Music and Protest

I have to admit that my recent output has been somewhat hindered by fog introduced upon reading a short piece entitled something upon the lines of "How to Blog", with peremptory instructions for being successful in this medium. The central tenet, and I paraphrase as I did not keep the article, was that words need to be presented as concisely, and simply as possible. In other words, as a writer, you are required to anticipate that your reader won't actually read, and will simply scan the page for something free, or some nugget of information that is of particular interest.

I am fully aware that this is a common instruction for all bloggers. As is my wont, I have proceeded to flagrantly disregard this central tenet, insisting to myself that there is no reason to seek validation or recognition, and furthermore, I will simply utilize this forum as an outlet for whatever particular musical fancy, or thought which, crosses my path. This is still my founding manifesto, but it does carry with it the ever-growing personal need to elicit coherent thoughts, whilst suppressing the knowledge that they are unlikely to ever be read. A competition of ego, without doubt, but perhaps I can be excused for enduring some motivational difficulties within an increasingly busy daily schedule.

I have been mulling over some of the recent events for some months now, and particularly regarding an apparent rise in political activism throughout the world. However, before I do so, I must ask forgiveness as I shall indulge with some rather lazy writing by referring liberally to other writers to illustrate my point. To start with, I was recently reading about the Occupy movement, to which one would imagine would render shrink wrapped fodder for artistic enterprise:

In Madrid, tens of thousands thronged the Puerta del Sol square shouting "Hands up! This is a robbery!" In Santiago, 25,000 Chileans processed through the city, pausing outside the presidential palace to hurl insults at the country's billionaire president. In Frankfurt, more than 5,000 people massed outside the European Central Bank, in scenes echoed in 50 towns and cities across Germany, from Berlin to Stuttgart. Sixty thousand people gathered in Barcelona, 100 in Manila, 3,000 in Auckland, 200 in Kuala Lumpur, 1,000 in Tel Aviv, 4,000 in London.

...

The exact targets of protesters' anger may differ from city to city and country to country. But while their numbers remain small in many places, activists argue that Saturday's demonstrations, many of which are still ongoing – and are pledged to remain so for the foreseeable future – are evidence of a growing wave of global anger at social and economic injustice.

I am fascinated by the link between protest and music that has traditionally always been a cornerstone of alternative music. In her article, also from the Guardian, Krissi Murison, wrote a piece entitled "Punk spoke up for angry kids. Why won't today's bands follow suit?" which arose as a consequence of the recent London riots. She quotes Joe Strummer and Mick Jones in their first interview with Barry Miles:

"I think people ought to know that we're anti-fascist, we're anti-violence, we're anti-racist and we're procreative. We're against ignorance," said Strummer, when asked how his band was offering a solution to their boredom and frustration. "I don't have to get drunk every night and go around kicking people and smashing up phone boxes […] We're dealing with subjects we really believe to matter. We're hoping to educate any kid who comes to listen to us."

In contrast to this, Ms Murison goes on to note:

"If that was punk's manifesto in 1976, then here's the closest thing music has to one in 2011: "Kill People. Burn Shit. Fuck School." It's a song by Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, whose apathetic anarchy is perhaps a more fitting, if unwitting, soundtrack to the riots of last week than the Clash's.

This, though, is apparently what rebellion sounds like in 2011: dead-eyed, mob-like and opportunistic. There's certainly no one else currently trying to articulate anything more meaningful in pop culture. Time was when rock stars, and not just the Clash, used to have lots to say about lots of very big, important things. Or so I'm told. The truth is that in my eight years as a music journalist, I've never found one.

...

Let's look at some of the likely candidates. Alex Turner: lyricist of a generation, everyday commentator extraordinaire, brilliant on chip shops, less so on council spending cuts. Here's what he told me last time I interviewed him, at the time of the student protests and trade-union marches: "Even though [some of our songs] are about 'what's going on' in, like, one part of town, it's not about 'WHAT'S GOING ON', is it? It's not like I'm showing an opinion on what's going on. I just don't know what that would achieve." Or Eton-educated folkie and former Black Bloc anarchist Frank Turner: "I'm uncomfortable being called 'political'. I don't want to be divisive.""

There is also then an excellent interview with JarvisCocker by Decca Aitkenhead :

Lyrics, he says, aren't actually all that important to songs. "Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can't rescue a dog of a song.

...

(when asked about current hit singles) "Oh, I wouldn't even know what they were," he says at once, apologetically. "I feel bad, because I used to be right into the charts. I stopped when it got too predictable. They killed it when they discovered that formula, where a single would be half price in the week that it was released, so all singles started selling loads in the first week and then dropping off. It stops that thing of a record building – the first week was always the highest – and then it wasn't interesting at all. It's a good picture of what capitalism does. They find a formula that kills off the thing they're trying to make money out of."

