Rules of the Game #2: Metal Clusters

[koganbot]

Rules of the Game #2: Metal Clusters

OK, second full column is up, brings up some things we talked about in the previous thread, about how there can be a chance element in which music you identify with socially.

(EDIT: Strangely, the link for the piece changed from the one I'd originally posted, so I've fixed it. I wonder how often this will happen. If you're looking for my pieces and the links aren't working, go to the Las Vegas Weekly main page and you'll probably see near the top something that says "Music: Rules Of The Game" followed by a subtitle, and that will be my latest column. Then, if you follow the link to the column, at the end of the column there's a link for "more articles from this author," which will take you to my previous columns.)

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

what do you make of the rhianna track, completely absent of the metal musingS?

[koganbot]

If you mean "Shut Up And Drive," that's got lots o' guitar crunch, so it qualifies as metal (at least it would in Xhuxk's book). I love it, and I love "Umbrella" (not to mention the "Umbuberella" remix) even more. Also love "Pon De Replay." I've complained that Rihanna tends to be too one-emotion-at-a-time, but both "Shut Up" and "Umbrella" benefit from the vocal mono-intensity. "Umbrella" really does wrap you up.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

bah i am stupid busy at the moment, when do comments need to appear by for you to respond to them?

[koganbot]

Oh, sometime in the next month. I mean, if you're shooting for the next column, I'd say post by Sunday morning my time, but comments may be referred to many columns hence. Also, whatever you post on the site you might also want to post here (or send to me via email), since there are delays between when you submit comments at LVW and when they appear (if I understood them correctly, both piratemoggy and katstevens posted comments a couple of days ago; but so far neither post has appeared onsite). Also, if you post here, that might generate more discussion.

[koganbot]

Interesting point that I made back in Why Music Sucks and that dubdobdee picked up on when he reviewed it for The Wire: OK, music in the eighties doesn't suck, but if I hadn't used the word "sucks" I wouldn't have gotten nearly the response. And I notice that the dumb but somewhat inflammatory Mark K-Punk quote that dickmalone posted on the previous thread got way more response than any of our more intelligent musings. Given that in my column I'm trying to attract people through insights rather than invective, this is a bit worrisome. Is it always necessary to say "don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd" if I want to attract a crowd?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

People say more when they're defensive but not necessarily more useful things, no?

And you can be provocative without using invective - "Classic Or Dud" is provocative because it's trying to force people off the middle ground, but it's still a neutral question. This is also a big reason I put marks out of 10 on Popular - I want people to engage with my review, sure, but if they DON'T engage with my review they can engage with the mark, by disagreeing and giving their own version.

Re. the column: the comments lag is REALLY annoying if you're used to ILX or LJ or any less moderated environment. I still commented though, maybe it will appear! Also, in terms of content, it might be that some readers are tempted to think "OK, I'll see where he's going with this" rather than jumping in immediately.

Maybe a contest to name the three metalheads would open up comments! I say Winken, Blinken and Noddy.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

De Gautet, Bersonin and Detchard

[koganbot]

Arsenic, Antimony, Mercury

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The reason Classic Or Dud is successful come to think of it is that it inviting participation not just through inviting provocation but also by allowing people space to post more reassuring content: a lot of people like posting that their favourite band is great because it's a comfortable and enjoyable thing to do. (I wrote about this here: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/nylpm/2002/08/joy-division-an-ideal-for-listening/) (Similarly asking Why Music Sucks is risking attracting people who are comfortable with it sucking and like saying so, not that WMS did do this).

[koganbot]

Eight hours later and your comment still isn't up. I'll see what happens in the next few days and then talk to them, if necessary. The URLs for the pieces have been changing too, so I've had to redo the links. I wonder if there's some connection to that and the comments not going up.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Right now the easiest thing for me to do to access the column is to post your "more articles by this author" link and check back to that for comments.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

something came up at the punk conference, about clustering, which i want to explore a bit

i. the panel was kicked off by a bunch of more-or-less home movies of pioneer punky kids in the kings road, 87-81, outside mclaren's and westwood's shop, dressing up and parading around -- giggling, gossiping talking nonsense, being young and cute and vivid and look-at-me, against the somewhat drab and unimaginative background of that part of the city in that era
ii. the social element of what caused them to gather was really evident, very much foregrounded by the film -- the music side of it less so, because we weren't seeing that, and bcz the conversations about it were very fragmentary (also all girls, bcz the man making the film found them cuter or more friendly or more interesting, i don't know: but the girl-conversations about the music THAT WE HEARD were enthused but chatty, rather than enthused but nerdy...)
iii. i wz really struck by -- and tried to articulate -- how very different my induction into this community was; i knew no such people -- i grew up in quite another part of the country -- i accessed the ethics of the music and the scene entirely through reading about it alone, in the pop press and a bit in the tabloid press, turnings its ideals and utopias around in my head
iv. even when i began to link up with people with similar tastes, i was already very much persuaded that "they wouldn't get it"; i would argue with them in a joilly bantering way, but kep my absolutist line hidden from view
v. at one point during the panel, i described the invisibility of my allgeiance (i didn't LOOK punk; i didn't expound its positions even with the semi-friendly quasi-punk among my pals) as a "secret agent on behalf of punk"
vi. someone in the audience laughed and asked if this wasn't the most anti-punk thing ever, and we got into the less interesting part of the discussion (ie "what was and wasn't punk" rather than "why was it that the the truth and untruth of punk so drove me") (to be fair the panel wasn't all about me, but even so this was a less fruitful direction to take...)
vii. anyway writing this up now i am somewhat fascinated by my apparent conception of the world i myself moved through as enemy territory -- my ideal "punk sociality" never materialising, ppl merely dressed as punks clearly not to be trusted or relied on
viii. it seems to me that writing about it here, ten years ago, i did not fully realise the degree to which my punk utopia became an inner restitutive landscape, of enormous shaping intensity, but also surprsingly malleable -- i did not have to adapt my opinions to those who shared my line, bcz i did not accept that any did (that i would soon meet)
ix. so i guess this is why i was looking a bit hard at the "community of one" part of anyone's jounrey through and between communities -- inc.our metal fans here

