The Next Amendment to the Constitution

For me, the great danger to the arts lies in its commercialization for the sake of business.  Here, the enormous task for the artist is to be able to control, to review, and to change if something is artistically doubtful.  One of the greatest psychological, educational and, finally, artistic errors of nowadays is to confuse terms and their meanings, such as "music" (as an art), "entertainment music" and "entertainment" itself.  The latter, besides the popular sense of the word, may also represent a spiritual action, a mind's efforts, even hardships.  (Thus, life itself may be the best entertainment.  However, as Oscar Wilde says, "Life is a beautiful theatre, only the repertoire is so poor.")

Let us try to clear this jungle-like state.  Any music ceases to be an art when used for an extra-musical purpose.  Therefore, a waltz of Strauss, for instance, may be perceived in two ways: one--as pure musical art, listened to as a sheer musical composition:  two--as a background for business and sociable relations.  There is no major social problem (still, there is always an aesthetic!) if a person uses both "musics" at his own will.

But there is a social crime if we all are surrounded in a pseudo-musical envelop in all public places, hotels, lobbies, elevators, banks, restaurants, planes, waiting rooms, etc., etc., not to mention all the radio and television commercials.  First of all, it represents an intrusion of our privacy, and I loudly call for a serious action on the highest level.  I sincerely hope this will be the next amendment to the Constitution.

Secondly it is a psychological error, this lulling and stupefying of our thoughts and imagination (almost becoming a slogan: "Don't think--we think for you.") Thirdly, it dulls our senses, making them insensitive to any musical sound.  Fourthly, it injects into our blood only certain formulas of early 19th-century harmony, thereby forming an obvious block in our artistic capacity.  Worst of all, our children sip it simultaneously with mother's milk.

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski from Seeking the Infinite, by Frederick Harris

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59.
Behind the glitter of the spectacle's distractions, modern society lies in thrall to the global domination of a banalizing trend that also dominates it at each point where the most advanced forms of commodity consumption have seemingly broadened the panoply of roles and objects available to choose from.  The vestiges of religion and of the family (still the chief mechanism for the passing on of class power), and thus too the vestiges of the moral repression that these institutions ensure, can now be seamlessly combined with the rhetorical advocacy of pleasure in this life.  The life in question is after all produced solely as a form of pseudo-gratification which still embodies repression.  A smug acceptance of what exists is likewise quite compatible with a purely spectacular rebelliousness, for the simple reason that dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economics of affluence finds a way of applying its production methods to this particular raw material

Guy Debord, The Society of the Specatcle, Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith

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60.
Media stars are spectacular representations of living human beings, distilling the essence of the spectacle's banality into images of possible roles.  Stardom is a diversification in the semblance of life--the object of an identification with mere appearance which is intended to compensate for the crumbling of directly experienced diversifications of productive activity.  Celebrities figure various styles of life and various views of society which anyone is supposedly free to embrace and pursue in a global manner.  Themselves incarnations of the inaccessible results of social labor, they mimic by-products of that labor, and project these above labor so that they appear as its goal.  The by-products in question are power and leisure -- the power to decide and the leisure to consume which are the alpha and the omega of a process that is never questioned.  In the former case, government power assumes the personified form of the pseudo-star; in the second, stars of consumption canvas for votes as pseudo-power over life lived.  But, just as none of these celestial activities are truly global, neither do they offer any real choices.

ibid

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The (black) president of the United States honoring the very British remains of Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy Center...that really did happen, right?  That is the remains of Led Zeppelin there in tuxedos and important, official looking sashes, isn't it?

I guess by Stairway to Heaven time (ooh, don't play it backwards!) Led Zeppelin had just about stolen all the American Black music there was to steal, and by that point they were deep into hobbits and trolls and all the rest, so I guess we should all be relieved we didn't have to hear the Wilsons (or the soulful choir in cute little hats) demanding someone squeeze her lemon until the juice ran down her leg.

Maybe it is true that there is nothing so bad that it can't get worse--though the above spectacle puts that notion to the test.  Either way, a fantastic new low with which to begin 2013.

