No.178, aired July 18, 2012. Reading from french poet Stephan Mallarme’s Herodiade, as translated by C.F. MacIntyre.
This episode engaged in a debate with Out To Lunch on the Butthole Surfers, using Dust Devil and Captain Beefheart’s Mirror Man as discussion points. At the last minute I realized (1) that the idea of a “mirror” was more central to OTL’s argument than I originally had realized, and (2) that mirrors, and reflections in general, are prominant in the poetry I was reading by Mallarme.
On May 12, 2010 Lunch, on his radio program "Late Lunch With Out To Lunch," said that “the problem with the butthole surfers is that they pretend to grate your petty-bourgoise sensibilities, but actually gratify them. Their spoiled-kid tantrums lack the self-reflective objectitude of musical art. No mirror objectifies their plaintive in-your-face music as a series of theatrical effects. Expression as ceasing to care what a listener might think - whereas that care is actually the self you are trying to express. At Leeds in 1993 Butthole Surfers got very boring, evidently thinking that if they hammered away long enough they would achieve mirror man or something - the Greatful Dead of punk – who needs that?”
When OTL talks about a listener’s petty bourgoise sensibilities, he means your sense of self as an abstract individual, not a product of a particular society, but a free consumer with an identity attached to a job, possessions, personal acheivements that would look good on your resume, and musical objects that gratify that sense of identity.
Lunch opposes that sensibility with the idea of art as a mirror, not in the naturalist sense where art reflects exterior reality, but a self-reflective objectitude where the artist has a sense of themself as a member of society, and wants to communicate with its audience, provoke a response, a dialogue – and he does not think the Butthole Surfers do this.
I think I understand OTL’s concepts, but it is not perfectly clear how these two tendencies manifest themselves in music. So my response was to play the Butthole Surfers’ “Dust Devil” against Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band’s “Mirror Man” and see if those tracks would reveal anything. I found that the Beefheart track does contain more internal dialogue amongst musicians and in that sense communicates more, but the Butthole Surfers’ studio work had a more visceral effect on my listening mind. Perhaps the BHs are a decent studio band but dull in concert? My age also plays a role, as I was born at the tail-end of the rock generation, weened on 1980s heavy metal, and only discovered blues and jazz as an adult.
A simple reading of OTL’s critique is that the BHS’s music is decadent in the way of many rock bands whose critical andor commercial success blocks reflection or self-critique. They don’t have to try because they have an identity, a reputation. Commercial success in particular filters to the metaphysics of individual bank accounts – it does not provide a reflective image for art to see itself. But what, then, are the BHS gratifying? The metaphysical individual’s need for boredom? Or does the bourgoise individual possess its own pleasure centre?
Then, when I was reading from Chapter 1 of Karl Marx’s Capital at lunch, the following footnote leaped up: “In a certain sense, man is in the position of a commodity. As he neither enters into the world in possession of a mirror ...a man first sees and recognizes himself in another man” [fn 19 on pg.144 in the Penguin Classics ed.]. The referencing text states: “By means of the value relation ... the physical body of commodity B becomes a mirror for the value of commodity A”
According to Marx’s value theory, value is the amount of human labour contained inside a commodity, measured in relation to a second commodity. Any work of music, whether recorded or live, is a commodity, as is the human body. So the listening/dancing body reflects the “value” of the music, or lack thereof. But music is a cultural commodity, so its value is not assessed only in how long the band rehearsed (although that’s part of it), but in how well the music reflects the social labour that supports it.
Here is a quote from the Mallarme text I read:
“O mirror!
cold water frozen by ennui in your frame,
how many times and through what hours, distressed
by dreams and searching my memories, like leaves
under your ice in the deep hole, have I
appeared in you like a shadow far away,
but, horror! in the dusk, in your austere pool
I have known the nakedness of my scattered dreams!”
In this speech, Herodias has two responses to her mirror. In the first she sees her self as a distant shadow, alienated from her own dreams. In the final two lines, she see something else, the nakedness of her scattered dreams. This second reflection is the real image, not a complete image of an abstracted individual frozen in boredom, but naked life as something broken, partial, scattered. And this is what the listener under capitalism craves, the disintigration of their abstract identity, a break in boredom and alienation, to see their own labour as an actual force, even if stolen from them, shattered into pieces, channeled through an industry called “culture” and delivered through amplifiers.
Then maybe the fault of the Butthole Surfers is that they attempt to gratify the grey shadow of the fictional whole person rather than the fractional reality?
Then I realized that I incorrectly transcribed Out To Lunch - the concert he attended was in 1983, not 1993, which changes everything - we are now talking about a band in its early creative flush, but then playing in a druggier, dronier style - which helps the explanation that they were frozen in ennui in their frame, but goes against the explanation that they are spoiled and decadent.
To be continued on August 1 (there was no program on July 26), in which I will play some early Butthole Surfers against the one Frank Zappa song that mentions a mirror prominantly.
