branding alienation with Tony Wilson

I recently watched Joy Division (2007, dir. Grant Gee), an exciting documentary that carries more intellectual heft than maybe any other film about a rock group.  Great interviews not just with the surviving band members and others who knew them, but also early followers who were deeply affected by the band's records and performance.  I'm struck, for instance by the insight (no pun intended) of graphic designer Jon Wozencraft into Joy Division's sound: it was the original "iPodded" music, a soundtrack of interiority and alienation well suited for navigating the abandoned landscapes and industries of 1970s Manchester.

And then there's the late Tony Wilson, whose charm, artistic principle, pretentiousness and frequent cluelessness are, as we had hoped, on full display. Wilson was famously eager to hang out with the young doers of Manchester, no matter how often or cruelly they expressed contempt for his class comfort, his fame as a TV personality, or his authority at Factory Records.  A 2002 BBC documentary coinciding with the release of 24 Hour Party People underscores how Wilson's genius for being in the right place at the right time required some tone-deafness to the uncomfortable asymmetry of social situations.

I can't write songs, I can't sing, I can't design, I can't book nightclubs. I don't do anything. I hang out with clever people for two reasons. One, I hang out with them because it excites me, and B, they can all blame me...

To be the guy who signed the cheque that paid for the labels on "Atmosphere" by Joy Division is actually such a privilege. And I kind of remain in awe of that sense of privilege. And I can be all flash and bullshitty and [makes scare quote gestures] the "twat" that is the popular image of whatever. But deep down inside, if that's the price you pay for being connected to this wonderful stuff...

Included in the Joy Division DVD extras is this interview excerpt where Wilson offers this explanation for Manchester's creative "regeneration."

Your city cannot be a derelict shithole if the young people of your town believe themselves to be, not the equal of Cardiff or Birmingham, but believe themselves—in that which is most important in the world, the creation of popular culture—to be better than Paris, Tokyo and L.A.

Wilson takes the long view on the city's endurance, perhaps understandably since he's ridden out Manchester's painful transformation from a declining industrial city to a post-industrial capital of pop music and football champions.  He's not alone, of course. His celebration of creative regeneration is increasingly the common wisdom among gurus of place-branding and the local governments they excite.

But his ironic reference to "death" notwithstanding, Wilson's upbeat assessment avoids an important truth about Manchester's influence on Joy Division: the city was symbol and source of an alienation that fueled the creative expressions of the young group. As music journalist and Joy Division writer Jon Savage observes, "In one of the interviews for the film, Tony Wilson made an impassioned case for Manchester’s future as a gleaming new technopolis. But this is only part of the story. In January 2008, a report issued by the think tank Centre for Cities found that Manchester was ‘England’s most unequal city’: in the centre, the employment rate was well below the national average. The city’s old duality – futuropolis v. ‘cesspit of human misery’ – still holds."

The tragedy of social, economic, and psychic alienation that lies at the genesis of so much musical creativity points to one reason why urban boosters' attempts to brand cities by their music scenes are so absurd.  Joy Division didn't form in order to raise Manchester's flag in contests of cool against other cities. Its members came together in order to escape Manchester and its life-draining confinements, if only through the 60 minutes of volume and adrenaline.  Not that they didn't romanticize Burroughs, Ballard, and other prophets of dystopia, nor that suicide isn't ultimately a stupid, selfish act for a father of a one-year-old girl. But the allure of urban decline—"grit as glamour," Richard Lloyd calls it in Neobohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City—is best enjoyed retrospectively by the fan, the music journalist, the artistic dilettante or the tourist.  For the local artists trapped in the city through no choice of their own, it's a legacy viewed at best appreciated the measured ambivalence of a prosperous middle age. 