For the two or three of you who read this blog, you may already know I've brought my brand of fun to freejazz-stef.blogspot.com.  There, I do my part, mixing good deeds and punishment.  Like this blog, that blog is the result of donated labor (the good deed part) and so to the readers and the senders-in of cd's keep in mind you get what you pay for (the punishment part.)

The narcissist part of me wants to act as ballast to the light-weight everything's groovy sentiment there in the land of mostly 4 and 5 star reviews.  What the world needs now is more 1 and 2 star reviews of 1 and 2 star recordings says my inner, mildly autistic, addicted to truth telling self.

Then, part of me (the let's get serious about art-business by doing exactly what everyone else does part of me) says why not roll on to my back and, into the air sissy an unrelenting stream of brilliant warm positivism?  Why not be part of the new media mandate of all boosterism, all the time, always?  Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy center...sure, why not?  Certainly Led Zeppelin could use a little more time at the trough, and since America takes such good care of American artists, why shouldn't all that surplus good will go to an off shore corporate entity as needy and relevant as Led Zeppelin?  Yes Mr. Plant, it brought a tear to my eye too.  Besides, I'm sure Margaret Thatcher is hard at work organizing a celebration of Moby Grape's place in British culture at the Winston Churchill centre for Arts Excellence in Buckingham Palace. 

The nagging question (my nagging question, anyway) is who get's chosen to wear the special sash?  Who get's chosen for poll position at the trough?  Who does the choosing?  Who chooses the choosers?  Who holds the key that winds up Big Ben?

I'm seeing it in "This Music"--the relentless boosterism for a select cohort.  I'm seeing this boosterism for this select cohort morphing into bald faced corporate welfare.  Does anyone else see it?  Does anyone else feel the feeling that we need to kill the pig to save it's life?  Anyone else a little uneasy with the rate at which the art-capitalist is able to commodify dissatisfaction?  Does anyone else give a fuck in light of the larger, more pressing problems defining "our" social conditions?

Are the managers and minders of culture (or Spectacle if you like) aware of this, and in this chaos, taking the opportunity to anaesthetize our consciousness and critical facilities even further with an accelerated stream of 70 minute boluses of forgettable music by a small, select group of "artists?"  Is forgettable music from a close knit, select group all "we" have to offer--or is it all "we" deserve?

End Of Long Count Calendar Best Of List

What, were you expecting something miraculous from the Mayans at the stroke of 12:01am?

For all you (and I) know, we got the stroke...it's just going to take a while to work itself out.

In the mean, a best of list.  2012 wasn't such a great year (and 2013 doesn't look like it's going to be much better).  A top 5 in no particular order, is all I got.


Sir Sambo!

When is Youtube going to get a MacArthur grant?  When is Youtube going to get the congretional medal of honor?  An honorary Doctorate?  A jewel encrusted tiara?  Youtube, like its predecessor television, really is the best friend a person can have.

Who else was going to introduce me to Sir Sambo?  Goddamn I love that Youtube.  I love all vehicles of sharing, really. 

Sir Sambo, thank you for your selections!


Lebenden Toten!

I don't know why, I don't care why, I just know I love Lebenden Toten.  I loved Atrocious Madness before them.  What I love about them (and by "them" I am referring to their music) is how it makes me feel.  It really is something how music can make us feel feelings--familiar and alien.

If I told you I've felt more (enjoyable) feelings listening to Lebenden Toten than I have listening to Mahler, would you respect me even less?

I love this video, too.  It's as perfect a visualization of the music as any. Yes, yes, what the world needs now is an IMAX movie of the Rolling Stones in Space, but when it comes to participation and the ability to make one's statement in the music video genre, all are welcome. 


Marco Eneidi

Oh that Marco.  Still a motherfucker on the horn after all these years.  If you need that explained to you with words, there's more than enough to read all over the internets--not that you need to be told that.

The above video is from Mexico.  I don't know why that excites me more than say a video of Marco playing with an inaudible no-input mixing boardist from Lichtenstein, but it does.  While it's not my primary interest to delineate between "European" and "American", there are more than a few instances when the ensembles sound betrays their identity.  For many reasons (none the least of which being my savagery, low I.Q., and compromised morality) I have always favoured the "American" sound.

Mexico has always struck me as "America Plus."  Isn't the richest man in the world Mexican?  Isn't Mexican drug violence making American drug violence look like flag-football?  Isn't Mexican food tastier than "American" food?

