The Campaign For Real Rock. Edwyn Collins. 1994. Setanta.

 Similar in tone to the Neil Young elegy My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue), Edwyn Collins’ seething harangue begins on a note of sadness. Whereas Young cast his vision of modern inertia across an all-encompassing scope, Collins’ focus is smaller, and he works to reduce his subject even lesser by denunciatory, cathartic means. The sadness, it turns out, was only a hint of smoldering rage. Collins’ target is the rock and roll poseur in his natural habitat, Glastonbury, maybe, or Coachella; Reading or Bonnaroo. Collins’ recitation of his indictment is spellbinding; you’re drawn in by his assurances as a performer, despite them sometimes failing him in his effort to make lyrical points; what the hell is a “Zimmerframe”? The song’s greatest pleasure comes from its most obvious contradiction; Collins neatly tailors his musical backing track to his vocal, seamlessly using FM radio rock song conventions which give the record a tonal impersonality similar to what you hear on, say, Animals-era Pink Floyd. Singing about the effects of capitalist rot from the inside of an industry that fosters it is one of those ironies that major label artists sometimes like to claim independence from even when the temptation to exploit the trappings of class privilege and recording studio budgets looms large. We are never so bourgeois as when we’re activating the “buy” command on a streaming service, thereby preserving the consumerist compulsions we’ve been conditioned since childhood to follow. “You pay for this but they give you that,” Neil Young warned back in 1979, giving voice to what has become, almost half a century later, the shallow reality of our national ambition. Two years before him, Pink Floyd worded it this way, “You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to.” Outmaneuvering the systemic contradictions that threaten the future of democracy in pursuit of the smaller, comfortable ones that make life bearable used to be known as modern life. Lately it’s become our primary mode of escape from the lethally transmutating airborne virus, and we’re running out of moves. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ça Plane Pour Moi. Plastic Bertrand. 1978. Sire.

  According to internet data, the Lollapalooza tour, 1995, reached Dallas, Texas, on August 10, a Thursday. Five of us rode in one car that I drove from Fort Worth to the Starplex Amphitheater; my fellow passengers were Jo, Pat, Trina, and that woman who lived in Azle, whose name I no longer remember, and who used to come into the record store often, along with her boyfriend. Her musical tastes tended toward the abrasive, commercial metal so popular with the white suburban kids of privilege: Nine Inch Nails, Iron Maiden, Alice In Chains. Her personal style was not that of a typical metal fan, more like Ally Sheedy after her character’s disastrous Breakfast Club makeover. I admired her bright and casual style, her propensity to good humor and cheer, and for not succumbing to conformity and becoming a metal clone like so many of our peers. She rolled joints during the entire car trip to Lollapalooza with the hurried precision of an efficient professional working against a deadline, and c
Read more

Blues Is King. Marshall Crenshaw. 1985. Warner Bros.

  Certain recording artists—Lindsey Buckingham, Lucinda Williams, Sylvester Stewart all come to mind—share such a deep affinity with American music that it can seem as if they’ve walked into our  fantasies of democracy and produced their best work from inside that dream. So it is with Marshall Crenshaw. His eponymously titled debut record was released in 1982, when American artists were engaged in a Janus faced dialogue with their audience; on one side, artists like Talking Heads, Prince, and Laurie Anderson boldly envisioned pop song dynamics that bore the irreducible stamp of their respective personalities, while on the other side, Los Lobos, the Replacements, and the Cramps refashioned the face of rock and roll itself to accurately mirror the tastes of a young public growing increasingly hostile to, as well as alienated from, the social and fiscal policies of a federal government that was becoming less and less representative. Somewhere between the two norms fell the music of Marsha
Read more

Les Bon Temps Rouler Waltz. BeauSoleil. 1988. Arhoolie.

  A modicum of sadness is built into BeauSoleil’s rendition of the Lawrence Walker ballad Les Bon Temps Rouler Waltz. It’s the emotional center point around which the song revolves, illuminating the record’s good faith by fixing the listener’s attention on the band’s collaborative dynamic, the process by which they draw poignancy from each instrumental performance. Every pop record is an implied contractual agreement between artist and listener, with listener consenting to his role as subjective recipient of the commercial audio product. The basic nature of this role is subject to change over a period of time as the listener’s relationship with the record changes, given, but not limited, to issues of personality maturity. Typically, the consumer role will fall into one of two camps: either the faceless, one-of-millions mass audience whose pop experience is often social or the cogent individual whose expectations of the pop experience are more personal and long lasting. The most signifi
Read more