’re headed toward a “forgotten century” as our technology becomes obsolete?
I’ve been saying that. You know, I think that guy read some interview with me, because I’ve been saying that for quite a while, that exact thing. At this point, think of how many computers you already have that are full of things — photographs, writing, music, whatever. And it’s inaccessible. Because even if you had the plug, you have to plug it in, none of the operating systems are up-to-date and they won’t reveal what you’ve stored on there. It’s kind of like every computer is a house burning down. … So I definitely think that people are gonna look back on this era and see it as a void in culture.
If you think about the way we look at the Greeks, we look at Athens and we think, “Oh, they were so creative and wonderful.” And then you look at the Spartans, and they have very little to show in terms of achievements. But who knows? Maybe they had some incredibly rich oral histories or perhaps they had computers. And they were storing everything on computers, and Athenians were primitive and just made sculptures and stuff, so now we think the Athenians are the geniuses.
It seems like you’re playing a consistent character in your music. Do you have a favorite?
Well, maybe that’s just a lack of imagination. Or consistency. Either one. [Laughs] I think that when you make music, you need to make some rules. You meet these old punk rockers and they still have the same biases — they still hate Fleetwood Mac or something. And it always seems, “Oh, that’s a little stunted.” But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s really important to have these kind of rules. Because once you decide that everything has worth… Maybe that’s not good for the art. It’s important to have some kind of sophomoric prejudices against certain art forms.
What are some of your sophomoric prejudices?
Oh, you know. [Long pause] I don’t know. I just like dynamics. And I like a little bit of personality in the music… there’s some sort of discernible personality or the idea that the thing that you’re seeing has a point of view. Those are the things that turn me on. And the things that don’t turn me on are kind of like just — obfuscationist music.
I guess I don’t like all this modern music that sounds like The Lion King, you know?
Did you say The Lion King?
Like all the modern pop music, pop music and hip-hop that all just sounds like Disney, you know? It’s pretty horrible.
Sounds like Disney? I’m trying to think of what you mean.
Sounds like a Denny Elfman soundtrack, you know?
“We can’t rely on the state to censor the bad things, we have to rely on ourselves. We have to create a people censorship.”
I’m struggling to think of examples.
So much of it sounds like that. It’s kind of an epic, goofy — it’s horrible! It’s f*****g horrible. So yeah, that’s a sophomoric prejudice. Right now everybody loves pop music. It’s kind of the vogue to be accepting, and not only accepting, but enthusiastic. But I feel like if you get involved in the conversation about the Grammys, you really should go see your therapist. ‘Cause that s**t is just horrifying.
There was that New York Times Magazine essay about “poptimism.” The author was raked over the coals for it because it was seen as an elitist perspective, but basically the argument was that as a reaction against rockism, the poptimist emerged.
Yeah. I can see that. So much of what people announce as their taste has to do with… “I’m not one of those people.” But the end result is that you’re encouraging this culture — it’s an idiotic culture. It’s — ugh! Really bad! It’s the voice of Wall Street. To me, that’s all that music — ugh! Really! It’s terrible! [Laughs]
You almost seem like you’re at a loss for words.
That’s what my book says — Censorship Now! That’s what it’s about. Censorship. Censor it! We can’t rely on the state to censor the bad things, we have to rely on ourselves. We have to create a people censorship.
[We talk more about the book, but later Svenonius says he doesn’t want to discuss it publicly yet because he suspects someone will steal his ideas.]
This seems in line with some of the anti-liberation ideas you’ve been putting out there, especially with Chain & the Gang.
Yeah… Like I said, I’m just a one-noter.
Your “Devitalize” song, which took an extreme stand against gentrification, seemed philosophically similar. I saw some stupid reactions to that song. There was somebody in some comment section who said something like, “What do people like Ian Svenonius really want? Do they want urban neighborhoods to go back to what they were?” I thought that was a thoughtless reaction, personally. Do you think people understood what you were saying with that?
Well, the thing about music is, it’s based on an emotion. It’s poetry. It’s allowed to be a little bit absurd, or totally absurd. And that’s why artists are powerful, because it can say these massive things without parsing words or putting footnotes down. And that’s why, when people respond in ways like that, essentially they don’t understand rock ‘n’ roll at all and they shouldn’t be part of the conversation. …
It’s just pure rock ‘n’ roll. Everybody feels like that. When you see your city being erased, and the culture being erased, by people who don’t even live here — by investors and architects who have no relationship to the city, and you see not only neighborhoods being erased but the whole cultural history… You wake up one day and you jog down the street and it looks completely different. Who, who has a real emotional attachment to the place they live, wouldn’t be offended by that — when you realize nobody was consulted? It’s so undemocratic, you know? It’s just this money thing.
So you react emotionally to that, and then these people who don’t understand rock ‘n’ roll are like, [in a dorky voice] “Oh, this is not a feasible city planning [policy] —” [Laughs] It’s just extraordinary. People like that should really be put in jail.
When your old band The Make-Up reunited, that was the most I’d read about you in national publications in a long time. Did you want to get The Make-Up back together?
Oh yeah, I definitely did. I was totally into it. Because I loved that band, and I felt like we could do a really good job. …
For me, selfishly, but also politically, I wanted to reform The Make-Up because in a way I think a reunion of a group serves the same function that a reissue used to serve. Reissues used to be a way of [reassessing] this group and think[ing] about it, and us[ing] it. But now there are so many reissues that that’s not really a thing. It’s harder for it to have the same impact as the Velvet Underground reissues in the ’80s. Or the Nuggets reissues in the ’70s. Those things were pivotal. …
Personally I was into The Make-Up and the mission of The Make-Up. I think it was an interesting group that was ambitious. It wasn’t always good, but it was an ambitious idea. I was interested in that. But it was hard.
Why?
Because you can’t do the thing where you’re listening to the music and you’re trying to imitate it. You really have to get into the spirit of what it is. So we only played like six shows or something, or seven shows. I think the first one we did — after the first one, after we got over the hump, it was like, “OK, I understand how to do this.” But at first I felt like I was imitating myself.
Back to the XYZ record quickly: Tell me about the lyrics you wrote for “Drum Machine.”
It’s just that dream of autonomy that everybody in a group deals with. Like, we all wanna collaborate and collaboration is what usually makes the music interesting, but then you’re like, “Well, could I collaborate with this machine? Could there be a relationship?” So in a way, it’s a lot of the same issues that lonely people feel with their erotic devices.
