and debate goes on... part3

-- Primary Sources on the
International Performing Arts,
September-October,1979

Words: Igor (Steve Wright) + editing by Green. PART 3 of 3. Article continues from...| Part 1 | Part 2 |

Igor:

 In other words, you consider that the art world, in terms of paintings, sculptures and things was redundant, and you've now decided to operate in the context of beat music and you're coming across the same problems?

Green:

 No, different problems--we're finding the same language, the same ideology, the same fixed ideas of 'art', 'creativity' and the rest of it, being slid in wholesale, if you like.

Nial:

 It isn't us whizzing in from our enclave, our neighbourhood and making an intervention here--blip...blip...blip--it's us in the context of an interview coming to terms with some of the problems thrown up by that context--it's beholden on us to blow all the shit out of the way.

Green:

 I'm keen to watch it, at the very least; to win some space--you look at the situation in Europe, and this is the same as in New York, where art and beat music are one and the same thing--one big thing of punk, Fassbinder films and art galleries.

Igor:

 But what are you going to put in this 'ideological space' apart from criticism of what was previously in that space?

Green:

 I think very much that it will be replaced by discourse above pseudo-criticism, and criticism above yik-yak which is what it was usually full of. I think criticism's very, very...I don't think it has a history of being critical, there's something incredibly uncritical about the performing arts for instance, so there's the introduction of criticism, things critical...Paradigm crisis, that's one interesting way of approaching it, which is finding where the weakest area of rock ideology is and heading for it, working on the weakest point, or the point that is increasingly problematic for people...itchy bug-bears, playing on that a bit.

Igor:

 I can almost hear the rock press saying 'Scritti Politti...pretentious...'(whatever that may mean)...

Green:

 They usually say pretentious when a group is thought to be over-stepping the mark, when a group DARES to deem themselves able, or wanting to, talk about, or introduce something that isn't already mapped out. We might get hit with that one but fuck 'em.

Igor:

 Do you think you'll dodge being consigned to an ideological graveyard or ghetto by the press in the future?

Green:

 If you are to survive you have to become part of the industry, a necessary institution, an embodiment of a myth that needs to be trotted out by the rock press to support lumpen rock ideology--you have to end up like the Who or someone--there's nothing ever gonna shut them up or write them off. You maybe can transcend fashion/criticism by becoming an internal fixed reference point of that conservative yik-yak.

It's a fashion industry--an industry which you have to keep stimulating interest because you're not marketing soap which people are gonna need to buy every week--you're gonna have to keep persuading people that there are things they're missing out on, there are records they need to buy to construct themselves as certain sorts of individuals; which means that periodically groups are gonna have to be flushed away--and they're flushed away largely through the organs of the rock press, who are the means by which the fashion and consumerist aspects of things are articulated--and sure, we're gonna come a cropper on that too, directly or indirectly. It's something that needs fighting, not because we want to be a group that hangs around forever, but because people should have the right to be interested in us or not--without the mediation of a record company, or press which tells us our time is up y'know...'OK, thank you very much, we have to take your soap-box away', etc. We'll come a cropper on that. Language is also critically important in making sure that it's a fashion industry. The only way that coats become fashion items is through language, the way we talk about them. So rock needs the language...

Ian:

 It oversteps its language. No-one here would deny that they can derive 'fun' from rock 'n roll (whatever that might be) but the fact is that rock press oversteps that by reifying it to a set of beliefs that rock 'n roll is all about fun.

Green:

 It's a very repressed idea of fun as well.

Ian:

 There are instances where fun is great--it's an aspect of teenage rebellion. If you're 14 or 15 and presented with a set of long faces and dogmatic repressions fun is fucking great.

Green:

 But the NME, etc., will make sure you get your fun in a very repressed and limited way. This society allows certain forms of fun which are unproblematic, which have no 'jouissance' about them--harmless fun. The other thing that has to be got out of the way is the aspect of the ideology that says 'all we can do is predicate things of this music', 'it's everybody's job to make decisions about this music' and all this is largely based on taste, aesthetic formulations--which makes it an incredibly fucking mindless and passive activity for an audience--the consuming public. As a form of 'interest' or 'criticism' it expires quickly--it needs to move on to new subjects as opposed to new discourse. It limits the effectiveness of groups and 'audiences' alike if that discourse is primarily established in terms of comments, y'know: 'I like it', 'I don't like it', 'This is a bit too scratchy for me', 'It's too grating', 'It's too loud', 'It's not slick enough'--because it's completely unresolvable. All you can do is get tired of it--it's another venal enemy--it's tedious, boring, vicious--but getting away from it is very difficult.

