Ornette Coleman vs. John Lydon

Anyway, boringly enough I plump for Ornette. I've never quite gotten the genius of Lydon. Sex Pistols--too much like pub rock for me (I'll take the Clash thanks; I can take the posturing with a pinch of salt and the music's much better). I picked up Metal Box the other day, which I've been meaning to do for years, and was somewhat underwhelmed. I like it, but I was expecting to hear something more earth-shaking, I guess. It sounds like everyone involved is trying very very hard not to be rock--which is interesting but doesn't seem to cohere into something other than rock. Lyrics are your standard- issue soulessness of consumer society stuff.

Whereas with Ornette, I feel like there's still a lot to discover, at least for me. Love Free Jazz, thought Tone Dialling was kind of mediocre (and I really did try with it--for a record that tries to incorporate so many dance- based genres, it's just not funky enough). Haven't heard a whole lot else, looking forward to doing so.

the book is def weakest on the pistols (haha: first attempt = postils) in their actual local context (viz slade meets tapper zukie) but it is a freedom from the Rough Guide to Rock dimension of this context that he is after all after.

apart from that i completely agree with dave q, esp. abt the bluddy clash

Well, I read him as saying the Pistols are in the tradition of Hugo Ball, not that they were all up on the history of Dada and decided to copy it. But if this is not what he is saying either, then what is he saying please?

I'll also side with Ornette over Lydon for reasons bound to be ripped to shreds: I see Ornette As Confrontational Figure as secondary to his body of work, while that element is front and centre in Lydon's. In that one respect Lydon wins hands down, as Pistols stuff still sounds like Mad magazine, while something like "This Is Our Music" now sounds downright conventional. Not to discredit JL's contibutions (and dave q you raise a great one that's new to me), but there SEEMS to be more going on with Ornette than audicity. Even if this has more to do with genres and relative histories than with individual intent, Ornette strikes me as more of a creator than a provocateur, and so holds up for me better than Lydon, the APPARENT opposite.

Although as I'm writing that I'm not sure I believe it i.e. those priorities might not be my own.

As for Mad, Wally Wood was a witless, sexist old fool with no bounce or energy to his art at all, much as I hate to disagree with Ethan. Terrific inker, though. The great Mad artists: Harvey Kurtzman, obv, its creator and one of comics' all-time greats; Sergio Aragones for being impossibly fast and always funny and one of the nicest men I ever met; and the lamented Don Martin, for the maddest cartooning ever in the mag. And maybe Bernie Krigstein, for the most disturbing and strangest ever strip in Mad, but that was an early one-off.

what GM is saying = the same thing happens at these difft moments in history when there is NO influence-heritage-tradition linking them = these are moments when time itself is being challenged/overthrown, so what is it they have in common? what is it abt these various time which were NOT part of the run of the mill (incl the run of the mill of themselves, as it were) etc? what is it that appears, time after time, like spontaneous bubbles from the living earth?

quite early on, after quoting isabella anscombe, GM says something like, "You heard all these links being made, you looked for them, they WEREN'T THERE." (my caps) (well, they're always my caps aren't they?) GM's making a much odder and more extremely bonkers claim than he is usually blamed for making.

there's a relationship between the sits and lettrists and a (separate) relationship between the lettrists and dada, but it's antagonistic, and very anti-theoretical (the sits were doing with theory what the lettrists were doing with the alphabet, sort of, but that's totally a red herring) (Debord is a flannel-merchant also...)

GM *is* using eg Debord's ideas to illuminate Lydon, yes, but he's just as much using Sex Pistols ideas to illuminate the CabVolt, or the Brothergood of Love (or whatever Munzer's crew are called: he goes back to the Albigensians at least). You can only say "influence" if you allow it to run backwards in time.

Which of course I do.

(graham might know also)

Yeah I like that GM doesn't name it, or even try to. To me "You heard all these links being made, you looked for them, they weren't there" isn't so much a bonkers claim as it is a paradox quietly waiting to pull the rug out from under his entire book: it never does, but then his thesis is that those links ARE there (even if only as ghost ideas), so he never really forces that question too hard.

Thumbed through it just now and noticed this: "...what McLaren and Reid made of the SI's old art project -- by 1975, dead letters sent from a mythical time..." It occurs to me that the same goes for me with Lydon/Ornette -- whatever impact either of them had is complete heresay (I was 4 in 77), and to approach either of them as Confrontational Figures requires a huge leap of faith on my part. So I guess I'm inclined to lean towards Ornette because there might be more there for me to enjoy directly, musically, outside the context of rebel-figure in an era I wasn't around for. Even there though I'm not so sure.

start a thread. Right. Ben?

Ian MacDonald slammed Marcus in the latest Uncut, calling LT the worst-written book ever by a major rock critic. Pretty funny when I remember how annoyingly-written and pedantic Revolution In The Head was, and how certain parts of LT are so beautifully-written they surpass the music he's talking about.

Oh, and John Lydon a "middle class hipster"?? Maybe nowadays, but not 'back in the day', surely? The class comparison isn't that relevant anyway - Strummer may have been the son of a diplomat, but Mick Jones was certainly born w/ a plastic spoon in his mouth...

I like Dave Q's point abt 'grace', too - Ornette always refused to play for peanuts, 'cos he KNEW his work was worth more than that. ("He plays pretty good for a millionaire" - Cecil Taylor on Miles Davis)

So the point might be made that Lydon affected culture more, but you could also argue that Ornette's vision was -- what, more sophisticated? difficult? or ultimately less Important? -- by virtue of the popular culture continuing to not Get It.

mark s: interesting point about stereo tech and harmolodics-like tone/rhythm. cf Hopkins ages ago? ha ha, no

doesnt everyone?

Post Two on this thread is an interesting take, not thought of it that way before.,

not people who buy records, no.

xp

^^^
rong

PIL sold more than the Sex Pistols? Seems unlikely HOOS.

I took it as "people who buy vinyl believe that the Sex Pistols were a better band than PiL." I buy vinyl. I think that is wrong.

aka the misreader

RIP dave q

See, I think most modern popular pop music sounds more like 'harmolodics' than it sounds like punk (unless it's nu-punk stuff obv.)

I'm trying to work out whether I can actually buy this as anything other than a witticism. I'd easily agree that i) most modern pop sounds more like James Brown than it sounds like punk and that ii) 70s harmolodic free funk owes a lot to James Brown but I don't know that I can see the connections going further than that. I'd like to, though, and I'd be interested in hearing someone back this up. (I'm not sure I'm convinced by the "stereo" thing upthread.)

Would anyone be surprised that I prefer Ornette to JL?