A long time ago, I was giving a junior from college a ride to a common destination. I didn't know her very well and we didn't have much to talk about - or maybe we did, but we'd never bothered to speak to each other, so I thought, perhaps now would be a good way to find out. For some odd reason I skipped the small-talk altogether and said, "It's a good time to be alive, you know. It's a good time in the history of the earth, for change, for art." And she laughed and said, "Are you trying to make conversation?"
And well, truth to tell I was just making conversation, but this heading is more than just passing fancy to me. Growing up we'd play this game: if there was a time and a place in the history of the world where you could choose to be, where would you be? And recently, I've played this game again. Once with a sixty year old neurologist, and again with a twenty-three year old literature student. The former gave me two or three periods - I don't remember them all, but they sounded fairly cerebral (excuse the pun); he also damned this age to hell because he thinks it's degenerating into barbarianism (and he isn't wrong). The latter said 1930s New York (because of Sinatra, the music, the writing, the alcohol, the parties, etcetera) , or 1950s New York (because of Kerouac and the Beat poets and everything previous), or 1960s America (for obvious reasons, and everything previous) ... and I've had my own fantasies, but for a while I haven't wanted to be alive at any other time than now. And it's precisely because we're degenerating into barbarianism - in politics, in discourse, in popular culture, in daily manners, in economics, what-have-you. But, there is a counter to this and effective or otherwise, it exists and it's popular, perhaps even populist. I mean, if the world was doing well, what would there be to do? It's only because we're facing nine-hundred different crises that our mettle is tested - our own heights and depths is what we're facing - rise or fall, but you can't stand still.
I was feeling fairly disillusioned one drunk midnight and I was bemoaning the status quo of this world, and how nothing really changes, everything is corrupt, blah blah boo-hoo! And I frustrated a smarter man with my whining and he finally said, "Look, change takes a long time! And every day there're people out there on the fringes chipping away, trying to effect change - they're doing good work." (Those weren't his words, but that's what he was saying.) The Doctors/Engineers/Journalists-without-Borders groups came to mind immediately and I realised he was right. Members of these groups are attacked, harassed, kidnapped, threatened and even murdered fairly regularly - not just by militants, and warlords, but also governments, who could do with a little starvation here and a little disease there, and a little silence/darkness here and complete isolation/lack of utilities there - because these are the things they use to control people. If there were volunteers providing these services, these assholes would actually have to do some work instead of terrorising the populace with guns and propaganda. It's similar to the reason that the Indian government hounds Naxals all over the country - I mean, other than the fact that they're armed insurrectionists threatening the fabric of our great democracy, Naxals are rumoured to provide health-care, education, and law and order in the areas they control. The reason we have so many NGOs in this country is because the government has withdrawn.
But I want to talk about something else today, actually.
When I was at college, one of my professors said that computers had effected a 'paradigm shift', meaning our world-view had been altered. Of course, in many ways, computers are thoroughly useless to most of the world: no small farmer tilling someone else's land for less-than-daily wage gives a shit about email or internet porn or blogs. But for people like us, who can use the words 'paradigm shift', they're very cool things. We can communicate with each other at any time, from anywhere provided the necessary hardware exists, in a number of ways. We can talk or write to each other, watch videos, read comic books, make music, and even make love remotely. Like Warren Ellis says, we are science fiction beings already, but just not the way we imagined we would be. Many systems have suffered because of the internet. Piracy is a big problem and its biggest victims are the corporations that distribute and disseminate, I think, and their response has been to squeeze the sources dry. They oppose 'free'-dom (don't excuse the pun here, accept it) because they have a vested interest to do so. It's fairly understandable, but as a result the product has suffered. Either because corrupt versions flood the distribution networks or the network itself is buggered.
