Day: September 11, 2003

tHAT wAS a nAUGHTY bIT oF cRAP: “HOWEVER, I’ve always thought the way music works backs up this ‘vision’, THE PAST AINT HISTORY! In this sense ‘Enlightenment’ (and thats where I come unstuck, who’s to say what is ‘Enlightened’?) always constitutes the future, and is from time to time stretched a little further “

I think he’s critiquing his own argument before he’s finished explaining it. Clearly I would argue viz someone like Merlin Stone that the 18th century enlightentment myth of progress (and indeed its lefty descendants with their faith in one-size fits all solutions — suckers!) is based on faulty premises. In other words, the (pre-platonic, socratic) past ain’t that backward. And I say that without, I hope, falling into noble savagery. Quite the reverse actually.

What I would also say is, I thijnk, identical to what Matt is trying to articulate: that the “progress” of music, of culture, is not linear, but elliptical, fractal even.

tHAT wAS a nAUGHTY bIT oF cRAP: “Obviously a band like the Velvet Underground (like it or not Paul Meme) are still, if not bursting with vital influence, then a little pungent. “

Hehehehe! I was wondering if this was going to come up. But let’s not get side tracked. My antipathy is partly curmudgeonly and entirely subjective. There are just very few Velvets records that I think are ANY cop at all — Heroin (good indie metal track) and… oh fuck knows. They don’t do much for me. And I’ve been listening to them since I was 12, played loads of their songs in a band a few years later. The whole reverence for them I find both mystifying and irritating in a way that I don’t for a band like, say the Stooges. And yes, you could probably critique the stooges as easily as the velvets. But the stooges did funhouse and Iggy did the Idiot, while the velvets did insipid sub folk and Lou Reed did, ummm, well quite a few good pop records actually, so lets leave it at that. I still reserve my right to snarl offensively about the velkvets being the most over-rated band in music history, I mean, if I gave it to Gen with boith barrels why not the rest of you?

I tend to think hipsters treat the velvets the same way the rest of the world treats the beatles. I don’t like the velvets much but I do like the beatles so go figure. Mind you, next time the sunday telegraph uses sunday morning in a TV ad I’ll sing along.

Of course the velvets are interesting objectively because of the milieu they sprang from but you’re all bored of that line of thinking so I’ll stop.