Open letter to Jon Eden and Paul Meme.
Quote from an email from Paul Meme:
"I'm saying your critique of industrial music is unfair and unbalanced. You can't raise the spectre of satanic child abuse without engaging with the veracity or rather lack thereof of that phenomenon. You certainly set up a manichean post-Xtian dichotomy where industrial music is at the "bad, dark, evil" end and some sort of "white light" Xtianity is at the other end without engaging in a more intelligent analysis of what is purported to be "evil" and in particular what is purported to be "good".
(excerpted)
I'm quite comfortable with you slagging off crappy exploitative industrial music -- been there, done that, got the t-shirt. You should have seen the anti-exploitation flyers me and John used to send off back in the old days. What I am not comfortable with is having the whole scene, the whole philosophical position, being jammed together as if it were all equally intellectually and spiritually bankrupt, which is not the case, and more especially when you accuse the whole lot of being conducive to "real evil" without thinking through just who is evil and who wreaks the most damage.."
I'm beginning to sense through your (and the excellent Biroco blog) that there is a well-weathered form of discourse in the culture you emerge from of "the rant", brow-beating and one-upmanship. Fired up with a few pints at the Dog and Duck surrounded by fellow "ranters" all having a larf it'd make perfect sense. I can picture the camaraderie and "bonhomie".....
(Apologising for responding irately to Paul's previous and blunter email) Maybe it just doesn't carry online unless you're acquainted with it. As for the content of what I've said well, who cares if we're in agreement? I'm beginning to suspect that while there is a healthy coalesence online with the blogs, a chummy consensus, there is also a danger of homogeneity. That's part of the reason I took k-punk to task. Stylistically superficial in one sense, but a serious issue too. We don't want one HUGE lovey dovey bundle of agreement? Do we? We want difference to be respected!
Thought about the industrial thing long and hard. Paul thinks I'm positing Christianity at one end and Satanism at the other. I think you (Uncarved) spotted that I wasn't. I've no truck with either really. Two sides of the same coin. I don't see a Transendental Positivism (form a queue, no pushing at the back!) having much to do with either. My main problem with that scene is that, and this is the third time I've said it*, it's project revolves around using symbols society construes negatively in a positive manner. But that often it just becomes about "rolling around in the muck."
Vis a vis Satanic Panic. I had no idea you were involved in that Gen Porridge thing. (Eden apparently nearly arrested on the basis of totally unfound allegations) Crikey you guys! I know all about that actually, and from interviews with him believe the rumours were unfounded. In the piece I wrote I was referring to something quite else I'd seen (and gee thanks for bringing it up). It wasn't a TG record sleeve. Also with regards to the experiences of my friend in Glasgow- this is all first-hand stuff, not from the press. From the things up at uncarved (yikes), and Jon's comments on the blog I sense that your not ENTIRELY in disagreement. Paul mentioned anti-exploitation rallies you'd attended etc.
I'd like to be able to be kinder about the music. You're obviously acquainted with the Industrial movement as a CULTURE, as such it's very rich and deep. However, the music seems ancillary to the scene, not even the focal point for gatherings like Talking Stick. Industrial music seems to exist outside the rhizomes that thread most other musics together. Points of entry from other musics are few and far between, stronger threads link it to literature and occult practise. A music which essentially performs a totemic or social function sets my alarm bells ringing. Notwithstanding the fact that music without an attendant culture is empty and flat, I want to hear music which is PRIMARILY a sonic experience. Only bits and pieces of "Industrial" music I've heard have managed to transcend this.
As for lumping it all together, well maybe that is a bit wicked of me. Some contributors have said NWW don't belong in there. However I've heard TG, Whitehouse, Coil, NWW and Current 93 all complain in separate interviews that they were unhappy with being lumped in the "Industrial scene". That's so rich! Refuse entry at the door for paying customers wearing fellow-travellers T-shirts or sporting facial piercing, ponytails, stovepipe hats, penny spex or wispy goatees then! Yeah unfair to tar EVERYTHING with the same brush, but this scene sure as hell clings together. That Keenan book will set the glue like the second tube of Araldite.
Dubya likes Coil you know. He has all their CDs.
Posted by Woebot at July 17, 2003 10:44 PM