So a drum machine is like your vibrator.
Yeah, or the Real Doll or whatever people use now.
OK, one last question. What I’ve always liked about Chain & the Gang is you’re playing with all these young people. What’s it like playing with young people who haven’t been in a big touring band before? Has there been a learning curve?
Not really. There’s been a bunch of different people involved. Right now we have sort of an ideal lineup, and it’s really great. There were a few people where was like, “Oh, OK… they have different ideas about how to do this.” But I’ve always just played with people who were friends and who it feels right [with]. And people who are enthusiastic.
And ultimately, the people who are playing music who aren’t as precious about being the administrator, or the king of the hill, they’re typically younger. … I’m just lucky that the people I play with are really awesome. They really flesh it out. Because Chain & the Gang is a skeleton. It’s essentially a soliloquy. And then I have these amazing people who help me create this drama and add all this personality.
So there’s no question that you’re the king of the hill in Chain & the Gang.
Well yeah, I’m Chain. But it’s actually pretty egalitarian, beyond the fact that I’m the mouthpiece. But besides that, the decisions are more democratic than I would like. ‘Cause I’m anti-democracy.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Chain and The Gang - Minimum Rock N Roll
record review from
Washington City Paper By Leor Galil:
Washington City Paper By Leor Galil:
Ian Svenonius has spent decades in bands that present themselves as anything but ordinary—the Nation of Ulysses, the agitprop post-hardcore group he fronted till its demise in 1992, even seceded from the union. Svenonius is an immeasurably sharp and sophisticated pop auteur who could make challenging, provocative work in a variety of mediums. He’s dabbled elsewhere: He’s hosted his own talk show (Soft Focus) and he’s written a couple of books (most recently 2012’s Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ’n’ Roll Group), but rock music is still the vehicle Svenonius uses to propel his heady sociopolitical manifestos.
He’s also got a knack for condensing a lot of ideas into lean, catchy rock, which is central to Chain and the Gang’s fourth album, Minimum Rock N Roll, released on Svenonius’s new label, Radical Elite (and distributed by Dischord Direct). It’s rock music stripped to its barest essentials—sometimes the spaces between notes can leave an impression as powerful as the group’s blunt guitar stabs—and played in a fashion reminiscent of the unvarnished, animalistic garage of decades long-since passed. Minimum Rock N Roll is revival rock, but that has less to do with the fact that the album sounds like it popped out of a time capsule from the ’60s and more to do with the way Svenonius, vocalist Katie Alice Greer (of Priests), and the rest of the band deliver the stark tunes with a fervor that borders on religious.
The music gets pretty intense, but its simplicity and near-minimalism tend to foreground any elements that change from song to song, elevating Svenonius’s words, and, more importantly, their content. The music’s the grand pulpit Svenonius uses for his declamations, and on Minimum Rock N Roll, he’s speaking (or singing, or sing-speaking) from one with a strong amplification system. His polemics are multipronged and layered—“Devitalize” is as much a takedown of gentrification as it is of society as a whole, no stretch for a guy who once released an album about destroying America and who calls his current band’s sound “crime rock.”
Indeed, there’s a sense of lawlessness that pervades Minimum Rock N Roll, which spills over from Svenonius’s lyrics into the band’s music and back again. The album’s a pointed attack on indie rock’s middling status quo, and it feels a little dangerous in a way that’s also entirely charming and approachable. Chain and the Gang even make outlaw life sound stylishly romantic on “I’m a Choice (Not a Child),” an old-school ballad that hints at some hidden nuance that’ll take months to unpack. It’s clever, a bit deceptively so, but that’s what you can expect from Svenonius and company—something that sounds innate and familiar, yet twisted in unexpected ways.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
new video from CHAIN & THE GANG
CHAIN & THE GANG -- "DEVITALIZE"
FROM THE LP "MINIMUM ROCK N ROLL" ON RADICAL ELITE RECORDS / FORTUNA POP! RECORDS.
DIRECTED BY JAMES SCHNEIDER
(CLICK ON THE "HD" OPTION TO WATCH IT PROPERLY)
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER THROUGH DISCHORD.COM IN THE USA / WORLD AND THROUGH FORTUNAPOP.COM IN UK AND EUROPE.
FILE UNDER: MINIMUM ROCK N ROLL / CRIME WAVE
and the promo clip for the LP
WHAT IS A GROUP? is a film by Ian F Svenonius starring Katie Alice Greer, Daniele Yandel, Chain & the Gang, Alex Minoff, Kid Congo Powers, Michelle Mae, Mary TImony, Francy Graham, and more. It explores the uses and origins of the rock n roll group.
Friday, January 31, 2014
OFF THE HOOK
Destroy catchy music before it destroys you
by Ian F Svenonius
from THE MEDIA
When a person walks down the street, an everyday setting might trigger remembrance of a song. As the lyrics convulsively unfold, an association between that moment, memory, and music is revealed; the song, instead of just being some random thought, was actually triggered by some stimuli or situation one had just encountered. Leaving a place might put the song "Leaving Here" or "Go Now" into one's head for example, or perhaps the connection is less obvious. The associative lyric might not even show up 'til the third stanza or fourth verse or something, at which point the singer is wowed by their unconscious brain at work.
Thus is illuminated the ancient use of song and the reason humans are intrinsically programmed to make and like music. Tunes carry or relay ideas, lessons and information from generation to generation and from place to place via memory. Since a bewitching tune stays with one forever–think of the jingles you heard as a child–the information contained in the song is unshakeable. One may choose to reject it, but if its constructed properly, with a good "hook," it will embed itself insidiously and be very hard or even impossible to completely remove. We might not care to "buy the world a coke to teach it harmony," but all who've heard that old commercial will carry its message to the grave.
Songs have had this function since the dawn of time and were the vehicle for social ideology and practical lessons such as: which berries to avoid, where the bears lived, how not to freeze in winter, why not to drink animal urine, etc. Just as important for survival were social lessons, such as the mores and rituals of one's particular tribe, explicated through song-stories. In modern times, these sung social and moral codes include the anthems of a Nation and (in folk songs) the mythology of its working class as well as the myths of its rulers (through courtly and classical music).
