Ripuasa

[JimO'Brien]

Radical Philosopy - Ben Watson Review

Review of Rip It Up and Start Again from Radical Philosopy. I don't think he likes it.

 

[3underscore]

Well, all I can say in terms of writing style: I have managed happily to read energy flash, and am strolling through Rip it Up...

I managed half a review by Ben Watson and I started to find his writing somewhat self agrandising and arrogant. maybe that's me, or maybe that's why RIUASA sells copies.

 

[john eden]

I don't think he likes it.

Well, it has given him the opportunity to write about this stuff, so obviously he has to give it some credit. Some fair enough points on the politics, but others less so. (For example it is fair enough SR to criticise the more leaden aspects of 80s Lenninism, but clearly the ANL did play an absolutely huge role in the period in politicising people and waking them up to the realities of racism, etc).

I do find it a bit odd that he criticises RIU for just concentrating on the music (which it doesn't, but perhaps I would agree that it doesn't go far enough into other areas, as for many of the groups the music would have been less important than the ideas...) but then seems to sketch a bizarre line from Bad Brains and other punk bands in Seattle to the protests there in 1999.

Perhaps Ben Watson has some huge insight into the workings of west coast punk in the 80s and 90s, but it seems to me that the musical and activist networks which lead to Seattle were much less "localist" than that. Indeed it's crucial to remember the role played by People's Global Action and events prior to Seattle like J18, which in turn feed back into the UK anarcho/left/libertarian milieu (such as Reclaim the Streets) which you would think would be more relevant to a review of the book.

Having said that, SWP members like Watson always seem to leave out these details, perhaps because they hopped on board the "anti-capitalist" bandwagon at Seattle...

 

[Rachel Verinder]

ah ben, bless him, said it better than i ever could.

 

[Woebot]

ah ben, bless him, said it better than i ever could.

sounds rather like telegrammatic muck-raking. are you not able to articulate your own opinions on this Marcello?

--------

gonna have to brief i've just lost an hours worth of spiel on this thread in the browser.

so this time as bullet points:

• me=simon's limpet
• no apologies. influenced BUT also likeminded (obv)
• this will prob embarass SR

Those who cite 1976–77 as the ‘real’ moment of punk are those for whom it was a springboard to TV celebrity. Genuine punks – ‘losers’ from the spectacular point of view – actually lived punk between 1978 and 1984.

• registers surprise at watsons agreement here.
• actually suspect that punk (in spite of electric r'n'b) may have been the original zone of confusion
• telelogically encoded (matt belgrano postcard punx) as widely agreed
• BUT maybe PP only where sophistry creeps into music.

Commentators on mass music ignore Adorno’s analysis at their peril.

• Huge fucking yawn
• Adorno likes 12 Tone Serialism (dies rightfully like a dog)
• 12 Tone essentially Schoneberg. Berg and miniscule Webern output
• 12 Tone overly theoretical and crushes itself. Theorists music.

• Adorno hates Jazz. Black spastic Marionettes jerking involuntairly to repetitive rhythm.
• Poor miserable whitey locks himself out of a world of thought.

Writers committed to particular genres, such as free jazz (Philippe Carles, Jean-Louis Comolli, Free Jazz Black Power, Paris, 1971), funk (Ricky Vincent, Funk, New York, 1996), rock (Joe Carducci, Rock and the Pop Narcotic, Los Angeles, 1994), country (Nick Tosches, Country, London, 1989) or rai (Bouziane Daoudi, Hadj Miliani, L’aventure du raï: Paris, 1996) are duty-bound to defend generic integrity against commodification, and so make aesthetic distinctions. However, pop is not a musical genre: it is what sells. Hence writing on pop cries out for categories like capital, labour and commodity, since they are the determining forces in this ‘genre’. Adorno’s warnings about the consumption of false images of freedom are highly pertinent here: the listening ear needs to be rigorous about objective actualities of form.

• Isnt point RIUASA makes that PP is last "real" indiginous folk music of a certain strata of society.
• Charts that strata's melting away into Post-Modern nonsense.
• Therefore discussion of Capital is only slightly pertinent as:
• THIS AINT POP.

