Nobody’s Business but my Own
All-round paragons of DIY virtue, Theo Peters and Ben Wright stage shows and circulate handmade records under the banner of Editions de Minuit. Moreover – and in keeping with a grand tradition of fannish self-expression – they’ve just launched a ‘zine. Hit editionsdeminuit@live.co.uk for where to get your hands on a copy. Murdofleur quizzed Theo and Ben about autonomy, identity formation and music fandom in the era of the blogosphere.
It seems that on corollary of music suddenly being everywhere is that you have less ability to decide for yourself when and how you hear it – I once had to leave the room when a mate’s little brother was playing Fifa Street because I was in danger of having a Dizzee Rascal track I really liked sutured to this image of a polygonal Ross Crouch doing bicycle kicks. It’s sort of creepy to realise that you recognise tracks you’ve never wittingly listened to, but which a record company marketting dept. has managed to sneak into your brain…
I sort of answered this lower down (last question, we did these out of sequence, sorry!) it sort of touches on a wobbler i threw in issue two of mine and theo’s ‘zine too. we got talking tonight about how pissed off we as fans get at the misrepresentation of our favourite artists in ads and other media we don’t agree with. I forget most of it, but lots was about Dylan, who I’ve never held in that high esteem anyway and Lennon, who I have, and McCartney, who I haven’t. And Bright Eyes. Halifax. wtf!?
As you said, you’ve started a ‘zine. Why something paper-based rather than online publication?
Because fuck the trees. Seriously, much as i appreciate the inernet as a platform for people to pebbledash with their creative juices (cheers to everyone who has ever tried and failed to make a video for their favourite song on Youtube, starring themselves or their bezzie that won’t make the viewer want to gouge their eyes out), i don’t really like what’s become of it. it seems much less anonymous and romantic, much more egotistical. Its also because I can’t work a computer and am a step away musically from an unwashed, denim-clad metallica roadie. My own influences are in the no-wave hardcore punk scene. I see the online blog/ ‘zine as creatively and artistically anaemic in comparison to its more organic predecessor. theo will no doubt have something much more ghandi to contribute.
It’s nice to have something real, something that stands on its own without a computer. Why have paper money and not pay for everything by cards and wires, watch your money go up and down on a screen but never see it… It’s the same as having books, videos, cds, whatever. Imagine a world with no bookshops or record shops. That’d be weird.
Maybe im too distrusting of the internet but i like to think things that exist materially might be uncovered in the future when they’ll still be exactly the same but everything else has changed. I mean, no-one looks at old internet pages they made ten years ago laughs at how times have changed, or is reminded of the time they made it because things on the internet are either destroyed, disregarded or updated and re-edited as time moves on. Sometimes thats a benfit of the internet – that things exist in an ‘unfinished’ state, that they can always be changed and updated and remain in a state of flux, but for the sake of posterity paper and material things generally are essential.
Is there a good argument for wanting to own music in material form (for yourself as it were) rather than rent/stream it? Is it, like, ecologically sound?
I love music in material form. There’s a lot to be said for having the artwork and the box and having cds and records to flip through. Maybe theres an argument for only renting and streaming if you’re the sort of person who’s never into the same thing for more than a day at a time and if you had any kind of music collection it’d only be a list of things you were never going to listen to. People listen to radio 1 regiously and while they’d gush on about how much music means to them, Jo Whiley tells them which band to like each week and they consider downloading their album but by the time they get round to it they’ve heard it a thousand times and the bbc producers have something equally unoriginal but “totally new!” to splash about the airwaves and adverts and billboards.
I like to surround myself with the music I’m into, I think it shapes a person to an extent. or at least grounds a person, to have a collection of what you really like and have liked. Its partly posterity again, it’s nice to go back to bands that you used to be into and remember what they offered or what time in your life they represent. Things like Spotify are ideal for getting into new music or trying it out, but for me it’d never replace having actual cds and records. i guess depends on tastes and interests.
in terms of having the artwork of a release and the lyrics readily available, I am totally for owning music in a tangible form. However, I am opposed to third parties profiting form the creativity and experiences of others, so against streaming or renting music. collective ownership in libraries or similar is obviously the ideal scenario. There are some ways round the ecologically destructive aspects of the music industry, such as using vegetable inks and recycled cases, as used by Bakery Outlet and several other responsible labels. I realise that there isn’t really any way we can package hard copies of music without impacting negatively on our environment, but if we don’t, what are we going to do when the lights go out? You need oil for a keyboard and wood for a guitar…
Simon Reynolds has coined the (kinda ungainly) term ’scenius’. Whereas (his argument goes) rock-oriented music criticism likes to think in terms of singular masterpieces singlehandedly wrought by a genius (Dylan, Lennon, Conor Oberst or whoever) great records can also be products of scenes, movements, networks of people – of scenius. Mostly his examples come from recent UK dance music, but it’s arguably true of a lot of canonical rock - bands who are in the right place at the right time often end up representing/taking the credit for/being seen as the pinnacle of more diffuse movements. Do you think the tendency to want to think in terms of individuals and canonical works is unhealthy?
