Category: 1

.

“Sociologists who have stopped the time-machine and, with a good deal of conceptual huffing and puffing, have gone down to the engine room to look, tell us that nowhere at all have they been able to locate and classify a class. They can only find a multitude of people with different occupations, incomes, status-hierarchies, and the rest. Of course they are right, since class is not this or that part of the machine, but the way the machine works once it is set in motion – not this and that interest, but the friction of interests – the movement itself, the heat, the thundering noise. Class is a social and cultural formation (often finding institutional expression) which cannot be defined abstractly, or in isolation, but only in terms of relationship with other classes; and, ultimately, the definition can only be made in the medium of time - that is, action and reaction, change and conflict.When we speak of a class we are thinking of a very loosely defined body of people who share the same congeries of interests, social experiences, traditions and value-system, who have a disposition to behave as a class, to define themselves in their actions and in their consciousness in relation to other groups of people in class ways. But class itself is not a thing, it is a happening.”

- E P Thompson

Nothing and should be everything.

I find this article as a whole too blustery and otherwise wrong-headed to actually like, but the following snippet does a useful job of prising open the discourse around ‘scroungers’ versus The Respectable Poor, in picking up on the kind of reactions which need to be progressively engaged with and challenged from a position of understanding rather than superior, usually class-inflected dismissal, both here and, it seems, in the US. NB I don’t, obviously, think that the problems here expressed began with an article in Salon.

“Before that article in Salon, this mother was allowed to believe that her staying off the dole had some honor in itself– some validation of her identity– and it allowed her to survive her hardships. Now she is forced to swallow that these people are not merely as good as her, but more valuable– they get an article, they get defenders like you, they are praised for their intrinsic human value, and all she gets is mocked, belittled, “she’s too stupid to know what’s good for her!”– all she can do is comment on their life– and her small act of rebellion is to at least use the space to tell the world she exists. Rage is her defense that keeps her intact while the world seemingly ignores her.”

(Yeah, this is how I like to spend my Saturday afternoons.)

Retromania

In regard to the poor-rates, I always view these as coupled with the idleness and depravity of the working classes… the morals as well as the manners of the lower orders of the community have been degenerating since the earliest ages of the French Revolution. The doctrine of equality and the rights of man is not yet forgotten, but fondly cherished and reluctantly abandoned. They consider their respective parishes as their right and inheritance, in which they are entitled to resort…

- Complaint of Dr M. Macqueen to the Board of Agriculture, 1816.

*

Condescension of posterity.

In a sense, this was a transitional mob, on its way to becoming a self-conscious Radical crowd; the leaven of Dissent and political education was at work, giving to the people a predisposition to turn out in defence of popular liberties, in defiance of authority, and in ‘movements of social protest, in which the underlying conflict of poor against rich… is clearly visible’ [...] For nearly a decade London and the south seemed (in the words of one critic) to be ‘a great Bedlam under the dominion of a beggarly, idle and intoxicated mob without keepers…’

E P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), p.75

On liking American Psycho, slight return.

Written for Bad Reputation.

The last time I wrote that yes, I did like American Psycho, and no, that wasn’t because I’d only seen the film, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that other women felt similarly, but I’m aware that we’re still a minority. American Psycho proved controversial even before its release, its unedited manuscript pushed from publisher to publisher, leaked extracts from it incurring public outrage, and its eventual appearance leapt upon by critics with the single-minded speed of a rat up a Habitrail tube. In terms of people judging the book without having read it, not a great deal seems to have changed. Continue reading →

A quick request (re. images of women in post-punk).

So: I’ve written a chapter on female post-punk musicians* for a forthcoming women-in-music book. I mostly talk about the Slits, the Raincoats, Linder Sterling, Lydia Lunch (unavoidably), ESG, the Au Pairs, Delta 5, Pauline Black, Barbara Ess, Ut., Mars, the Bush Tetras, the Bloods, Malaria!, Kleenex/LiLiPUT, and latterly Erase Errata, Sonic Youth, Scissor Girls, Karen O, Nisennenmondai etc.

Now: I didn’t include any illustrations with the writing, because my grasp of decent visual art is comparable to Boris Johnson’s grasp of his handlebars after a heavy night out. But apparently it would be nice to have some.