But there's a bright side to this as well. The hierarchies, on one level, are breaking down: it doesn't matter whether you're a big artist or an unknown. Let's say more people enter the industry on a local level, for the local scene, and with the number of localities there are, suddenly the scene overall is much much larger than we imagined. Everybody's on the internet, and the internet is pregnant with possibility; the choices are that many more. I have a better chance to support new work, or work that I think speaks to me, than I did before. Remember when you were down at a local pub or whatever and the bands were pissing the hell out of you because they all sounded the same and you wondered what the hell happened to good taste? (I think for the most part it wasn't the bands that were to blame but rather what was allowed to influence them.) Well, now, if you hate the local band, or the mainstream monopolies, just browse the internet and you're bound to find someone who makes noise you love and adore. And just sending their noise around to your friends is a way to support them. It's not the greatest help in the world, but not everyone has reduced morals like you, and someone might actually care to pay them for their service. If you facilitate that, that's not too awful. So here's me doing my measly bit.
Their new album, Couch Dictators, is almost ready for release from Interrobang records; the artwork is on its way. I wish you could download the album, but if you didn't do it yesterday (and that's my fault) then I'm afraid you're out of luck. But not that out of luck, of course. I wouldn't tease you if you're interested and leave you with an erection. If you want the album, message or write to me and I'll send it along electronically. The Ocean Band is a cosmopolitan band - I mean that they don't belong to one particular anything (race, nationality, discipline, politics), except perhaps the sound they make together. And right now, they're scattered across the globe doing their own things, following their own compulsions.
I love their sound. It's loud and full and it's rock 'n' roll. It could be something you could have picked up thirty years ago, but really, you couldn't. It has a freshness to it that I really appreciate. It's like listening to the White Stripes for the first time, because they've bridged a huge gap in the development of rock 'n' roll music (that I think grunge altered and then hung us over with, so we narcotised ourselves with Keane and Coldplay). The singer has a very different voice, his own voice, and the bass is bloody cool too. The guitar slashes, it's picked, it's distorted; the drums and the keyboards are solid; they're a pleasure to listen to, if you liked what your parents heard but wished the musicians were younger. Okay, I admit a lot of our parents listened to Boney M. and Abba (not my parents, by the way, but I don't ascribe good taste to everybody), but I mean the good stuff.
Angshu Chatterjee, the guitarist:
me: how did you record this album? aren't you guys all scattered?
Angshu: well, everything was recorded before the scattering happened or, at least, most of it but the mixing took ages because of that; collating e-mails and comments and so on. it's so much quicker to have five guys in a studio.
me: i think it's a really good thing it's a long album. an album that runs less than an hour is like fastfood sometimes.
Angshu: it kind of goes against the trend. the ubiquity of myspace and itunes and so forth ensures that we are moving back towards an age of singles over full length LPs.
me: i know what you mean. i read a little thingie on sound technology and kind of music it facilitates/breeds. it's a tiny snippet. i think it's a great thing your album's long, though. it demands attention. people are really lazy with appreciation, these days. it's a 'pay attention, fucker'. it's good. and it's well balanced so far.
Angshu: thanks. there're so many changes coming up though. in content, in distribution. it's a weird time in the industry. recording costs have plummeted, meaning that there's a lot more opportunity to actually finish an album for a small band, without the attendant pressures of trying to have a "hit". distribution is a big sinking ship, which means that, no matter how many good albums there are, they won't go beyond a few hundred people. predictably enough, i have long and complicated opinions on the state of the industry. join the forums! we need new people, really.
me: i know what you mean. the work we do, no matter how well we think of it, only so many people see it. trying to get it some exposure is tough.
Angshu: yes. exactement. and it takes more creative thinking than ever, because the established ways have just been wildly upset. not one major label made a profit last year. of the magazines, only spin made a profit. it's a weird and wonderful time
Things are changing in how we make and receive art, and that in itself is changing art. Notice how pop music isn't as shitty as it used to be. I'm not overwhelmed by boy-bands and busty blondes that sound like cows in lust anymore - they're around, but they're negligible as they rightfully should be. TV is getting better, not that a lot of people are watching. Great shows don't run as long as they should, but that they run at all is fantastic. Thank god for HBO/Showtime. Shows like Dexter and Weeds are doing pretty well.
Now, I don't download what I can buy. What I can't buy because I don't have access to is fair game, as far as I'm concerned. I conveniently blame whoever's responsible for not providing me with what I want: it's their fault. The champions of the free-market aren't really interested in a 'free' market or demand/supply, anyway - they're interested in profits and monopolies. Fuck them, I say. The world is changing and changing fast. It's strange and shocking - let's keep it that way.