...

"Music's changed in that way. People still listen to it, but it's not as central, it's more like a scented candle. It sets the mood. Also, because people like to multitask, in a way if you've got a bit of music on in the background and the lyrical content is making you want to listen to it, then that would probably put you off the texting you wanted to do. I think people like things that just make that right kind of noise, but leave your brain free to do something else."

All of this subsequently brought to mind the thoughts of another excellent author, Peter Doggett, who wrote the following in his superb book on the 60's, "There's A Riot Going On" :

(quoting Tom Hayden, a student activist) "What had killed the movement, he suggested, wasn't political repression or FBI harassment, or even (in the classic Marxist equation) a mismatch of economics and social conditions. The culprit was none other than the counter-culture itself, 'the sense that the kind of things that were supposed to be naturally ours were getting out of our control'. He singled out 'the absorption of Yippie-type theatrics into the media' : the leaders of the movement had allowed themselves to become distracted by the possibility of stardom and ego gratification. Worse still, however, was 'the feeling that people had been ripped off on a widespread basis by the absorption of rock music into the commercial culture'. As soon as 'The Revolutionaries Are On Columbia Records', they are no longer revolutionaries. When 'The Man Can't Bust Our Music', the music is already busted, in every sense of the word. The irony was that Hayden himself was already a media star. His words reflected the comfort of a man who could expect to attract attention and command lucrative earnings for the rest of his life. Members of the black power movement had been living under rather more extreme pressure, fearing for their lives rather than fretting about the sincerity of John Lennon or Mick Jagger. Yet the music and the movement had been so intertwined that it was easy to believe they were supporting each other. Hayden and his comrades were chilled by the realisation that rock and the revolution might actually have been diverting and sapping each other's energy."

...

"You've always got to have good tunes if you're marching. But the tunes don't make the march. Basically, rock and roll isn't protest, and never was. It's not political. It promotes interfamilial tension - or it used to. Now it can't even do that, because fathers don't even get outraged with the music. So rock and roll's gone, that's all gone." (Mick Jagger, 1980)

In 1975, former student leader Tom Hayden wistfully recalled the revolution that never was. 'The original theory of Weatherman was that we were in a situation of virtual fascism, because of Nixon's policies,' he declared. 'And therefore the only recourse, in their view, was resistance against this closed system. That's proven, I think, to be a fear that did not unfold. The democratic process came through. We're not living in a police state.' A decade after the movement first raised the flag of revolution, Hayden was content to trust in democracy, and the power of - rather than to- the people. He could not have realised that he had just lived through a golden era of democracy, when the people had the power to fight their government, and imagine that they might affect its actions at home and around the world; and when musicians were prepared to endanger their careers, and sometimes even their lives, in the cause of political freedom. But that dream, like so many, was over.

I run perilously close to rightfully acquiring the grumpy old man label (if I have not already), but the point that I am trying to make is that, at present, music seems to have lost a moral compass (at least in the mainstream), and there is a prevalent, and seemingly commonly held, sense of a decaying society with little exchange of ideas or thoughts. Of course, it is a true-ism to say that each generation thinks that the subsequent is worse, so this caveat must be mentioned. But it seems as if, apparent or not, that there is a paradox within the internet in that although there is a phenomenal exchange of information, there is also a deep sense of mistrust, self-consciousness and a lack of research. To regress briefly, the historical concept of a music fan was that they were somewhat of a hoarder. They were, and are, somewhat of a social oddity, who obsessively seek out to the rarest music, and obsess over songs and musicians that is often inexplicable to people are not of a similar ilk. I must make mention of this brief nugget by Tom Piazza, from his highly recommended Devil Sent The Rain, where he recounts a story of searching through a flea market for 78's:

"By the time I finished, I had looked through at least three thousand discs and had whittled down my stack to thirty-five. I paid two dollars apiece for them ("They always find some good ones," the proprietress said as she counted out my change from a wad of bills she kept in the pocket of her housedress), and I walked out slightly overstimulated, a little toasted around the edges, but with a sense of satisfaction and even of gratitude for being able to retrieve these records from the mountain of chaos where they had languished."