Part 1
1. Summertime – Booker T & The MGs
2. Winged Assassins – Anvil
3. The Damned Don’t Cry – John Coltrane
4. Led Eye – Sailboats Don’t Cry
5. The Proximity Of Mars – Rodney Sharman
6. School Love – Anvil
Part 2
1. Dust Devil – Butthole Surfers
2. Mirror Man – Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
3. Favourite Settings – Burro
4. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
This episode engaged in a debate with Out To Lunch on the Butthole Surfers, using Dust Devil and Captain Beefheart’s Mirror Man as discussion points. At the last minute I realized (1) that the idea of a “mirror” was more central to OTL’s argument than I originally had realized, and (2) that mirrors, and reflections in general, are prominant in the poetry I was reading by Mallarme.
On May 12, 2010 Lunch, on his radio program "Late Lunch With Out To Lunch," said that “the problem with the butthole surfers is that they pretend to grate your petty-bourgoise sensibilities, but actually gratify them. Their spoiled-kid tantrums lack the self-reflective objectitude of musical art. No mirror objectifies their plaintive in-your-face music as a series of theatrical effects. Expression as ceasing to care what a listener might think - whereas that care is actually the self you are trying to express. At Leeds in 1993 Butthole Surfers got very boring, evidently thinking that if they hammered away long enough they would achieve mirror man or something - the Greatful Dead of punk – who needs that?”
When OTL talks about a listener’s petty bourgoise sensibilities, he means your sense of self as an abstract individual, not a product of a particular society, but a free consumer with an identity attached to a job, possessions, personal acheivements that would look good on your resume, and musical objects that gratify that sense of identity.
Lunch opposes that sensibility with the idea of art as a mirror, not in the naturalist sense where art reflects exterior reality, but a self-reflective objectitude where the artist has a sense of themself as a member of society, and wants to communicate with its audience, provoke a response, a dialogue – and he does not think the Butthole Surfers do this.
I think I understand OTL’s concepts, but it is not perfectly clear how these two tendencies manifest themselves in music. So my response was to play the Butthole Surfers’ “Dust Devil” against Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band’s “Mirror Man” and see if those tracks would reveal anything. I found that the Beefheart track does contain more internal dialogue amongst musicians and in that sense communicates more, but the Butthole Surfers’ studio work had a more visceral effect on my listening mind. Perhaps the BHs are a decent studio band but dull in concert? My age also plays a role, as I was born at the tail-end of the rock generation, weened on 1980s heavy metal, and only discovered blues and jazz as an adult.
A simple reading of OTL’s critique is that the BHS’s music is decadent in the way of many rock bands whose critical andor commercial success blocks reflection or self-critique. They don’t have to try because they have an identity, a reputation. Commercial success in particular filters to the metaphysics of individual bank accounts – it does not provide a reflective image for art to see itself. But what, then, are the BHS gratifying? The metaphysical individual’s need for boredom? Or does the bourgoise individual possess its own pleasure centre?
Then, when I was reading from Chapter 1 of Karl Marx’s Capital at lunch, the following footnote leaped up: “In a certain sense, man is in the position of a commodity. As he neither enters into the world in possession of a mirror ...a man first sees and recognizes himself in another man” [fn 19 on pg.144 in the Penguin Classics ed.]. The referencing text states: “By means of the value relation ... the physical body of commodity B becomes a mirror for the value of commodity A”
According to Marx’s value theory, value is the amount of human labour contained inside a commodity, measured in relation to a second commodity. Any work of music, whether recorded or live, is a commodity, as is the human body. So the listening/dancing body reflects the “value” of the music, or lack thereof. But music is a cultural commodity, so its value is not assessed only in how long the band rehearsed (although that’s part of it), but in how well the music reflects the social labour that supports it.
Here is a quote from the Mallarme text I read:
“O mirror!
cold water frozen by ennui in your frame,
how many times and through what hours, distressed
by dreams and searching my memories, like leaves
under your ice in the deep hole, have I
appeared in you like a shadow far away,
but, horror! in the dusk, in your austere pool
I have known the nakedness of my scattered dreams!”
In this speech, Herodias has two responses to her mirror. In the first she sees her self as a distant shadow, alienated from her own dreams. In the final two lines, she see something else, the nakedness of her scattered dreams. This second reflection is the real image, not a complete image of an abstracted individual frozen in boredom, but naked life as something broken, partial, scattered. And this is what the listener under capitalism craves, the disintigration of their abstract identity, a break in boredom and alienation, to see their own labour as an actual force, even if stolen from them, shattered into pieces, channeled through an industry called “culture” and delivered through amplifiers.
Then maybe the fault of the Butthole Surfers is that they attempt to gratify the grey shadow of the fictional whole person rather than the fractional reality?
Then I realized that I incorrectly transcribed Out To Lunch - the concert he attended was in 1983, not 1993, which changes everything - we are now talking about a band in its early creative flush, but then playing in a druggier, dronier style - which helps the explanation that they were frozen in ennui in their frame, but goes against the explanation that they are spoiled and decadent.
To be continued on August 1 (there was no program on July 26), in which I will play some early Butthole Surfers against the one Frank Zappa song that mentions a mirror prominantly.
Part 1
1. Summertime – Booker T & The MGs
2. Winged Assassins – Anvil
3. The Damned Don’t Cry – John Coltrane
4. Led Eye – Sailboats Don’t Cry
5. The Proximity Of Mars – Rodney Sharman
6. School Love – Anvil
Part 2
1. Dust Devil – Butthole Surfers
2. Mirror Man – Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
3. Favourite Settings – Burro
4. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
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