Because songs are an extremely powerful form of mind control, music became a highly contested battlefield in the war between various ruling class factions. This struggle was occurring in the 18th and 19th century through opera and symphonic music for example. Teutonic classical music was nurtured by well heeled patrons in the Holy Roman Empire, when the nascent German nation strove to assert a distinct cultural identity. This program contributed eventually to unification under Bismarck. Russian composers before and after the revolution competed with their supremacist "western" counterparts to explain an idea of Russian genius and sophistication, and so on.
Once capitalism became paradigmatic, the mind control properties of the "hook" and the catchy chorus were utilized by a new mercantile ruling class to sell products via "jingles". As the system became more sophisticated, song "hooks" were used to explain products' invaluable nature, the ways which people were inadequate without products, that ownership of products defined happiness itself, and how people without said products were deficient, pathetic, unseemly, grotesque, and sexually undesirable.
When rock n roll revealed itself in the post-war USA, it was immediately recognized for its awesome power and potential for conquering the world. Rock n roll came out of the black American south, but had its roots in ancient African music which had been suppressed by slavers and kept underground for centuries, like druidism in the British isles. Secretly practiced under the guise of "work songs" and "gospel" music, it evolved over time into something quite different from anything in Africa, cunningly constructed as to be almost irresistible to the listener. Having absorbed the obstacles and influences of its new environment, it emerged from its exile with the force of a teenage volcano. European music, Christianity, systemic oppression, electricity, and capitalism were assimilated the way a virus adapts and contorts itself to resist whatever antibodies it encounters. Rock n rolls songs were more powerful, simple, immediate and "hook" laden than any of their competitors and the genre was appraised by the ruling clique as the greatest carriage ever for translating and infiltrating ideological messages.
But they also recognized that this would only be effective if it weren't recognized as a tool. Commercial jingles, jingo-ist anthems, and Soviet agit-prop were tainted because their roots were apparent. Rock n roll in the hands of the ruling class had to retain a semblance of its autonomy and only be insidiously influenced by market programming. Therefore, the artists themselves had to manipulated in a manner where they would conform to desired standards. This was achieved through a barbaric system of arbitrary criticism, institutionalized poverty, degradation of the work force, momentary adoration followed immediately by callous disregard, and the promise of princely rewards and immortality after some undefined act which would be mysteriously deemed world beating.
As rock swept the world, conquering all other arts like a ferocious wild fire, some artists rebelled against its use. Intuitively, they knew "the hook" of a hit song was a kind of mnemonic time bomb which was possibly quite immoral to plant inside listeners heads. Every hit-maker was a typhoid Mary who was instructing their audience as to modes of behavior, right and wrong, sometimes even injecting morbid sociopathy into fans' unwitting brains. The singer's whim, caprice, or perverse sense of humor could unleash unfathomable destruction – socially and geo-politically – through the proliferation of song. Singers were concerned about their influence and tried to rein in their songs "catchiness." Folk singers in the late '50s and early '60s were particular exponents of this approach, trying to sing in obtuse, difficult ways and indulging in hardly listenable olde tyme pre-rock dirges. Jazz musicians, resentful of their use as an international propaganda weapon, made their music unquotable, first with "bop" and then with "free" jazz. But it was a steep price to pay. Any one who took this high road saw their ability to economically survive disintegrate.
Once the folk movement was demolished by the seductive force of electricity (1965), ex-folkies transferred their reluctant use of "the hook" to rock, infusing that medium with their anti sell-out concerns and counter-musicality. But, while in folk "selling out" had had fairly clear connotations, in the context of rock – which had (since it had been called "rock") always been tied to crass commercial proponents and mafia elements – "selling out" was a strange concept. It was never a coherent or delineated political concern as it had been with the crypto commies in the folk movement, who were often involved in activism and civil rights. Instead it became an aesthetic idea. "Selling out" was a sign that a group had crossed an invisible line into commercial vulgarity and was no longer behaving in a "cool," hip, and with-it manner. Sometimes this meant too much musicality; too many "hooks". Sometimes it meant the wrong clothing choices. These standards or rules of comportment radically changed from group to group.
Punk took the rhetoric of folk ("selling out" and "authenticity" were obsessions of both) and, understanding the mind control nefariousness of "the hook," tried to utilize its power to subvert commercialism, imperialism, etc, with anthems of resistance. But while this music tried to subvert the system by aping rock structures with rebellious lyrics, it was barred from mass proliferation by a rigid rock establishment that controlled distribution of records and access to airplay. Eventually it was assimilated into rock and absorbed as another texture.
When more extreme variants of punk, "no wave" and then "hardcore" started, they were – like folk, avant noise, and bop – an attempt to subvert the mass hypnosis of music in general and rock in particular, by being almost unlistenable. The attempt was similar as that attempted decades earlier by Xenakis, Cage, Feldman, and other insurrectionists of the avant "experimental" era. The paradox for the unlistenable groups was that their attempts to thwart mind control through anti-music were more intuitive than articulated, and therefore they were susceptible to bits of musicality creeping in. And when an unlistenable no-wave or HC group added a tease of a tune or melody, they were immediately rewarded with popularity by a well meaning but ignoramus audience who were genetically hard wired to respond to music codes like "hooks" and melody. This response – like human sexual response – was innate and had developed to help the species survive. Now, with "the hook" a slave to commercial forces intent on destroying the world for momentary gain and despotic control, the species paradoxically needed to destroy catchy music for its very survival. This was only sort of understood and never articulated by the actors in the post-punk drama, so the audience – while instinctively loving "the hook" – were still wary of too much musicality. Therefore, HC and no wave existed in a demi-world of "sort-of music" music, tantalizing their audiences with the threat of a song, but rarely delivering.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Against Tipping
by Ian Svenonius
from JACOBIN / a magazine of culture and polemic
So long as the karmic tip jar clouds our perceptions, the insane injustice of an underpaid labor force reimbursed through only the guilty feelings of their coworkers will persist.
When you’re traveling, it’s easy to see the origins of modern tipping. A tipped service in a foreign land is typically performed by someone who is not an employee of an establishment but works either as an adjunct or as a free agent — a shoeshine boy, for instance. In a “third-world” city, a self-styled tour guide might be tipped in return for leading a group of sightseers. In Italy, a Neapolitan street urchin might offer to protect a parked car in return for a gratuity.
