The Revolution Was Televised

I recently got a documentary on the Manhattan cable access show TV Party , which ran from about 1978 to 1982. It was a talk show co-hosted by a guy named Glenn O’Brien and Chris Stein of Blondie, and Debbie Harry and Fab-Five Freddie were part of the cast and crew. (I guess that’s why she rapped about Fab-Five Freddie on the song AutoAmerican) There’s actually a lot of overlap between the cast and crew because it was very chaotic and low/no budget. It was also very artsy and experimental and had regular guests like David Byrne, Robert Fripp, John Lurie and Arto Lindsey.

Anyway, I mention it because I was really struck by what Glenn O’Brien said about the show being political. He always introduced the show as being "a party that could be a political party" and they had posters of Marx and Mao in the background, but when a political subject came up, the conversation would always drift toward the absurd. No political subject was treated seriously at all, or at least not for very long.

This led many people, including a lot of people involved in the show, to say that the show was apolitical or even anti-political. Glenn O’Brien’s take on the politics of the show was different. He thinks that the very creation of the show is political. Rather than passively consuming TV programming made by large corporations, they created their own show and that in itself is a political act. Whether the content of the show was political, apolitical or anti-political, the act of creating their own culture was very political.

Nashville has a cable access station. What are we waiting for?

If it's too loud, you're too old.

“Dude, yer right, but I don't care. I'm old as you and I enjoy more easy listening now, but then again I've always peppered my John Zorn and with The Ames Brothers anyway. The bands that blew your socks off at the time were of their time and age group (early 20's) like you were. Maybe it's just not your demographic anymore. I suggest you do a "Strangers with Candy" thing by going back to high school to get in the groove of the current young mind.”

This raises the question of “out-growing” rock music. It’s true that I don’t listen to a lot of the same music that I did when I was younger. I am less inclined to listen to Big Black than I was when I was in college. It’s also true that my music collection includes a lot of things that I would not have gone near when I was in my 20’s. The Magnetic Fields, Elliot Smith and Catpower would not have made the cut 20 years ago (and Oum Kolthoum would not have, either).

Furthermore, I also think some music is fairly “demographic specific”. I remember when I first got into punk rock I saw a documentary called DOA. There is a scene with Sham 69 playing on a roof top to an audience of chanting kids that appeared to be like heaven to me. At the tender age of 14, I could not imagine anything better than being on that roof top chanting along. Now, I think I would be miserable up there with a bunch of obnoxious teenage vandals spitting on each other. It being in London, I’m sure it was cold and raining, too.

Nevertheless, the qualities of most of the music that I listened to when I was younger that appealed to me then still appeal to me now. I listened to it because it was good and I continue to listen to it for the same reason. I may not play the Stooges or the Ramones nearly as often as I used to, but I certainly have not renounced them either. I think the fact that I am looking for their current equivalents is evidence of this.

And if Leonard Cohen is more likely to make his way onto my stereo these days, so are Buck Owens, Louis Jordan, Nusrat Fateh ali Khan, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Caspar Brötzmann Massaker. My musical tastes have not gotten mellower so much as they have gotten broader. That’s not to say that I’m no longer picky. I usually tell people that I hate music with two or three thousand exceptions. But I am more at ease with music that is softer or more challenging or more unfamiliar culturally than I was 10 or 20 years ago.

Let there be Rock

My first post-introduction posting is about rock music? How shallow, sad and predictable. I claim the excuse that I am easing into the blogging thing and talking about rock music is easy, but I will understand if you groan and roll your eyes. I should also point out that the grouchy old man tone of the post is unavoidable.

I am extremely disappointed by the state of indie rock today. It seems like most bands out now owe more to James Taylor than they do to the Ramones. I need the ROCK and no one's bringing it. It's as if we're in the movie Animal House and Otis Day and the Knights have gone home and we're left with guy with the guitar on the stairs playing "I Gave My Love a Cherry". Where are the Butthole Surfers of today? Where is the Big Black of today? Where is the Wire of today?

Of course the problem may be that my sources of current music information are the local college radio station and the staff at the Alley Cat Restaurant and Lounge. If I had depended solely on college radio to find out what was going on with independent music in the mid 1980's, I might have ended up thinking that all indie rock bands of the time sounded like REM and the Replacements.

I went through a similar "crisis" in mid 1990's when Drag City Records and Pavement were reaching the peak of their popularity and it seemed like every band was out of tune and off kilter. At least the bands currently played on the college radio station can play their instruments.

I should equivocate further by saying that I like a lot of the bands out now. I continue to listen to college radio (or rather, I've started listening to it again) because there is a lot of good music out there, wispy as it is. It's just that the absence of rock is deafening.