I often think that rock music made me a socialist. But, in all honesty, I have trouble believing I have much more than what Billy Bragg called, “socialism of the heart.” Even in excerpting that catchy phrase, I’ve denatured Bragg’s song (and I am so sorry buddy, because I love you madly.) I can’t tell you what it means in its original context off the top of my head, nor cite the changes it has inspired me to even attempt to bring about. Instead, it means what I want it to mean, and I employ it to define myself. While I hope my relating to the deep communal spirit of compassion that I ascribe those lyrics is somehow good enough, the truth is that I bought a bit of my character from a man who encouraged me to steal his own record off the shelf. Without even adding up all the media between Bragg and I: all the label execs and profits and what have you, I can’t help but feel that’s fucked up. I guess it’s because I think about my relationship to rock ’n’ roll in these kinds of terms that I am so grateful for this new collection of Dan Graham’s, Rock/Music Writings put out by the great little non-profit press, Primary Information.
The essays, art works and table scraps collected in Rock/Music span Graham’s writings beginning in 1968 up through 1987 on ‘60s rock and psychedelia and ‘70s punk and new wave. The book proceeds roughly chronologically and features some of his early writings, previously only published in obscure art rags the likes of which kids like me have never seen. These are interesting tidbits, but alone verge on inconsequential, and range from concrete-poetic interpretations of Beatles songs (I suspect drug use) to vaguely stream of consciousness accounts of live performances by the likes of The Vanilla Fudge and The Kinks. These are, in themselves, at times barely legible, but fun as an adventure and a kind of double mirror on the times. While they do have some shining moments of good description, like when Dan says of Ray Davies’ performance, “In ‘Something Better Beginning’ the even vocal modulation of the declaration is placed in doubt, suspended, almost hysterical in the drawn-out words,” they are ultimately about as pretentious as that same sentence. Only rarely is Dan’s self-indulgence off shot by little swipes like, “Political is negatively coded; It means ‘no fun.’ The Ramones are fun.” The rough truth is that pieces like Country Trip, which features song lyrics in boxes, can be just plain annoying. Fortunately, they do not make up the entire content of the book.
However, in the context of the book as a whole the early writings become more interesting than just the amateurish beginnings of a writer. Instead, they shed light on the origin of the more interesting and formally constructed essays to come. It must be said that these better, later writings already exist largely in the two MIT Press books of Graham’s writings: Rock My Religion and Two Way Mirror Power. Still, the great thing about Rock/Music Writing is the editing. These pieces are put together very smartly, and re-present a palpable train of thought based thoroughly in the politics/theory of rock music as consumer spectacle. While it can be annoying to re-encounter the same sentences across different essays and Dan’s favorite quotes and song lyrics from the likes of Poly Styrene, Devo and Malcom McClaren, the better attitude is to see the charm in it and appreciate the prolonged effort Dan has put into sussing out the significance of an era of music. In the end, the book presents a critic coming to a full appreciation of spectacle (which is of course Graham’s constant preoccupation.) The inclusion of the early writings, art pieces like Musical Performance and Stage-Set Utilizing Two-Way Mirror and Time-Delay, as well as the fact that you would have to buy both MIT books to get the better essays, make this a nice and coherent collection worthy of its individual existence. Rock/Music presents a body of solid thought on one specific subject, even if it can be repetitive. More over, the design is rad.