While I think it would be a pity for Canada, America and Mexico to meld into a three flagged wal-mart of super exploitation, I also think (based in part on the above video) that the combination of Mexico and "This Music" is likely to yield fantastic results far in excess of those resulting from the combination of Canada and this music.

But then who knows...perhaps Mexico will out do even the United States when it comes to non-support of its artists. The bigger the front, the bigger the back, after all.

Ok, so that's three...um...I'm trying here...You all saw the Snoop Lion video for La La La, right?  Well, here comes the KING



HATE ALL YOU WANT my lords, for ye shall be "smoked like papers."

And what better to burn them haters than with Lighters Up?


Free Jazz in Mexico, Rasta consciousness live and direct from the epicentre of West Coast hip hop, cats and dogs, apples and oranges...

Lastly, how do I say this so everyone can understand....Ni Kantu!

That's right, the blog of Clifford Allen.  A wonderful writer and all around smart guy on the side of good.

Feelings: I feel like the blog thing might have "peaked" from the glories of 2007-2008-2009.  Tweets, grunts, "Myface" (as my neighbour calls it) and, I dunno, sustained economic faltering have all taken a toll on that once slightly more rich landscape.

But Clifford is keeping it real, sifting through mountains of music, going to events and sharing the good word and he hasn't turned into a jaundice cynical prick.  How does he do it?

If bloggers are a part of the This Music food chain, then we should all stop by his fine site and let him know we care.

And there you go.  2012--buh bye! 

Improvisation Saves The Day / Evasion by Regression

 Music has become comic in the present phase primarily because something so completely useless is carried on with all the visible signs of the strain of serious work. By being alien to solid people, music reveals their alienation from one another, and the consciousness of alienation vents itself in laughter. In music--or similarly in lyric poetry--the society which judged them comic becomes comic. But involved in this laughter is the decay of the sacral spirit of reconciliation. All music today can very easily sound as Parsifal did to Nietzsche's ear. It recalls incomprehensible rites and surviving masks from an earlier time, and is provocative nonsense. The radio which both wears out music and overexposes it, makes a major contribution to this. Perhaps a better hour may at some time strike even for the clever fellows: one in which they may demand instead of prepared materials ready to be switched on, the improvisatory displacement of things, as the sort of radical beginning that can only thrive under the protection of the unshaken real world. Even discipline can take over the expression of free solidarity if freedom becomes its content. As little as regressive listening is a symptom of progress in consciousness of freedom, it could suddenly turn around if art, in unity with the society, should ever leave the road of the always-identical...

What is worn out yields pliantly to the improvising hand; the used parts win a second life as variants. Just as the chauffeur's knowledge of his old second-hand car can enable him to drive it punctually and unrecognized to its intended destination, so can the expression of a beat-up melody, straining under the pressure of clarinets and oboes in the upper register, arrive at places which the approved musical language could never safely reach. Such music really crystallizes the whole, into which it has incorporated the vulgarized fragments, into something new, yet it takes its material form from regressive listening...

The terror which Schoenberg and Webern spread, today as in the past, comes not from their incomprehensibility but from the fact that they are all too correctly understood. Their music gives form to that anxiety, that terror, that insight into the catastrophic situation which others merely evade by regressing. They are called individualists, and yet their work is nothing but a single dialogue with the powers which destroy individuality--powers whose "formless shadows" fall gigantically on their music. In music, too, collective powers are liquidating an individuality past saving, but against them only individuals are capable of consciously representing the aims of collectivity.

Adorno, the same essay as all the others.

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Adorno--supporting "This Music" before it was "This Music."

At some point, perhaps once the doorknobs are fixed, I'll figure out the proximity of this essay to Adorno's Quasi una Fantasia and the great essay therein Vers une Musique Informelle--which also, if you squint your mind--could be all about our beloved music.

Of the many sadnesses meditated upon in this humble blog, that Adorno couldn't have heard Dixon's complete trajectory is near the top of the sadness pile.

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Music has become comic in the present phase primarily because something so completely useless is carried on with all the visible signs of the strain of serious work.