maybe viscerality is the community-of-one response to stuff; discussability the gathered cluster's -- and the apparent alignment is a function of the yr movement between you alone (even if "alone in a crowd") and you with yr buddies

since one of the things we do is check out for affirmation and confirmation and explication what are feelings are and mean and are called, by discussing them with friends -- even boys do this, tho notoriously not very ably! -- an apparent alignment will be effected by the tamping down of strong feelings with bad labels ("you like ABBA! but they are teh ghey! METAL ROOLZ DUDE!"); and either the thin line between love and hate will be crossed, and the metalteen in question will adjust his "wrong" attraction towards a disgust response (self disgust for "not being properly metal" blurring into "teh ghey yuk yuk"); or the passion wil coninue in secret, and the metalteen will begin to operate a taste double-life (haha which will maybe actually allow him to become gay!)

[koganbot]

Real punks don't look punk?

No time for full response now 'cept to say that my one-man punk-rock revo came in September 1970 through March 1971 as described in my Roger Williams chapter and that the Kids Who Sat Next To Me were Bob Dylan as recorded in '64-'66 and Fusion magazine as came in the mail every month (and also bits and fragments from Grace Slick et al.) BUT also I had the somewhat deluded and very adolescent assumption that vast vast vast numbers of people were going through the exact same thing as I but were not willing to articulate it or admit it nearly so well ("And he cursed me when I proved to him/I said 'Look, not even you can hide/You see you're just like me'") (cf. "In every single person is a Slim Shady lurkin'"). But I wouldn't have used the phrase "punk rock" for it, even if the term had been coined by then - and given lead times it probably just had been, but I didn't see the May 1971 Creem when it first came out anyway, in fact haven't ever), and when I did see the phrase I understood intuitively what it meant but my "understanding" meant "96 Tears" and "Pushin' Too Hard" and "Steppin' Stone" and "Get Me To The World On Time" but not "Ballad Of A Thin Man" or "Memphis Blues Again" or "Under My Thumb" or "Sister Ray" (nor, later, "Search and Destroy" or "I Wanna Be Your Dog" or "Frankenstein" or "Anarchy In The U.K"); in other words it meant the jr. high school creeps who copied the Stones and Yardbirds without getting the complexities and who hurt people to convince themselves they were tough but who also would crack and go on kamikaze attacks against authority. It was only reluctantly that I finally capitulated and decided "OK, since other people are using the term to include the Stooges and Pistols I've got to, too," and it's only in the latter sense that '70-'71 could be dubbed my Punk Rock Revolution.

But anyway, my 1970-71 revo wasn't actually solo as it included Dylan and Grace and Marty and Meltzer and Jurgens and Tosches et al. and to a lesser extent my friend Tom Olds and unlike you I tried to find allies and audiences for my revo by showing e.g. the What Thing to scads of people I knew; interesting point: my revo was on paper.

[koganbot]

So in my original usage, by punks I actually meant punks, e.g. Elisha Cook Jr. in The Maltese Falcon.

[koganbot]

But of course I'd already switched to the cool and cruel and bully kids' music back in 1966, i.e., that of the Stones and the punks and creeps trying to sound like them (Question Mark, Seeds, Electric Prunes).

Which is interesting and maybe even paradoxical (identifying with the oppressor, perhaps?), especially given that I remember first questioning in 1966 my own support of the Vietnam War when hearing a radio report on an antiwar demonstration where the peaceful demonstrators were attacked by a stone-throwing mob. My feeling was that I didn't want to be on the side of the stone-throwers. They were doing what bad guys did: racists in Mississippi attacked peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, guns, and firehoses. This incident actually created a rip in my understanding of the world, since I thought we were the good guys in Vietnam (defending the South Vietnamese against communist aggression), and it didn't compute that the bad guys at home seemed to be on the good side and the demonstrators seemed to be on the bad. So I had to realign my thinking, and eventually turned against the war, though obviously not for this reason alone. And of course over the years antiwar people themselves heaved plenty of rocks, literal and verbal, and so did I, so things never quite righted themselves into good guys versus bad guys. But the weird thing is that my music tastes didn't follow this pattern. I've liked plenty of stones throsers, from the Stones through the Stooges and Sex Pistols and Contortions. And 1966 was when I turned towards hard rock, towards the cool, cruel guys' music. (Not so simple, of course. "Pushin' Too Hard" represented a pop/rock world that was pushin' on me, but also was about being pushed on, so I could identify, and was about pushing back. As I say in "Death Rock 2000," I was totally unclear where I stood - or wanted to stand - amidst the pushed and the pushers.)