In both cases, the inference is clear: if you don’t employ me, I will hurt you. This thinly veiled extortion is the subtext to much tipping: if the propertied individual doesn’t comply with the demands of the semi-employed, something terrible might happen to them or their things. So tipping began essentially as a way to stave off violence by the indigent, forgotten people; it is a social contract adhered to by the privileged class who fear and disdain the less fortunate and are aware of the failure of their own class to create equity.
But tipping in the United States is something more nuanced. The people who are tipped in the US comprise an ever-expanding number of employed professions. Employers recognize the tipped individual as a great boon to the business: someone who needn’t be given benefits, a living wage, or employment security. They are essentially a guest at the company who must comport themselves appropriately for monetary reward, courtesy of the customer. And this reward can be large. The tip, though it is a ghost fee, is actually a fairly strict amount — 15 to 20 percent of a tab, $1 per drink — and is essentially mandatory; a failure to pay will result in public shaming or even fisticuffs. The tipping scale varies wildly and is determined by race and class factors. Cute young white people are often given the desirable, highly visible jobs that tip well at restaurants and bars, while Central American immigrants work for trickle-down tips in the back.
In the United States, one is required to tip one’s waiter, bartender, taxi driver, bellhop, barista, sandwich artist, valet parker, coat-check, hairdresser, barber, driver, masseuse, pedicurist, strip-tease artist, dogwalker, hotel maid, concierge, and so on. A tipped job is typically one that is tied to a very quantifiable service done for a particular person or group. It is often linked to the idea of a “luxury” service as well (an espresso could be made at home, so you must tip if you are buying it while out). In this sense, it is maintained by the consumer as a guilt fee.
Meanwhile, a bus driver on a daily route will not be tipped, for example, though he or she is working hard to serve the public. Policemen are not tipped except in the form of donations by ass-kissers to the “fraternal order” in exchange for a sticker that is supposed to confer preferential treatment by officers. Public servants are not tipped. The tipped individual is providing a personal, private service.
Luxury service is therefore the crux. Tipping is the onus of the purchaser who pays the wage of the worker on top of the cost of whatever service provided, which goes to the business itself.
If one ever tries to discuss tipping in America, one is immediately met with a dismissive and lofty: “Well, I tip really well because I was/am part of the service industry.” Like veterans of the armed forces, the “service people” are bound together in a cult whose members have experienced the true nature of work servitude and the demeaning, harrowing experience it represents. The fellow warrior conspicuously tips well in a great display of homage and respect. Service implies a subservience but also a noble sacrifice. The service industry workers prepare our sandwiches nobly, submitting to our personalized mayonnaise requests. Almost all Americans have worked in the service industry at some point and many will only ever work in it.
Tipping for these service-industry comrades is outside of money. It is an alm or genuflection; a gesture of humility to the tippee designed to recognize and rehabilitate the degrading nature of their work, and also to connect with them spiritually. The camaraderie and smile dispensed by the waitstaff on receiving a generous tip after a suspenseful meal service brings the light of spiritual nourishment to the tipper, who can rest well that night. The Neapolitan street urchin’s implied violence still hovers over the interaction, but now the justice and retribution feels more karmic.
Just as oblations to the poor will puff up one’s sense of self, “tipping well” — 20 percent or more — is a measure of one’s personal decency. People often boast of their tipping. The least attractive thing one could do in the US is tip stingily. That is for old, religious people or clueless foreigners. Conversely, if one leaves a tip at a coffee bar in parts of Europe, the barista looks insulted and confused, as if you were treating him or her as a beggar; are you some kind of playboy show-off who throws his money around? Obviously, these people have never seen the Scorsese film Goodfellas, which portrays mafiosi in the sixties tipping wildly in a display of rampant virility.
People fall over themselves to brag of their tipping prowess and, despite the inherent and obvious injustice of a massive, scarcely-paid workforce scraping and begging for a wage, there has yet to be a true revolt of tipped employees. In a lottery-minded, American Idol culture, workers are loath to give up the chance for a Saudi Sheik to tip them a million dollars as reward for preparing a great smoothie. And there are palpable dividends; tattooed bartenders are bad-boy sex symbols that determine who gets served and when. Their management gives them an allotment of courtesy drinks which they can hand out to high-tipping customers or prospective lovemaking partners. Their favor is therefore highly sought by bar-goers due to their high-handed, undemocratic authority.
Tipping therefore has many purposes besides being an exploitive business model. It either shows affinity for comrades in the service industry, or is a duty done reluctantly by the bourgeoisie to stave off insurrection. It absolves sins and wrongdoing, so it’s religious. It is a guilt fee paid by the ill-conscienced for the immoral act of indulging in luxury. It is an act of dominance as it displays power through capital, and also an act of submission — a paid tribute offered to the service person. All of this is erotic and exciting, which accounts for the huge popularity of tipping.
Tipping makes us into slaves and masters simultaneously in a confused, kinetic, and highly kinky social model. The service industry model carries over into the bedroom with the modern emphasis on oral sex and “servicing” one’s partner. And it is cross-cultural; the service industry accounts for most jobs in the post-industrial West — up to 80 percent in the US, a country that has exported most of its industry to cheaper places and mechanized its farms. In fact, the United States, more than most nations, is almost entirely dualistic; on one hand there is the bourgeoisie or “middle class,” and on the other, the service industry.
But even this binary is blurry. Middle-class is a designation worn by all Americans, except possibly some rappers who claim to be rich. Warren Buffett, for example, likely calls himself middle-class. Politicians pander to a mythic middle class in their stump speeches. In the United States, middle-class has been stripped of its old meaning (owners of capital, wealthy, propertied non-aristocrats) and come to mean someone who is positioned in the middle, between the very richest person and the very poorest person. All but two people in America are middle-class.
Of course, the defining idea of a middle class is not really one’s bank balance but instead a set of values. It is a social group with concern for the results of their actions. “Middle-class” was an insult during a more class-conscious era, grumbled in France with proletarian disdain at those who bartered the present for an imagined future. Middle-class behavior included investing in stocks, buying insurance, having real estate, worshipping work, loving science, and practicing austerity despite having wealth. Irreligious protestantism, in short. Healthy eating, temperance, decorum, and sensible behavior are all bourgeois to a proletariat that revels in the moment, unfettered by concerns about interest rates and the “slow dime.”
