Memories of my Autonomism

“Rock-And-Roll Will Last” (The Story of Rock)

Finally, the “philosophy of rock music”. Rock and roll is about something, and what it is about can be discerned by considering the nature of its predecessor genre, “jump blues”. As the frenetic pace of, and instantly explicable interest of the lyrics to, “Five Guys Named Moe” indicated very clearly to the contemporary audience “jump blues” was a “full court press”: hic Rhodus, hic salta, but only if you could dance really fast. In other words, minor criminals explained the “history and theory” of the legitimate authorities engaging in what later became known as “smabbing” — a word of Oakland English (you will learn what it means).

However, the ol-fashion rou-tine ceas’ed to work circa abt. 1948, and “Jackie Brenston” (Ike Turner) taught people a new way to talk — “You’ve seen the jalopies, with the noises they make/Well, let me introduce my new Rocket 88″. Plein air, very natural and minimal lyrics to electric guitar music enabled by the sudden introduction of the solid-body guitar as something that could be bought; once Les and Mary gave up the act, Ike was free to completely not understand that Chuck Berry was “calling him out”, and the Beatles could even cede their status as technically superior rent-boys to insipid newcomers of a distinctly British hue. As things progressed beyond the “garage rock” of jobbers-to-never-be, they did not improve: people ended up learning lessons from “hard rock” they wanted to like but instead had to praise, and not enough lessons from sweet boys from various Southlands.

In the ’70s, we had “new soul”, aka funk, which had not yet reached the level of total satiety and so many were distracted from the progress of “spirits in the sky”: finally, people trapped in “programs” beyond the recognition of their families and themselves made punk rock, music good enough to justify their continued immiseration (or elevation to the status of “god”). Not good enow, but many bands from the ’80s we heard (and ones Americans didn’t hear — when Casey Kasem said of U2 “These guys are from England and who gives a shit”, he was trying to forget about The Pop Group) “smashed the mold”: garbage for people who did not need to get loose enough to work, and rap began because it needed some proving, in the city, that Man kann hier leben.

In the ’90s, indie-rock good enough to convince everyone of indubitable truths and laid-back tones asserting the “right to enjoyment”: finally indie-rock good enough to convince everyone of impossible truths (“If only I lived in Hoboken” —  it would not be as pleasant as you would think) and hip-hop forced to chronicle American history from war bucks on “up”.

However, believe Adorno was not as hard on rock and roll as “Hektor Rottweiler”, “diminuitive” pianist, was on jazz: it was going to last if anything was, and if anything was allowed to lasten (enter the trip of your German adolescent life) it would be that.

Ultimately, the “message” of the rock “star” and his or her tribulations is that of the oldest saying of philosophy, taken in widest compass:

“The bow (bios) is life, and its work is death.”

βιός τῷ τόξῳ ὄνομα βίος ἔργον δὲ θάνατος

Ike and Tina Turner Revue: Funkier than a Mosquita’s Tweeter (Check the liner notes to Workin’ Together)

Chuck Berry: Let It Rock

The Beatles: Flying/Blue Jay Way

The American Pastime: Modernism (A Meadian Theory of Jazz)

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you ain’t never gonna know” — Louis Armstrong

At this particular time, I would like to do something other than “celebrate American tradition” by speaking of jazz music. All throughout American history, various people have dreamt of “making it new”: a new life in the New World, clean and scientific and modern and meaningless. This is, unfortunately, not the quiddity of life in the Republic: an absolute modernism that turns on the true “moment” and the involution of “projection possibilities” fails to keep faith with a history that keeps recapturing us and teaching us the lessons of every second. From the man who could not tell a lie on to “the now”, to accept the modernist charges has meant coping with a symbolic world that does not achieve “closure” in the thoughts and dreams of the concrete mind.

It is this way, too, with jazz. The story beloved of those who found records from straight out of the vaults of freedom, c. 1960-1969, unbelievable music is not quite true: Albert Ayler’s military music, like the martial dance-steps of the itinerant city youth, evokes a black musical tradition older than jazz. “Jazz” is from somewhere else, and for something else: in short order, nowhere and nothing.

No music could be more wholly other than music as it had existed up to a point where an “independent city” created a generation of people capable of, among other things, speaking of Michelangelo in straitened circumstances; as Harvey Pekar has pointed out, systematically removing the traces of functional harmony and the “theologically vaulted cosmos” predated the opening of the New York record industry: from le jazz hot on, the only things being rung were changes.

