Gays against Gaga

Hardcore for Nerds: Punktimism v. Poptimism

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:28:00 -0700

Hardcore for Nerds: Punktimism v. Poptimism:

I think the question is whether ‘poptimism’ and ‘punktimism’ are really that different from each other (and the latter, much more even than the former, is a thing constructed primarily for the purposes of this discussion): if they’re not, they should naturally overlap; but if they are, and oppose each other, then the proper response is not to triangulate between them as if they were two equally valid but different viewpoints (a process that usually means the more culturally powerful side decides the point of compromise) but to form a new synthesis that replaces them both. Hegelian Dialectics 101.

What I’ve always had a block about understanding in the concept of poptimism is that while supposedly about upholding the genuine quality of music, freed from snobbery and ‘elitism’, by its nature it revolves around whatever music is ‘popular’. So assuming one agrees that artistic merit isn’t actually decided by democracy, or that the commercial process by which that is supposed to happen (VOTE NOW! BUY!) is definitely flawed, what it really ought to be about is critically appreciating the communal experience of music. Which is what punk - or ‘punktimism’ - is about as well, only its communal experience is focused on a particular movement in the political arts (of course there is apolitical punk as well as political pop, but each movement has its general directed oriented in a certain way).

Punks follow the crowd too, although it is a smaller one and they at least tend to feel it has a different purpose. Pop (or mainstream, or mass) culture vs. counter-culture isn’t an entirely bad way of separating the two: despite the well-rehearsed arguments against a ‘counter-culture’ not having a valid existence, I at least think it’s a valuable concept to maintain so as it has a chance to make a more concrete impact. So that’s what I, and others, don’t want to give up about punk - that idea and inspiration of rebellion and rejection - and don’t want to see it subsumed into a pop-optimism that is inherently less confrontational about the culture industry and the various demands of capitalism on social life.*

However, I don’t think that critical side of punk has to be inevitably associated with rockism or elitism: punk has always been a movement that has consciously struggled with -isms both within and without, with varying degrees of success, but those particular descriptions probably apply the least to those creating at the margins of what is traditionally regarded as the ‘punk’ movement, who may not take the label but embody the principles the most (or, to be frank: is it elitist not to command a mass following?) There should be a way of combining counter-cultural principles with cultural openness, and indeed this is what made some of the most creative punk music after the initial anti-everything statements of ‘77. And today, self-identified punk fans embody some of the principles of poptimism within their own genre: the appropriation of the language of tough-guy hardcore for the semi-ironic, semi-sincere ‘Defend Pop-Punk’ slogan, or the burgeoning re-appreciation for 00s pop-punk and post-hardcore that the commercial machine spewed out and then rendered ‘uncool’ in the pursuit of pop novelty. I would call that ’punktimism’, rather than assuming the term refers to a reactionary foil of poptimism’s ostensibly unique progressiveness.

This is super smart, but I think if we’re going to go down the road of coining terms to describe ideological extremes, we could do better than “punktimism” which seems like a contradiction in terms. (Meaning, optimism in punk or about punk is only ever one side of the coin. HC4N advances the notion of the Hegelian dialectic, which is appropriate, as punk has long been a dialectical discourse—a one-two punch of pessimism and optimism, of affirmation and denial, “No Future” and “PMA.” You could also view Hegel through the lens of Adorno and call it “Pegatively Nositive”, after the title of one of our favorite punk records of the last few years.)

Instead, maybe we would benefit from a distinction between punk and punkism. There’s an obvious parallel to rockism, but this distinction borrows the convention from geopolitics to distinguish between Islam and Islamism, or as Andrew Sullivan does, between Christianity and Christianism. (note: this should not be seen as an endorsement of the problematic construct of Islamism, or of Andrew Sullivan, who is a bit daft.)

Punkism could then be ascribed to the subset of punks who hold fast to the illusion of the ultimate superiority of their particular subculture, while punk just means identification with and participation in that subcultural/intellectual tradition. In 2013, most punks ain’t punkists.

Similarly, we could benefit from a distinction between poptimism, a reading of pop music that tends to accent and celebrate pop music’s capacity for pleasure and socially liberatory themes and popism, a system of thinking about music that posits pop values as normative.