To the middle class, both the lower and upper classes (titled aristocrats who have inherited their wealth) are despicable, due to their disdain for work and the Protestant ethic, and for the guiltless joy they derive in sensual pleasures such as drunkenness and fornication. Nations or communities which are poor or never had a bourgeois revolution are marked by orgies of revelry quite unknown in more economically prosperous places. These places are incomprehensible to the American sensibility, which views them as savage, brutal, and insane. The United States’ foreign policy is essentially to make people American through capitalism or kill them. They are better off dead than living any other way.
The American Revolution was, of course, along with the French Revolution and the English Civil War, a Protestant, masonic, capitalist revolution. It was, as much as the American-Israeli-propagated Middle East violence, a clash of socio-religious sensibilities. On one hand, the Calvinist capitalists who worshipped industry, and on the other, the clergy-allied landed gentry who saw work as man’s curse. When the masonic forces prevailed, it meant that a growth-oriented, work ideology would also prevail.
Though American capitalists were slave owners who derived much of their wealth from forced, unpaid labor, they revered the concept of work. They presented themselves as personally industrious, and from Jefferson’s and Washington’s achievements, we can see that some of them were. Their revolution laid the groundwork for a nation which, in many respects, is still a work camp.
Immigrants come to the United States, called the “land of opportunity,” typically for the promise of making money, and not for the enlightened social values or the quality of life. When one goes to Brooklyn, the housing blocks and the trains remind one that, in the industrial era, New York City was essentially a concentration camp of foreign textile workers who, like many of the less visible employees in the service industry, were barely paid.
They, too, were placated by the idea of chance. The chance wages of the tip jar are mystical, undefined, practically psychedelic; therefore they are more attractive than the cold hard reality of the paycheck. The tip jar is therefore a symbol of worker passivity. This modern condition of a giant, impoverished “middle class” of service industry workers conspicuously trading generous tips with one another in a prolonged orgy of self-congratulation and simulated affluence must end. As long as the dream world of nebulous “karma jar” income pollutes the atmosphere, no one can reconcile the insane injustice of an unpaid labor force reimbursed through the guilty feelings of their coworkers.
Can you imagine 1920s’ steelworkers in Pittsburgh, their faces stained with soot and grime, paying each other’s wages while their mill bosses pleaded poverty? That’s essentially what’s happening now in a merry-go-round circle-jerk of dream economics. When the first barista refuses the enforced gesture of happy-go-lucky largesse by their off-work co-worker, then the whole stinking system will collapse in a mound of idiocy and be revealed for the indentured servitude that it is.
- See more at: JACOBIN / a magazine of culture and polemic
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Friday, May 25, 2012
the MAKE-UP
Reunion this weekend!
One of my favorite bands THE MAKE-UP from Washington DC will be playing this weekend at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in the UK. I wish I could be there in London to see them, should be great, catch them if you can in this rare appearance. (probably won't happen again)
Long-dormant gospel yeh-yeh specialists the Make-Up return after 12 years of inactivity at the festival's "I'll Be Your Mirror" weekend in London, May 25 to 27.Quoted text from exclaim.ca
According to a press release, the reunion, which takes place May 27, comes at the request of festival organizers. It's unclear at this point whether or not this is a one-off appearance.
Formed in 1995, the Washington, DC outfit specialized in politically minded bursts that blended elements of soul, punk, funk, garage and more. The group, which often wore matching uniforms, featured former members of Nation of Ulysses and Cupid Car Club, and following their disbandment in 2000, singer Ian Svenonius and bassist Michelle Mae re-teamed for Scene Creamers/Weird War.
Svenonius currently leads Chain & the Gang, while guitarist James Canty is a longtime member of Ted Leo & the Pharmacists.
Monday, March 14, 2011
“My Conversation With the Secret Service”
by IAN SVENONIUS
Here's an old story that just came up on my internet radar that my good friend Ian Svenonius (Nation Of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Chain and The Gang) wrote back in 2005 for the now semi-defunct ARTHUR Magazine.
If you enjoyed this story or even if you didn't (which I doubt) you should go and get Ian's incredible book "The Psychic Soviet"
I loved it!
A Conversation With the Secret Service
Was I being investigated as a threat to the president—or as a potential hire for a sinister job?
By Ian Svenonius
I have a suspicion that the current president might be assassinated. How do I know? I was interviewed for it.
About a year and a half ago, I took a call from people who identified themselves as the Secret Service. They expressed an urgent desire to see me, which in their highly considered psycho-babble, was made to sound like a choiceless inevitability.
On the demand for an explanation, the agent, a woman, told me that they had intercepted an email which seemed to implicate me in a plot to harm the POTUS: that is, the President Of The United States.
I immediately surmised that her concern was related to a mass mailing I’d written in beat-prose to attract attendees to a night of record playing at a local club, called “Spilt Milk.” Thinking that my audience would enjoy the same amusements as myself, I had perhaps contained some reference to a dispatched leader of the free world.
The Secret Service’s responsibility was to check out every instance of a threat, no matter how far-fetched.
“We need you to come down to the office. It’s extremely important,” the woman insisted.
To get the initial sale, through, they used a female agent, knowing via a psychological assessment based on telephone and computer surveillance, that this would seem less threatening to me. Like a talented telemarketer, she was gentle but firmly coercive. In fact, the two professions are related, as the FBI and CIA’s inquisition techniques are lifted straight from Nelson Rockefeller’s bible for salesmen, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and feature the exact same mind control tricks. Of course, telemarketers don’t have the weight of state security at their disposal.
“I can’t come down, I’m really busy,” I told her, though my inbred instinct was to obey.
“We’ll come to your house, then,” she insisted, another offer I evaded.
After much back and forth, I agreed to meet “them,” the Secret Service agents, at a French bistro not far from my house. It seemed less likely that they’d kill or abduct me in a public setting.
Before I left my home, I alerted a few people as to the nature of my rendezvous and they agreed to witness the interrogation from afar, unannounced.
When I arrived, the officers were sitting in the outside cafe section under a sun umbrella which said “CHIMAY.” One was the woman I had spoken with on the telephone and she was accompanied by a man in a lowslung baseball cap with some rugged facial growth.
They looked drab and angry, respectively.
As the woman agent clasped the evidence and sat businesslike, her partner assumed the “bad cop” persona, searching me like a berserker and then scowling fiercely through the duration of the meeting. The implication was clear; if he were let off his chain, he would make quick work of me for god and country.
