Well, this post did ruffle some feathers, didn’t it? The contemplation of Harry Gilonis admiring two notes “added at the last minute” to Opus 106 is soothing, of course, like a sip of sweet sherry. But it begs the question: WHY were we subjected to his lengthy (not-to-say yawn-inducing) self-portrait of the politically-correct music buff polishing his aestheticism? I’ll tell you why. It’s because the AMM dared reprise Walter Benjamin’s programme: seize what’s positive in mass culture’s destruction of artistic aura, go forth and act. Apparently this proposal is “idiotic”. But to whom? Like the tender souls of German Idealism, aghast at Marx’s discovery that Communards were solving problems of philosophy which had foxed the best minds of Germany, Harry and Paul recoil at the suggestion that pop music has anything to teach them. So Paul abandons the project he announced ten years ago, which was to explain rock music to itself. Instead, he’s followed Harry into a gilded autodidact chamber hung with mirrors reflecting the solitary aesthete’s taste, knowledge and expertise (with a list of improv gigs conscientiously-attended hung proudly on the wall). You’ve made a culture of distinction out of stuff that aims to end distinction! I dread to think how you two talk to civilians about music - the sheer weight of do’s and don’ts, the albatross of an entire “culture” you know about, and they ignore. For a good reason: it’s a breeding ground for preening cretins! You say I should love the music of over-educated shit-heads because they paid their roadies and played gigs for the Italian Communist Party (nice work if you can get it). But what if Henry Cow sounds like blurry bad jazz rock today? Can this be figured in the moralistic carpet of your weave of justifying self? Moralistic anarchism, blind to the simple facts which stare us in the face. Poor music chasing poorer politics! Admit, it’s crap. Dissing bourgeois culture doesn’t ally me with the positivists, Paul, you’ve got your own pet positivist on board, i.e. Harry. A man who’s never ventured an unguarded opinion, and can only report (endlessly) “facts” about a culture he admires (but doesn’t understand) — until you want to die of boredom. To talk about pop is not to be Tony Parsons, it’s to talk about the very heart and muscle of capitalism. Harry’s kitsch projection of avant’s determinate negations into a positive culture is deathly, and shows in the fact that his comments simply regurgitate Adorno like some sacred text with no new twist or thought. Of course Harry’s been an empty shell for nigh on thirty years, but Paul! What happened? Bin these borrowed clothes and dare to be yourself.
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