Rockhunter, Issue 22, 20 September 2006
Antiquarianism, Fictional History, Tradition, Novelty and Beating Collectomania
Very much as in the 15th to 16th centuries, when it was possible to possess and know all the things ever written, in these days of CD reissues of everything, we’ve reached a similar turning point in history. Previously, the sort of knowledge bunged out on countless rekkids, the Comps of Ages, belonged to the collectors in their dark holes, those strange shadowy beings with no noses. “How did they smell?” I hear you ask!!! Oh dear…
These comps accumulated just as hidden knowledge, or the occult, if you will (Or even if you won’t!!! — Ed.), was collected and known only to the mouth-breathing self-styled Collecto-Mages of yester-yore. I’m overblowing this a bit, just for effect!! Even the most whiney media studies tosser would have to agree, in retrospect, that collecting — especially in the area of psych/punk — is intensely contextual, even revisionist. Remember, we collectors and enthusiasts were the ones who changed the world by putting value on out-of-date sounds. And God help us for transvaluing forgotten shit!!!!
Wooooo! Back to the forge!!! Let’s face it, the Renaissance boyos were collectors, with their old documents, wunderkammers and such, but they called themselves alchemists because that’s got the buzz of a sexy quest about, while collecting is anything but.
So, the old toons are dead. Rrrring the alarm!!! Another sound is always dying, somewhere. But the Old Ones are being reanimated and all of us are now summoning the gluey voices of the long-dead lost. Even their absence—their much deserved rest—can’t prevent them from helping with our digressionarily dubjective historicist inquiries. Even The Unknowns, on Unknown Unknowns Vol. IX…
Julian Cope is Not the Only Antiquarian
Listen up, you sods!!! You might just learn something. I’ve spent too many years in the dank, sweaty Basement of Cool, interrogating emptied-out ash-piles and the void, blackened skulls of forgotten keening youths. Nigromansiery, they called it, way back when chatting to brazen heads was all the go. But whether the hands were black because of working with dusty old shit, or the hands claimed the title because of the evil they did, or not, is not recorded.
I’d made the mistake of thinking more music was better music. I got myself strung out on plenty. Which sometimes is just not enough. Now, I’ve always dabbled, getting into a bit of Reggay, Cajun, Country, or whatever strikes my gaze when I’m a bit bored in the Blighty’s manifold disc emporia. But I’d went too far and forgot the most important thing—the modus operandi by which I’d worked for all the years when music was the only thing between me and cutting out of this here. Deep knowledge. Or obsession. Either.
I went back to listening umpteen times to the ones that grabbed me. To get them in mi brane. So, without much anew, I hot-footed it back to The Past. I’m still time travelling there most every day. Recent synpase-shifters from the past 18 months include: “Nightmare” by the Gas Company, Mickey Newbury’s “How Many Times Must the Piper be Paid for His Song?”, Bod Dylan’s “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down”, Betty Harris’ feedfront epic “There’s a Break in the Road”. That sort of thing. Is it Deep Knowledge, obsession, or competence, that makes me an effective force in the Realm of Rockin’?!?!
Basically, to cut a short story a whole lot longer, I’ve had to work out another way of loving my music. See, although compulsive necrophilia is all very well, a chap needs to feel a pulse every now and then!! As my pal the poet Alan Hay says, nostalgia’s a young man’s game. Actually, thinking about it, he may have got that off me. See what I mean about all this sorting of things into proper places. Anyway, where was I?!?!
I discovered that, with some age to me, I’d reborn myself as a speculative archaeologist! Like a big ole Graham Hancock of Rock!! And this was my dig!! And it was freaking me out!!! Like, Thensville!!!! I was in an era comparable with the 16th century, when The Past was mostly unwritten on cartloads of crumbly documents with old writing on them and the antiquarian gang decided to find a new way of dealing with The Past, what with all the stuff written about it coming out of the woodwork. It was at that point that John Selden and some of his friends up and down the length of England dumped their wigs on their leathery study tables, alongside old prehistoric flint tools and such, mopped their stubbly, wrinkled heids, sniffed a bit due to the mouldy old parchment dust up their hooters and got weaving with their quills, scritchy-scratchilode on the lamb-chop parchimoult.
What the antiquarians came up with was brilliant! They hit upon the wheeze of putting the olden days documents in date order and tracing back through them to work out who was writing about who. And what. Previously, old papers had been gathered around particular places, or in bundles to prove individual legal cases (who owned that bit of land; who had the right to go hither and yon, or thusly, etc.). No one had thought you could use documents to build a massive picture, rather than focus on detail, using wordy precedents microscope-like. Why, it was almost like painting individual figures in a mural and watching them grow into a representative scene, with the big ones at the front and all the tiny wee fellows in the distance. Not that perspective or a written tradition is the end of the story in either case, but, you know….
Anyway, here’s the thing. They’d decided that, at some stage, The Past had grown into The Present, rather than both things having existed all at the same time in different myth-eras all along. Oh, do try and keep up! It was then they found they’d created more of a problem than a solution. How on God’s good Earth were they to deal with new documents that came along? There was no end to all the new history they’d allowed to be created with their antiquarian master-stroke!! They’d gone and created Novelty as well as Tradition. And it seems that, at the same time as the wigged ones were about their historical fictions, they were also creating false divisions between ‘fiction’ and ‘history’ that would last for at least 500 years. And that’s another reason why poor old Copey ain’t as original as people seem to think he is. He’s no right to call himself a modern antiquarian. Let’s all create more fictions from The Past without his implicit permission!! We are all antiquarians, every day of our listening lives.
Right, well. There was I, with a fixed view of how all this music I loved worked, and more of it coming at me every day through comps, downloads, old cassettes turning up down the backs of sofas, and every which way. But I was bored fitting all the new genre toons into the slots I had ready for ‘em. I was sick fed up of waiting, squatting like a perverted wicket keeper!!! “Dear oh dear”, I thought, “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s have a read of a book or something.”
Anyway, I’m all right now, which is the main thing.
See ya!!!!
Ed.
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