[NewMusic] Dying Industry...(sic)

[Joseph Zitt]

Or in other words, those who do not remember the past are condemned to 
repurchase it.

matthew at matthewgoodheart.com wrote:
> 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
> 
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> 
>