Conspicuous Consumption
The latest piece by my colleague k-punk in FACT magazine takes in Social Theorist Thorstein Veblen's concept of "conspicuous consumption". Mark comes up with a stylish twist on the concept to describe the studied indifference London's inattentive club-goers, what he calls "conspicuous contempt". Putting down the piece I couldn't help but mull over (in my traditionally paranoid manner) the ramifications of Veblen's theory. What for instance, from a rather arid Marxist perspective, is a blog like this but an opportunity for the blogger to parade his acquisitions? Even sharity blogs have their intent undermined by the fact that the music being given away is but a copy of the original arcane vaulted vinyl.
Putting together these shots of Phillips Prospective 21eme siecle sleeves that I've scooped since I wrote my first piece on The Silver Records just over four years ago, it seemed really appropriate to reflect on Veblen's ideas. If there are any records which embody the quality of jewels it has to be these. That's ironic in a couple of ways, firstly because when originally released they were put out at bargain prices (rather like the Nonesuch records), furthermore their musical content is extremely obtuse, even punishing. A jewel on the other hand is 'cross-the-board' enchanting, even a child will marvel at a jewel.
Reading Veblen I was surprised to find that his tone isn't particularly self-righteous or pious, and that it's nuanced. I suppose though Marx is a good deal more sophisticated than he's often interpreted, for instance evincing a respect for religion that few people credit. Rather than being a stiffly critical view of Nouveau Riche or Upper-Middle class's lavish "narcissistic" acquistion of goods amassed purely for the effect of demonstrating wealth with the intention of improving their public perception, Veblen's actually quite matter-of-fact, descriptive even.
I thought this passage was particularly interesting: He becomes a connoisseur in creditable viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dancers, and the narcotics. This cultivation of the aesthetic faculty requires time and application, and the demands made upon the gentleman in this direction therefore tend to change his life of leisure into a more or less arduous application to the business of learning how to live a life of ostensible leisure in a becoming way.
There is a sense that something like the concrete explorations of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales de RTF could be such an acquired taste of the sophisticate, of the "decadent bourgeoisie". Indeed wasn't this the regime's critique of the first wave of fascinating explorations in the Russian Avant-Garde (Malevich, Vertov and Tatlin)? That it was at odds with the success of the project.
I remember visiting East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, wandering around a super-market in astonishment. There was one type of bread available. One type of milk. Sugar. Tinned meat. There seemed to be no room whatsoever for the extraneous, or variety of any kind. In one sense this was laudable, but really what tedium! Capitalism on the other hand works by endlessly multiplying and subdividing the products available. So it is with music, it actually enables stylistic diversity, producing yet more stranger fruit. Rather than shutting it down, by prescribing a model (ie Stalin's Socialist Realism) music seems to flourish within it. Perhaps it's unsurprising how the current financial cataclysm for the Industry seems to have brought musical innovation to its knees. I can't think of a single good thing that has come out of the dalliance of Music with Marxist politics. Certainly not The Redskins but not really even the communal claptrap of the early Amon Duul communes.
On the Malec the treat for me was "Dahovi", "pour bande magnetique" though the rest of the tunes are certainly impressive "contemporary" music. The "concert collectif" is a total gem, incredibly ruff and wild, though sadly my copy (found like the Henry in Montpelier last year) is in terrible nick. "Variations pour une porte et un soupir" is under-rated and diverting though perhaps a victim of its aesthetic strictures.