Maybe that's the point.  What rock group today moves to a city to have their souls crushed? Most likely one with geographic options. Efforts to brand so-called musical cities paint over the scars cities inflicted on too many artists. If urban alienation is a crucible for art, its contradictions can't be resolved by a streetside plaque or walking tour.

adventures in arts-based urban revitalization: the RoboCop statue in Detroit

On February 7th, someone tweeted the mayor of Detroit with a passing thought: “Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky & Robocop would kick Rocky’s butt. He’s a GREAT ambassador for Detroit.”  The city’s mayor (and former NBA all star) Dave Bing replied, “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.” Thus an idea was born and, as these things happen, took off like wildfire.

First a Facebook group was set up with a name that couldn’t miss: Build a statue of RoboCop in Detroit.  Then a local art/technology community group donated a site on Roosevelt Park, in front of the derelict Michigan Central Station. A sculptor with experience in producing massive iron works for artists like Matthew Barney offered to oversee the statue’s creation.  The project would require money, an estimated $50,000, so an online fundraising effort was launched. In just eight days it raised about half its target; in one more day, it went over the top.  

Here, then, is a glimpse of what arts-based urban revitalization may look like in the age of the internet meme.  I’m of at least three minds on this topic.

Why not! A 1987 sci-fi action movie directed by Paul Verhoeven, “RoboCop” is loved by many for its mix of robots-on-steroids FX, social commentary, extreme violence, and cop-movie clichés.  If the film lacked the prophetic vision of “Blade Runner” or edge-of-your-seat pacing of “The Terminator” (both I and II), it compensated with its B-movie sensibility, trashy dialogue, and the cheesy-but-I-like-it look of its titular protagonist, played with just the right level of humor by Peter Weller. Gen Xers and Yers are likely to have seen the movie at least a half-dozen times in bits and parts; many a quote (“Well, give the man a hand!”) has been recited over bonghits and text messages. “RoboCop” puts Detroit on the map in a world where the culture of basic cable TV comprises the common frame of reference.  Sure, it’s not Detroit in its best light, but that’s not the film’s fault.

More to the point: a statue of RoboCop would be awesome! Yes, it takes a sense of humor to see that—but shouldn’t Detroit have pride in its willingness to laugh at itself? Imagine all the people who would travel just to see it! (As one funder wrote, “I will pilgrimage from Australia to see this statue, it will be one of the proudest moments of my life.”)

Why not? Because have you watched “RoboCop”? Closely? Does a city where police suppresion has had a hand in urban revolts since 1863 need another memorial to a cop, much less a fictional cyborg cop? Sure, the movie purports to take the little guy’s side with its story of a dedicated public servant besieged by a corrupt local power structure, but its drama—indeed, the emotional charge delivered by entire dystopian city genre of that era—draws upon a fucked-up conventional wisdom in which America’s urban crisis stems from the deterioration of social order and decency among the urban population. The fearful gaze that frames the viewer’s perspective in “RoboCop” is deracialized in some respects (for instance, the ruthless criminal boss is played by the white dad from That ‘70s Show), but in the real world its object is unquestionably a black face. In this sense, “RoboCop” hates Detroit’s majority population as much as the racist cops who started the 1967 riots did.

And $50,000 for a statue?! How many hungry people could be fed, how many after-school programs could be funded, how many small businesses could stay afloat with that kind of money?

Why this isn’t really about Detroit at all. In truth, I don’t know enough about the people behind the RoboCop statue or their opponents to assign them these contrasting viewpoints. I confess that whenever I read about community development via “the creative use of digital technology and the arts,” I’m tempted to project the gentrification framework on them: they are the outsiders, dispossessing the locals of their own cultural representations (if not their actual homes, which were probably taken from them long before). But in this case, I don’t know who is newcomer and who is old-timer. The statue’s proponents hail from the creative class, hardly the principled opponents of gentrification, but they advocate an uplift of and upgrading for Detroit that’s desperately needed. Maybe the statue will really set in motion the virtuous circle that one organizer envisioned:

Beyond the statue even, there's every chance that this crowd funding experience will go on to kickstart the kickstarting of other amazing things in Detroit. Imagine that? Your kickstarting of a RoboCop statue cascades into greater positivity and more connections coming into Detroit...

