[NewMusic] Dying Industry...(sic)

[matthew at matthewgoodheart.com]

Nice post Jonathan.

> and was listening to old shows from the fillmore east and west. one thing
> that struck me was that rock musicians in their 20s or early 30s were
pretty
> good back in the late 60s. clapton was even good then. so, was it musical
> training in schools? was it practice time? cuz, man, the bands now that
are sent up
> and over the peak of popularity to has-been land before the players are 30,
> they really suck.

Well, using your argument below, it could be the "success" of the punk: 
the 1976 quote from Sideburns: "This is a chord, this is another, this is
a third. Now form a band."

 >(we won! yay. all our socialist values end up marginalizing us in the
modern capitalism!)*
> *and other revolutions we won: microbrews, good coffee, good bagels;
> essentially college culture gone universal, along with the dorm room
> bands. the result? killian's red, starbucks, noah's. etc.

Well, I wouldn't call it socialist, because none of your examples have to
do with collectivisation; rather these are more closely related to
individualism and libertarianism as expressed through a certain kind of
populism. Which brings me to:

Forgive these lengthy ramblings, and I make no claim for this bearing any
relationship to coherence: BUT:

 I've been thinking lately about this; how what Jonathan is talking about
is the ultimate example of what the Situationists called "Recouperation"-
where the commodity-Spectacle society consumes any threat and sells it
back to us, thereby further asserting its ascendancy. So in musical terms
within the DIY yourself movement, traditional study or technical
virtuosity was seen as part of the power structure which one was trying
to overturn; it was a form of indoctrination. However, it's pretty easy
to see now that this kind of "rejectionist" stance now has tremendous
market appeal: the image of radicalism sells; hence the folks at
adbusters getting hired by the very companies they are criticizing. The
notion of radical individualism is built into the very commodities
marketed to "empower" us: the I-pod, MY-space, etc. all which ostensibly
function to express individuality, yet also heavily contribute to
alienation and isolation.  Realizations of these contradictions, then,
are considered "ironic"- where irony becomes the a method of apology or
rationalization, once again folding  potentially destructive forces back
into the discourse of the Spectacle. So we end up in the classic
Orwellian situation where both the "tradition" and the "anti-tradition"
are arms of the power structure and methods of indoctrination; as more
"radicalism" gets recouperated, the more difficult it becomes to think
outside that structure.

Here are a few interesting examples: Cecil Taylor at the SFJazz Festival
(ironic in itself) performing under an enormous banner that says CITIBANK.
The course at Harvard called "Noisy Art," where the students form an
"Itchy and Scratchy Orchestra" and perform Cardew's work: what does it
mean at an elite academic institution to ironically conflate the name of a
heavily marketed television show characters (themselves an embodiment of
ironic Spectacular discourse) with the work of the co-founder of
Revolutionary Communist Party of Britian, ? (Or for that matter evoking
19th cent. laissez-faire capitalist rationalizations for who "survives" as
a "paradigm challenging" artist.)

My guess is that all ages are ages of contradiction: so I sometimes think
ours is the age of absolute control of the Spectacle, while the
simultaneous proliferation of that which is outside: such as wikipedia, or
free-music sharing, or. . . there is more available now at our fingertips
than ever before (see ubu.com), . . . but have found the effects of that
information more and more absorbed into a commodity/spectacle based
mindset.

In thinking about this stuff recently, I'm sort of amazed how "out of the
mainstream" work- like my own and almost all of the folks I know- still
operates along some formula which capitulates to the "power structure"-
whatever the seemingly radical aesthetic of one's music, even the notion
of "making a CD" - that is distributing one's "art" through a
commodification - informs (literally in-forms) the meaning of work: it is
within the terms dictated by the commodity-Spectacle economy, though the
actual remuneration leaves it marginalized.  One could make the same
assertion for the nature of most performance, for that matter. (Yes, the
idea of sliding scales and etc. certainly put a twist on this. . .)  So
the potential dissolution of the CD/record based distribution model for
music commodification opens up new possibilities, but I find it
interesting that we (and I include myself) think about it in what I would
call "soft" terms. And yes, it is mostly because we are all struggling to
pay rent, eat, get health care, etc. Maybe there's no choice.  Maybe we
shouldn't think of it in any other way. Or maybe we shouldn't. Or there is
something to say and I'm not saying it.


mg