Therefore: I’m looking for suitable images – photographs, illustrations, cartoons – for inclusion in the chapter. Anything relevant considered especially if it pertains to the bands mentioned. Full credit given, further details on request, please pass this on if you can think of anyone who’d care. Thank you.

Also: it is my birthday. I’m going to celebrate with fresh air and daylight.

* Of which there is an excellent overview here.

Housekeeping: do or don’t adjust your set.

If you look to the right there, you’ll see that I have made my Twitter account non-public, for no more intriguing reason than that I also work full-time in a job that isn’t this blog. If you really want to follow my account, for every scintillating signifier of my slow descent from the noble ranks of the expatriate Welsh scholar-proletariat to the hopeless impoverished morass of the North London hack-secretariat, if you really want to be notified of which Dexys Midnight Runners song I currently wish was soundtracking the film I wish my life was, if you really can’t live without reading another retweet of @BretEastonEllis’ most recent sardonically dickish pronouncement, then by all means get your own account and follow mine, I can’t think why I’d deny you the pleasure.

FLOOD THEATRE: aprés-moi, le deluge.


 
Laughter in dark times becomes necessary, providing both critique and consolation. And the nights are certainly drawing in. I mean, look at all this. Or, on what seems by comparison a light note, this surreal attempt to humanise the employees of an organisation geared solely towards turning a profit by trading in hatred and tits.

Satire has never seemed so conspicuous by its absence. It is one thing to see corruption, incompetence and venality occasionally exposed; it is quite another to see so many practitioners of corruption, incompetence and venality incessantly expose themselves with the bafflingly brazen insouciance of compulsive flashers drunk in a town park. So the news has turned horribly, endlessly funny – far funnier than any current attempt to dissect or diagnose its disgustingness. Look at this, or this, or the point at which the dark arts of spin, the erosion of journalistic enquiry, and the vacuum at the heart of the Labour Party coalesced to form a revelatory moment of pantomime androidry – and how quaint, how nearly comforting, how spot-on then but now unremarkable those past satirical visions seem, eh?

The lunatic reality of contemporary politics is galloping ahead of satire by significant furlongs, and few seem capable of or even interested in catching up. Which is where Flood Theatre come in.

Flood takes all the above into account, and styles itself ’the new comedy for the new politics’. In soundscapes and sketches drawn with a dramatic flair for language and a fine sense of the absurd, it outlines our rats’ nest of politics, media and society with unflinching precision.

There’s a long and noble history of art that takes life in all its grim, bleak splendour and manages to wring out disbelieving laughter. There’s been Chris Morris, there is Stewart Lee, and, soon, there will be Flood.

Flood perform at the Edinburgh Fringe, August 5th-27th. Book now.

This one time, at band camp…

Interesting article on Bandcamp:

Bandcamp drew its inspiration from intuitive blogging platforms such as WordPress. ‘[T]here, if you’re a writer, you can set up your own site that’s rock-solid for free. It struck us as crazy that if your artistic output happens to be music instead of text, that your options were bad.’

Bandcamp functions as a middleman site rather than digital DIY culture proper, but still. The expectation of profit from music is now firmly weighted towards auxiliary activities – touring, merchandise, licensing, ’360 sponsorship’ (hmm) – and the surgical excision of an artistic heart from the petrified industry establishment continues.

2010 in clicks.

I received some relatively pointless stats from WordPress this morning, but perhaps it’s worth recording the most-viewed posts here:

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

What Carlos Did Next: Carl Barat and Sadie Frost in Fool For Love February 2010
3 comments

2

Handbags and Gladrags: the glittery genius of Kenickie March 2010
10 comments

3

I Love You But You’re Wood Green: Carl Barat at the Big Green Bookshop October 2010
3 comments

4

If the Beatles had read Blake: a word on the Libertines August 2010

5

About March 2009
1 comment

In the coming year I’d like to write more on women in music, both as artists and as fans; on punk as a revolutionary cultural moment; and on the near-certain death of the record industry in the age of the one-click download. I’d also like to write, but probably won’t, a retrospective on post-Libertines London bands entitled ‘The Good, the Bad, and Thee Unstrung’.

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on this blog, or, for that matter, less of?