 

Personally, I don’t find the joke made by the RoboCop statue to a particularly mean-spirited one. It’s kind of funny, and I’ve had a few good chuckles sharing the story of the RoboCop statue with friends and colleagues.  It is, however, not a joke being told by Detroiters. That is, the background of experiences and worldviews its humor draws upon isn’t Detroit. It’s the teenage world of late-night TV, beer and bonghits, and B-movie sci-fi/action fandom.

In a smart and compelling review essay, John Patrick Leary situates recent photography and documentaries of Detroit’s scarred landscape within a genre of ruin porn. “All the elements are here,” Leary writes (with specific reference in this quote to Julien Temple’s documentary “Requiem For Detroit?”): 

the exuberant connoisseurship of dereliction; the unembarrassed rejoicing at the “excitement” of it all, hastily balanced by the liberal posturing of sympathy for a “man-made Katrina;” and most importantly, the absence of people other than those he calls, cruelly, “street zombies.” The city is a shell, and so are the people who occasionally stumble into the photographer’s viewfinder.

Not all Detroit aesthetes subscribe to the ghoulish fetishism of this genre. These days, “well-meaning defenders of the city’s possibilities,” Leary explains, “are often politically active, often young, and, it should be noted, often white. This class of Detroit story chronicles Detroit’s possibilities, with a heavy emphasis on art and urban agriculture on abandoned land.”

I’m not sure which side the proponents of the RoboCop statue fall on, but in either case what both views on Detroit share is the “evacuation of context”: real histories and community relations are traded out for the particular obsessions of the beholder. With the RoboCop statue, the cultural references of the college dorm-room now constitute a strategy for arts-based urban revitalization. (That, and the internet-based fundraising technique of “crowd funding.”)  The self-serving, narcissistic thrust of creative-class politics, so often just below the surface of proposals to create bike lanes or questions about “what would Jane Jacobs do?", now appears to huff the fumes of 80s nostalgia and adolescent humor. Where is the ‘real’ Detroit in this picture?

teaching musical urbanism

As you may know, this blog runs in tandem with a team-taught undergraduate seminar I teach at Vassar College with Hua Hsu.  We're four weeks into the semester now, and I'm excited by the multidisciplinary group of students we have in the course.  In case you're interested in what a course on musical urbanism looks like, here's the schedule of topics and readings.  

Do take a glance at the "recommended media" sections for each week.  Among other things, it's ridiculous how many great music documentaries we've found on the internet; truly, the amount of bootleg documentary uploading going on is accelerating rapidly.  This one arrived YouTube just three days ago, serendipitously in time for next week's seminar readings on Detroit.

Hua and I have also organized a small series of campus events in conjunction with the class that the Vassar College student newspaper just wrote about.  Very much looking forward to the lectures by sociologist/blogger Oliver Wang and music journalist Dave Tompkins. 

singing in Tahrir Square

Words can hardly convey the magnitude of this historic moment in Egypt, or of my awe and admiration at the people's achievement in forcing the dictator out nonviolently. So no essay today. Instead, the sights and songs of the joyful crowds in Egypt's streets. To get a feel for what it might sound like in Tahrir Square, why not play all these clips simultaneously?

uncovering the underground: Ladbroke Grove

As someone who’s been seeking out underground rock music for over 25 years, punk rock really fucked me up. Specifically, the punk rock dogma I internalized by reading the English music weekly New Musical Express religiously between 1983-85. Punk rock in England was largely over in these years, unless you were talking about groups like Crass or Discharge, which the NME almost never did. It was more likely to cover the “hardcore” scene coming out of America, by which it meant Black Flag and Husker Du but also Swans (?) and Sonic Youth (?!). Still, in dozens of articles about the Fall, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cabaret Voltaire, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and so on, the punk rock commandments passed down to the post-punk generation came through loud and clear:

• punk rock destroys bloated rock dinosaurs and pop stars
• guitar solos and ten-minute overtures are for public school toffs
• punk rockers hate long-haired hippies and their music
• 50s rock’n’roll and 60s R&B are the only old music worth paying attention to
• no 70s music before punk rock is any good—reggae excepted