Also, the rate at which history is made is different for the NME and people involved in it, the way they see history, and make it, is different from people elsewhere. God knows the rate at which 20th century history is being made for a panel-beater at Ford Dagenhams--it's probably slower than ours in chucking up problematics and ideas about going on and how history develops. An NME writer has a fast metabolism but that's necessary because he/she is part of something that needs to sell a weekly paper. But again that fast metabolism of consumerism and chatter is fucking horrible. There are aspects of the fast historical metabolism you can turn to your advantage possibly--in attempting to deal with a lengthening history of involvement in beat music (not a problem for us yet--or maybe ever). As you go on in the world, the more tracks you leave lying around that can be reified--that can be sorted into a pattern to typify and label you. It's why, for the moment, singles are better than albums because they're not taken as definitive historical statements--minor classics of genres or any of that shit. They're soon forgotten--and in part that can be useful. We'll try and fend off the 'modern music' ghetto.

Igor:

 You've dealt with problems that you've faced in the art world and the problems that present themselves by singing to a record company simultaneously by putting out your own single. But you're looking at the rock press as something that has to be tackled in the future. Couldn't you deal with that in the same way? In other words have your own press, or only give interviews to a magazine that will not act in that way, not have that language?

Green:

 I think one of the problems there is that the possibility of our staying in this 'conversation', our staying in this production and sorting out the problems requires that we get a kind of acknowledgement that it is going on from the rock press. Alternative presses are definitely something that would be favourite in attempting to break down the monolithic rock ideology, but at the same time I don't think we would ever say 'No, we wouldn't talk to the big three, etc'.

Tom:

 That's a problem of consumption. whereas with a DIY record you can have total control of how it sounds and how it is packaged you then put your product on offer in an already established market place, i.e. the means of distribution is already there--Rough Trade will get your records into the shops throughout the country. But if you try to tackle the press in the same way, sure, you can have total control over the text, layout, etc., but there's no parallel means of distribution...newsagents won't stock it, so you're limited to 'hip' bookshops and record shops, so only a handful of people get to see it.

Green:

 Actually, when I come to think of it, something we talked about a lot in the past was putting out some text or display to record shops, just to be pinned up on the wall, for instance...this week's Scritti Politti polemic, or issue, or a couple of pages of something in discussion that we thought was interesting, some way of making some linguistic or ideological stuff available...

Igor:

 The Rough Trade journal (if it comes out) will be interesting because the fanzines up to now haven't really been critical documents to any large extent. They've felt themselves to be part of a movement and they've interviewed bands in a very wide-eyed sort of way.

Green:

 They've operated from within the dominant ideology.

Ian:

 The trouble is that we're bearing the phrase 'The sins of the father are visits upon the children', we're bearing that at the moment, because we've all jumped into it, pretty much at the same point, and we've discovered that there's so much shit to be sorted out through, and we're aware of the fact that there's a danger of theorising and not having any objects for discussion. Not having alternative magazines or records there. But at the same time the more you probe into them the more you see the kind of nasty ramifications around making any move at all on the board. The fact that if you make the least move, it's going to have all these...kind of...upshots which you have very little control of, and that's the problems you have to work through. It's not problems that are your problems, it's the problems of the way it will inevitably be construed...be constructed.

Igor:

 The problem is the board itself, surely.

Green:

 Sure, but you either pack up your dominoes and go home or you decide to persevere with it.

Nial:

 No, you pack up your dominoes and get back into the domino box!

Green:

 You might as well stick with this kind of nasty board of the game, otherwise you...

Nial:

 You haven't got any other...

Green:

 There are no other...

Nial:

 But we're fucking here unfortunately!

Igor:

 Stuck with the domino ideology!

Green:

 You step outside the repressive ideology of the music business and wherever else you go you're gonna have the mainstream, the dominant, repressive ideology. You'll have it at Ford Dagenham's, you'll have it on the dole, you'll have it on the buses, you'll have it in all its quaint forms anyplace. There is no escape from it.

I personally think that this form of activity has got the potential to afford some way of going on that means that you can overcome a lot of the repression that characterises life otherwise.


...end of article