The purpose of this choreographed psycho-ballet is of course to draw the detainee into the maternal arms of the good cop so as to escape the paternal bad cop figure’s wrath. This psy-op cliche was immediately transparent, but it still worked; psychological reflex is at least as dependable as the blood-and-guts kind.
Meanwhile, my own spy witnesses had taken their anonymous positions, taking snapshots innocuously in case I were later dangled from a helicopter by these freak thugs.
When the waiter came by, I ordered a latte.
The mama character drew the offending email from a folder dramatically, like it was a bad report card. She read it aloud, slowly and haltingly as if translating from hieroglyphs.
“Dear Spilt Milk…”
The email flyer was written like a Dear Abby column, with the advice giver having the name of the nightclub. I explained this to the concerned agents who didn’t seem satisfied.
The mama kept reading:
“My partner and I recently had sex change operations to better understand the respective gender’s perspective. It was a very enlightening experience. To better understand the plight of the aged, I’ve been attending sessions at a tanning salon and to better empathize with endangered wildlife, I’ve been listening to a Richard and Mimi Farina LP.”
The agents pretended to be utterly literal and scanned me for signs of bursting hormones and imported genitalia.
I explained that I actually hadn’t had a sex change but that this was meant as a fantastical scenario in the life of a mythical do-gooder.
Again, the berserker daddy looked like he was herniating.
The reading continued.
“Now I’d like to experience psychological derangement; to stand in the virtual shoes of a person who is a would be gunmen, bent on murdering the president. Any suggestions? Signed, Empathy Tourist”
They looked at me, bewildered and shocked, in a sublime pantomime of a 17th-century Puritan couple. As if the culture weren’t littered with so much obscenity and simulated bloodshed; as if these presidential fondlers weren’t de facto collaboraters with some of the greatest mass murderers in history.
Still, the act was perfect; their collective civic virginity had been punctured by these rapacious words.They were awestruck by my audacity.
She continued, though the strain was evident:
“Dear Empathy Tourist,
My dear do gooder, you need look no further than Spilt Milk: each and every dancing lothario there is an aspiring revolutionary whose singular desire is to slaughter the president!”
The address followed but she didn’t read it.
Who was the Empathy Tourist?
Who is Spilt Milk?
Was this nightclub a gathering of would be assassins?
Would I like to kill the president?
A thousand “are you a lone nut” questions followed from a prepared questionaire, which followed the cultural conceit that there is no ideology, only insane people, that to desire the assassination of the president (a person so fine and benign) one would have to simply be a crazoid mentalist.
Responding to their assumed persona of lobotomized dunderhead, I played the part of apolitic entrepeneur, a man whose sole desire was to see asses in seats.
Before this absurd charade was concluded, I declared officially that I didn’t mean to incite club goers to kill the POTUS.
Of course, like the various running dog lackeys who were tapping my phone and reading my mail, they already knew this. The interview was bogus but it wasn’t merely bean counting. In fact, it was maybe something far more sinister.
The whole experience was demeaning like a job interview for some corporation like Urban Outfitters.
And perhaps it was a job interview; there is a good chance that I was being screened as a possible patsy in the RITUAL BLOOD SACRIFICE OF THE FIRSTBORN GEORGE W. BUSH BY HIS FATHER, GEORGE H. W. BUSH, the arch-satanist who has controlled the country for thirty years. Just as Kennedy was ritualistically murdered in Dallas by his inner circle in a magick invocation of a new age, maybe W. will be killed as an offering to moloch or whatever hungry diety demands satisfaction.
Think about it. He has been bred for this role.
The pathos of George W. is evident when one sees him speak. After the initial disgust one feels at his stupidity, arrogance and mass murdering, one is seized with pity at his plight. It’s a simple matter to see that he is merely a husk of a man, a mind controlled puppet; the sad, lame, brain-gone pawn of the various blood sucking high priests of the inner order.
His sobriety and “born again” conversion were really just a cover for an MK-ULTRA mind control program to which W, as a wayward lout, prone to suggestion, was the perfect “candidate”.
Just as Hinckley was H. W. ’s robot slave, a “friend” of the Bush family, designed to kill Reagan and therefore annoint the elder for the top spot, George W. is another mental muppet, a bizarre construct who must be cast into the flames to realize the elder’s pledge to his illuminated brethren to usher in the final stage of Novus Ordo Seclorum, “the New World Order.” While mass murder of Iraqis, Afghanis and Colombians is an appreciable offering, the firstborn is traditionally the “whopper” of sacrifice.
I was certainly just one of several patsies interviewed for the hapless job of taking the fall. After my encounter, the agents hurried down to the club in question and harassed management there in an attempt to gauge public perception of me. They have very specific requirements, after all.
Not anyone will do.
Like Oswald, James Earl Ray, Sirhan and Hinkley, this new “Lone Nut” will be found with journals of scribbled free verse as evidence of his lunacy…
If you enjoyed this story or even if you didn't (which I doubt) you should go and get Ian's incredible book "The Psychic Soviet"
I loved it!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
THE DOCUMENTARY CRISIS
BY IAN F. SVENONIUS
from Vice magazine:
Oil painting has been pursued for around 600 years. Screen-printing was developed during the Song dynasty in China during the tenth century, making it around 1,000 years old. Perhaps the oldest-known poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in cuneiform in the third millennium BCE, making written poetry at least 5,000 years old. Music probably emerged along with Homo sapiens in Africa as an intrinsic feature of human culture 160,000 years ago. In comparison, cinema has had the life span of an American box turtle: approximately 124 years. Yet although just a babe in “art years,” today it faces an existential crisis.Originally Published September, 2009 in Vice magazine, but i just finally read it on the plane tuesday...
Hailed by Lenin as “the most important art form” during its infancy and still transfixing the world just a generation ago, film now struggles for life, for relevance, for viewers, and even to resemble something worthy of discourse at all. Since film developed out of topsy-turvy industrial capitalism, this condition of crisis is not so strange. In fact, since capitalism’s persona is perpetual crisis, it makes sense that film—a chip off the old block—would be marked by the same manufactured hysteria that typifies the system that spawned it.
When it first developed into something more than a novelty, film was an extension of the theater, a way to tell stories about the world. But as opposed to theater, film was the industrial era’s contribution to art, and therefore—unlike other, more ancient media—it inevitably resembled new industries, such as steel and oil, with the same stratified division of labor, unions, strikes, insidious contracts, pitiless exploitation, and a monopoly-minded owner elite.