Poptimism has brought us some valid and true insights, even as it tends to get a little starry-eyed. It’s when poptimism crosses over into pop-ism that we really get into trouble, because the net effect is to make culture industry critiques inadmissible.

thepeoplesrecord: New FCC chairman is “former lobbyist for...

Wed, 01 May 2013 08:02:43 -0700

thepeoplesrecord:

New FCC chairman is “former lobbyist for cable & wireless industries”
April 30, 2013

President Barack Obama will nominate venture capitalist Tom Wheeler to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, The Wall Street Journal reported today. Wheeler is “a former top lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries” and will be nominated as soon as tomorrow, the Journal wrote. The Hill reporter Brendan Sasso said the White House has now confirmed that Wheeler will be nominated for the post.

The top FCC post is empty because of the departure of Chairman Julius Genachowski. When Genachowski announced his decision to step down last month, we wrote that he was “lauded by industry” and “blasted by activists” because of moves that benefited corporations instead of consumers. Genachowski won praise from consumer advocates in some instances, but the decision to let wireless operators evade net neutrality rules and his approval of mergers such as Comcast/NBCUniversal were criticized by groups pushing for more competition in communications industries.

Wheeler has been a venture capitalist at Core Capital Partners since 2005. “Tom was President of the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) from 1979 to 1984,” his Core Capital biography states. “After several years as CEO of various technology start-ups, including the first company to offer high-speed data to the home and the first digital video delivery service, he was asked to lead the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA), where he was CEO until 2004.”

Wheeler is an “Obama loyalist,” Time reporter Sam Gustin wrote two weeks ago while describing him as the front-runner for the FCC nomination. Wheeler previously received an appointment from Obama to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

“Mr. Wheeler will take over as the commission confronts a changing technology world,” the Journal wrote. “Many of its regulations were crafted for outdated telephone technology. Democrats would like to apply many of these rules to new communications methods, such as wireless technology and broadband Internet. But it isn’t clear whether Mr. Wheeler is on board with that approach.”

Law professor and net neutrality supporter Susan Crawford gained some support from FCC observers hoping the next commission head would be a champion for broadband competition. Crawford, author of “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” was never seen as a likely choice for Obama, though. She wasn’t corrupt enough for the current administration.

“Despite that vote of confidence, many in the public interest community remain suspicious of Wheeler—even as they acknowledge that he’s the frontrunner—due to his industry lobbying and the fact that his positions on the major issues facing the FCC remain largely unknown,” Gustin wrote. “In late March, more than two dozen public interest groups wrote to Obama expressing alarm that the president was considering a candidate ‘who was the head of not one but two major industry lobbying groups.’”

Tom’s past history as the head of two industry trade associations should deeply trouble you. Free Press, one of the groups lobbying against Wheeler, issued a telling statement.

“The Federal Communications Commission needs a strong leader—someone who will use this powerful position to stand up to industry giants and protect the public interest,” Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron said. “On paper, Tom Wheeler does not appear to be that person, having headed not one but two major trade associations.”

Source

This is pretty unfair and omits the important fact that Susan Crawford herself has said that Tom Wheeler is a pretty solid candidate for the position.

It also cherry picks sentences from Free Press’s statement, omits the sentence that followed their concerns about Wheeler: “ But he now has the opportunity to prove his critics wrong, clean up the mess left by his predecessor, and be the public servant we so badly need at the FCC.”

Not that Wheeler would be our choice, but to conclude “Barack Obama does not care about you” based on the fact that he appointed this dude to one federal agency is to totally misunderstand how the appointment process works. Obama could try and appoint a left-wing media reformer, but that person would never actually get the job, because whoever Obama appoints still has to get approved by Congress.

Do you know how many presidential appointees are still waiting for approval by Congress?

"It’s offensive to those not in the tiny ultra-privileged world that can be bored with questions of..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:22:50 -0700

“It’s offensive to those not in the tiny ultra-privileged world that can be bored with questions of power, domination, inequality, resistance, and so on, because these questions make looking at art “more awkward.” Fuck that, go read a YouTube comment.”