i think this one might be soaring over my head, but will try a tentative answer… I think music is a progressive and fluid expression of highly developed emotions. If you look hard enough, any barriers and genres within music can be transcended. From the Stooges and the MC5 on to Agent Orange (who can be linked to the Beach Boys!) on to Minor Threat, music constantly evolves and will continue to do so. It can be helpful to name-drop influences in a ’sounds like..’ way, but constraining and canonising along the lines of genre isn’t conducive to innovation and creativity, especially with different aspects of sub-culture. isolating them from one another as unassailable tablets brought from mount …ararat?.. will only cause stagnation in music.
Sometimes I think the ‘net’s helped me hear stuff I otherwise wouldn’t have and allowed bands to find larger audiences than they could have previously; sometimes I feel like it just means more hype and less being confronted by/stumbling upon things. What’s your opinion of how its changed fandom?
The internet has helped me find music, for sure. i used to be into those sites where you type in bands your into and gives you lists of bands it thinks are similar, and free tracks and things. Epitonic was one, i got into the whole Elephant Six Collective thing by typing into something I’m probably not into now. But it’s prompted me to go out and buy things, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Having said that, I’m sure it’s killed a bunch of music magazines and other mediums that we use to find bands and artists, but maybe thats sort of normal change. The defunct magazines might’ve set up internet blogs and set about interviewing people by email. Probably not though. I think the internet helps the lowly consumer, but fucks anyone trying to make money from an independent mag. So actually, it might be partly a bad thing. More hype? Probably. I dont know, I’m not sure I’m that affected by it. Extra hype’s probably mostly with famous-to-be up and coming bands that would kill eachother for hype and fame anyway, so they’d more or less find it with or without the internet. I think you have to go looking for hyped bands if you want to, don’t you? Read nme.com or something. or look at itunes’ recommended section. the internet makes it easier for people to be fans of more things. everyone likes fans.
The internet is the next generation of communication, so it has led to an easier exchange of ideas than was previously available. At the risk of continuing to sound like I am refusing point blank to get with the times or am old and jaded beyond my years, at least, I think this improved effieciency has come at a price. Back in the day (before my time, i can’t chat) people used to trade tapes and thus build up relationships, sustaining several diy communities. nowadays when i download music i don’t know who i’m getting it off unless the band has right-on diy ethics and i’m downloading straight from them, so i don’t know who to thank. Being a fan is easier now, for sure. its much more passive, you can leech (literally, torrent users) and not be active in contributing to the vast reservoirs of new music on the internet. As for hype, listen to hip hop by dead prez, allow hype
Do ideas like ’selling out’ and ‘keeping it real’ etc. have much currency anymore for music fans? Should they? If authenticity really mattered wouldn’t we all have to listen to Seasick Steve instead of Tom Waits?
As far as i’m concerned, keeping it real is every bit as important today as ever it was. If not more so. Although it has been going on for long time (elvis writing jingles for advertisers) nowadays commerce’s encroachment on the world of art is so hegemonic as to be mistaken for synergy in many cases. From my own perspective selling out is a real danger, as it means compromise. Others may not be of the same opinions as me, though. at the end of the day, it’s their music, they can do what they want.
As for Waits vs. Steve, fuck steve, he was hyped all along, yeah he jumped box cars etc. but then he SOLD OUT. Waits has kept it real, kept it undergroud since way back when. plus waits is a shite sight better than seasick steve. whereas steve sings form his own expreience, waits sings about others… more coherently than these others could manage. I believe that if you agree with the ideals and want to help an artist or label, then do what they ask of you, whether that is to spread the word about them, or buy their products (it shouldn’t be the latter). If not, steal!
I think it matters for sure. sometimes i hear about sell-out moves that bands i like have made and it makes me cringe a bit. The other day i read Rogue Wave described as part of ‘The O.C music crowd’ because they had a song on an episode. Sometimes its hard – a lot of bands i like i wouldnt have ever heard of if they hadnt made some kind of vaguely compromising career move at some point, but it’s acceptable in small doses. It’s when a band or artist allows it to be their main point of recognition, when it shapes their reputation and therefore the music they create.