When blue eyes were smoky like an opium den, life was not always so nice: and to counterpoint Walter Benjamin, the modernism of jazz was a “disequilibrating” force — with superior musicianship to no end, a person is alone in their thoughts and their world, and the forward momentum of a “plan” becomes less than questionable. The connosieurship of jazz makes for one of the hardest truths around.

However, I would like to end the note by explaining the redemptive promise of jazz, in the spirit of the American sociologist George Herbert Mead. Mead’s signal innovation in pragmatist philosophy was a theory of “taking the attitude of the other”, the mechanism by which human beings come to have human uses for each other: systematically considering the “history and theory” of another person’s mind. The Meadian lesson of jazz is that we are not “all together in this”, we are not moving ever-upward, our most intimate familiars have thoughts we can never understand — and that one ought not to “exterminate all the brutes”.

Pharoah Sanders: “The Creator Has a Master Plan”

Of the Catholic Macintosh {in lieu of Don Bryant, Houston politics, The Olympics, *republicaine* nutrition, and force-ed insanity}

Rubard: {Velvetaster}

You would think we would be quite done with the need to speak on the topic of the Velvet Underground, since they are one of the most heavily “publicized” bands of all time — in the Sixties, too — and it’s not actually hard anymore to acquire their records. However, it is time for me to disclose something: I once thought I was a Velvet, but I am really a Velvetaster. Having grown up in a city whose intellectual life was dominated by Reed College, and having gotten accepted there through the auspices of a man who remembered a time before either “Reedies” or reedités, and having not gone the thought of being a “Lou Reed” of sorts, leading a “velvet underground”, amused me — I suppose my wearing a Czech wool version of the Brecht hat might even have figured into it somehow, although that was more of a Pittsburgh moment.

However, it is true I am just not that man. Why? I even get to prefer the VU songs totally dominated by him, pieces of genuine “New York trash” David Johansen wouldn’t touch with a six and one-quarter foot pole. Having reinvented Long Island family life and upstate New York, Lou was permitted to move to the city he knew inside and out and rip the Brill Building a new one; following this fortuitous occurrence, he was able to make exactly the kind of music he wanted to make, provided 1/2 of his records were given over to European bullshit. Later on, he really got it his own way: totally, completely, from other people with exciting stories of life in These United States (it is true that the “secret” Velvets album is the best, so good Wes Anderson committed “Stephanie Says” to malapropos memory forever). Then he was the most exciting office employee ever, and finally an icon. So, let us consider a selection of Reed numbers.

Sunday Morning

There She Goes Again

Beginning To See The Light

Lonesome Cowboy Bill

Train Round The Bend

Sweet Jane

It’s Alright (The Way That You Live) [Yo La Tengo, full version]

Self, Explanatory

When Things Fall Apart

Motortown Revue

Bob Dylan once said Smokey Robinson was the greatest living American poet; he was “asked” to clarify, and said he meant to say Artur Rimbaud instead. Here is “Tears of A Clown”, and honestly I have to say it bothers me that Smokey says “pagliacci” and not “Pagliacco”.

Next, the greatest Motown song of all, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”: James Jamerson’s bass arpeggios are amazing. Unfortunately, Terrell died of a brain tumor at age 24, but sometimes technology gets better.

Radio, Radio

I’d like to plug two Portland radio programs that play new “independent” music – the “alternative” station, 94.7, is somehow both dated and not representative of what people in Portland listened to back when KBBT existed. OPB’s weekend program “In House”, on Saturday and Sunday from 8 to 11 PM, showcases new US bands that, like most, do not achieve wide distribution of physical records; hearing the sounds from across the country is fascinating. For insight into the traditional Northwest scene, though, Brandon Lieberman’s venerable Drinking from Puddles on Wednesdays from 8 to 11 is probably the good deal: he’s moved on slightly from the days when Corin Tucker used to call him out for being “heterosexist”, but there’s still a lot to learn about the fabulous Northwestern ’90s and their sequels.

Non-Speculative Realism: Gang of Four

It’s now aesthetics time on Fortunes of the Dialectic. In discussions with my life partner John Lacny and some guy named Richard Seymour, I bruited a theory of which British bands corresponded to which British parties: the parallels with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin and the Clash are obvious enough for “trainspotters” of British leftism, but there’s a super-obvious choice for British Maoists: the “Theory” band Gang of Four. Gang of Four played very intense “punk-funk” with lyrics heavily inflected by Continental social theory, reflecting the sharp disenchantment an ordinary college-leaver could have with everyday life in late-’70s Britain. Here are a few live selections:

Damaged Goods

At Home He’s a Tourist

I Love a Man in Uniform

Anthrax

Not Great Men

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