Serious work.  Is music serious work?  Is music important?  I go back and forth on this one.  At present, I'm more feeling like music is a symptom (like a rash, swollen tongue or hair loss) of something else.  Class station, traumas endured in childhood, geographic location, astrological sign...any number of things. 

Right now, the "what" of one's voice is seems inescapable.  How that negates the notion of the "seriousness" in elaborating and polishing one's voice for production purposes (ultimately, or as a byproduct of the "lifestyle") I'm not exactly sure.  I am sure that there is an increasing feeling of inner unease regarding the "work" of music as being any more or less "serious" than any other work.  If I spend 23 hours a day playing Giant Steps backwards in the key of H at 400 bpm and you spend 23 hours a poking cows in the ass with a stick in the freezing cold and/or rain, who's work is more serious?  Who is more serious about their work?  

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if art, in unity with the society, should ever leave the road of the always-identical

"The road of the always-identical."  This is why we love Adorno.  Just about sums it up.  Stay tuned for more of your favorite hits from the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's!  The same fucking shit for one half of one century.  Yes, yes, 1950 to 1970 was more musical evolution and growth in 20 years than the previous 200.  It also seems to have set the standard for the next 200 to follow, until the next mega spurt comes along.  The road of the always identical, spilling out before us for an eternity, with a Subway Subway Subway every 50 miles.

A recent trip to dear old Portland revealed an instance of a municipal utility partnering with those residents who live around a field owned by said utility.  In exchange for a small modicum of committee based paper-trail accountability, this utility has given significant capital to make what was once an unsavory place of nefariousness into an inviting place of restored ecological functionality complete with fruit trees, gardens, shade trees, bee hives, composts, water run-off bio swales and the like.  This is where Portland really leads the continent. 

Portland lags along with the rest of the "civilized world" in it's relationship to art in that it too is addicted to the always identical.  "Art's" orgonotic pulse in Portland is no stronger or more special than that of anywhere else.  What sets Portland apart Art-wise is the convenient mass transit to and from the venues and a relatively lax parent culture that permits the weekly rags to be as potty mouth as they please.  The weekly rags respond as you might expect them too--like Pat Boone singing Crazy Train.  But they do shake their poms furiously for the home team.  That pays dividends to be sure.  And dividends are their own form of control.  Like Snausages.  And so, once again, away we go on the rainy leaf covered road of the always identical feeling smug and rad on our single speed track bikes with the wind whistling through our ear disk tube things...

What if art, in unity with society, were to really link arms and leave the road of the always identical?  What if the City of Portland (tm) were to really really put the call out?  What if the City of Portland (tm) were to really really put it's municipal might behind that "Art" which strayed from the always identical?  How WEIRD (tm) would Portland be then?

Is it possible to have an artful city with no prevailing, hegemonic "style" other than the "human" or "functional?"  Would that be great or would it be a nightmare?

asking

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so can the expression of a beat-up melody, straining under the pressure of clarinets and oboes in the upper register, arrive at places which the approved musical language could never safely reach. Such music really crystallizes the whole, into which it has incorporated the vulgarized fragments, into something new, yet it takes its material form from regressive listening...

Sounds to me like he's talking about Cookin' at the Plugged Nickel.

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The terror which Schoenberg and Webern spread, today as in the past, comes not from their incomprehensibility but from the fact that they are all too correctly understood. Their music gives form to that anxiety, that terror, that insight into the catastrophic situation which others merely evade by regressing.

(Even) Homer Simpson knows exactly what time it is.  The hatred of "This Music" comes not from an incomprehension due to the "shocking newness" of the sounds.  Ninja please!  As mentioned before, it has been "now" for the last 50 years!  Just less fulfilling!  And more expensive!  And more cheaply made!

The hatred of this music absolutely comes from the insight into the (our) catastrophic situation.  Our regressions fuel the sin industry, and for it we are congratulated and given an alternate soundtrack (paid for by the sin industry) diametrically opposed to the one that scared us earlier by giving form to our anxiety and terror.

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They are called individualists, and yet their work is nothing but a single dialogue with the powers which destroy individuality--powers whose "formless shadows" fall gigantically on their music. In music, too, collective powers are liquidating an individuality past saving, but against them only individuals are capable of consciously representing the aims of collectivity. 

