Thanks to Rupert for typing out the following extract from yesterday’s Independent newspaper. It’s Barney Hoskins on the dreaded Brit Awards:


THE BRITS: POP YOU CAN AND SHOULD GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD

“Chart pop has become so redundant, so musically bankrupt, that the best we can do is collude with the mass delusion that a pocket-sized Oz automaton is a spunky sex goddess with a flawless sense of irony. I refer, of course, to Ms Minogue, whose numbingly formulaic 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' is being hailed as some work of postmodern electro-pop genius.

Am I going mad? Or just missing the point? How is it that pop music has been reduced to mere surface - white radio noise to while away time?

Call me a curmudgeon; call me a sentimental old rock bloke - others almost certainly will. My old NME colleague Paul Morley will say I'm clinging to archaic art-rock values instead of surrendering to the blissful banality of now. But I say *resist*! If we pretend that Kylie and Dido are sexy, vital pop stars, surely we're doomed. If the news that Westlife are about to score their 10th No 1 single doesn't make us yawn our heads off, it may already be too late.

The idea that pop = rebellion may have become mere myth, but it's an important myth nonetheless and one that should at least endure as a goal or ideal. The terrifying thing about today's pop yoof is that it's never experienced rebellion or resistance to anything. Kids today are simply bred like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers pods to be passive consumers of lifestyle accessories, digesters of fads and images living in a Warholian dream-state of vacuous capitalism.

Which is why, ultimately, one has to see that pop's musical bankruptcy is a symptom rather than a cause.”

Some fine stuff in there, some of which I’ll wholeheartedly agree on, and others on which I won’t. For example, a big Yes to the idea that contemporary Pop youth has never experienced ‘rebellion’ or ‘resistance’, and a big Yes to the thought that ‘we’ are doomed if we consider Dido and Kylie to be sexy, vital pop stars. But a big ‘No’ to the idea that pop music, specifically chart pop music has ever been anything but mere surface noise to while away the time, notable peculiarities excepted down the ages, of course… but then such peculiarities don’t generally make much impact on the radio anyway.

And a big No to the idea that ‘the kids of today’ are passing through their lives in a ‘Warholian dream-state of vacuous capitalism’… I mean, just take out the Warholian bit and it’s fine, because yeah, I’d be pretty damn down on ‘the kids’ for those reasons too, it’s just that I don’t think it’s particularly Warholian of them. I mean, at least Warhol took that consumption and made something from it. He used the very essence of consumption and fed it right back to the world; created from consumption, which is a pretty cool thing to do really. Of course most kids don’t do that. Most kids never did. It’s not as if that’s particularly a post-modern condition, or a symptom only evident in Noughties pop culture. I recall ‘we’ said similar things in the blighted ‘80s when Thatcherism ruled supreme and everyone wanted to be a boorish money grabbing shithead. Well, not everyone of course… same as not everyone is drifting by in the vacuous state Mr Hoskins suggests today. It just seems that way because, lets face it, we’re getting old and crotchety and jealous of people who look like they are having a better time than us.

Anyway, speaking of Warholian, I just finished scribbling a review of the retrospective show at the Tate Modern in London, the subject of my half-term escape from the sleepiness of Exeter and the South West. And whilst it was excellent being in the city for a day or two, it’s equally lovely being safely back in the attic, gazing out on the wind and the rain and listening to CD2 of the White Stripes’ ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’ single, featuring as it does rather fine live renditions of Dylan’s ‘Lovesick’ and Bacharach and David’s ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’. Both sound awesomely huge. Also on there is the video for the lead single track, which I shall watch on my computer later.

Back from London, yes… reflecting on the Warhol show which was, I’ll say now, fantastically good. Also somewhat depressing, but that’s more to do with that idea of aging and loneliness and those are thoughts for another time entirely.

Outside right now the rain is coming down sideways and the wind is howling around the eaves. I was going to ride my bike this afternoon… I guess I can scratch that idea right now. Oh well.

London… more art. Or is it more Art? I have no idea. I have an idea though that the Medieval sculpture and painting in the Tate Britain is nothing short of lovely. I always hated those early paintings, but that was probably my age (and this is why, on the whole, I am DELIGHTED to be this age and couldn’t really give a shit if the ‘kids’ are being blinkered and disinterested in, uh, everything but their ring tones) and my disposition and the sense that Old = Crap and New = Great. What a stupid notion that is.

The Medieval portraits are especially wonderful. I can stand for hours in front of those paintings, just looking at the brushwork, gazing on the details, admiring their very essence as paintings. I love the patterns on the clothing, the way it’s painted in delicious flat black lines, like a Lichtenstein painting of, how many hundreds of years later? Too many to count. And the wonderful lace hanging over an arm, making its mark more for the lack of mark than anything else. Wow.

I never thought I would say all of that, ever. Admiring Medieval portraits. Wow. I must be growing up.

Or just old.

Whichever.

Oh, and look, if you’re in the Tate Britain go and look at the Death of Chatterton painting and giggle at Malcolm McLaren’s commentary in which he compares Chatterton to Sid Vicious. How I laughed. But only at the Sid reference, because really everything else that McLaren says is spot on; about rebellion and youth and such like, and Chatterton being a Rock star of his age… it’s a lovely parallel, but really you know that Chatterton is more Kurt than Sid. And speaking of the Chatterton painting, if you’re in the gift shop, go check out the Sam Taylor-Wood ‘Soliloguy 1’ photo in the postcard area… a lovely connection.

And still speaking of Chatterton, if McLaren’s notes are to believed, the poet topped himself at age 17, and this was a few years after he was busy forging Medieval manuscripts… so, uh, forging manuscripts at 14 or 15? Man, that’s impressive. I wish I had some kids in my classes now who could do that, at that age. That would be cool. Instead they just Linkin Park record sleeves. Sorry, CD sleeves. They don’t know what you mean when you say ‘record’. And why should they?

More art…or more Art. The lovely Langlands and Bell at the Alan Cristea gallery in Cork Street, London does indeed, as my friend Tim suggests, deserve it’s own FAC catalogue number. The work is so slick and perfectly formed it would be at home on a Factory record sleeve of old, especially those Airport flight prefix pieces where the letter forms float on glass, merging the flight to a moment in space. Fantastic.


posted by duke harringay at 12:12 PM