- More, Better Sociology (via nathanjurgenson)

"The punk mentality used to be a default ethos among rock kids, but over the past decade that fell..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:53:00 -0700

“The punk mentality used to be a default ethos among rock kids, but over the past decade that fell apart; punk-think, which used to feel joyful and liberating, has started to look crabbed and guarded as well. Who, at this point, needs to lob spitballs at a monoculture that anyone with an Internet connection can easily escape? It seems bolder now to embrace things with reckless innocence and delight in artifice — which is exactly what some of the earliest New York punks, and some of the best to follow them, were aiming for.”

- Nitsuh Abebe, “This Is Punk?” Best sentences of cultural criticism I’ve read this year. (via judyxberman)

——

Love Nitsuh and Judy both, but this isn’t Nitsuh’s strongest work.

The “punk mentality” used to be a “default ethos” among “rock kids”?* I guess this depends on where you grew up, but that’s gonna be news for punk kids who got sneered at for liking The Slits over Zeppelin, treated like space aliens for liking Slant 6 more than the Beatles, for liking Half Japanese or Unrest more than Aerosmith or AC/DC, you know? Nirvana did something to unite punk and rock fans, but the depth of that union may have been pretty surface level for many.

Not sure what “punk-think” is either. But “joyful and liberating” and “guarded” aren’t opposites. Frankly, it makes sense to be protective of the stuff that is the most awesome and precious to you, especially for communities of marginalized folks. You know? You want to keep Taco Bell out of your all-ages DIY festival not because you hate fun, but because you want to create a context where reckless innocence can thrive unimpeded. That’s always been part of the dynamic.

And then this idea that the internet enables “escape” from monoculture; okay but what if the point isn’t to “escape” but to engage and ultimately transform stuff? Is Nitsuh saying that critical readings of and attitudes toward shitty mass culture are obsolete because you can find alternatives easier? Seriously? True, it is the prevalent trend right now, to imagine that mass culture doesn’t actually have any power over people because one can make jokes about it on twitter, or find a alternative consumer identity that fits one’s taste preferences without much friction.

Yes, “delight in artifice” is great, but artifice is one critical tool in a artist’s toolbox. So the question is: to what end? Delight in artifice for the sake of artifice is still frequently a capitalist bummer.

And okay, we’re being a tad strident here (BECAUSE PUNX ARE ALWAYS ANGRY LOL!), but I dunno why it seems suddenly trendy to conceptualize “punk” in 2013 as if it resembled the Maximum Rock N Roll letters page in ‘94; today’s punks are heterogenous and frequently musically omnivorous and doing rad joyful stuff all over. When you see writing like this you wonder how deeply engaged these writers are with the diverse universe of punk kids today. And maybe that’s not Nitsuh’s job as a pop music writer for a major publication, or maybe it’s just descriptive of phenomena endemic to NYC (which we don’t know much about, having never lived there) but it’s kind of disappointing.

Because if the prescription is to nudge punk in the direction of poptimism, that doesn’t seem “bolder”, it just seems trendier and more congruent with late capitalism.

*We apologize for the overuse of scarequotes in this post, but those sentences are full of questionable constructs and abstractions we can’t really get behind.

(via gaysagainstgaga)

Respect to you, too, and I understand why you’d have a problem with the piece. But I think you’re seeing punk as a philosophy or lifestyle — and especially the punks of today — through rose-colored glasses. As someone who has loved punk music for basically my whole life (despite never identifying as “a punk,” which I think is key to having some distance on it), I understand that it’s upsetting to see the movement painted as reactionary.

You reference poptimism, and that is important to this argument. To identify as “a punk” in 2013 is, in large part, to be a rockist. And that comes with some ideological baggage that historically privileges the musical forms approved by straight white men over genres dominated by women, queer people, and people of color. This is what your Slits fans and your Led Zeppelin fans have in common — they both think that a guitar-wielding person singing songs that he or she wrote is the highest form of musical expression. That doesn’t mean that everyone who identifies as “a punk” is so retrograde that they can’t appreciate a great pop song, but it does mean I can’t speak to Nitsuh’s familiarity with punks in 2013, but I’ve definitely seen enough of that world to notice a problem with people who profess to be so radical closing their minds to so much of what our culture has to offer.