Not that these statements weren’t true in many regards, but the burning-bridges aesthetic that places the Sex Pistols at Year One for music of any worth (i.e., music that the NME wrote about) erased any sense of historical context or cultural precedent for punk rock for me. Over the last 10-15 years, I’ve filled in the blanks with music criticism, music history, and the tidal wave of reissued albums featuring the bands and sounds that came before punk. Periodicals like Mojo and Arthur have also contributed valiantly, as have prolific archivists like Julian Cope (who has tirelessly and breathlessly documented the underground in Germany, Japan, even Denmark). Nevertheless, I still get a shock whenever I discover bygone scenes with fully developed aesthetics that are underground in the way that punk rock is, but which aren’t “punk rock.”

Currently I’m fascinated with the west London neighborhood of Ladbroke Grove. Its countercultural cachet today comes largely via its association with the Portobello Road Market, which runs on the parallel street, and the annual Notting Hill Carnival. But in the late 60s and 70s Ladbroke Grove was the main enclave for Britain’s drug-gobbling freaks (please, don’t call us hippies).  The comparison to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury has been made more than once, but the imminent explosion of punk rock all around London, particularly west London, casts the cultural impact of Ladbroke Grove in a more radical light.  The neighborhood was the base for countercultural journals like International Times and Oz, and even a UK chapter of White Panther Party. Needless to say, bands from Ladbroke grove waved the freak flag particularly high.

 

Probably the first freak band was the Deviants, who symbolized a new radical faction in London’s psychedelic underground. Their 1967 debut Ptooff was a key album, a jarring, in-your-face break with the village-green whimsy of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd and other, more prominent psychedelic groups from Britain. “For those who were ready to live in squats, fight policemen and radically alter their lives, music was important more for its message than its artistic qualities,” recounted Joe Boyd in White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. “Leading the radical faction was Mick Farren,” the Deviants’ frontman and today a prolific writer/journalist.

The Pretty Things started a couple years earlier as one of the many UK bands inspired by the blues (the “uglier cousins of the Rolling Stones,” the press called them) before developing a more epic, psychedelic style. Critical consensus deems their 1968 album S.F. Sorrow the band’s classic; on this album, they enlisted Twink, drummer from the hard-hitting R&B band Tomorrow, who then joined…

… the Pink Fairies. A self-styled British counterpart to the MC5, the Fairies played a grizzled boogie that hasn’t aged very well but has its undeniable charms. They were one of Ladbroke Grove’s cherished “community bands” or “people’s bands,” playing free concerts in the street or outside major rock festivals like Glastonbury. Larry Wallis, their last frontman, went on to join the first version of Motörhead with Lemmy, after he was kicked out of…

… Hawkwind. The other “people’s band,” Hawkwind are undoubtedly the most famous group to come from Ladbroke Grove. They were fluent in a number of post-60s psychedelic styles, from free-form freakouts to the-snot-has-caked-upon-my-pants acoustic odes to elves-and-warlords sci-fi/fantasy tales (particularly when writers Michael Moorcock and Robert Calvert joined the band). It’s their driving, droning proto-metal, however, that has secured Hawkwind’s legend, providing the template (and the titular song) for Lemmy’s next band Motörhead as well.

I’d be the first to admit my cluelessness on the subject, which is why Rich Deakin’s Keep it Together! Cosmic Boogie with the Deviants and the Pink Fairies is at the top of my reading list, but it seems the influence of the Ladbroke Grove underground on punk rock has only recently been acknowledged. Punk’s exclusion of long-haired hippies from the domain of radical cultural and political revolt is still tenacious, informing the aesthetic common sense of music thrill-seekers from my generation.  Has it taken punk rock’s final transformation into just another lifestyle brand to end its monopoly on rock’n’roll transgression and let other voices and communities from the underground be heard again?

gathering no moss with Keith Richards

The beginning of the new semester has kept me from posting recently. Well, that and the excellent distraction provided by Keith Richards’ autobiography, Life. So much fun to read, and so much food for thought for someone who’s admittedly not the world’s biggest Stones fan.

