Oppression, muse, inspiration vs perspiration vs serendipity...

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I'm sure if you sat John Lydon down for five minutes and got him to stop spitting bile for a moment, then he would concur that part of what drove him on to 'create' was indeed the daily tsunami of oppression, at least as much as his hangover. Is the daily tsunami of oppression stimulating to the kind of mind that needs to create? Is a sense of "us against them" nurtured by sense of being unjustly and unfairly shat upon by life, and is a sense of "us against them" conducive to binding the kind of groups who might produce punk or rock or alternative muic, from The Slits to Public Enemy to Nirvana? The 'band as gang' ideal?

Take Oasis, for example. Living in the daily tsunami of oppression that is Burnage, Noel writes a clutch of songs about wanting to escape and be famous and take drugs and fight and shag and stuffness, which are largely pretty good. Said songs get group famous, Noel writes some more that are similar structurally but less angry, group go strataspheric, get out of Burnage, get fat and lose their sense of being on the recieving end of the dailt tsunami of oppression, and end up being flatulent and bloated for their next 2 (3?) albums.

And what kind of oppression is more justified/less pathetic / produces the better art / produces most art? Is Kelly Jones's despicable treatment by the media any less valuable or understandable or oppressive than Kurt Cobain's emotional problems, the racial problems lived with day in and day out by black americans / asian americans / hispanic americans / anyone not white, etcetera?

Is there a muse at all? Or is it just a load of arty-farty pseudo-spiritual nonsense?

― Nick Southall, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Does that make any sense?

Oh, and I don't really think Kelly Jones' treatment by the media / music press was actually despicable at all, I just think he over- reacted to some bad reviews.

― Nick Southall, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A lot of it is pathetic whining: take punk, for instance, where a lot of it was whining of the 'I'm bored' sort.

Oasis and stereophonics are burnt out pop stars and Kurt Cobain was just funny. He made a heavy metal pop album and then complained that people who went to his shows listened to heavy metal and not the raincoats. Hilarious!

― Julio Desouza, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"i'm bored" in 1977 (when media was small and meagre and dingy) (trust me) (or rent the ON THE BUSES movie, which for years boasted the UK's highest box office) meant something very different to "i'm bored" in 2002, when the problem is staving off media: you could argue, pretty much, that the "bored" generation went on to seize and change media to their own template, so that EVERYTHING YOU HATE TODAY is the fault of those of us who *were* bored in 1977. Be careful what you wish for: you might get it. Success as trap = punk's secret subject...

(does rotten still spit bile? only as a kind of for-god's-sake-stop-me clown's turn surely?)

― mark s, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

''you could argue, pretty much, that the "bored" generation went on to seize and change media to their own template, so that EVERYTHING YOU HATE TODAY is the fault of those of us who *were* bored in 1977. Be careful what you wish for: you might get it.''

From the above, punk= another path in the career ladder then- is that all it was? I'm sure you're right.

Be careful what 'you' wish for. I hope that 'you' is not being appiled to me.

― Julio Desouza, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Punk = career path.

John Lydon seemed to do quite well out of it, economically. I think Mr Strummer has quite a nice house in Spain too.

As for him spitting bile, I saw / heard him on something last week, harping on about the Pistols reuniting yet again, this time for the Queen's Golden Jubilee, so they can celebrate 25 years of anarchy, or some such bollocks. Whether it was actual bile he was spitting or not I'm not sure, his vocal mannerisms are such that EVERYTHING he EVER says sounds like "fuck off, inferior bourgeois slag", including, probably, "my darling, I love you, you balance me and make me whole, I would give my breath to see you smile." You get the idea...

Anyway...

Are we saying that oppression isn't the muse then? Are we saying that it's just an excuse for a slightly different and more alternative way of target marketting your audience? Punk as product, angst as advert, etcetera?

― Nick Southall, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The current Momus webthought goes into this stuff. The main thrust of the essay is a jaunty and cheerful description of a visit from 'the muse', but I've intercut that with more grouchy bits about sitting in public places -- burger bars, clubs, trains -- and being subjected to music being used in all the wrong ways (social control, mood regulation, in conflict with other music). The idea is to show that you can't know what you love until you know what you hate. Whether we're looking at a 'tsunami of oppression' or simple irritation is another question.

Behind my thought are two very simple ideas (which nevertheless are surprisingly limited in their appeal):

1. Music should be listened to. It's not for the background.

2. Music (or, more generally, art) is a portal to another world. We should enter, in order to play and be challenged by the strangeness we find there. (The more experimental, the better, because art is a zero risk simulation world. We can do anything, and nobody gets hurt.) Art should not simply express or embrace real life as we know it -- and by the same token, should not simply reject real life (calling it 'the tsunami of oppression') either. It should propose its own alternative world, which we can hold up to the real world for comparison.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oddly enough, I just submitted my latest Careless Talk piece about hearing music in restaurants, though from more a bemused point of view than necessarily one of social control. I did talk about how in America when music and 'theme' of the restaurant are closely identified, then there's always an element of tourism-without-leaving- home -- my exact line was something like "Isn't it nice that all the people speak English and there's no nasty terrorists!" An oversimplification, but still.