There are aspects of this that don’t even have to with rockism. Some of it has to do with how self-evident punk’s anti-artifice argument has become over the past 35 years. No one’s shocked anymore when you point out that most pop stars’ songs are written by committee or that their images are constructed in a boardroom or that they shill for major corporations. (Never mind that plenty of mainstream bands who “write their own songs” and are marketed as “punk” were constructed in a very similar way.) This stuff is just so obvious it’s become naive to say it out loud. This is, in part, a credit to how effective its early critiques of pop culture were. (Never mind that, as Nitsuh notes, the very first punks had much more open and complex relationships to pop culture than subsequent waves.) But since that critique has stayed static as our collective understanding of pop culture has evolved — especially since the turn of the millennium — it’s punk that’s become outmoded.

This is what’s hurting punk, as an identity, a critical stance, and a genre of music. I don’t deny that we need the punk voice, that corrective negation, that insistence that we question the artifice that threatens to make us complacent. But as we become more sophisticated in our understanding of all that, we need punk to become more sophisticated, too — we need it to tell us something about our culture that we don’t already know. And I can’t think of the last time it’s done that.

(via judyxberman)

——

Judy, we appreciate the response here, but we remain deeply puzzled by this:

“To identify as “a punk” in 2013 is, in large part, to be a rockist.”[…]
the ideology they’ve adopted — not by liking punk music as one genre among many but by identifying as “a punk” — values an increasingly shallow definition of authenticity that upholds some troubling received wisdom that reinforces classic-rock norms.

We don’t understand this. Why should this be so? Who gets to decide what someone else’s identity means? This is a bummer for us as queer people who are constantly being told what identifying as queer should mean, instead of allowed to define it for ourselves, or as feminists who are told that feminism means hating men. Assuming we’re using Douglas Wolk’s definition of rockism, which means positing rock values as “normative,” it’s easy to forget that first wave punk can be understood as a criticism of rockism using a rock vocabulary. In 2013, the punk labels we love the most are putting out hip-hop, weird electro noise music, house, dubby-folk, alongside guitar rock. (Yes, dull annoying rockist wankers are still present in punk, just like the rest of the world. But, um, anyone with an internet connection can easily escape them!)

“And that comes with some ideological baggage that historically privileges the musical forms approved by straight white men over genres dominated by women, queer people, and people of color. This is what your Slits fans and your Led Zeppelin fans have in common — they both think that a guitar-wielding person singing songs that he or she wrote is the highest form of musical expression. “

We’ll set aside questions about which genres have offered which kinds of opportunities for diverse kinds of humans, because, OMG huge topic. But we know a lot of punks who love the Slits, and we don’t think we know any that think a “guitar-wielding person singing songs that he or she wrote is the highest form of musical expression”. Frankly, we don’t think most Slits fans even give a shit about what the “highest form of musical expression” is. That isn’t the point. The point is community, possibility, inspiration, not technical skill, not even “great art for the ages”, not virtuosity. And we don’t know any Slits fans in 2013 who aren’t also into like, Dolly Parton, and Salt N’ Pepa and Kate Bush.

To the extent that punk still fixates on guitar rock, it’s not because most punks think guitar rock is the “highest form” of anything, so much as a reflection of the obvious fact that when music is made in a context that is focused on community and traditions, people create stuff they choose the tools and tropes that are available to them based on their immediate cultural context, not because they think those tools are inherently superior to all others.

And this business about punk’s critique remaining static? This is hard to address without getting into the messy business of defining what punk’s fundamental critique actually is (there are multitudes—a topic for another post). And there’s also something to be interrogated about why novelty is so paramount these days, or the false equation of novelty with sophistication—why we’re all more inclined to ask for culture to “tell us something new” instead of “tell us something true” (even as we could point to a lot of bands/artists that are doing both.)

But if you accept that part of the point of the endeavor is some kind of social transformation on individual or collective levels, just because something is obvious and “everyone” knows doesn’t mean there’s a reason to stop saying it! There is endless value in articulating and rearticulating big corny irreducible truths like:

Women and queers should be able to control their bodies and destinies.

