http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/
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Originally Posted by Rouge's Foam Blog
It’s been a troubling week for music as a collective activity, open to the general public. On Monday, news rapidly spread that legendary Shoreditch club Plastic People is under threat of closure by Hackney Council under the advice of the police, prompting an extraordinary ‘Save Plastic People’ campaign. The club has spent a decade housing and incubating the best and freshest of UK dance musics. Days later, we learnt that the unique BBC digital radio stations 6 Music and The Asian Network could well be shut down as part of a belt-tightening exercise that apparently pre-empts an oncoming Conservative government.
Plastic People, BBC 6 Music and The Asian Network all share a faith in music that’s outside of – even ahead of – the mainstream, and they exist to bring that music to a wider audience. Institutions like these are of course vital to the health of musical creativity and innovation in this country and worldwide. Moreover, the threat of their demise is a symptom of the trend that sees music slowly transforming from a collective activity that builds and benefits societies, stoking the imaginations of those who participate in it, into an economically viable product made for personally selected, individual consumption – or at the most, a fashionable, elite but ultimately inoffensive decoration for the solipsistic cycles of sex, money-making and waiting around that our lives are increasingly held to amount to.
Tellingly, one of the reasons given for the ‘application to review’ Plastic People’s licence was ‘Prevention of Public Nuisance’. Which public? Whose public? Here, PP’s promotion of public activity becomes the nuisance caused by a public, which evidently needs to be prevented. Music is being shifted from a publicly shared activity to the peaceful security of private consumption from within our own little kingdoms – from a collective, participatory act of open-minded creativity and imagination to an easy, stultifying, quality-controlled familiarity. |
While i don't agree that bbc6 music is a particularily great insitution that is either vital to creativity or necessarily so worth saying - i do agree with everything else written here. the problem with the bloggers position is that they are too focused on seeing particular institutions as worth defending against mainstream capitalism - i say energy should not necessarily be focused on protecting whatever few bastions of slightly beyond medicority exist within official (enemy) territory and we should instead focus on new organisation completly outside of legal official channels. bbc6music may be a hell of a lot better than having to fucking listen to virginfm when you work - but it IS in a way a kind of ludditte extravagance. why not just go pirate? why do we need the bbc involved anyways? i can see it being tremendously valued if you are stuck in work and its a choice between that and the rest of the utter soul crushing disgusting advertising bullshit they play... but still, it's hardly
vital to health and creativity... this point could be debated... but why always try meagerly to fight the fight we know we are going to loose? is there not a kind of invisible radiation beam of self concioussness and anxiety that makes us all edit and censor ourselves in public nowadays that renders official channels of communication useless? the fight for something worthwhile in the mainstream, something to stand in opposition to the uniform be happy and work and fuck and be hedonistic and don't dare think or feel anything abnormal evil disgusting social propaganda bullshit that they play on mainstream radio. for this blogger, and for the likes of k-punk et all who grew up pre vinyl/mp3 - what they criticise as the oed-ipod is often a younger generations only defense against the poisonous bile poring out of every shop radio. what do they think we are going to necessarily hear if we take off our headfones? noones allowed to come within emotional distance of a stranger that they might begin to feel some empathy, no, you best stick alone, remember your in competition with these people, and have property to defend.
what we need is more illegal raves, more illegal events, more illegal art and more public/collective events that are not basically a cattle pen for drugs/alcohol to use up our bodies. that are not basically a station for us to sit passively alone with each other having our cash and attention sucked from us by the available receptacles. events that happen and offer a space for new ideas to circulate, where we can escape ourselves - but not by trying to pound our self and body into submission with poisonous drugs. not to blot out with prescription nihilism and the "let's violently reduce everything to what we call 'enjoyment' and sex" attitude. fuck that.
events that involve music, video, art, text, conversation/whatever - hedonism that is constructive and builds friendships and alliances instead of everyone going home to enjoy their hangovers and merchandise purchases alone.
events that are for the dissemination of ideas and collective joy - not collective misery that tries to erase itself with the maintnenance of a false appearance that can only be sustained with a constant flow of drugs cigs booze junk and bullshit talk.
there is nothing to stop people from going out and doing stuff like this except their own self conciousness, after you deal with that then you can deal with the cops or assholes trying to keep it quiet and stop any life from breaking out.
and one more thing -
Moreover, the threat of their demise is a symptom of the trend that sees music slowly transforming from a collective activity that builds and benefits societies, stoking the imaginations of those who participate in it, into an economically viable product made for personally selected, individual consumption – or at the most, a fashionable, elite but ultimately inoffensive decoration for the solipsistic cycles of sex, money-making and waiting around that our lives are increasingly held to amount to.
does this part not make you think of noise right now? whats left of post punk/alternative/experimental rock esque genres?