And what are those aims of collectivity?  I don't think it is the liquidation of individuality, regardless if it is past saving or not.  Actually, I think the aim of the collective is to support and give sanctuary to individuality so that it may develop and grow with diminished exposure to the withering insanity one faces when going it alone in the market.  Instead, collectives seem to be their own insanity generators--if not totally dysfunctional then, as mentioned, liquidators of individuality with needless strata of stricture and behaviour modification.  Then of course there are those collectives which are simply fronts for the careerist goals of of that sociopath charismatic enough to hide their intentions.

They're everywhere.  Like bedbugs.

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Speaking of stricture and behavior modification, this Adorno essay is DUNZO.  Maybe we are going to give Adorno a rest for a while and give another look at Reich.  Adorno's writing about music always makes me think of Reich's writing about neurotics and psychopaths.

I also found a college text book about money from those long ago Econ minor days.   It's written in an arm around your back familiar tone with quaint and false little quotes like

There may be some misers who accumulate wealth for the simple pleasures of counting and admiring it.  But for most of us, wealth is a means to an end rather than the end itself.

lol.  Hey, all you out there for whom shaving was compulsory, and compulsory at an hour earlier than you would prefer (I know you're out there)--is the above quote true or false?

Jaya David S. Ware

A genius of the saxophone.  "Our" Sonny Rollins in as much as he was a consummate musician and instrumentalist who came up centered in This Music as opposed to Tin Pan Alley "Jazz."  And if that's a half truth, then we can all agree that his recorded output had more to do with the new thing than the old.

One of my first exposures to This Music was a performance of the David S. Ware quartet featuring a certain Bill Dixon on trumpet.  That was at the Old Knitting Factory, in 1989 I believe.  Ware had a huge, crackling sound on the horn.  It didn't matter what he played, that he played was the excitement.  One of those kind of horn players.  Few and far between.

Ware's time in the hospital toward the end of his life strikes a chord with anyone who's ever been there.  The hospital for all its miracles (and there are many) is by in large a harrowing, traumatizing place to be.  You go in, they get you so completely fucking high with IV drugs you can't feel an organ being removed, you come out of it with a tube down your throat, up your nose, in your prick, in your arm, out your side, fluids going in, fluids going out, people taking your blood every 3 hours--and that's when everything is going smoothly.

The fact that Ware's Onecept was his first recording after a kidney transplant makes it all the more remarkable.  There is a Realization (in the capital R sense of the word) to Ware's playing.  Who knows to what degree his hospital stay (and let's face it, near death experience) influenced the music (though if I had to guess, I'd guess significantly)  If it's true you play your life in this music, by Onecept, the challenges Ware had faced and surmounted in his are, for many, beyond comprehension.  I'm not sure if that makes Onecept the best or the worst choice for the "I'm new to free-jazz, what should I listen to first" set.

While I know Ware had a history at Bennington, I don't know exactly what it is, beyond a sabbatical replacement for Dixon at some point in the early 80's (where's that copy of Dixonia when you need it?)  Regardless, the social network diagram for Onecept has link backs to Dixon in Warren Smith and William Parker.  Indeed there is a Dixonian dignity and pacing to Onecept that makes it stand above and beyond the rabble.  A unique and beautiful soul and sound who will be missed.

Ah Death, you slippery pig bastard fuck. 

Things: Calculating the Oil of Snoop Lion, Marco Eneidi, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski

Things!

This fine HP 12c Platinum 25th Anniversary Edition came into my care thanks to our friend Max.  Thanking you Max.  Of the many special things the HP 12c Platinum 25th Anniversary Edition can do, a mere fraction of which I know how to use, it is the ability to conduct one's calculations using Reverse Polish Notation that titillates me the most.  Reverse Polish Notation--look for that as the title to a track on my forth coming solo recording.

Oil from Palestine!

Dare I say this fine oil is better than its Italian counterparts available to me on a day to day basis?  Is that fair?  Am I even allowed to say Palestine?

Seeking the Infinite the much anticipated biography of Maestro Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, written by Frederick Edward Harris arrived via the post not too long ago.  I do love the post.  Hopefully they won't close all the post offices in the United States.

Mr. Harris was kind enough to avail the Citizen's Orchestra a lovely rehearsal room at MIT when Mr. Bill Dixon was in town. 

