Back in 1974 Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood and Bernie Rhodes collaborated on their famous T-shirt: “You’re going to wake up one morning and know what side of the bed you’ve been lying on!” It carried a list of hates on the left side and loves on the right. It's a ranting manifesto dispatching the likes of David Essex/Bryan Ferry/Salvador Dali/Sir Keith Joseph and his sensational speeches and embracing the likes of Valerie Solanis/Jamaican Rude Boys/Coffee bars that sell whisky under the counter/Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS/
1974 was a moment that cried out for rupture and polarisation. The possibilities of the movements of 1960’s had already began to close up, solidifying into a new orthodoxy just as stifling as the dreary post-war world 1960’s veterans thought they were leaving behind. Social movements aren’t distinct entities but selections from a continuous dynamic. They are like waves in a continually changing substance. Human subjectivities, that were fluid in times of great motion can suddenly solidify into clag unable to struggle free of itself. It’s at times like this that new ruptures can take hold, a moment of hard stratification to break free of the clag and light out into new territory.
One of the mechanisms used in these moments is a dip into the past to pull out some new antecedents but is all this still possible within the ever re-devoured remains of pop culture? In fact we need to rework that for it to even begin to make sense. Seeing as pop will eat itself as a means of things staying the same, as a means of homestatic reproduction, can it eat itself unhealthy? Are there any antecedents that when eaten will make pop feel a little queasy? That might break pop out of its self-referential reproduction and reconnect with wider social movement.
Fucked if I know, but perhaps we can detect signs in the latest incarnation of the “side of the bed” T-shirt –Thou shalt always kill The song by Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip currently getting airplay and column inches and scraping into the top 40.
Here’s the lyrics, print your own shirt:
Thou shalt not steal if there is direct victim.
Thou shalt not worship pop idols or follow lost prophets.
Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Johnny Hartman, Desmond Decker, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barret in vain.
Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a peadophile… Some people are just nice.
Thou shalt not read NME.
Thall shalt not stop liking a band just because they’ve become popular.
Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.
Thou shalt not judge a book by it’s cover.
Thou shalt not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover.
Thall shalt not buy Coca-Cola products.
Thou shalt not buy Nestle products.
Thou shalt not go into the woods with your boyfriend’s best friend, take drugs and cheat on him.
Thou shalt not fall in love so easily.
Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls’ pants. Use it to get into their heads.
Thou shalt not watch Hollyoakes.
Thou shalt not attend an open mic and leave as soon as you're done just because you’ve finished your shitty little poem or song you self-righteous prick.
Thou shalt not return to the same club or bar week in, week out just ’cause you once saw a girl there that you fancied but you’re never gonna fucking talk to.
Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals no matter how great they are or were.
The Beatles - Were just a band. Led Zepplin - Just a band.
The Beach Boys - Just a band.
The Sex Pistols - Just a band.
The Clash - Just a band.
Crass - Just a band. Minor Threat - Just a band.
The Cure - Just a band.
The Smiths - Just a band. Nirvana - Just a band.
The Pixies - Just a band. Oasis - Just a band.
Radiohead - Just a band. Bloc Party - Just a band.
The Arctic Monkeys - Just a band.
The next big thing - JUST A BAND.
Thou shalt give equal worth to tragedies that occur in non-English speaking countries as to those that occur in English speaking countries.
Thou shalt remember that guns, bitches and bling were never part of the four elements and never will be.
Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music
Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music
Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music
Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music
Thou shalt not pimp my ride.
Thou shalt not scream if you wanna go faster.
Thou shalt not move to the sound of the wickedness.
Thou shalt not make some noise for Detroit.
When I say “Hey” thou shalt not say “Ho”.
When I say “Hip” thou shalt not say “Hop”.
When I say "he say, she say, we say, make some noise" - kill me.
Thou shalt not quote me happy.
Thou shalt not shake it like a polaroid picture.
Thou shalt not wish your girlfriend was a freak like me.
Thou shalt spell the word “Pheonix” P-H-E-O-N-I-X not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you.
Thou shalt not express your shock at the fact that Sharon got off with Bradley at the club last night by saying “Is it”.
Thou shalt think for yourselves.
And
Thou shalt always kill.
Of course some of these are not objectively, revolutionary more in the nature of directional demands but it was the mention of Crass as ‘just a band’ that peeked my interest. Clips of the songs video on youtube have kids asking “who are Crass?” “who are Minor Threat?” on the coments.
I suppose the Crass brand is ripe for re-discovery as an authentic outside to commodification (pay no more than £3.50) but it’s only when you check out the facial hair on the video that you discover what’s really radical about Scroobius Pip.
If there is hope it lies with the beards.
5 comments:
Good post, well put. You might be right about Crass being ripe for a re-packaging, but weren’t they ripe a few years ago? I think it’s been tried and found wanting. There’s a more serious point though about our ability to plunder the past. Punk re-worked so much of hippy's original attitude (without of course acknowledging it), which is how it made sense to a wider audience than itself (the more turned-on hippies were among the first to get it, just as the more turned-on punks were among the first to get rave etc etc). But that sort of re-appropriation just doesn't seem possible any more. Think of an era, a song, an attitude, and you can bet some suit from an ad agency will have got there first. This also leads on to stuff about irony, detachment and cynicism as a post-modern survival strategy. It’s liberating in its own way, but it means we can't simply use tactics from an earlier game. But enough of these generalities, I’m getting back to growing my beard.
Well, actually I was thinking of something much more ambitious than Timotei. Not just Zounds flogging Vodafone or Intel (ah, so that’s where we heard those Mockney tones first), but national exhibitions of artwork for Flux of Pink Indians, and Lloyd Webber doing Christ The Musical in the West End. I give it five years...
Anyway, I am intrigued by this idea of plunder, how we can (or could) take something from the past and make the present into something else. Twist it. Fuck up time. I came across this great speech by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, which seems to speak to some of this.
“A lot of us running around talking about politics don't even know what politics is. Did you ever see something and pull it and you take it as far as you can and it almost outstretches itself and it goes into something else? If you take it so far that it is two things? As a matter of fact, some things if you stretch it so far, it’ll be another thing. Did you ever cook something so long that it turns into something else? Ain’t that right?
That's what we’re talking about with politics.”
When you put it like that, politics doesn’t seem such a hateful notion.
What a fucking great quote from Fred Hampton. That is going to be used again. In fact I can't believe you didn't make it into a post of its own. What a geeat excuse to also post up a pic of him looking cool.
Yeah, this quote is great. And this 'something else' that politics becomes when we stretch it: it's that question we keep returning to, isn't it? 'What sort of life do we want to live?'
From the point of view of the market(!) a fairly dreadful book about Crass came out the other year and sank without trace. Surely this demonstrates that some things just can't be commodified and remain pure statements abou...sorry, wrong blog.
Fantastic Fred Hampson quote.
Not much to comment. Have been reading Teenage all bloody night again.
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