I was quite taken by No-Man - an approving nod in their direction, from a June 1993 singles column
"Crap has not yet turned to gold; you'll have to wait for us to write all this up for you, Gavin, old man"
- hark at the self-conscious awareness of the role of discourse in framing music, the sense that a transvaluation would need to be staged and set in motion, for us to hear all these vocal / lyrical / sonic / sartorial mannerisms as "cool" and even "enjoyable" again. And that transvaluation would be the shared work of critics and musicians (with the writers taking the lead)
Supremely arrogant, this envisioning critics as unacknowledged legislators of Music, whose diktats would change taste in receptive minds. The power of rhetorical alchemy: the formerly "crap" transubstantiated into the new "gold".
What's funny is that first list of band names (from Bebop to Doctors of Madness via Van Der Graaf, Deaf School and SAHB) are groups I would not even have heard at that point. I knew the names and had a vague sense of reputations - what they stood for.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Going back to No-Man - I never made the connection that half the core group is Steve Wilson as in Porcupine Tree and "remixer of renown" . So there's prog as well as glam in their art-pop, and it's very cleanly produced indeed.
Liner note to Loveblows & Lovecries, penned by "Billy Baudelaire" (actually singer Tim Bowness)
“Lovecry
The first thing you notice is the terrible beauty of it all.
The terrible rightness. The appetite.
Here at last is a group that appreciates extremes of
experience and expression. A group that prays to the hips
and lips of Presley’s rock’n’roll escapism as often as it
bathes in the poetry of Sartre’s poisoned Paris. A group
that likes to hurl its body at passing trains, stick its head
in fluffy clouds and roll naked in the dirt – all in the
same lunch break.
As taken by Manson’s whiskers as Bolan’s curls, No Man
is another crueller pop dream for another crueller
generation, charging through the idiot wind of 90’s new
age indolence, striking a balance between wisdom and folly, fact and
fancy, truth and its consequences.
No Man is a simple as a child’s fable and as complex as life itself.
A tetchy bastard with a healthy appetite and a nice line in
kitchen utensils, No Man likes good food.
Loveblows and Lovecries, a taste of heaven.
Eat Well!“
Via this site dedicated to the group (who are still an on-going project)
I love that word "transvaluation". A new one to me. It reminds me of a concept in financial analysis that I recently learned from Daniel Davies' excellent Substack: "change of valuation basis".
ReplyDeleteIt comes from the world of commercial real estate. Valuing a building is, of course, a very important part of the business, but it is more of an art than a science. There is no obvious right answer for the value of a product that is not exactly like any other, and usually changes hands only infrequently. So what financial analysts typically do is think of some plausible numbers for how many units in the building will be occupied and how much rent the tenants will be prepared to pay, plug those numbers into a model, and come up with a credible-sounding valuation for the building.
But in extreme conditions - a pandemic or a financial crisis, say - the valuation basis can change. Investors in your building don't want to know how much rent it could earn in the long term; they want to know how much they could get for it if they had to tosh it up and sell it within 18 months, or worse, if they had to sell it immediately. That's a change of valuation basis.
In Rock music, bands are similarly valued according to criteria that are fundamentally subjective, but can be communicated and shared to build a common understanding. When the critical consensus shifts, that's a change of valuation basis. In the prog era, the valuation basis included familiarity with Classical music and Jazz, instrumental virtuosity, and conceptual ambition. Punk replaced that with energy, concision and social relevance.
To extend the analogy, the critics who were early champions of the Stooges or hardcore techno are like the heroes of The Big Short, who use another valuation basis that is different from the critical consensus. When the world shifted and that basis became the new consensus, they made fortunes. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be possible to monetise critical evaluations in quite the same way!
I love that thing of applying financial language to cultural activity, it gives me that Gang of Four cold-hearted "marriage seen as a contract" rush. One thing I did that still makes me smile is the Influences Index - https://blissout.blogspot.com/search?q=influences+index - bands investing and divesting their capital in different eras and ancestors. Actually the first time I did it was a the end of this record collection rock piece for NYT - http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-perils-of-loving-old-records-too.htmlhere
ReplyDeleteHowever I think this particular use of "transvaluation" - if not the word, then the idea - ultimately comes from Nietzsche. Didn't he call for new values? I think that's also where Iggy got the title of his album from.
So this kind of transvaluation in a music scene, it's a power play, closer in spirit to combat - like a judo move. Suddenly the tables are turned, the value hierarchy is inverted. If a band, or a critic, pulls it off, the prize is not a financial pay-off, it's glory.
Those are great pieces! I wonder what that sort of stock market guide would look like today. Or if it would would even be possible.
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