Of course, the point of my recounting this is Mr. Piazza goes on to admit that he had kept his wife waiting for almost two hours, whilst all of this digging for 78’s was being undertaken. My better half, as I recounted this story, gave me a similar smile, her eyes expressing what I would imagine to be the exactly the same sentiments towards me. My point though is that there is a growing sense that beneath the avalanche of information, we should feel compelled to mine beneath it for those items that are truly worth finding. But for many, there is perhaps too constant an awareness on the net of often excessively harsh criticism from too many readers, be it informed, misinformed or simply vindictive. The nature of information has changed, and instead of information being made available for those that would seek to locate it, the information is now readily (too easily) available, and we are now confronted with the task of sifting and discarding as opposed to simply researching. It is a subtle paradigm shift, as opposed to evaluating, comparing and researching; an inordinate amount of time is simply spent trying to verify whether something is in fact accurate at all. Integral to this is the constant flow of ideas and thoughts, most of which are trivial, and the overarching threat of being the target for the mob.

To translate all of this into the terms of the music world, I get the impression that people have become weary of the constant overload of bands and songs. The radio has become an endless parade of repetitive songs, all frighteningly similar, all equally vacuous. As Mr. Cocker notes, music has merely become background noise, and not an item of interest in itself. Personally, I believe it is a facet of listening fatigue, as there is just too much information being bombarded onto us on a daily basis. There are too many opinions, too much music, just too much of everything with insufficient filter by which to evaluate and gauge an opinion. Information is provided as a doorway to individuality, but is cruelly removing all such sense of self, and in fact replacing it with a barrage that leaves little opportunity for thought or consideration, assuming those faculties exist in the first place. Worse, we have become so accustomed to this excess, that as soon as Blackberry crashes, there is a public outcry over the loss of amenities. The Bacchus of information has instilled a culture of obesity and hedonism, and we are now at the moment akin to the drunken detritus of all parties- they do eventually end, with all the obfustication and delirium that entails. People, and particularly children, have so much being placed before them on a daily basis that it would seem to be perfectly understandable that there is a glazed look of non-comprehension and shortened attention spans.

It is easy to become depressed by all of this, and it is equally true that it is far easier to find criticism than to be constructive. The music world is in a state of flux, and there is something of a changing of the guard with the tics of the 80's returning in force. Music, as an effective medium of communication, has been severely reduced, and we have a situation now where there is a distinct dumbing down within popular music in particular. Perhaps it arises from a cynicism with the fate of rock stars from the 60’s and 70’s (an aspect of which came through strongly in the 90’s with the slacker generation, and the number of drug fatalities), the anger that is associated with financially difficult times, or the chaos that capitalism has reigned upon the industry. The independent system had a distinct rise in its fortunes, but it has not changed anything, and rather merely been integrated into the system, with an associated growth in clout. In other words, we have now been introduced to "the new boss, same as the old boss", to quote Pete Townshend.

In contrast to the all this, we do need to bear in mind, and sympathise with the artists. We now have something of a pressure cooker situation, where the reality of the modern music industry is that business considerations are usually the single overriding factor. Artists are severely constrained in their movements, if not by regulation by the major labels, but then also by considerations of supply and demand. To be a successful musician no longer guarantees wealth or fame, or even a career. Rather, if nothing else, the rise to prominence of independent labels has emphasised the realities of the working, every day, musician. Most bands simply make enough to get by, especially if regard is had to significant economic inroads introduced by file sharing, and the fact that most consumers are also operating under significant financial constraints. In other words, the whole situation argues against looking over the parapet, be it by the consumer or the artist.

But there will always be a new movement, a new trend, and perhaps it is only a matter of time before this happens. The industry has a habit of meandering along, and will change as it can. The threat that the system would collapse under pressure from the internet has not come to pass, and things have continued much as they always have, albeit at greater expense to the consumer, and with an amended business plan for many artists. The 80's have returned in force, and these sounds may dominate our airwaves for some time yet I fear. We can then only hope that some youthful abandon, hopefully free of cynicism, will then return with fresh ideas to excite. In the interim, we can only hope that technology has not succeeded in making too many people old before their time.

In conclusion, however, perhaps it would be apt to quote again from Tom Piazza, in Devil Sent The Rain, in that whilst there may be significant reluctance of modern artists to become involved, there was a time when this was not the case, and although music may no longer fuel a revolution, perhaps it still retains the potential to provoke a little thought :

If you live somewhere else in the city, as I do, you can tell yourself that it's happening to other people. But if we learned one thing from Katrina, it is that we are part of an integrated social and geographical and spiritual ecosystem. We can turn our heads as long as it is going on somewhere else and happening to someone else. Or we can get mad now, and make a stand for human dignity and fairness against greed and power lust.

In his song about the bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd, written seventy years ago, the singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie sang,

"As through this world I've wandered, I've met lots of funny men,

Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen."

He could turn a phrase, that Woody Guthrie. He ended the song thus:

"But as through this world you travel, and as through this world you roam,

You will never see an outlaw drive a family from their home."