An increasingly small handful of corporations control the vast majority of media outlets, and we should fix that.

Authority should be accountable.

We should work to create better and more egalitarian systems that value people over money and privilege.

You have agency and you don’t need permission.

It’s okay to feel how you’re feeling.

Etc.

Punk praxis does this stuff for us; gives us access to a community of shared values and mutual support and critical inquiry and accountability. Obvs not the only place you can access those insights and resources, but it works for us, and that’s why we’re punks, even as most of the music we listen to sounds more like Sade than Minor Threat these days.

"The punk mentality used to be a default ethos among rock kids, but over the past decade that fell..."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:36:00 -0700

QUEER MUSiC FRIDAY! McAlmont & Butler —...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:00:53 -0700

QUEER MUSiC FRIDAY!

McAlmont & Butler — “Yes”

If you don’t know David McAlmont’s work, do check it out. This song, from a collaboration with Suede’s Bernard Butler, is a gem, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. Possibly the greatest singer that Britain has ever produced.

"Part of my own affection for Kim Gordon, I realize, is her association with an era when even boys..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:36:12 -0700

“Part of my own affection for Kim Gordon, I realize, is her association with an era when even boys thought it was cool to call themselves feminists. I’m not sure when exactly that changed, but I know that by the time I was aware of experiencing sexism firsthand I’d already gotten the message that to identify myself as a feminist would limit me. I envy and admire the way Gordon—and the pop-cultural heroes she helped shape, like Hanna and Coppola and Courtney Love—seemed unafraid of that word. But I am even more envious and admiring of the way the men in Gordon’s orbit—from the Beastie Boys, who played with Sonic Youth over the years, to Moore to Cobain, who was very close to Gordon—seem to have taken cues from her about how to be good men.”

- The Top 50 Gifs of Me Dancing At Coachella, Being Like, “Fuck Yes Kim Gordon (And Lizzy Goodman)” (via lindsayzoladz)

Boys: it is still cool to call yourself feminist.

(Also: we think this piece is good, and suggests something important: to the extent that there’s a renewed interest in 90s punk, it’s less about nostalgia (or orthodoxy) and more that it reflects an aching for a cultural moment when feminism and populist music were colliding in a way that wasn’t so damned third-wavey in the options that got forefronted.)

Apparently this Turkish blog wrote about us?

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 22:48:56 -0700

Apparently this Turkish blog wrote about us?:

Any Turkish-speaking readers want to summarize? Google Translate isn’t much help.

LGBTQ Equality goes beyond marriage

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:59:00 -0700

LGBTQ Equality goes beyond marriage:

We’re pro-marriage. While feminist and queer critiques of the institution as it is currently practiced are important, we reject the idea that marriage is fundamentally about preserving patriarchy or private property or whatever. When marriage belongs to everyone, you can do whatever you want with it. You can make your marriage (or non-marriage) an expression of your most awesome feminist anti-consumerist values. Marriage done right, can be goddamned radical.

But we do need to remember that marriage isn’t the #1 end-all goal for LGBT equality. This article does a great job of reminding us why.

Lady Gaga

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:38:34 -0700

Lady Gaga:

towheegordon:

yourfaveisproblematic:

Her racist brownface V Magazine cover

More brownface

Posing with people in blackface

Appropriating and sexualizing the sari

Appropriating and sexualizing the burqa

Appropriating the niqab, and wearing it together with a purse with the word “cunt” written on it

This

She’s ableist and uses a wheelchair during her performances

Using an antiziganist slur

Refers to gay people as “the gays”

Uses trans*phobic slurs: “I look at photos of myself, and I look like such a t****y!”

When addressing media rumors that she’s trans*, she said, “I really am a lady! I’m not quite as outrageous as I look - underneath all this I am deeply moral and actually a really nice girl”. She insinuated that trans* women are not really women, and that they can’t be moral or nice people.

Uses ableist slurs: “I’m a songwriter. I’ve written loads of music. Why would I try to put out a song and think I’m getting one over on everybody? That’s r****ded.”

