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But, Are You Advanced Enough?
Lou Reed, singing with the Blind Boys of Alabama AND he’s singing a Velvet Underground song AND appears to be enjoying it.
I’ll Keep A Close Watch
I posit that John Cale is more advanced than Lou Reed.
Repent, Repent
From The (world famous for being the only good music writing resource†) Quietus:
We say first visibly, as of course Sioux was one of the Sex Pistols’ entourage who rocked up on Bill Grundy’s Today programme and was the source of the “dirty fucker”’s lusty comments. But this is the problem with laying into so-called hipsters. If Sioux ended her teens as a hipster, she started her adulthood as one of the best rock stars of the late 70s, the80s and beyond.In most cases the accusation of hipsterism smacks of jealousy and a tiresome obsession with authenticity or has come from a quasi-self aware ‘hipster’ journalist.
Every generation plays dress up. Though the recovery from the cyclical ironic self-awareness of the punk, or in our time hipster, culture would surely be a valuable process. Unless you never recovered and ended up doing butter advertisements. Still, you’d be in good company.
†: Of course I forgot about Wax Poetics.
The 80/20 McCartney Split
The records Paul McCartney made in the first ten years after leaving The Beatles are eight parts ego-tripping superstar schlock to two parts outsider art. They have all the slickness of Seventies AOR, but at second glance they’re as disassociated as Wesley Willis. No other major rock star would make an album quite like Ram, so cosy and so conflicted. No other major rock star would think to write a song about his Land Rover, or Fungus The Bogeyman. While his peers were mining Robert Johnson’s ‘Crossroads’, McCartney was covering the theme from Crossroads. The man was in a world of his own.
Judas!
Daniel Miller, writing for The Nation, has recently published a “scathing critique” of Slavoj Žižek in general and his latest book, In Defense of Lost Causes, in particular, pointing to his pyrrhic descent into madness as indicated by the undoubtedly Hegelian trifecta of Hitchens-esque contrarianism, left-wing militarism and, of course, the culminating integration with hyper-reflexive late-capitalist consumerism. Miller concludes his review with this bit of speculative reason:
Throughout In Defense of Lost Causes, Žižek speaks recurrently, and in a sometimes disturbingly extravagant tone, of the “messianic” imperative of performing “a Leap of Faith” over the ravine of common sense in pursuit of “lost Causes, Causes that, from the space of sceptical wisdom, cannot but appear as crazy.” During such moments, it’s hard not to suspect that Žižek has finally gone mad.
As a student of advanced theory, I don’t find any of this problematic. On the contrary, Miller’s reaction to Žižek’s “Kehre” typifies the kind of idolatry that surrounds innumerable public figures when the ego catches a glimpse of its own auratic reflection only to find itself spurned and alienated in the solipsistic idiocy of its own narcissistic jouissance.
Perhaps this gives some credibility to Rex Butler’s otherwise annoyingly stupid and culturally inept comparison of Žižek to Bob Dylan, only insofar as both succeeded in alienating large portions of their audience at a certain world-historical juncture. If this is the case, then I fully welcome Žižek’s theological turn and his advertisements for the BBC and Abercrombie & Fitch. If Miller represents the kind of audience Žižek had formerly captivated, then I eagerly await the sleeveless leather shirts and aviators to come.