Because of my HP 12c Platinum 25th Anniversary Edition and a job that gets me up at 4am, I haven't had time to really dive in to the book.  I did, however, dip my toe in the vast waters (634 pages!) and was duly rewarded.  Take page 1, for example:

The renowned conductor and composer Stanislaw Skrowaczewski's sense of reality was influenced by surreal occurrences during his childhood in Lwow, Poland, where he was born on October 3, 1923.  As a very young child, he had a dream about outer space in which he saw stars and a huge flying god wearing a white dress; the dream was so intense that he woke up screaming.  About the same time he also had dreams of exotic, steep green mountains standing like columns.  These dreams recurred a few more times and then suddenly stopped.  He was amazed ten years later to see this dream landscape in photographs of China's Sichuan province.  In 2007 he learned through a DNA test that his ancestry was four percent Chinese.  These revelations and similar experiences throughout his life led Skrowaczewski to believe in the possibility of reincarnation.

There's some great pictures, too.

I've heard Skrowaczewski conduct Bruckner, but I don't know if I can tell you which orchestra it was.  I also haven't listened to enough other Bruckner to speak with that special kind of authority that actually means something.  I have, however, listened to my fare share of recordings of the Rite of Spring, and can say with out any hesitation Skrowaczewski's recording is by far my favorite.

Speaking of favorite, how about my favorite living alto saxophonist?

You really owe it to yourself (and Marco) to buy one of these.  To wit:

 a friend made all the covers, each one individually hand done.

(many of which can be seen here)

By purchasing this, you support 4 artists at once!  So get on your facebook thing and give Marco a shout.  Besides, Marco demonstrates his Morihei Ueshiba side--untouchable and totally fluid.  Marco is at one with the horn.  I wish he would take up the oboe or programming in C or something that would challenge him.  What can't Marco do on the Alto?  Really, who are his peers?

Snoop Lion "La La La" (produced by Major Lazer) by Snoop Lion

Sugaaaah!  Mos-def +1.  Who can hate on this?  Getting beyond the good and evil of music, shouldn't we all be happy to see Rastafari in popular culture?  Imagine if Rastafari took with the kids the same way as gang/thug culture...the healing of the nation! 

When are Snoop lion and HR going to make the duo record, or would that break the universe?

Yes, yes, hurt words from adorno...I know you miss them so.  I do too.  A few more paragraphs left.  Last mile is the hardest mile sort of thing. 

See What You Get For Trying To Be Nice?

However it may be with films, today's mass music shows little of such progress in disenchantment.  Nothing survives in it more steadfastly than the illusion, nothing is more illusory than its reality.  The infantile play has scarcely more than the name in common with the productivity of children.  Otherwise, bourgeois sport would not want to differentiate itself so strictly from play.  Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of remaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as duty puts it among useful purposes and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom in it.  This is particularly valid for contemporary mass music.  It is only play as a repetition of prescribed models, and the playful release from responsibility which is thereby achieved does not reduce at all the time devoted to duty except by transferring the responsibility to the models, the following of which one makes into a duty for himself.  In this lies the inherent pretense of the dominant music sport.  It is illusory to promote the technical-rational moments of contemporary mass music--or the special capacities of the regressive listeners which may correspond to these moments--at the expense of decayed magic, which nevertheless prescribes the rules for the bar functioning itself.  It would also be illusory because the technical innovations of mass music really don't exist.  This goes without saying for harmonic and melodic construction...The practice of contemporary popular music has not so much developed these techniques as conformistically dulled them.  The listeners who expertly view these techniques with astonishment are in no way technically educated thereby, but react with resistance and rejection as soon as the techniques are introduced to them in those contexts in which they have their meaning.  Whether a technique can be considered progressive and "rational" depends on this meaning and on its place in the whole of society as well as in the organization of the particular work.  Technical development as such can serve crude reaction as soon as it has established itself as a fetish and by its perfection represents the neglected social tasks as already accomplished.  This is why all attempts to reform mass music and regressive listening on the basis of what exists are frustrated.  Consumable art music must pay by the sacrifice of its consistency.  Its faults are not "artistic"' every incorrectly composed or outmoded chord bespeaks the backwardness of those to whose demand accommodation is made.  But technically consistent, harmonious mass music, purified of all the elements of bad pretense would turn into art music and at once lose its mass basis.  All attempts at reconciliation, whether by market-oriented artists or collectively-oriented art educators, are fruitless.  They have accomplished nothing more than handicrafts or the sort of products with which directions for use or a social text must be given, so that one may be properly informed about their deeper background.