More of her trans*phobia

Use of slurs and pejoratives in her Born This Way lyrics: “no matter black, white, or beige/ chola or Orient-made”. Discussion and analysis in the link.

Addressing the media firestorm over her weight gain: “Adele is bigger than me, how come nobody says anything about it?”

lady gaga everybody.

DJ Sprinkles interview

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:07:57 -0800

Since I am unable to believe in the authenticity or purity of identities of any kind, when I invoke “identifiable” sounds (a “queer” sound, a “black” sound, etc.) I am doing so to question the social relationships around their construction, proliferation, and distribution. The moment we become lazy about our use of those “identifiable” sounds — the minute we take it for granted that the essentialist associations they have come to carry are unquestionable and real reflections of material social experiences — everything becomes one-dimensional and shallow. This is why almost all music is one-dimensional and shallow! [Laughs.] For example, if I can beat a dead horse, my problem with Madonna’s “Vogue” is not that it was “inauthentic,” but that its terms of discourse misrepresented its relationship to vogueing by actively erasing the very contexts of Latina and African-American transgendered culture that inspired it (via lyrics about “It makes no difference if you’re black or white, a boy or a girl”… it TOTALLY made a difference, and THAT SOCIAL REALITY is where any real discussion on vogueing BEGINS.). So I’m interested in these other directions of audio discourse that cannot even occur if one is preoccupied with conflated essentializations of identity and sound. There is never a true point of origin for anything. It’s all referential and contextual. In my opinion, there is no point in discussions focussing on identifying the source of a sound or style — that is a hopelessly futile exercise, although it is the dominant exercise! It’s a distraction from the real discussions needing to be held, and those are discussions on relations of domination.

As a DJ in the late ’80s and early ’90s, there were a lot of drag queens asking me to play Madonna’s “Vogue” when it first came out. I refused, but I could understand their requests. We all have very complicit and complex relationships to dominations, and a perverse desire to celebrate our visibility within the dominant mainstream, no matter how unfamiliar or distorted that reflection may be… often because we are conditioned to feel so unhappy with what we see in the mirror to begin with. Mainstream visibility is like getting approval of the Father. It’s a mental and abusive process. It is also totally standard. So I get it… But there is also that which remains unrepresented and invisible to most. That which existed, and may have already been lost, but did so without seeking approval of the Father. And again, this is generally not a freed or liberated space, but a space of intense hatred for the Father. These are difficult things to speak of and represent, because any act of representation has the potential to be a violation of the cultural site it wishes to speak of. So to speak of them requires obfuscating or complicating the usual functions of language - not through vague poetry, but unexpected flashes of clarity coming from unexpected vectors.

Read the rest

Just North of Something Important: Consumer confidence

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:01:10 -0800

Just North of Something Important: Consumer confidence:

barthel:

The thing I’m most mystified about currently in terms of the way people talk and think about the internet is the almost total disdain for traditional labor issues. Everything is about economic efficiency and service to the consumer. If something can save you, as a customer, some measure of time or annoyance, it’s worth employees being fired, or working without health insurance, or losing any perks the profession might have provided. This has been most noticeable in the case of the music industry: scratch a comment box about piracy and you’re likely to find some argument that just because you work as a musician doesn’t mean you deserve to get paid for it. since that would inconvenience listeners. But you can see it in the cases of the postal service, the media, and now the educational system, too. In all cases, the hard-fought protections for workers that have been built up are opposed for resulting in a sub-optimal user experience, and so therefore they must be abolished.

This argument is morally untenable from self-identifying leftists, and so the language it’s couched in is one of historical inevitability. You see it clearly inClay Shirkey’s recent writings about MOOCs and higher education: it’s not so much that online education would be universally better as it is that it’s coming whether we like it or not, and the only possible response is to get out of the way. If you’re limiting your historical scope to the last couple decades, when laissez-faire economics have been the norm and we’re all suspicious of regulations, then maybe that makes sense. But to broaden the scope to the history of the labor movement in general (and all of these things are at least partially labor issues: see, for instance, Amanda Palmer trying to screw over unionized musicians), the idea that workers should have looked at the massive and unavoidable changes wrought by industrialization and said “well, nothing we can do about that, let’s just succumb to its logic” is inconceivable.

