Picking up a certain monthly periodical at the moment never fails to raise a sigh. What's with the Avant-Garde thing?
There comes a time in every record collectors life when he or she stumbles upon the Avant-Garde. It's an exciting moment for the theorist in all of us. Suddenly everything makes sense, our view of the whole field of music shifts. It becomes clear that lonely old fellows with beards had every idea a very long time before everyone else. Your favourite party music was a twinkle in their eyes as they laboured in subterranean studios keeping their tape-edits clean from cobwebs. Furthermore you realise that the only true radicals were those hardy souls with their Saxaphones. They look as bold and cool as those chaps doing messy paintings in Art class.
Some of us get lost in this particular maze for longer than others, directly proportional I believe to the amount we actually like music and admire the beauty of sound. The more insecure people are about their instinctual loves the longer it takes. The happier they are with the certainties of theory, then the more time is spent fawning over the historic Avant-Garde and by extention it's current copyists.
Sure there is some unspeakably beautiful Avant-Garde music- but I believe it tends to be wild and insane often druggy, street, religious or folk music which has transcended itself through a sheer intense love of sound. I'd put La Monte Young, Sun Ra, Bernard Parmegiani and John Coltrane in as examples of the aforementioned categories. John Cage? Not a musician mate, never said he was one. You certainly don't get there by aping Avant-Garde music itself. Indeed I think we could even institute a RetroAvantGarde TM category for all those desperate young men and women trying attain divine inspiration by proxy- suggested starting date Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" with Oval's "Diskont" as "The Year RetroAvantGarde TM broke". Going by this definition you could comfortably argue for Darkcore era Ardcore as a true Avant Garde rather than pomo street music with a curious avant twist, or even any Hip-Hop for that matter from Cannibal Ox to Jay Z (feeling generous today).
Of course the thing with RetroAvantGarde TM is that it's jolly easy to deal with. It turns up to the interview on time, wears nice clothes, flatters the editor, has it's CD in the office in time for the review staff, properly advertises it's concert in the appropriate press and is a really nice interesting chappie (though bloody rude and arrogant to everyone else who fails to understand how brill and clever and original it really is).
It makes me heartily sad to see column inches filling up with this stuff and stores choking with it's product. It also has a nasty habit of infecting "cleverer" musicians. I for one wish Herbert would stick to making gourgeous House music. So I've one thing to say: GET OVER IT!
Posted by Woebot at January 25, 2003 12:43 PM