Enik is beyond good and evil · Jul 4, 12:09 PM by Don
Welcome to the third installment of Timedoor’s coverage of Simon Reynolds’ book, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. I’ll be focusing on “Chapter 3 – Tribal Revival: The Pop Group and the Slits.”
After punk’s napalm flare burned rock ‘n’ roll down to its essential elements, artists began exploring pre-punk musics with fresh ears. Various genres were reborn, like flora growing from the ashes of a forest fire. Reynolds credits the Pop Group with looking back to funk, reggae, and jazz and convincingly (to Reynolds, anyway) incorporating those genres into its postpunk sound.
The first thing one notices about the Pop Group is Mark Stewart’s elastic, yet almost unlistenable, voice. In the band’s debut single, “She is Beyond Good and Evil,” Stewart at times sounds uncannily like Robert Smith of the Cure, Ian Curtis of Joy Division, and Belouis Some. The rest of time he caterwauls, screams, yelps, and sing-speaks in an offputting manner. Back this up with a highly disagreeable parody of funk music and you have what Mrs. Enik calls “audioshit.”
mp3: The Pop Group – She is Beyond Good and Evil
I include a contemporary track here, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan’s song, ”(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?” Both “She is Beyond Good and Evil” and “Come Walk With Me” use the phrase “little girl.” After reading the book Reynolds wrote with wife Joy Press, The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion, and Rock ‘n’ Roll, I became more sensitized to sexist and misogynist language in song lyrics. “Little girl” and “baby” are common ways that pop (I mean “pop” in the broadest sense possible) singers refer to adult female lovers. In “She is Beyond Good and Evil,” the “little girl” is also referred to as “immortal wife.” So the narrator’s wife is a little girl? In the Campbell/Lanegan song, both “little girl” and “baby” are used.
For some reason “baby” doesn’t bug me, perhaps because of its ubiquity and its gender neutrality. The phrase “little girl,” however, is more objectionable. It has specificity (not just a “girl,” but a “little girl”) and patronizing redundancy. Isn’t a “girl” inherently “little?” To emphasize the lack of physical size and/or social power with the addition of “little” is simply cruel. At best, the phrase “little girl” infantilizes a grown woman; at worst, it connotes pedophilia.
mp3: Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – (Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?
A few years back I was an avid reader of the anti-consumerism magazine, Adbusters. I eventually stopped reading because it was such a downer. I don’t mean to sound like an ostrich with its head in the sand; I want to know about what is going on in the world, good and bad. However, Adbusters struck me as so joyless. I still open up a copy now and then when I’m standing at a magazine rack; I do respect the ultimate goal of the magazine. But I still often find myself thinking, “How can it expect to rally people around its issues when it lacks a sense of humor?”
I thought of Adbusters while reading the lyrics to “Spend, Spend, Spend” by the Slits. Here is the chorus:
I want to buy
(Have you been affected?)
I need consoling
(You could be addicted)
I need something new
Something trivial would do
I want to satisfy this empty feeling
The last line brought to mind this image from Adbusters, which perfectly complements my earlier point about the magazine.
The accompanying text reads, “feeling empty? don’t worry consumption will fill the void.”
I can’t deny it is a powerful, haunting image: the black eyes, the zombie-white skin, the blank expression. But it does nothing to motivate or inspire. It just makes you feel stupid for buying anything that is not food, clothing, or shelter.
mp3: The Slits – Spend, Spend, Spend
Like the Pop Group, the Slits pulled elements of reggage into its “naive cacophony,” as Reynolds puts it. What made the Slits “post-punk” was the band’s dearth of chops and abundance of feeling, that’s the “punk” part of the equation. The “post” element came from the women’s openess to reggae, dub, and soul. I think this type of openess is the antecedent for the idea that you can be punk without being “punk.” This is a theme Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE hits in most interviews he does. In a 2004 interview with the Hudson Reporter, Watt asserts, “There were no rules. You could play whatever you wanted to. It was before hardcore, but it was definitely part of punk. The bands were more individual in their sound. It was original. It was people coming out of the ‘70s’ idea of punk.”
Watt contemporary Ian MacKaye and his post-hardcore band, Fugazi, often addressed the theme of consumerism. In “Merchandise,” Fugazi’s message resonates with the Adbuster mindset, but manages to move beyond mere soapboxing and truly inspire its audience.
mp3: Fugazi – Merchandise
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Tell 'em Chaka sent you Enik comes and takes you by the hand
It’s not every day you find the soundtrack to the book you’re reading. Thak you very much!
— crash calloway Jul 18, 02:18 AM #