What was Reynolds doing during this period? Which gigs did he attend? How did he earn a living? Did he meet anyone at gigs? Was he ever scared? How did punk and post-punk challenge his sense of identity, his view of the British class system? Without information about the storyteller, we can’t get critical purchase on their story.

• Plainly laughable.
• Simon working on Greengrocers stall to afford to buy copy of Metal Box!!!!
• Watson grandstanding?

The clichés come thick and fast: Tony Wilson’s Factory Records used situationist ideas, but Guy Debord wouldn’t have approved.

• same criticism by Rob Young in The Wire
• unedited manuscript 2 or 3 times size of eventual 500 page tome?
• element of forgivable shorthand?

But attention to sales figures rather than musical form inevitably underplays the contribution of blues, funk and reggae.

• I'm the original catholic collector (dusts down statue)
• Similar argument I made here at WOEBOT
• Made same critique of soundlsike 1981's comp in which context it seemed fair (survey of 1981)
• But not over RIUASA, book focuses closely on UK and USA Post-Punk. Thats the remit. Get over it.

but he has no inkling that No Wave Harmolodics was a Hendrix-scale leap forward in how rock can be played, a revolution forced underground by a music industry in retrenchment. (We had our own exponents, from Nottingham, called Pinski Zoo, but they didn’t chart, so they don’t count as ‘post-punk’.)

• nearly fell off my chair laughing. Pinski Zoo! What an absolutely appaling group.
• Watson fast disappearing up anal canal.

Reynolds detests the organized Left. Rock Against Racism is only mentioned in order to berate its ‘puritan’ dogmatism and to defend the ‘unaligned’ individual (in this case, the ridiculous Howard Devoto).

• Clearly very lacksaidaiscal reading of book.
• I thought Devoto would be horrified at how he's portrayed in RIUASA
• Attributed Devoto's reaction to no-show at discussion panel.

But, as he admits at the end of Rip It Up, all he’s left with at the end is an overblown and vacuous product like Frankie Goes To Hollywood, a boy-band prototype.

• Isnt that the whole f**king point?
• Doh!
• RIUASA = story with an unhappy ending.

Instead it festered underground, until in the United States the grassroots networks built by Bad Brains and other Washington DC hardcore bands exploded at the Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization in 1999.

• Glad eden picked this up
• Surely the most preposterous, even insane, idea Watson comes up with.

-------

Conclusion:

• weirdly vituperative and peronal attack
• v.glad i didnt have to read Watson's account of those years.

 

[matt b]

Instead it festered underground, until in the United States the grassroots networks built by Bad Brains and other Washington DC hardcore bands exploded at the Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization in 1999.

even ignoring the spurious 'h/c underground led to seattle', link watson's wrong- its generally accepted the DK's and black flag were the pioneers of h/c 'grassroots networks.

 

[Rachel Verinder]

sounds rather like telegrammatic muck-raking. are you not able to articulate your own opinions on this Marcello?

sure. but i need a free and undisturbed evening to do so. full & proper response to this coming, as soon as i get time to do it.

anyway sinker's doing a four-way review of ben's book, simon's book, kogan's book and my book as they sort of tell the whole story between them, rashomon-style.

 

[soundslike1981]

• Made same critique of soundlsike 1981's comp in which context it seemed fair (survey of 1981)
[/color]

Just for the record, I believe I also replied to this critique, stating that the "1981" box isn't being presented/touted as a survay of (all of) 1981, but one with certain parameters. '1981,' as I stated, just worked better graphically than "1981: post-punk/diy/hardcore/experimental/ska/electro/electropop/power-pop/etc. but not hip-hop, r&b, jazz, reggae, country, or tuvan throat singing". My introductory essay to the set (and any mention of it I've made elsewhere) states pretty clearly what it's parameters are and aren't, and why---and sales figures certainly weren't amongst the culling criteria. Nobody can attempt to cover so broad a ground as an *entire years musical output in all genres* and that was neither my aim nor claim.