One theme that emerges loud and clear is his cosmopolitanism. Raised as an adventurous but not particularly distinguished boy in suburban London whose iconic celebrity is thrust upon him by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, historically speaking, Keef enjoys the ride with eyes wide open. He’s “the stranger” of Georg Simmel’s 1908 essay, who “is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of ‘objectivity’… composed of distance and nearness, indifference and involvement.” As an anecdote from the Stones’ first US tour in 1964 illustrates:

Most towns, like white Nashville, for example, by ten o’clock were ghost towns. We were working with black guys, the Vibrations, Don Bradley, I think his name was. The most amazing act, they could do everything. They were doing somersaults while they were playing. “What are you going to do after the show?” This is already an invitation. So, get in the cab and we go across the tracks and it’s just starting to happen. There’s food going, everybody’s rocking and rolling, everybody’s having a good time, and it was such a contrast from the white side of town, it always sticks in my memory. You could hang there with ribs, drink, smoke. And big mamas, for some reason they always looked upon us as thin and frail people. So they started to mama us, which was all right with me. Shoved into the middle of two enormous breasts… “You need a rubdown, boy?” “OK, anything you say, mama.” Just the free-and-easiness of it. You wake up in a house full of black people who are being so incredibly kind to you, you can’t believe it. I mean, shit, I wish this happened at home. And this happened in every town. You wake up, where am I? And there’s a big mama there, and you’re in bed with her daughter, but you get breakfast in bed. [pp. 161-2]

If Keith goes everywhere with the Stones, at the same time he goes nowhere. He shows no particular connection to a particular place. Music, culture, friends, and family influence him deeply, but he doesn’t seem to carry a particular city in his head throughout his life.  True to the band’s name, Keith is the proverbial rolling stone that gathers no moss, the rootless cosmopolitan that enflamed Stalin’s fevered brain (or, in the case of Life, two-bit police across the western world). His roaming lifestyle resurfaced recently when this 1977 missive from William Burroughs to Brion Gysin showed up on the internet:

 

Of course, the influence of place needn’t be sentimental, the “hometown” of memory. (Indeed, among other things Life adds to the growing body of 20th-century literature that conveys what a miserable country post-WWII England could be, a place truly worth escaping.) Place can have a less visible, more practical effect on our consciousness, as urban sociologist Ian Michael Borer writes: “The ways that people make sense of the world they live in, once lived in, or hope to build are tied to the places where they practice their culture.”

From this perspective, at least one place does leave its stamp on Keith: the British art college. This is an institution that has intrigued me and so many other Americans, first, because it has no real U.S. counterpart; it isn’t (or at least wasn’t) the MFA-granting art college that American students apply to today. From what I can tell, the British art school thrived as a secondary educational destination for non-academic-minded British students from the post-WWII period through the 80s, when its curricula and its credential system was integrated into the conventional academia of university education. Instead, at 16 years old British kids like Keith could follow this third, less routinized path between traditional college and the “secondary modern” (an analogue to the American BOCES), presumably to gain skills in design and advertisement. In fact, most of the cultural training that art school students received occurred outside the formal classroom, as Keith attests:

I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t been expelled from Dartford [Tech] and sent to art college. There was a lot more music than art going on at Sidcup [Art College], or any of the other art colleges in south London that were turning out suburban beatniks—which is what I was learning to be… It was a pretty lax routine. You did your classes, finished your projects and went to the john, where there was this little hangout-cloakroom, where we sat around and played guitar. That was what really gave me the impetus to play, and at that age you pick up stuff at speed. There were loads of people playing guitar there. The art colleges produced some notable pickers in that period when rock and roll, UK-style, was getting under way. [pp. 67, 68-9]

The heyday of British art schools over roughly three decades coincided with the explosion of cultural production in Britain associated with “Swinging London,” among other things. And of course, it yielded too many British rock musicians to count, Keith Richards being possibly the first one of significant note. Here, maybe, is a formative setting for cultural practice and status attainment—an urbanism for the placeless, peripatetic British rock star.