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Wooosh!  Where to begin?

We can always begin by taking a swipe at "mass music"

Nothing survives in it more steadfastly than the illusion, nothing is more illusory than its reality.

and further down

It would also be illusory because the technical innovations of mass music really don't exist.  This goes without saying for harmonic and melodic construction.. 

and then again with

The practice of contemporary popular music has not so much developed these techniques as conformistically dulled them.  The listeners who expertly view these techniques with astonishment are in no way technically educated

So lets see...contemporary popular music--mass music--a music without technical innovation, as conformistic dulling device for musical techniques, astonishing the technically uneducated.

That's fun.


Then there's the whole notion of reconciliation, of fusion (a music Amiri Baraka once called "the music of betrayal")

Consumable art music must pay by the sacrifice of its consistency.  Its faults are not "artistic"' every incorrectly composed or outmoded chord bespeaks the backwardness of those to whose demand accommodation is made 

That's fun too: consumable art music as "sacrificed", and those who demand "accommodation" (a "beat" or an ethnic cap perhaps?) as "backward."

and really, if there was any question left,

All attempts at reconciliation, whether by market-oriented artists or collectively-oriented art educators, are fruitless.  They have accomplished nothing more than handicrafts or the sort of products with which directions for use or a social text must be given, so that one may be properly informed about their deeper background 

"handicrafts with which directions for use or a social text must be given, so that one may properly be informed about their deeper background"

Though I can't remember why, or how it came about, I can remember recently giving money to someone in exchange for safety pins with ornate bead work on them--but not just any safety pin with ornate bead work, but safety pins made by these children in that "under developed" African nation and furthermore, these moneys will go that charity, so on and so forth.  Never did get the safety pins or the ornate bead work.  I feel like "reconciled" music, be it by market-oriented artists or collectively-oriented art educators, like a beaded safety pins that is never delivered, really is fruitless.

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Reconciled music reminds me of Portland, what with its super abundance of everything, including market-oriented artists and collectively-oriented art educators.  My memories of leaving the house in Portland are few, and what memories exist of seeing "this music" performed in Portland by Portlanders always involved (and often featured) reconciliation with "mass-music"--be it olde timey hootenanny music, or "americana" or a wanton mis-reading of Fela Kuti or Klezmer or broken electronic toys from the late 70's.  Invariably, those performances were fruitless, accomplishing nothing.

New York City is another story...similar but different.  Same super abundance of everything, except it's all distinct, separate and not equal.  There isn't a lot of reconciliation, unless it is underwritten by an exceedingly large grant.  What does unite the city is the ubiquitous smell of piss, still steadfast as verified in recent visit to The Stone to see a 5 soprano saxophone tribute to Steve Lacy.  Sounded great, smelled horrible.  While said evening of music was "laced" with that sense of duty Adorno is talking about, there was no, overt, chronic reconciliation with "mass music."  There was a little, but that eventually dissipated like deodorant on the F train. There was no sense you were listening to a commercial or the sound track for an info-mercial or an "experiment" or a bid to win more fans and centralize more capital, but instead, the sense one was listening to real music in real time. 

It was, of course, horribly attended, so that's a plus:  "If everyone digs what you're doing, you probably aren't doing anything worth doing" as Dixon would say.

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Another horribly attended event was the recent performance by the Citizen's Orchestra.  Even the drummer took a pass on showing up.  National treasures can be like that sometimes, I guess.

It has been my personal experience that performances where and when I am overcome with a feeling of panic and a surety that the music couldn't possibly be worse, often turn out to be the most rewarding and lasting listening experiences after the fact.  What I liked about this particular performance of the Citizen's Orchestra was the contour...the relative lack of huge jagged peaks of thrilling emotional climax.  10 solid years of near constant reggae music (among other things) has cooled my shit out a bit; I want different things from music, some of which were achieved here.

