Check it out: Sasha Frere-Jones’s “Noise Control”
The May 24th, 2010 issue of The New Yorker includes an article by resident music critic Sasha Frere-Jones titled “Noise Control.” (You can access the article here if you don’t have the print version.) I am not familiar with noise music, but I know some of our contributors are, and I’m sure some of our readers are as well. However, I find noise music really interesting because, from the little I have heard/read it seems to test our traditional definitions of music. Sasha Frere-Jones gives readers a brief introduction into the roots of noise music (could anyone tell us how accurate or overgeneralized this brief intro is?) and discusses several noise bands who are drawing the attention of a broader audience to an avant garde genre. In the end, Frere-Jones states that “to many people now, noise isn’t necessarily an aggressive or alienating element; it sounds more like nature than nature does.” I’m not comfortable with that assertion: first, before this quotation, he explains how noise music sounds very similar to what our daily lives sound like: “windows popping up on an open laptop, conversations slipping from the screen to the air while music (or is it noise?) plays in the background.” What about this scenario reminds him of “nature”? Or is the problem my narrow definition of “nature”? Could it be that music is commonly thought of as artificial, constructed, and noise music goes against that? Even that would fall flat, because he points out how the musicians in the bands he mentions actually sit down to compose the songs. I think noise music does bear some resemblance to the way we are enveloped in sounds on a daily basis (and enveloped in the same sounds on a regular basis), but I’m still skeptic as to what constitutes “nature”/”natural” for Frere-Jones, and what about noise music seems like “nature.”
Check out the article and let us know what you think of Frere-Jones’s piece!
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Formations of Control in Underground Venues
I think about the sheer authenticity related to the experience of enjoying punk music in a basement. Admittedly, authenticity is a social construction, but in the moment – Wow! This shit is for real! Seriously, two weeks ago I found myself screaming at my friend Jimbo’s face, “You’re the only real thing!” after his band Radio Exiles played. As an academic who actively promotes the deconstruction of all claims to authenticity, this is a pretty big deal. In all honestly, by the time his band played, most of the audience had left and it really was just fifteen dudes in a basement. Ten had already played, and the other five were playing. Half an hour earlier things were very different. . .
What I noticed, in the concrete basement, the epitome of DIY ideology and functionality – packed with fifty people while the touring band played, was that there was an eerie level of self policing. The ten people, old timers (almost 30 years old), who stayed till the end lingered around the perimeter watching the crowd more than the band. Now this practice was likely tacit, unknown to the practitioners, but for a scene that prides itself on authenticity and brands itself as a subculture it was interesting to see common societal mechanisms of control being replicated again within the community. Basement venues are kept secret because when they get press, they are shut down by the police for several reasons regarding safety and noise. This external policing has been internalized, and recreated by the people maintaining the scene. This is Foucault’s discussion of discipline, the prison and panopticism, almost literally produced in underground venues. The reason basement venues seem authentic, is because there is no contrived societal organization within, instead there is ideological consensus; a natural cultural phenomenon. Authenticity is the organic recontextualization and subsequent recapitualization of an order we already know and understand. Basement shows are authentic because they feature familiar tropes of organization, safety and music, in an alternative environment and context.
Perhaps Radio Exiles were real because radio has become obsolete. At any rate, that’s a discussion for another time. Check em’ out: http://www.myspace.com/radioexiles
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Radio free Brunswick!
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