Doc 40: BUT I AM STILL AN ACTION FIGURE

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

BUT I AM STILL AN ACTION FIGURE

10 comments:

* yuri * said...: I saw PiL perform tonight in LA. It was a fun show,, but the most emotional moment of the day was when i mentioned the event to a co-worker.. and she said,, y'mean the band John started after Sid Vicious died? it was at that very instant that I realized that the post-punk influence that PiL holds is very much undeniable in modern rock music.. but the very recipe that the sex pistols presented to the world is absolutely the catalyst for every cutting-edge performer of the last 30 years. the combination of the personalities with the artistic vision that maclaren helped to bring to the masses.. please post a reply here if you disagree that all these guys like Nine Inch Nails all the way to even performers like Beck or Radiohead couldn't have existed without. it really is about the catalyst. nothing else matters... not even the result.; 11:31 PM
Diamond Jim said...: I'd seriously question that "the artistic vision that maclaren helped to bring to the masses." Maclaren was an asshole who stole every idea he had.; 1:09 AM
x_S said...: Fuck all that... I'm so fucking tired of people acting as if contemporary artists owe some sort of tribute or acknowledgement simply because they made music or painted or took pictures after someone else did.

If this is to be so, why don't we acknowledge or even fucking remember the people who first created the instruments? Certainly there would be no musicians without instruments, or painters without brushes... but we don't give a fuck who first made them, we just care who's making them now at what quality. Same as it should be with music & all art forms, not just the instruments used to create with.

The reality is that humans aren't so unique as they often like to claim, they're always doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. They're all always breathing, or at least trying to. Is it so hard to believe they have the same thoughts at the same or a different time? To think that two humans centuries apart may conceive & design the same invention? Has it not happened before?

Take the baghdad battery into consideration for a moment...

I suppose we all owe everything to others, though, there's no use in reminiscing about the fact if we gain nothing from such debt.

GUITAR HERO! THAT'S THE FUCKING RESULT OF THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR! REHASHING THE SAME MESS WITHOUT ADDING ANY FLAVOR!

Immortal Technique is more of a cutting edge artist & political activist than any of those corporate tools like Trent Reznor or that fucking scientologist.. Yorke might be decently creative & a fine musician, but is an ineffective whelp next to what Immortal Technique has done & Filipe Coronel damned sure doesn't owe anything to punk rock.

You've missed out on entire genres & moments & don't account for them when you try to lump everything in a generality.

Just do a bit of reading...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Technique

If you'd prefer to listen, a song I'd suggest for this crowd is "The 4th Branch" a google search should bring up a free stream link from lala.com right at the top ( Mick is on that site by the way ) & if you have a hard time listening, read the lyrics, you can do so here:

http://www.lyrics007.com/Immortal%20Technique%20Lyrics/The%204th%20Branch%20Lyrics.html; 4:31 AM
stu said...: i don`t remember it quite like that yuri. x-S is q.right,my youngest offsping is dying for me to get rockstar or whatever.i keep telling him i`ve a guitar,amp, effects ,learn to play the f/n guitar!!!cuh!kids eh?; 11:50 AM
stu said...: i`ve just read on bbc.com that malcolm mclaren died today.whatever you may think of him in interviews,jon savage`s book,i always liked him.eccentric but...kind.i remember his ads in the nme for let it rock.very sad news.; 12:26 PM
x_S said...: The problem is stagnation in the rock genres, not kids.

Sad as it is, myspace.com & soundclick.com did more for independent music than anything else in recent years. Mind you, MTV, Radio & corporate influence essentially ruined the progress that had been ever so briefly made. Murdoch made a TOS agreement that gives news corp the rights to all music uploaded... soundclick's model was stolen & repackaged by the likes of Murdoch. Amazon.com want's either 45 or 55% of the cut for every item sold for the self publishing artist & people rarely trust sites like cdbaby or kunaki.com

Now you're looking at Guitar Hero & Rock Band video games not only having more appeal to kids than picking up real instruments & playing, though, it is the place these kids go to experience new music from the rock genre. If DJ Hero had been as popular as the other games I'd have asserted that music was screaming & kicking in it's death rattle. You want an old song to jump into the top 40's or have a massive sales influx on itunes, get it used in the trailer for a video game. "I don't want to set the world on fire" by the Ink Spots as example... why else, other than Fallout 3, would that pop up out of nowhere from the dusty shelves?

We're looking at the point where contemporary music is so driven by the industry that there is far more demand than supply. Rehashing & repackaging, digitally remastered albums are the results... the new material being made is mostly designed for market to teenagers.

Prime example of the sorry state of the rock genre & punk legacy, Iggy Pop doing voice acting as the DJ for the fake radio station in-game on GTA IV & that was back in 07. Tsunami Bomb & The Living End play small crowds of 21 & over while kids flock to a police state at rap shows & nu-metal concerts. Now days with the monitoring programs going on, these kids can only just barely use the crowd for a brief moment to abide their libations or fuck. I can only imagine what happens at a miley cyrus concert or an emo show like my chemical romance or vampire weekend.

I don't see a lot of improvement on the way... though, we rarely see it coming, whatever it ultimately is.

</end rant; 4:19 PM
* yuri * said...: thanks so much for these comments, all. you've given me some food for thought, and I appreciate that.; 7:01 PM
Diamond Jim said...: Spooky that this entire discussion should break out on the day Maclaren dies.; 7:30 PM
* yuri * said...: Blame Mick.. he started it with his photos of Sid. :-PPPP; 8:00 PM
* yuri * said...: y'know.. this whole thing with McLaren reminds me of the character Dennis Hopper played in the TV version of Crash. The scene where he came up with the idea to give music away for free to appease the daughter's investors by changing the business model. i'm sure you all are aware Dennis is on his deathbed in Venice as we speak. But his character role reflects that moment that we all face as creative people. The moment where our audience expects us to deliver magic under any circumstance or pressure, and we who are able to deliver are capable of finding an effective muse to be our creative catalyst,, resulting in a phenomenal idea that catches fire and takes off. There aren't alot of performers around that really know how to trigger that in themselves. That's why so many artists resort to simply nick an idea as opposed to putting themselves in a dangerous situation, which forces out a really nu idea as a survival impulse.; 8:33 PM

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