Indeed, since ownership of the means of production is the central issue in such types of industry, the great film houses—Warner Bros. and MGM—contrived a stranglehold on film, processing, supply, workers (actors and directors were bought and held under contract), and distribution so as to stifle, destroy, and otherwise discourage competitors.
Thus, like rock ’n’ roll in its “classic” phase, film in the USA was, almost from the beginning, an unaffordable venture for all except the Hollywood studios, with a few designated “auteurs” holding forth with their new offerings each season. Humanity was hypnotized by the fables they were taught in the hermetically sealed movie houses that dotted every city block. To be a participant in “the movies” was a glorious dream. Would-be actresses hurled themselves toward the merciless megalith of Hollywood like so much sacrificial foodstuff, and to be a director was a laughable, fanciful ambition, akin to being president or king of the world.
When video technology was proliferated on the cheap beginning in the 1980s, it was, like all new consumer gizmos, hailed as a revolution for the everyman. Video was cheap and portable, and it existed outside the film industry’s monopoly over the means of production. Now anyone who had the smarts and the ambition could make a film, not just those with show-biz connections, family ties, or the willingness to surrender on a casting couch. Like most supposed triumphs for “the people,” this was in truth a matter of one industry (Japanese electronics) asserting itself over another (Hollywood movies).
The only problem with video was its crudity and ugliness. The picture was rough, and it didn’t have the same magic sensibility that viewers saw in celluloid. Therefore, despite the almost immediate mass proliferation of video cameras, few films of any note were produced using the new equipment. Instead the now ubiquitous camcorders were carted dutifully to underground rock shows until another use—documenting sex acts—was discovered.
Hollywood responded to the threat of video democracy, though, by making their means of production even more unassailable. Films were driven by super-celebs and special effects more than ever before. Storytelling became a low priority next to monster makeup, interstellar explosions, and megastars. As cable television and rental video continued to smash away at the revenue of the cinema house, the desire to produce spectacle was more and more the overriding concern of the studios. For a film to have a theatrical release, it had to resemble a carnival ride with the attendant thrills, chills, and nausea-inducing spills. Breakneck editing, zany camera work, excruciating volume, and lurid, freakish violence have now rendered many films, ironically, unwatchable. Every year or so, due to forgetfulness, one may wander into a theater, lured by a hysterical advertising barrage, convinced that seeing a particular film is indispensable to one’s continued cultural literacy. Then, emerging sullied, degraded, insulted, and $20 poorer, one swears never to be tricked again. This life lesson is typically learned about once a year. In fact, movie watching in a theater is generally an exercise in nostalgia, akin to hearing a Drifters song on an oldies station.
This decline has been long coming. Jean-Luc Godard once memorably noted in an interview that when he discovered cinema in the 50s it was in fact “already over.” Indeed, in 1946 America, with a population of 141 million, 100 million film tickets were sold each week for a total of 36.5 billion tickets that year. Now, with the US population more than doubled, ticket sales for all of North America in 2007 (including Canada) were just 1.4 billion.
Of course, people are still passively watching their master’s morality plays, but now at home on television, so picture quality is no longer as important. Sensing an opportunity for breakthrough, video makers—people not necessarily anointed by the studios—started trying to exploit the enormous potential for a decentralized movie industry comprised of real auteurs and enthusiasts, similar to decentralized scenes of musicians, painters, and poets. But the video camera’s initial utilization as a tool of documentary was never shaken. Nor was the universal disdain for something that could film just anybody or be afforded by anyone. In a society with an institutionalized contempt for poor people, video’s very cheapness was actually a liability.
Because of its roots in recording music shows and pornography, video was seen as “truth.” Therefore, the new generation of filmmakers, barred from the use of film by its untenable expense, bothered themselves with making “documentaries” instead of dramas with their video cameras. Documentaries are now produced at an unbelievable rate. They are typically portraits of an unusual person, such as an archer with no arms or a vegetarian who hunts, or a political diatribe about a war, or a historical piece celebrating a particular rock group featuring testimonials from people who were “there” or were profoundly affected. Grants for documentaries are comparatively easy to come by, and documentary festivals abound.
While a portion of these video documentaries is interesting, what is truly fascinating is the volume that is being produced as opposed to traditional fictional narratives. What does it say about a generation that can’t seem to write a story with characters or a plot with tension? While music has gone absolutely fantasist (rife with “psych-folk” singer-songwriters warbling about magic and elves, electro composers proposing sex with robots, and alt-country crooners lamenting the passing of an imaginary world), new filmmakers are obsessed with presenting a picture of “reality.” They have a doomsday cult’s concern with presenting their time as they see it since they are disbarred from the official surreal dialogue that is being inscribed by imperialist lechers like the New York Times and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward.
While this impulse to present one’s own era to the earth’s inheritors echoes a human need seen since the cave paintings of yore, the artlessness of the video medium needs to be taken to task. These films are usually bad-looking, un-nuanced, propagandistic tellings of events. The camera work is almost always execrable, the narration is simplistic, the method of storytelling is usually a parade of talking heads; they feel like audiovisual presentations in a grade school. While utilizing this powerful medium and trying to express a particular ideological argument could be admirable, the aesthetic decisions of the video auteurs often reveal an infantilized weltanschauung, a stunted artistic vision, and a linear and impoverished mindset.
It all raises the question: Who is the imagined audience for such expositions? Is it one’s contemporaries? This seems highly unlikely since the retold Iraq-war tidbits and rock ’n’ roll mythos featured in such pictures are well known to their watchers. If the point is a mere recitation of folklore, that is a defensible raison d’être, though the trappings of cinema hardly seem necessary for such a task when a pamphlet or magazine article could do the job at least as well, without all the self-important fuss. Making money can’t be the reason, since these projects are typically a financial risk.
The obvious answer seems to be that videos are produced to explain ourselves and our situation to some future alien race. The documentary’s careful and childlike elucidation of events is calculated to be understood by an exotic sensibility, and the genial idiocy on display seems to speak to an interstellar consciousness of which no subtlety can be presumed for fear of misinterpretation, and for which no common culture can be assumed. Why else would a film like Standard Operating Procedure be so asinine and simpleminded? Every human who saw that particular film must have been baffled at its apologist stance for what everyone knows is an ethics-free killing machine, the United States Army.