And well, truth to tell I was just making conversation, but this heading is more than just passing fancy to me. Growing up we'd play this game: if there was a time and a place in the history of the world where you could choose to be, where would you be? And recently, I've played this game again. Once with a sixty year old neurologist, and again with a twenty-three year old literature student. The former gave me two or three periods - I don't remember them all, but they sounded fairly cerebral (excuse the pun); he also damned this age to hell because he thinks it's degenerating into barbarianism (and he isn't wrong). The latter said 1930s New York (because of Sinatra, the music, the writing, the alcohol, the parties, etcetera) , or 1950s New York (because of Kerouac and the Beat poets and everything previous), or 1960s America (for obvious reasons, and everything previous) ... and I've had my own fantasies, but for a while I haven't wanted to be alive at any other time than now. And it's precisely because we're degenerating into barbarianism - in politics, in discourse, in popular culture, in daily manners, in economics, what-have-you. But, there is a counter to this and effective or otherwise, it exists and it's popular, perhaps even populist. I mean, if the world was doing well, what would there be to do? It's only because we're facing nine-hundred different crises that our mettle is tested - our own heights and depths is what we're facing - rise or fall, but you can't stand still.
I was feeling fairly disillusioned one drunk midnight and I was bemoaning the status quo of this world, and how nothing really changes, everything is corrupt, blah blah boo-hoo! And I frustrated a smarter man with my whining and he finally said, "Look, change takes a long time! And every day there're people out there on the fringes chipping away, trying to effect change - they're doing good work." (Those weren't his words, but that's what he was saying.) The Doctors/Engineers/Journalists-without-Borders groups came to mind immediately and I realised he was right. Members of these groups are attacked, harassed, kidnapped, threatened and even murdered fairly regularly - not just by militants, and warlords, but also governments, who could do with a little starvation here and a little disease there, and a little silence/darkness here and complete isolation/lack of utilities there - because these are the things they use to control people. If there were volunteers providing these services, these assholes would actually have to do some work instead of terrorising the populace with guns and propaganda. It's similar to the reason that the Indian government hounds Naxals all over the country - I mean, other than the fact that they're armed insurrectionists threatening the fabric of our great democracy, Naxals are rumoured to provide health-care, education, and law and order in the areas they control. The reason we have so many NGOs in this country is because the government has withdrawn.
But I want to talk about something else today, actually.
When I was at college, one of my professors said that computers had effected a 'paradigm shift', meaning our world-view had been altered. Of course, in many ways, computers are thoroughly useless to most of the world: no small farmer tilling someone else's land for less-than-daily wage gives a shit about email or internet porn or blogs. But for people like us, who can use the words 'paradigm shift', they're very cool things. We can communicate with each other at any time, from anywhere provided the necessary hardware exists, in a number of ways. We can talk or write to each other, watch videos, read comic books, make music, and even make love remotely. Like Warren Ellis says, we are science fiction beings already, but just not the way we imagined we would be. Many systems have suffered because of the internet. Piracy is a big problem and its biggest victims are the corporations that distribute and disseminate, I think, and their response has been to squeeze the sources dry. They oppose 'free'-dom (don't excuse the pun here, accept it) because they have a vested interest to do so. It's fairly understandable, but as a result the product has suffered. Either because corrupt versions flood the distribution networks or the network itself is buggered.
But there's a bright side to this as well. The hierarchies, on one level, are breaking down: it doesn't matter whether you're a big artist or an unknown. Let's say more people enter the industry on a local level, for the local scene, and with the number of localities there are, suddenly the scene overall is much much larger than we imagined. Everybody's on the internet, and the internet is pregnant with possibility; the choices are that many more. I have a better chance to support new work, or work that I think speaks to me, than I did before. Remember when you were down at a local pub or whatever and the bands were pissing the hell out of you because they all sounded the same and you wondered what the hell happened to good taste? (I think for the most part it wasn't the bands that were to blame but rather what was allowed to influence them.) Well, now, if you hate the local band, or the mainstream monopolies, just browse the internet and you're bound to find someone who makes noise you love and adore. And just sending their noise around to your friends is a way to support them. It's not the greatest help in the world, but not everyone has reduced morals like you, and someone might actually care to pay them for their service. If you facilitate that, that's not too awful. So here's me doing my measly bit.
