The Dissensus Framework

luka

luka

Well-known member
I never read NME or Melody Maker but when the wire was good you'd have Simon, Ben Watson, Kodwo Eshun,David Toop, Ian Penman, even David Keenan, why not, many of whom hate each other (Simon and Ben both loathe Keenan, and one another) but all have their own distinct style, aesthetic, range of interests. I liked it. It was ambitious and mad.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
Oh i don't loathe Ben Watson - he's very entertaining, and obviously incredibly smart and knows a lot of stuff that is brought to bear in provocative ways. but yes the deploying of the Frankfurt School and early Soviet formalist criticism to justify Frank fucking Zappa - and not even the Sixties stuff which is sort of at least historically interesting / peculiar - but things like "Dinah Moe Hum" and Joe's Garage etc... i can't take it seriously.

it's a taste thing. the taste lapse is unarguable, or rather, no arguments however clever or backed-up with authorities could dissuade you out of your somatic revulsion for the music.

it's a reverse syndrome of how it's supposed to work, in a way - it should be that the authority of the thinkers invoked validates the music, but in fact the shitness of the music makes you start to doubt the theorists.

of course all the above is the kettle calling the pot black to the power of 1000

yeah Ben - even though he's been rude about me in print - I appreciate the conviction and rigor - the bristly, prickly tone, the caustic sweeping dismissals. i'm not sure i'd actively seek it out though outside the printed page!

I don't actually dislike David Keenan either, have enjoyed his writing and he's come up with some really interesting ideas. i just don't go along with the whole beat-outsider more-underground-the-better obscurist mindset.

But anyone who can be bothered to work up sort of consistent aesthetic viewpoint or set of values, an idea of history and what the righteous music is - that's going to be valuable on some level.

i don't read things in order to agree with them. it's good to be tested, provoked.

and as regards the old music press, and the golden age of the Wire, there's definitely something to be said for that kind of rivalrous, staking out ideas-territory as a milieu - willy-waving for sure, territorial pissing - but it's not only that. as a byproduct, you get interesting, starkly defined sets of ideas - and energised prose.
 
Last edited:
luka

luka

Well-known member
Yeah, I approve of it. Very much so. If it had stil existed when I wss in my early 20s perhaps I would have tried to get involved. The game was already up though. I don't know where you can read or publish that kind of thing now. It's a great shame. I was defending it not knocking it.
 
V

version

Well-known member
This talk of the NME is so alien to me, by the time I came to it was just articles about The Libertines and "Nu-Rave".
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
You mention Oxbridge... there were quite a lot of Oxford and Cambridge graduates on the music press, but the funny thing was that this is not something you would have gone around advertising. It was still, certainly in the Eighties, very much shadowed by punk values and the whole idea of street credibility. So it wasn't something you would draw attention to in your pitch letter with sample reviews hoping to get work. Not saying I did this consciously at all, but I did actually pick one of the few avenues of work where having gone to Oxford was not an advantage. The coolest thing even then would have been to not even have gone to university, but gone straight from school to the papers - like Julie Burchill did or Tony Parsons (although i think he actually worked in a factory and knocked out a pulp fiction paperback before joining NME). Neither Morley nor Penman went through higher education. I know, it's hard to believe, given how class-stratified this country still is - but the music press was an odd little bubble world where all that was inside out.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
I only mention oxbridge cos you went to the ox and watson went to the bridge bit.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
luka said:
Yeah, I approve of it. Very much so. If it had stil existed when I wss in my early 20s perhaps I would have tried to get involved. The game was already up though. I don't know where you can read or publish that kind of thing now. It's a great shame. I was defending it not knocking it.
Click to expand...

oh yeah, i got that.

i mean it was going on with the blogs in the early days, that music paper type energy - lots of prickly exchanges and interesting, slightly testy arguments, but also collaborative type energy - only catch was the being paid bit no longer existed.

and that was never very remunerative - but you could actually make a living if you were very active and churning it out, as a regular music paper contributor.

and being a livelihood, that meant you could devote all your energy to it, a total lifestyle of thinking and arguing about music. not exactly a balanced way to live, but good especially when you're young and needing a purpose.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
luka said:
I shouldn't have bought him up. Si hates him. Despises him.
Click to expand...

i really don't! Honest!

I find him slightly amusing (i'm sure it's mutual). Like e.g. he's into boxing. Meaning, he goes to a gym and boxes.

This will interest Barty but he is very upfront Keenan about his interest in porn. I read some thing where he was listing his favorite cultural or literary influences, the formative forces of his youth, that kind of thing and one of them was Leg magazine, or something like that - some 1970s publication.

Oh yes and he has a joke he likes to tell, about how he suggested that The Wire should have as its strapline under the title - "Not Just a Jazz Mag"
 
S

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
it all started when i noticed the only thing blissblog was showing any enthusiasm about was wanking (check demetarialisation thread) and i suggested that he should write a big sex thing for pitchfork.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Craners like that. I was once witness to a conversation between him and a mutual friend, an established new Zealand poet, about milf porn. The depth of knowledge was formidable. So many names. Performances assessed etc. I didn't realise you could have that level of interest in it. Almost study it you know
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
version said:
Do you miss it?
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, that's obvious, surely

But I miss a lot of things - that is the problem with getting older, you have multiple nostalgias going simultaneously.

And you forget also the miseries or dreary stuff that surrounded the exciting things you are fetishing

The Seventies were really awful - food, the air in London, clothes, everyday look of stuff, attitudes to race and sexuality etc, economics, strife, - the fact that a lot of cool records came out then and weird children's TV programs etc doesn't quite compensate really.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top