Watching the Royal Wedding the other day got me thinking about The Sex Pistols & the Queens Jubilee back in the 1970’s.
It made me think about how pasteurised our culture has become.
Am I wrong… but is there currently any Band, DJ or Act who are that subversive, who are part of a movement? Who can create the cultural agitation that might equal that?
With X Factor… Popstars… and even DJ’s & Producers. What do people stand for that means something?
What is the purpose / message that various people have? Why is it not important anymore? Media / Money obviously acts as the sh!tfilter here & thats why it probably doesnt happen nowadays. People are far more interested in being successful & measuring that success in €$£’s than anything else.
Sure - Illegal DL’s have forces many to not expect a living from Music sales… so maybe its harder to get the cash than before… but wheres the passion?
Isnt that a bad thing?
Is it still out there? Who has got it & whats the message?
Is anyone possible of something similar to what the Sex Pistols & all the other (better) political bands did back in the 70’s / 80’s… maybe even 90’s?
Or have I missed out on 20 years of social change somewhere?
Wheres the attitude gone that inspires this change?
There are many bands who stand up for a purpose or movement but they never reach many people due to the media pumping this linear crap to us we are becoming so linear with this mainstream stuff that music with a purpose never sees the light of day…people don’t look for good music they simply turn on their radio and listen to the crap they’re playing…
yeah, that’s another thing. I’m sure if you sat down and looked you’d find hundreds of bands like this but because of the garbage they’re trying to get to sell these days, the radio won’t play any of it.
also, you can’t just say “RATM - 90’s”, if you look at the dates on those articles you’ll see they’re still around today and just as active as they used to be, so that’s gotta count for something.
Thats grand. We now need examples of new people from the last 10 years…
[quote]gedeon (30/04/2011)[hr]also, you can’t just say “RATM - 90’s”, if you look at the dates on those articles you’ll see they’re still around today and just as active as they used to be, so that’s gotta count for something.[/quote]
welll dance music based around commercial niteclubs etc is essentially a hedonistic pursuit unlikely to be a harbinger of social change or the type of thing you mean
however around the periphery of the dance music scene there are lots of people putting on small/free nights / starting labels / making music independently
which is along the lines of the DIY ethic engendered by the later punk scene
steve jones famously used to nick guitars and amps from other peoples gigs, as did shaun ryders dad. This was considered to be prt of their outlaw cool. The pistols would rip off chuck berry songs and the mondays ripped off everybody.
Both bands were f**kin ace. the mondays were punk but not “Punk”
now guys get a computer rip some software and make their own twist on deadmau5/hawtin/scuba
they might not realise it but they have been influenced by punk.
the free party movement of the 90s emerged when the rave scene merged with the
traveller/punk scene
there are still squats and free parties going on. there has been a big crackdown recently round england on all the squats in the lead up to the royal wedding
but politics is different now the pistols came about in the context of the late 70s when trade union power was high and there were strikes and a lot more sloganeering
the thatcher / blair / reagan years changed all that - unions are a shadow of themselves. “repetitive beats” became enshrined in law as dangerous for people to gather together to dance along to. if that doesnt make dance music political i dunno what does.
but politics is different now - there is a wider realisation that the personal is political
yes there are huge demos and people shouting slogans but now people take everyday actions in the course of their normal lives which have a cumulative political effect
stuff like boycotting certain companies
in that sense bands spouting empty slogans are a bit of an anachronism these days, yer more likely to get them donating money from a gig to a certain organisation or sumthin like that.
It’s pretty hard to have a political message with dance music as most of it is instrumental. No words, no message. Can’t engender firey righteousness in the audience if they can’t scream along with the lyrics.
Besides dance music is designed as a release of energy in a purely happy way. Now you could organise a gig where some tents had polemic being spouted and others had dance music in but it’d be a strange mix wouldn’t it?
Funnily enough I see Lady Gaga as being somewhat subversive. Perhaps she engineered her look for purely commercial reasons perhaps it’s her look because, as an artist, that’s her identity. But if you’d brought her along to the likes of Cowell before she was famous, he’d have likely re-styled her as it’s not a look you’d expect the mainstream to want to emulate.
but look at the london acid techno scene for example and free parties
thats all the same people who were in squats and went to (and prob still go to ) crass gigs and the like
but the political element isnt in slogan shouting but in personal actions
whether its livin in squats or DIY culture - allotments / gigs stuff like that
a big part of punk / alternative years ago was having indie labels
“indie” is now thought of as a a genre of guitar music rather than a way of doing things but there are literally thousands of independent dance labels springing up all the time, many times more than there were in the 80s heyday of indie/punk when there were a lot but mostly they were quite big label in terms of what exists now
as the means of music production have been disseminated so the “old” model of music labels etc of the last century has become obsolete
we are now moving back to where musicians have to ply their trade in gigs to earn a living rather than making records
thats how most musicians made their living for thousands of years
if you wanted to stay at home instead of being a wandering minstrel you were f**ked basically.
All spot on. Agree with all you said there. Especially with the whole Punk ethic thing & DM being subjected to Law etc…
I think what I’m trying to do is v.difficult here, trying to compare like with like. You are right… its more complicated than black & white.
Just to give an example from here: I see in Ireland, where the Banks / Government - yada, yada, yada… did what they did & there wasnt the uprising or social agitation that would would have expected.
Theres job losses, rising prices, emmigration AND the country owes close to a Trillion (will be more), and people are widely acceping it.
I think there would have been far more fight in people 20, 30 years ago. I dont think people give a fck about anything other than themselves for the most part. Theres less communtity spirit & more individualism.
People might be more informed & finally realise that McDonalds is sh!t food. Or boycott DeBeers Diamonds… and know that Michael Jackson did whatever… but they fail to get a hard for the thought of their grandkids inheriting all of their debt.
The point I’m trying to make is that its different now. If there is something still going on, its fragmented & not as powerful as their predecessors back in the day. I think people have really changed.
I think people are cleverer in this day and age. Now people realise that it doesnt matter what you do or try to do, the powers that be will always win in the end…
Also no offense but these hippy people fighting the system living in squats and squallor thinking their great for not paying taxes and not paying rent or gas/electric etc… well why bwould anyone want to live like that? Sitting around doing drugs, not worked a day in their lives and constantly ‘fighting’ something. My experience is they do more talking about fighting something than actuall fighting. Also i dont think anyone really wants this type of lifestyle unless your a no good jobless lazy bum…
[quote]jjdejong0 (01/05/2011)[hr]I think people are cleverer in this day and age. Now people realise that it doesnt matter what you do or try to do, the powers that be will always win in the end…[/quote]
You won’t be surprised that I have been reading this thread with a lot of interest as most people here probably can suss out I am a bit of a rebel myself
I’ll get back to you on this as it will probably be a long essay
[quote]slender (01/05/2011)[hr]You won’t be surprised that I have been reading this thread with a lot of interest as most people here probably can suss out I am a bit of a rebel myself
I’ll get back to you on this as it will probably be a long essay
Just to give an example from here: I see in Ireland, where the Banks / Government - yada, yada, yada… did what they did & there wasnt the uprising or social agitation that would would have expected.
Theres job losses, rising prices, emmigration ANDthe country owes close to a Trillion (will be more), and people are widely acceping it.