Their new album, Couch Dictators, is almost ready for release from Interrobang records; the artwork is on its way. I wish you could download the album, but if you didn't do it yesterday (and that's my fault) then I'm afraid you're out of luck. But not that out of luck, of course. I wouldn't tease you if you're interested and leave you with an erection. If you want the album, message or write to me and I'll send it along electronically. The Ocean Band is a cosmopolitan band - I mean that they don't belong to one particular anything (race, nationality, discipline, politics), except perhaps the sound they make together. And right now, they're scattered across the globe doing their own things, following their own compulsions.
I love their sound. It's loud and full and it's rock 'n' roll. It could be something you could have picked up thirty years ago, but really, you couldn't. It has a freshness to it that I really appreciate. It's like listening to the White Stripes for the first time, because they've bridged a huge gap in the development of rock 'n' roll music (that I think grunge altered and then hung us over with, so we narcotised ourselves with Keane and Coldplay). The singer has a very different voice, his own voice, and the bass is bloody cool too. The guitar slashes, it's picked, it's distorted; the drums and the keyboards are solid; they're a pleasure to listen to, if you liked what your parents heard but wished the musicians were younger. Okay, I admit a lot of our parents listened to Boney M. and Abba (not my parents, by the way, but I don't ascribe good taste to everybody), but I mean the good stuff.
Angshu Chatterjee, the guitarist:
me: how did you record this album? aren't you guys all scattered?
Angshu: well, everything was recorded before the scattering happened or, at least, most of it but the mixing took ages because of that; collating e-mails and comments and so on. it's so much quicker to have five guys in a studio.
me: i think it's a really good thing it's a long album. an album that runs less than an hour is like fastfood sometimes.
Angshu: it kind of goes against the trend. the ubiquity of myspace and itunes and so forth ensures that we are moving back towards an age of singles over full length LPs.
me: i know what you mean. i read a little thingie on sound technology and kind of music it facilitates/breeds. it's a tiny snippet. i think it's a great thing your album's long, though. it demands attention. people are really lazy with appreciation, these days. it's a 'pay attention, fucker'. it's good. and it's well balanced so far.
Angshu: thanks. there're so many changes coming up though. in content, in distribution. it's a weird time in the industry. recording costs have plummeted, meaning that there's a lot more opportunity to actually finish an album for a small band, without the attendant pressures of trying to have a "hit". distribution is a big sinking ship, which means that, no matter how many good albums there are, they won't go beyond a few hundred people. predictably enough, i have long and complicated opinions on the state of the industry. join the forums! we need new people, really.
me: i know what you mean. the work we do, no matter how well we think of it, only so many people see it. trying to get it some exposure is tough.
Angshu: yes. exactement. and it takes more creative thinking than ever, because the established ways have just been wildly upset. not one major label made a profit last year. of the magazines, only spin made a profit. it's a weird and wonderful time
Things are changing in how we make and receive art, and that in itself is changing art. Notice how pop music isn't as shitty as it used to be. I'm not overwhelmed by boy-bands and busty blondes that sound like cows in lust anymore - they're around, but they're negligible as they rightfully should be. TV is getting better, not that a lot of people are watching. Great shows don't run as long as they should, but that they run at all is fantastic. Thank god for HBO/Showtime. Shows like Dexter and Weeds are doing pretty well.
Now, I don't download what I can buy. What I can't buy because I don't have access to is fair game, as far as I'm concerned. I conveniently blame whoever's responsible for not providing me with what I want: it's their fault. The champions of the free-market aren't really interested in a 'free' market or demand/supply, anyway - they're interested in profits and monopolies. Fuck them, I say. The world is changing and changing fast. It's strange and shocking - let's keep it that way.
5 comments:
Just when I was feeling all down and nihilistic. Thanks, Momo.
you're welcome. :)
and thank you.
Even I remember that when would you choose to be born game - you really must've played it with everybody.
You chose the 50s if I remember correctly. Cuz then it'd be the 70s when you'd be in your twenty-somethings. Forget what i chose.
you gave me a lift to college once. wasnt me, was it?
no. it wasn't you. :)
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