The system is changing, as the system is always changing, and we’re negotiating that as best we can. The issue here is that some of those changes are being driven by economic interests hostile to the labor rights of the workers in the current system, and that is the precise point at which we’d want the government to step in - or, at the very least, for an organized movement of those workers to actively resist those changes, rather than simply rolling over and accepting a lower quality of life because the government couldn’t get its shit together to fix the looming problems in higher education, music, or whatever industry we’re disrupting today. It’s a blinkered view. All consumers are also laborers, after all. But despite our deep concern for our rights when we’re occupying one of those roles, we’re utterly dismissive of the rights we might have when occupying the other.

This 15-year old girl is named Janis Ian. She’s singing...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:00:47 -0800

This 15-year old girl is named Janis Ian. She’s singing her composition “Society’s Child” in 1965. ”Society’s Child” is also the name of her autobiography; the audiobook version won a Grammy last night (beating Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, and two other rad lesbians: Rachel Maddow and Ellen DeGeneres!)

You may also have heard her best known song “At 17”, which is kind of a brutal outsider anthem.

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
the world was younger than today
when dreams were all they gave for free
to ugly duckling girls like me…

Janis Ian came out as a lesbian in 1993, and married Patricia Snyder in 2003.

Queer teenagers: pick up an instrument, write a song and you will rule the world!

"While today’s youth are eager to live in a world where racism does not exist, they do not want to do..."

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:17:46 -0800

“While today’s youth are eager to live in a world where racism does not exist, they do not want to do the political work of changing themselves or society. That world entails confronting pain and hostility. And they are the generations who are constantly told via mass media that only losers feel pain, that the good life is a life without difficulties. They are constantly told that the only peace and happiness they can have will come to them through rugged individualism, through a focus on meeting self-centered needs. In a world where pathological narcissism is the order of the day, it is difficult to arouse collective concern for challenging racism or any form of domination.”

- bell hooks | Where We Stand: Class Matters

gayboywithamohawk: needle: must everyone rip off david...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:53:36 -0800

gayboywithamohawk:

needle:

must everyone rip off david lachappelle

really now, color scheme alone, she’s ripping off The Hulk.

Hahahha.

Fuck Yeah! Queer Music: Ugh.

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:43:00 -0800

Fuck Yeah! Queer Music: Ugh.:

fyeahqueermusic

gaysagainstgaga:

So Taylor Swift is the latest superstar to team up with notorious homophobe union-busters TARGET.

Is it okay to say that her music is kind of one dimensional too, or will we get mobbed by angry poptimists?

(Also, so ridiculous that her song makes reference to “some indie record that’s cooler than mine” when her record is ON AN INDIE LABEL! The obvious implication is that there’s something elitist or snobby about “indie” and of course, the opposite is true—fundamentally, indie is a populist idea at its core—that music that doesn’t come from giant corporations—-maybe even the noise you make in your bedroom with your friends—- can be every bit as real and valid and important as big pop hits).

Worth noting that her label has distribution through a major, and it is through that major label that she gets radio play and such. Major labels are still a big BIG part of her success.

And I actually like that line, because it is a bash against hipster elitism, and how many people will just turn up their noses at Swift simply because she is a pop singer. Not that Swift isn’t problematic, she is in many, many ways, but not because she is poking fun at the mainstream indie blogger bullshit scene. Her music is just as valid as the most obscure lo-fi garage rock, and with that, it can be just as flawed, homophobic, slut shaming, etc…

It’s true that TS and her label, Big Machine, has a distro deal with Universal and they help with radio promo.

I think I read somewhere that the “some indie record” in question was a Best Coast record, with the goofy songs about the cat and stuff, and okay, we can sort of see that making sense and actually being kind of funny in that context—Taylor being incredulous about why someone would find that kind of songwriting to be more meaningful than her own.

In our experience, “Indie snobs”—to the extent that they exist as something more than a strawperson—tend to be n00bs. On the other hand, we’ve observed that indie lifers—the ones that stick it out long enough to take independent cultural production seriously as a lifelong pursuit—tend to be anything but snobs about pop music. (Were this blog not written anonymously we could tell you stories about which famous indie rocker turned us on to Kelly Clarkson for the first time.)

