I was going to build this piece out of responses to The Astronaut's Notepad's enthusiasm for what Jon describes as AvantFolk. Still waiting for Jon's comps to arrive, I wandered down to Rough Trade and checked a couple of the records out, the one by the No Neck Blues Band and the Jackie O Motherfucker record. I liked them, the music is a folky free-jazz low-fi rock mash-up, very droney and stretched out. What was really salient, to my mind was the way they've chosen to record themselves. It sounds like the band is crouched in one corner of the recording studio and one mic is pointed in their general direction. The model? Sounds like an ethnographic recording of a tribe of hairy refuseniks, the CD is an aural document, the recording of a lifestyle in opposition to Global Capitalism. Maybe what is at the heart of this approach is a belief that to enter into the mechanics of recording is to enter into into the same machinations as perpetrated by the state. They may be right? But perhaps to even record and market your "product" you're entering the same arena, especially now as so many of today's tiny-indies are distantly owned by the big record labels. It's the same political conundrum which many a group has got themselves appealingly screwed-up about.
Jon's piece was characterised by a nervousness about what he may feel is Beatnik music. Music which gives a damn, which wears it's heart on it's sleeve, which tries to battle through the minefield of contradictions. Beatnik music is of course more than that, it comes with a whole baggage of cultural markers. Beatnik music has as it's mirror image music which we could term AvantYob, both essentially have as their target a notion of mainstream society. Lets break out both the cliches:
Beatnik-------------vs------------AvantYob
-----------------------------------------------
Bourgeois-------------------------Prole
Conscious-------------------------Unconcious
Constructive----------------------Destructive
Refusal----------------------------Ignorance
Literate----------------------------Illiterate
Meditated -------------------------Instinctive
Audible----------------------------Noisy
Harmonious----------------------Cacophonous
Angelic----------------------------Diabolic
Celebrity--------------------------Scenius
CD/LP-----------------------------12"/7"
I just find it amazing how clearly music can be slotted into one or other of these categories. The notion of Beatniks being Celebrities and AvantYobs not, might seem to be a contradiction. In some ways it is, but the true AvantYob is just one interlocking gear in a machine. Some AvantYobs, when they become famous become apologists, forever trying to illustrate how they slot into the scene. The AvantYob is often turned into a celebrity by the lazy Beatnik Music Press transposing it's value system onto the AvantYobs. Fame can be thrilling for the AvantYob, but as soon as they forget their implication in the machine they wither like flower without soil, the Beatnik, on the other hand can flourish. Having said all this you can't keep a good AvantYob down, and there is such a thing as grassroots celebrity, in which AvantYobs emerge as "figureheads" by virtue of being so feckin' brilliant. All this relates to Brian Eno's now "well kicked-around" notion of "Scenius", the AvantYob is one element in the scene sharing a group responsibilty for the generation of the genre so DON'T THINK Bob Marley, THINK everyone in Kingston, Jamaica popping down the recording studio after a hard days work to cut a 7" like the one they heard at the dance last week.
Beatnik------------vs-----------AvantYob
--------------------------------------------
MC5----------------------------The Seeds (Garage Punk)
The Clash----------------------Eater (Punk)
Parliament---------------------James Brown (Funk)
Bob Marley--------------------Big Youth (MC Reggae)
Led Zep------------------------Black Sabbath (Brum Metal)
Sonic Youth--------------------Dinosaur Jr (US Hardcore)
Fela Kuti-----------------------King Sunny Ade (JuJu)
The Prodigy-------------------DJ Hype (Ardkore)
Def Jux------------------------WuTang (Horrorcore)
(Delftones)--------------------Slayer (New Metal)
I'd like to steer well clear of any value judgements attached to either AvantYob or Beatnik. I don't think it's at all helpful, there are very good arguments for both positions, and wonderful music arises from both. Really what interests me is the exclusivity of each position. I really don't think you can be both. A very few people have made a decent stab at being what I now officially dub YobNiks TM. The YobNik TM is essentially a compromised but still fascinating character. You couldn't say the YobNik TM succeeds in all his ambitions, but he or she manages to tick quite alot of all the boxes. I've thought about this for days and all I can think of are Goldie, Mark E Smith and Jimi Hendrix. That's a pretty queer gang, and they'd probably have difficulty together at a dinner party. Jimi I'm least certain of, he's probably the greatest Beatnik ever. But in a real sense they are also characters who want it all desperately. They want the whole cake and the plate. Maybe the YobNik TM holds the key to the future?
How I feel about music at the moment right now is that I know I hopelessly skewered in favour of the AvantYobs. Its a tough time for Beatnik's right now, mainly because being a political radical ain't what it used to be, it's not enough to wave your copy of No Logo and stroke your beard chaps. Sometimes I think groups like Ultra-Red and Beta Bodega are as about as hard as being a Beatnik gets these days with all their cross-border grassroots activities, but we're still a long way from 70's Germany and Amon Duul harbouring members of the Baader Meinhof don't you think? It's also possibly down to a general smartening up of culture, maybe you don't get the kind of anti-social excess practised by the Beatniks of yore. The Deleuzian idea that aspiring to be an AvantYob, ignoring mainstream culture and concentrating on generating one's own personal positivity will contribute to undermining Global Capitalism is a liberating one. But of course we're a bunch of Beatnik wannabe Avant-Yobs reading all this into the dionysian activities of the subculture.
Which brings me to my final point. What are you, are you a Beatnik or an AvantYob? Like me I imagine you're a Beatnik, with your face pressed tightly against the glass. Because if you were a true AvantYob you wouldn't be reading this bollocks.
Posted by Woebot at February 11, 2003 12:13 PM