Uh, the muse. I just get ideas. If there's a muse, it doesn't talk to me. Didn't Albert Brooks do a Muse movie recently? Looked goofy.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

yes nukes

― dave q, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

...his vocal mannerisms are such that EVERYTHING he EVER says sounds like "fuck off, inferior bourgeois slag"...

I have one of these voices too! It makes establishing relationships terribly hard.
Someone more expert than I can confirm or deny this statement:
John Lydon=very insecure person
??? No?

Momus - You are a wise man indeed, but I don't understand why, if art is a "zero risk simulation world" (and it is), we can't have it both ways in every way. Why should we have someone dictating what it can and can't do? Why does it have to be in the foreground all the time if it can be in the fore and back? (Did we learn nothing from Eno? The art of being in the background is still an art.) The beauty of it all is that it can both propose its own alternative world and slap some sense into your real one.

You can have it both ways, hence there being a market for both Britney (by the way, someone start a thread about "Overprotected") and Xiu Xiu (likewise their album), with the overlap being proved on this board.

― Keiko, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You're right, Keiko, of course. I'm just talking about the way I approach music, I suppose.

I'm dismayed by the Japanese tendency to put not one but two sound systems in most public spaces, broadcasting different music into the same acoustic area simultaneously (adding announcements whenever possible). For instance, in my local supermarket they pipe in classical music over the big system, but by the frozen cabinets they have a special 'fish song' which carries through most of the store.

Now I *could not* work in this store if I had to to listen to that all day. It also happens in big commercial clubs like Yellow, where they have several DJs playing to areas which are not acoustically separated, and the sound just all bleeds together into a big meaningless clump. And the scary thing is that nobody seems to notice! Just like they don't notice in a cafe when the CD skips, or when the CD is on repeat forever.

Faced with such flagrant acoustic insensitivity, I have a choice: to be very avant garde and treat it like Cage and Satie ('Indeterminacy' and 'Vexations') or teach myself habituation ('Oh, is there music playing? I didn't even notice.') The first would require a Herculean act of will, the second indifference to music. I don't want to have to develop either, so I'm very careful when choosing a cafe, doing an 'acoustic check' first.

Sometimes I think that people -- and especially businesses -- should have to earn the right to use sound systems, which should be licensed and regulated like guns. They'd have to study counterpoint, Fluxus, Aolian scales and Palestrina to get a license. Then they could play The Fish Song.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Of course, we could blame CDs and especially multi-CD machines for giving cafes etc a way of putting on music then forgetting about it. A return to vinyl would serve to heighten attention, because with vinyl you at least have to get up every half an hour and pay attention to turning the record over, or choosing a new one.

Some of the bars I go to have a DJ, and I'm fascinated by how the crowd is not only blocking out the music, they're blanking the person playing it too. It's as if the world divides into 'music otakus' who love music, and others, who love smoking, talking, drinking and fiddling with cellphones.

The DJ, a 'music otaku', is a social untouchable, standing there in his box looking lonely, cut off from the room by a pair of headphones. His need to pay attention to music in a world which has designated it an attention-free zone makes him invisible and inaudible, a sort of leper.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

We need to make it much more difficult to hear music.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Someone mentioned Eno and his invention of ambient music. As I recall the story, Eno was in hospital after being injured in a car accident and wanted to hear some music. A friend brought him a record, put it on, and left. The volume was way too low and Eno had to strain to hear it. Incidental sounds like water pipes and rain on the window became mixed in with the sound of flutes. This was, it seems, a very intense and active listening experience and not at all what I'm describing, which is the blocking out and backgrounding of 'indiscreet' music.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There used to be a device that ensured at least somebody paid attention to what music was played in cafes, etc. - the jukebox.

― Curt, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Isn't there a story of Satie (surely the grandfather of all ambient) composing music specifically intended to be played as background music, and that he got pissed the first time it was played in a public place because the audience became interested in it enough to stop talking to each other? If true, that's fucking great...

― Joe, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, the word 'music' is derived from 'muse', and I'm sure a lot of people have felt the touch of 'her', but the whole concept seems to come from a time when God(s) were given credit for everything cool just because the people couldn't deal with/understand the complexity and depth available in the human mind. One thing I know: You can't manufacture inspirado. The muse's body is made up of every song you have ever heard; her soul contains all the heighth and depth you're capable; she lives in your boundless mind. I like the idea of music as another world, but I have more thinking than talking to do on the subject. (Am I being off-topic by responding to the original question?)

― Gilgamesh, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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