Anyway, we’re still mad about Target! They got Justin Timberlake too! Et tu JT?

Vocabulary

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:22:00 -0800

75% of the music industry is controlled by 3 companies: Universal, Sony-BMG, and Warner Bros. These are called “major labels”

The other 25% of music sales comes from independent labels (or self-released, meaning the artist themselves fulfills the role that a label would otherwise play.

The major labels have earned a reputation for screwing artists and consumers alike, and media consolidation generally has bad consequences for democracy all around.

This is not to say that there aren’t a lot of great records we love on major labels, and artists that have managed to navigate those systems with their creativity intact and of course there’s scoundrels and fools and regressive jerkwads in the independent sector too.

But if you’re interested in understanding the landscape, it’s important to understand the vocabulary. ”Indie” is a business model, not a style.

Ugh.

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 17:30:42 -0800

So Taylor Swift is the latest superstar to team up with notorious homophobe union-busters TARGET.

Is it okay to say that her music is kind of one dimensional too, or will we get mobbed by angry poptimists?

(Also, so ridiculous that her song makes reference to “some indie record that’s cooler than mine” when her record is ON AN INDIE LABEL! The obvious implication is that there’s something elitist or snobby about “indie” and of course, the opposite is true—fundamentally, indie is a populist idea at its core—that music that doesn’t come from giant corporations—-maybe even the noise you make in your bedroom with your friends—- can be every bit as real and valid and important as big pop hits).

jawnita: Last night I Netflix’d How to Survive a Plague, the...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:19:42 -0800

jawnita:

Last night I Netflix’d How to Survive a Plague, the documentary chronicling the history of AIDS activist group ACT UP, and how they essentially protested the government into making HIV medication more accessible to those afflicted with it. It was a fascinating, informative, heartwrenching doc (made more heartwrenching by its soundtrack of Arthur Russell, the gentle, disco experimentalist who died of AIDS in 1992). I recommend it.

But one aspect troubled me. Why was ACT UP so white? Why, in a documentary about AIDS-afflicted gay men (mostly men) in 1980s and 1990s New York City, were there literally like three people of color in the whole film, only one of whom—Chicano artist Ray Navarro—had a speaking role. Where were the blacks and Latinos who came to symbolize ’90s gay liberation through movies, music, and other popular culture? Where were the blacks and Latinos who lost their lives in far greater numbers than other ethnicities, particularly the whites who ran ACT UP—and continue to do so?

So I googled “ACT Up” and “racism” and the only thing that came up, as it turned out, was the October 1990 issue of SPIN, which was guest edited by Spike Lee. In it, an article by Celia Farber entitled “AIDS: Words from the Front” explores the disproportionate amount of media coverage given to white AIDS activists, when the most disadvantaged communities were the most likely to need public and government assistance. The first few paragraphs describing a “Medicaid mill” in Harlem are some of the most devastating I’ve read in awhile. There’s a quote about heroin dealers putting a cap of AZT in every bag they sold. Fuck. And Keith Cylar, a black AIDS activist WITH ACT Up, provides the pull quote that brought the piece up in my google search, and discusses efforts he has made to get them to be less racist. Cylar was not in the film—he died of complications from AIDS and cardioarrhythmia in 2004. But his efforts are still felt by New Yorkers, whether you knew it or not: he co-founded Housing Works, the health care and housing resources organization that operates a terrific non-profit bookstore and some of the best secondhand stores in the city.

So yeah, I recommend both watching that movie and reading that article, and understanding that the ramifications of that apparent racial disconnect (brought on in part by local and national government and institutionalized racism) continue to this day. Oh, and also, fuck Ed Koch. Enjoy hell.

Watch this movie and read that article and make sure your activism is intersectional, folks.

Now is probably a good time to remind you that taxpayers spent $470 million to rebuild the SuperDome

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:59:00 -0800

Now is probably a good time to remind you that taxpayers spent $470 million to rebuild the SuperDome:

Fuck a hypercapitalist spectacle.

Fuck a jingoistic pro-sports industrial complex.