And there you go, East coast inspection 2012.  Thank you all for your kindness and hospitality.  Hope to see you in so-called 2013.

The Younger Generation, Rowing for the Older Generation

The "younger generation"--the concept itself is merely an ideological catch-all--seems to be in conflict with its elders and their plush culture precisely through the new way of listening.  In America, it is just the so-called liberals and progressives whom one finds among the advocates of light popular music, most of whom want to classify their activity as democratic.  But if regressive hearing is progressive as opposed to the "individualistic" sort, it is only in the dialectical sense that it is better fitted to the advancing brutality than the latter.  All possible mold has been rubbed off the baseness, and it is legitimate to criticize the esthetic residue of an individuality that was long since wrested from individuals.  But this criticism comes with little force from the sphere of popular music, since it is just this sphere that mummifies the vulgarized and decaying remnants of romantic individualism.  Its innovations are inseparably coupled with these remnants...

Machochism in hearing is not only defined by self-surrender and pseudo-pleasure through identification with power.  Underlying it is the knowledge that the security of shelter under the ruling conditions is a provisional one, that it is only a respite, and that eventually everything must collapse.  Even in self-surrender one is not good in his own eyes; in his enjoyment one feels that he is simultaneously betraying the possible and being betrayed by the existent.  Regressive listening is always ready to degenerate into rage.  If one knows that he is basically marking time, the rage is directed primarily against everything which could disavow the modernity of being with-it and up-to-date and reveal how little has in fact changed.

Adorno, Fetish Character in Music and Regression of Listening.


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Let's pause and given some attention to this phrase 

The mummification of vulgarized, decaying remnants. 

This got me thinking of the corporate reality.  Multi-nationals.  The big guys.  Big media, big pharm, big oil, big finance, big arms, big diamonds...that kind of thing.


Despite the fact that, oh, 99% of the population is on the shit side of the larger, multinational exploitation stick, there is a huge, gyrating segment of the population who see themselves, one day, on the non-shit-end of that stick.

Good luck with that.

That obviously unfulfilled hope has given rise to its own aesthetic.  Equal parts despair and Stockholm syndrome.  One day, it might have it's own DSM listing. Perhaps not until the DSM-V.
In the mean time, the corporate aesthetic:


Corporate clothes--mummified, vulgar, decaying remnants of fashion.
Corporate food--mummified, vulgar decaying remnants of cuisine.
Corporate golf events--mummified, vulgar decaying remnants of a good walk spoiled.
Corporate credit card--mummified, vulgar decaying remnants of capitalism.
Corporate report card--mummified, vulgar decaying remnants of feedback from master craftsmen.
Corporate Christmas Party--mummified, vulgar decaying remnants of the birth of Jesus Christ.


and so on.



This hopeful, corporate aesthetic informs (or is it informed by?) the corporate way of life.  In that instance:


The Corporatists = the vulgar, decaying remains of mummified romantic individuals.

How exactly does one become a Corporatist?  What is the incorporation processes?

1. Kill the inner romantic individual
2. Mummify the inner romantic individual it in such a way that only the vulgar remains
3. Let the vulgar remains of the mummified inner romantic decay
4. Stuff the remnants of decayed vulgarity into appropriate casing or file extension (embroidered polyester shirt, track suit, Brooks Brothers suit, .mp3 etc.)

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Now that you have completed steps 1 through 4, please answer this questionnaire:

1. Are you feeling pseudo-pleasure through your identification with power? 
2. Have you killed your inner romantic, mummified it, kept only the most vulgar aspects, let that decay, and stuffed those remnants in an embroidered polyester shirt in exchange for security of shelter under the ruling system?
3. Do you have a nagging suspicion that for all the killing, mummification, and celebration of the vulgar, this "security of shelter under the ruling system" is merely a provisional one--a temporarily provisional one, no less?  
4. Do you feel like you are betraying the possible and being betrayed by the existent?
5. Is rage far away or simmering under the surface?  How about depression?
6. Are you marking time?  
7. Do you like being reminded that the self surrender was optional, as was the murder of the inner romantic, which you then mummified, saving only the most vulgar aspects, only to let that decay?
8. Do you love the pop songs of the day? 
9. Do you love the new coffee drinks at McDonalds?

More Adorno soon!