One for all the remaining auteurists

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Syd Barrett vs. Brian Eno

Perfect lab conditions "mad inspiration" v. "analytical craftsman", appollonian v. dionysian etc

― dave q, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Conventional wisdom has it that the 'mad genius' theory is a risible adolescent trap, etc., yet Eno's (vastly influential) career seems to be ENTIRELY based on ONE Barrett song ("Chapter 24"), which IMHO wasn't even one of his better ones. Vocals, the arbitrary schematic structure, drones, everything. 'Intelligence' = feeding off weaker outsiders? Maybe the 'romantic fallacy' isn't so fallacious!

― dave q, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Eno for his ability to work with others. (Is that an incorrect answer?)

― the pinefox, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'Smart' people can work with others, 'mad' people force others to work with THEM.

― dave q, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm interested by this Chapter 24 song you mention, I don't think I know it.

The Pinefox is onto something with his praising of Eno's ability to work with others. I think one of the problems with the idea of Barrett as an auteur genius is that by the time of his solo albums he was a bit too fucked to exercise the kind of control over proceedings that a controlling auteur needs; nor was he sufficiently together to collaborate meaningfully. You kind of end up with Barrett and his backing band doing their own thing, playing around each other. It comes together beautifully, but I don't think you can really say that the finished product was a creative outpouring of Barrett's wildly Dionysian soul.

― DV, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Chapter 24" is on 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn' and consists of phrases out of the I Ching set to a droning minimalist backdrop.

― dave q, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

BTW I think if such a thing as a Laingian schizophrenic 'insight' (that the rest of us miss) exists, I think Barrett got it on at least two occasions - "The Gnome" (about the creation of language) and "Arnold Layne" (desperation and life-negation of fetishism - "Why can't you see, it takes two to know?")

― dave q, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Barrett fans being like Tolkien fans, incapable of rational discussion of their worship-object's obvious failings, I've always tended to be fairly anti-Syd: and I hatehatehate all that "Small Children = the Mad = the Tripping = more insightful and gorgeous than YOU mr so-called straight- square commuter with yr tie and brown shoes" (at least Marc Bolan recognised and worked the link between this pose and mass teen-pop commodification). But actually, all but lost in the Orgy of Twee (©anthony easton), there are many genuinely original fantastic tropes and strokes — except SB never follows anything up! 'Chapter 24' *is* very Enoid — great call (tho does it really have no precursors itself? maybe not...) — but it's just so fucking thrown away. Plenty more where this came from: oops. EVERYTHING was throwaway with Barrett, above all himself: beauty, imagination, daring, potential. Yeah I know: waste of self is my total bete noir.

― mark s, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If Eno's twin avatars ARE barrett and john cage (= primary 60s english romantic vs the toppermost-of-poppermost modernist ANTI- expressionist), well, no wonder he got under so much punXoR skin. Cage's use of randomness IS the follow-through, anyway, to where Barrett was headed. (For eloquent reactionary counterblast against the implications and effect of all this, which being a front-rank twat he helpfully terms "postmodernism", cf Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, passim...)

― mark s, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(Eno's secondary avatars = Velvets and C.Cardew, latter in ref. systems and the bettah bitz of middle-class Brit "maoism")

― mark s, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Re Velvets - another example of smart networker (Reed) feeding off mad naif (Delmore Schwarz)?

― dave q, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i was thinking more really how reed plays guitar: which i don't know the root of — reed says ornette, which i can't really hear, but schwarz i think not heh

― mark s, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'Waste of self' -- thoughts on Michael Wood on Brando in A-Now article in recent LRB?

― the pinefox, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(Brando's *self* is intact, tho, pf: i'm not bugged by ppl deciding against a career course they despise, even when they're the best thing that ever happened to profession in question)

― mark s, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Fine. I was really saying - did you like MW's thoughts, at all? I just read them today, and did like (mainly cos written with MW''s snappy movie ambiguity conviction).

― the pinefox, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Agreed on the "plays well with others" thing. More to the point, Eno is able to _push_ others to places they'd never have gotten to otherwise: David Byrne, Bowie, U2, the No New York people, Phil Manzanera, Phil Collins (no kidding, cf. the awesome drumming on "No One Receiving"). Can't say the same for Barrett, e.g.

Favorite recent quote on Eno is from Elvis Costello, on their collaboration "My Dark Life": "I very much admired his creative use of the erase button."

― Douglas, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

...but Barrett wasn't really Big Crazy Guy when he started writing: that came later. Eno's ability to bring out the best in others is worth noting, but Barrett's "Candy and a Currant Bun" -- or "Vegetable Man" -- or "Bike" -- these _are_ the work of an analytical craftsman. The "he's crazy, his genuis arises on its own power de profundis" stuff is perhaps what draws people to S.B., but his songs seem quite good to me, certainly better as pop songs than Eno's work in similar areas ("Taking Tiger Mountain," "Another Green World").

― John Darnielle, Sunday, 30 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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