Rockhunter, Issue 11, June 2004
The Limits of Independence: Conscience, Possessive Individualism and Mass Ventriloquism in Reverse
Those who imagine they are independent rarely match the image of the self-sufficient auteur type that they seek to cultivate. When people boast about their independence in music production, for instance, that can generally be taken as a postscript to incorporation of one kind or another.
Independence as a statement of intent is mendaciously self-applied by those with an eye to the market. Self-employment is a kind of economic independence, but selling stuff you’ve made on the basis of either a niche you’ve cornered or a good deal with suppliers isn’t what I call independence. Those things mark out players in the culture markets. If you’ve something to sell, sell it — but don’t tell me you’ve reinvented art by doing so.
Making mention of independence in relation to a particular approach to culture is how people distinguish themselves on a sliding scale between corporate soul and troubadour — and way out past the endposts of human comprehension in both directions. As a matter of distinction, independence is a social positioning device, an identity fixer for those wandering along the windy edges of social mobility.
Contrariness is a lonely kind of independence. Nevertheless, whether someone’s different because they can’t help it or different for the sake of it, or divergent when common sense begs for consensus, this is true independence. Contra-cultural salmon leaps are future bookmarks. Without contrary producers of misfit or even novelty artefacts and ideas, there would be no way for everyone else to fabricate certainty and fix values.
Independence in culture is a rewound version of “conscience”, the still, small voice of Judaism and, whence, of Renaissance Protestantism re-invented for a new time in which certain people choose to assume their individuality beyond collectivities without troubling either to negotiate it or recognise the grossness of their assumption.
So independence is the soul speaking. But does this mean we’re hearing the true voice of the individual?
What of those who are not independent enough to express themselves? Do they heed their conscience only to pick it out of their nose and flick it? In what respects are ‘the underclass’ or ‘the vulnerable’ not independent?
If you choose to believe that inspiration floats in the aether and humour artists and musicians who say they’re just performing natural functions, then yes, independence is the true voice of the individual alone, crying for attention as the last meaningful representation of conscience and, for that matter, history.
However, if you see assemblages of sounds, colour combinations, verbal concatenations and spaces, etc., as the very stuff of human understanding — the things we know as our common, free language — independence must be the true voice of us all, sounding the depths of experience and ventriloquising metatemporarily through loose-limbed reluctants who cannot but fail to understand their unhappy position.
I put myself in the latter category. I’m contrary, but I can’t help it. Also, I like it.
Hater in the Nation
Another big question coming through loud and clear is, Why do you just hate stuff, Hunter? Why are you laying your hang-ups on the rest of us? Why can’t you just chill, buddy?
People never cease not to amaze me. Baby, it’s not a question of why, but what. Do people not look around them and see the mess made by the self-conscious goo trailing in people’s retarded wakes?
Just for the rekkid, here’s the things that are currently getting my goat this month. When you’ve read and digested, I’m sure you’ll agree I’ve a prima facie casie for hate.
1. Sibilant and/or hectoring voices on London-bound trains
2. Ostentatious fruit-eating in public, especially on public transport
3. Feet on seats, especially in pubs and on public transport
4. Spitting on pavements, and on public transport.
And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to give a not inconsiderable sum to the person who can give me a clue as to why Britain’s wannabe hardest lads—Burberry’d, casual and that—dress like a bunch of Piccadilly chickens!! And you can tell them I said that!!!
Hata in the Nation
Next time yer fire up the ole PC, run in the direction of Playahata.com. This is one seriously conscious music site!!
There’s a trend in the land of the idea of negritude to push the supposed power of consumer choice and laughably suggest that people are somehow empowered as they spend their hard-earned on crisp new items. What a load of toss!!! Playahata takes that idea round the back and two-fistedly criticises it from within.
In fact, I was so inspired by Playahata’s critical stance in the face of the ‘obviousness’ of the link between consumerism and blackness that I was thinkin’ of changing the name of this mag to GentHata. Wha’cha think? I want to represent my conservative white look —short back and sides, prole disdain and antiquarian stance masking fiery critical weirdity — and get it out there for conversation and change purposes. But maybe I’m doing it already…
Comps/re-issues/CDRs/cassettes received this month
Perfumed Wind, 12-track compilation LP, to be reviewed when I’ve some spare time. Includes super singles by The Tempus Fugitives, The Sutton Who and the Days of Night.
Violet’s Sordid Claim, 3-track CDR by Notts proto-Goths, including the excellent “Aphid Click”
Bopper’s Nark, 8-track CDR by this Essex trio from the mid-70s. Truly demented rockin’ mayhem from the school of the Wild Angels. Great versions of Vincent’s “Cat Man” and Richie Deran’s “Little Willie”!!!
That’s all, folk.
Tree love,
Ed.
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