Other apparently pointless documentaries are legion. No End in Sight, for example, is a propaganda piece that suggests that the war in Iraq was “mishandled” and then raises the specter of Iran as bogeyman in its closing statements, leaving the door open for a spectacular sequel. With these views palpably omnipresent on television and in the papers, who are the intended viewers for such abominable drivel? Perhaps a future race that will sort through the detritus of our civilization and to which the filmmakers feel a responsibility in explaining their damnable capitalist ideology, the system that spelled an end to such a luscious planet. Perhaps they believe that while the transmissions of television will be lost and newspapers burned away in the nuclear holocaust, the video documentary will survive, protected by its tough plastic sheath. Maybe their propaganda is supposed to mitigate the disgust the aliens will feel when witnessing human senselessness, the same feeling you get when you find, at a thrift store, a great record collection that’s been stepped on, scratched to hell, and left to molder.
The clues are all around that documentaries, and video in general, are meant for aliens. Why are DVDs shaped like flying saucers? To appeal to aliens. Why do porn performers shave their genitals? Because their directors imagine this will appeal to the aliens for whom the video porn is actually meant—the same aliens who are commonly depicted as hairless. Who determined that video would be used this way? No one in particular. It was unconscious. Something about video screams “The Future” to people. Video fonts and screens always feature in futuristic television, records, and films. Perhaps there is some astral travel we’ve made through which we’ve witnessed this posthistorical environment.
This impulse, to create explanations of our time for a future superior race or being, is understandable, of course. It’s been the impetus for many esoteric and religious writings through the ages. But it’s a mistake to assume that the aliens are so aesthetically stilted that they can’t appreciate a little artistry in their propaganda. What the videos are really explaining to this future race is how stylistically impoverished our era is. From the new buildings authored by a diabolical breed of “architects,” to the office workers’ khaki pants, to the artless business signs in the same few computer fonts, to the cars that are designed using the same horrible computer, the population is being aesthetically defecated on, and they know no better. Years of artistic retardation and philistine admonitions against art from everywhere, whether it’s Jesse Helms of the federal government or the rock ’n’ roll stars of the culture industry (“A French Small Faces EP cover can piss all over any of [Picasso’s] paintings”—Paul Weller), have resulted in a kitsch country (the USA) that looks like shit, and through that country’s outsize influence on the rest of the planet, a kitsch world that also looks like shit.
Of course, it’s important not to be too harsh in one’s judgment of the auteurs of these mediocre video movies. They are working under a fascist dictatorship, after all, with its attendant psychic torments, idiot citizenry, and nasty bedfellows born of the need for funding. It is especially difficult to produce anything worthwhile when one feels there is no audience for it. The mass media has successfully made us all feel remote, hapless, crazy, alone. Certainly, relatively little interesting art was produced in Pinochet’s Chile.
In Bob Dylan’s famous interview in the D. A. Pennebaker documentary Don’t Look Back where he chastises a Time reporter by saying, “There’s no ideas in Time magazine… just these facts… the article you’re writing, it can’t be a good article; it doesn’t mean anything,” he might as well have been discussing this new documentary craze. When, upon being pressed for an alternative approach, he suggests, “The plain picture… the plain picture of, let’s say, a tramp vomiting in the sewer and next to it a picture of Mr. Rockefeller,” he could easily be talking about the collage newsreels of Santiago Álvarez.
The work of Álvarez points the way toward the solution to the current quagmire in which the documentary world finds itself. A Cuban filmmaker who Fidel Castro charged with producing newsreels upon the revolution’s successful bid for power, he created an average of a film every two weeks for 30 years. He did this with almost no materials at his disposal, and yet his constructions are fantastic evocations of the circumstances in which they were constructed. An alien viewing his work would certainly be delighted at the humanity that created it, would understand the complexity of their breed and the circumstance and the contradictions in their characters that ultimately led to the destruction of the planet. It would be sort of like if the aforementioned ruined record collection at the secondhand shop had a poignant explanation that elaborated the owner’s struggle against the dire forces that created the calamity that ultimately befell it.
One of Álvarez’s films worth watching is LBJ, made in 1969. It insinuates that LBJ killed MLK, RFK, and JFK (L for “Luther,” B for “Bobby,” J for “Jack”) and does so with almost no words or narration. The tools are stark: a few Life and Playboy magazines, détourned and slowly panned across. Ingenious editing. Bewitching use of music. This is a documentary that could be played to speakers of any language to similar effect, and it also works divorced of its political program, as beautiful collage art for the ages. Music by Carl Orff, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, the Trashmen, Pablo Milanés, Leo Brouwer, and others follows LBJ’s daughter’s marriage through to his dastardly deeds. The film closes with the birth of his grandchild montaged with a clip of a Vietnamese peasant burned alive by napalm. Almost all of it uses pictures from newspapers or the society pages of magazines. Álvarez is free to take whatever newsreel footage, magazine photographs, found images, and pop, jazz, or classical tunes he chooses, from whatever sources he wants, since he is working for El Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos of the Republic of Cuba, which was and still is in a state of war with the capitalist world and therefore disdains copyright laws.
Envious filmmakers will watch Álvarez and cry “No fair!” when they see what this allows him—but they should quit their bellyaching and get with the program. Modern licensing and intellectual-property laws have destroyed art and expression in this country. It’s time for a rebellion against filmic conventions and, yes, the laws that enforce modern film’s mediocrity. Santiago Álvarez, who made over 700 films in his career from 1959 until his death in 1998, would be much better appreciated by any aliens who happen to wander by our planet than the hokey simplistic garbage that the documentary makers typically churn out nowadays.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Chain and the Gang
Once again Ian Svenonious and the band rocked here in new york city last week. Here's a few pictures my friend Luke shot with his iPhone, panoramic photos he made in-camera while the band was playing. They are made up of 4-5 separate shots.
Here's the clip from the 1st time i saw them earlier in the year (different back up band now).
If you missed them on this last tour, DON'T MAKE THAT MISTAKE AGAIN. Everyone in the house thought they were great.
Here's the clip from the 1st time i saw them earlier in the year (different back up band now).
If you missed them on this last tour, DON'T MAKE THAT MISTAKE AGAIN. Everyone in the house thought they were great.
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