I admit that my interest in 'RIUASA' waned during the second half and especially the later stages, because I don't really care for the music of Frankie Goes to Hollywood et al. But I thought it was interesting, and honest, that Mr. Reynolds chose to follow his chosen subfield to it's grave, as it were, rather than trying to make false separations between the highs of his subject matter and its lows that followed. There were interesting points raised about 'RIU' in the critique at hand, but the idea that it fails by not having written a book about all pop music that had anything to do with his main players is silly---or is it rockist to write books that aren't about everything everywhere everytime now? ; )

 

[henrymiller]

how brave of him to take on 'academic orthodoxy' *and* accuse SR of being 'unversed in adorno' in the same review. that's negative dialectics, folks.

 

[francesco]

"Radical Philosophy"?
Seem a very long and tired old story to me. What's, in this point in time, radical in marxism-leninism, it's schlerotizated remains of an orthodoxy?

 

[Woebot]

and another thing!!!

i'm not defending reynolds, so much as defending my interpretation of that book, but where does watson get off with saying there's no critical angle in the book?

isnt it plain as day what music enthuses reynolds from reading it? just like energy flash where i came away desperate to find the noise factory records i didnt already own its obvious what music he rates and what he doesnt, even though he doesnt take much trouble to magic-marker faves in glowing orange.

i've had so much in the way of hot tips from the book:

• rediscovered the associates (had fourth drawer down in the past, but couldnt hear it)
• completely fallen in love with the early cabs pre-red mecca (had lots of later cabs which i only half liked: 2x45, Yashar, etc)
• cemented my love of the minutemen (subsequently tracked down 'joy' and 'paranoid time' the latter at 7 ecstatic tracks on a 7" may be one of the greatest pieces of vinyl ever)
• reevaluated devo (who i'd always half dismissed)
• discovered the blue orchids (rocking to money mountain right now)
• picked up the first lemon kittens LP (i only had the feebler big dentist)
• completely discoverd the early thomas leer (secured copies of private plane, four movements etc on record for a few bob only) for which i'll be eternally grateful
• identified cherry red as a label (found pillows and prayers)
• discovered chrome. i'd heard stuff but kinda glossed over it.
• even followed up the glaxo babies!! (got nine months to the disco for a song)

etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

all of which because it was patently clear from reynolds description and tone that these might be worth investigating.

and theres plenty of stuff i WONT be checking out see most of chapters on new pop, goth, glory boys, ztt.......

 

[Woebot]

Just for the record, I believe I also replied to this critique, stating that the "1981" box isn't being presented/touted as a survay of (all of) 1981, but one with certain parameters. '1981,' as I stated, just worked better graphically than "1981: post-punk/diy/hardcore/experimental/ska/electro/electropop/power-pop/etc. but not hip-hop, r&b, jazz, reggae, country, or tuvan throat singing".

yeah i'm sorry, you got caught in friendly-fire here. its the bomb your box.

 

[Rachel Verinder]

the great thing about ben's bailey biog is that all the records he slags off in it are actually my favourites! but then he does admit in the book that in the summer of '77 he was still digging little feat and wishbone ash. oh yes, and zappa.

 

[massrock]

Not directly related to the book, ahough maybe this gets a mention, but an interesting trivia nugget from Peter Shapiro's 303 trawl in last month's The Wire mag regarding the bassline to the titular OJ song.

I had to go listen, it's true!

Also, could this thread actually be any harder to search for?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Instead it festered underground, until in the United States the grassroots networks built by Bad Brains and other Washington DC hardcore bands exploded at the Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization in 1999.

right, so this thread is 4 yrs old & who cares anyway - but - that is just one of the craziest, craziest things I have ever read. utterly, shockingly wrong on so many levels.

 

[swears]

God, that review is horrible. Seems like Ben Watson wants to justify his subjective love of a bunch of crusty bands with a few quotes from Adorno, because we know anything that sells or is popular is automatically shallow and meaningless, right? (Unless it's the Sex Pistols, of course)