If someone sets their sights on fame and gears their music towards a pop audience, forgetting their original ideas, they’ve lost it. I’ve got a half-problem with Stornoway at the moment because of their increasing radio time, press attention and critical acclaim. only because its seemed for some time that they’ve been actively seeking out much wider recognition (which they probably deserve). Trouble is, theres a line between working what you’ve got into a money-maker and “selling out” and its probably hard to know when that line comes. I’ve obviously got absolutely no standing for judging when a band has ‘gone too far’ with perusing media or pop attention so its probably not fair to say. BUT I am aware of when it happens. and I lose interest quite quickly. An artist’s intentions behind their art are often as important as the art itself.
The Clinic
Guidance: contains language which may offend.
Eugene: Hello hello, welcome to the maternity ward. Come in, come in. Now, you must be Samantha, eh? Yes, quite the little fox. ha ha! I bet you get that all the time, don’t you, a wee slip of a thing like you, eh? Well Samantha, pleased to meet you, I’m Dr Fergusen, but I expect that you already knew that didn’t you? If you didn’t, you bloody well should have; you’ve been waiting two hours to see me. Plenty of time to find out something simple like name. That’s the trouble with the youth today, no initiative. Well, you’re here now, may as well make yourself comfortable, put your foetus up! Ha ha! Don’t worry, just my little joke!
Now, what seems to be the problem? No no! Let me guess, I’m good at this. Right, let’s see… To start with, it hasn’t escaped my notice that you have a slight pot-belly, which immediately presents me with two possibilities: 1) that you are pregnant.
Samantha: Well, yeah…
Eugene: No, let me finish! Or 2) that, in an effort to look attractive, pointless as it may be, you have starved yourself to such an extent that you are turning into one of those ghastly little African things which, as far as I’m concerned, are neither comic nor a relief. However, given that on the whole you look comparatively healthy, if a little spotty, and given also that this is, after all, a maternity ward, I am inclined to discount the latter theory and have come to the conclusion that you are, as they say, with child. In a word, pregnant. Am I right?
Samantha: Yeah, genius, but…
Eugene: Oh, it was nothing, you needn’t look so amazed. Really, I’ve explained my reasoning, there was no other conclusion I could have reached. But now that we have got to the bottom of your predicament, we are faced with an either bigger question, namely: what are we going to do about it? Well, you have certainly come to right place.
Looking at you, and I am, I would say that you seem quite young, probably a bit stupid, definitely common, and – No! Don’t interrupt me. Remember that I am the Doctor whereas you are the silly little girl who got herself knocked up before she could even spell ‘condon’, let alone ‘prophylactic’. Where was I? Oh yes – and poor. In short, you’re in a bit of a coil, which is kind of ironic, I suppose. I therefore suspect that you want to have an abortion. Correct?
Samantha: No, I…
Eugene: Good! It’s for the best. Now, deciding to have an abortion is a big decision, and not one to be rushed into. So, if you can come to my home on Thursday, I’ll soon have the bastard out of you. I assume it is a bastard, or, rather, would be, were I not on the case. However…
Samantha: But…
Eugene: I said, However, if you can’t make Thursday, or perhaps think, as I do, that “if ‘twere to be done, then ‘twere well that ‘twere to done quickly”, then, for an extra tenner, cash, I’ll get to work now.
Samantha: No, you don’t understa…
Eugene: Of course, I was forgetting. You’re poor. Very well, I’ll waive the tenner. Now, on your back.
Samantha: No! I want to keep it.
Eugene: Just between ourselves? Of course, absolutely. Now, show us your snatch.
Samantha: No! I want to keep the baby!
Eugene: Keep it? What, in a jar? Actually, that’s quite a good idea. You could have it on a pendant or something, as a kind of contraceptive cum momento mori. Yes, I expect we could do that.
Samantha: I DON’T WANT AN ABORTION!
Eugene: Now don’t be silly, of course you do. You’re not old enough, clever enough, or rich enough to have a baby. Surely you don’t want to bring up a child to have the same kind of life that you’ve had, do you? Of course you don’t. After all, who could be so selfish? But perhaps you’re just scared. Well don’t be, it’s perfectly safe, even for triplets. It’s really very simple: first off, we take an itinery (you know: “two lips; indifferent red” et cetera), then we just part your beef curtains, so [part hands, Moses like], and insert a common kitchen whisk into your tuna canoe, do an Eskimo roll and mince the little blighter, or, as Jamie Oliver would say, ‘Blitz it!” Then we just suck it out through a straw; a Smoothie of the Innocent, as it were. See, nothing could be easier.
Any Questions? No? Good, that’s settled then. Now just lie back and think of England free from people like you.