What we come to in the end is the not just the piece The Artist as Producer, but a clear picture of why Graham is thinking about that new role—what social forces in the consumption of music and portrayal of rock ’n’ roll in the media, pitted against the political aims of the performers, drives the artist to take control of their entire image? This clash is probably best described in the essay The End of Liberalism, which compares the Ramone’s use of popular music and imagery to express the dark reality of the post Vietnam era with Lichtenstein (to whom the book is dedicated) and the other pop-artists. In it Dan describes the ‘60s era pop-star turned unwittingly into hero by the media, then aptly compares them to the Ab Ex painters turned into phallic symbols by the likes of Life magazine. An awareness of this current spurs the embittered artist, the Ramones and Lichtenstein, to coopt pop-culture and media representation in order to expose what lies beneath them, the gritty but glossed over reality of the era. We are a happy family, aren’t we? In other essays like Punk as Propoganda similar themes get revisited, often with the same quotations, as well as fuller theory based breakdowns of the difference between British and American punk rock. Even though another essay like Rock my Religion is ostensibly about tying the religious ceremonies of the Shakers to Patti Smith’s use of sexuality in her music and act, what we really get throughout the book, over and over with slightly varying angles of approach, is the spectacle of rock ‘n’ roll and how various acts have attempted to put it to their own purposes. This is, of course, an interesting and important topic and great fun to read about. Furthermore, through this elaboration on a theme as common to Graham’s art/thinking as it is to the artists he is writing about, the reader gets a nice portrait of both an evolution within Graham as well as a picture of a certain developing self-consciousness in rock ‘n’ roll, as well as in visual art.
If there is any problem with the book, which there is, it is that Dan isn’t really the greatest academic writer. Not only does he have the same trendy and of the time grab bag of references—Marcuse, Adorno & Horkheimer, Marx, Kristeva, Clark, and Barthes on the theory side, Poly Styrene, Devo, McClaren, and Smith on the rock side—for every essay, but his use of theory goes in strictly one direction. In one manic sentence it is assumed that quoting Kristeva will illuminate Siouxsie Sioux’s lyrics. The truth is that Kristeva is exceedingly hard to read and needs a lot of active interpretation before becoming anything like an instrument of clarity. Perhaps at the time she might have been on everyone’s mind, but I highly doubt there has ever been a moment when everyone understood her. I do not mean to practice what Barthes dubbed ‘Neither-Nor Criticism’ in Mythologies (see? irresponsible), but rather point out that most of Dan’s theoretical conjurings constitute arguments to be proved with further evidence rather than evidence themselves. This is not to say they are bad, many are quite interesting (even the Kristeva one), but they simply cannot be taken as complete. For example, Dan makes constant use of Marcuse’s term ‘desublimation’ where by sublimated libidinous energy is, if I remember correctly, somehow liberated and expressed consciously in the same or similar act that was previously entirely sublimated, i.e. unconscious. Even experts would say that this idea is a tough pill to swallow, but I love Marcuse so… I’m just not sure how to take it. The point is, to show this for one artist would be an entire essay, to show it for an era of punk rock, a book much longer than Rock/Music Writings. The counterpoint to this quasi-failure of Graham’s is that he clearly has a great grasp of rock ‘n’ roll history, interesting ideas as to what these people are trying to do, and situates them well inside their times. Put simply, to all the Graham fan-boys and theory-heads out there, cool your jets, the battle has been begun but not yet been won.
Rock/Music Writings is a handsomely packaged and well-edited collection of a very smart man’s sturdy but less than perfectly written thinking on some of the most important subject matter around. Without punk rock, without music, and without the ability to write and think about it as Graham has, I really don’t see the point in getting out of bed in the morning. Graham’s book revives a time when the potentially liberating roll of rock rebellion was a live battleground, and not an award that MTV gave out. For this we should thank Graham. Rock/Music is a pleasure to read, if often perplexing. Plus, it has a bunch of great nuggets like, “Gang of Four, like the Mekons and Scritti Politti, all studied under the Marxist art historian T.J. Clark at Leeds University,” which blew my mind, and “In the early 1950s, a new social class–one that Karl Marx hadn’t predicted–emerged as a force in America: the teenager.” Well said.
Paperback
224 Pages
29 B&W reproductions of video stills.
Published by Primary Information, September 2009
Designed by An Art Service, New York
For the Fetishists:
Wow, this book feels great in your hands! The cover design is fantastic, it just looks cool, and very appropriate to both the subject and its author with its video still abstractly depicting some indecipherable concert somewhere. The type treatment is not only handsome, but easy to read. This is really the best-case scenario where the design and production of a book excellently compliment the content and make it feel like an experience to read. Even despite the $18 price point (cheap!) the book still feels substantial. There are no frill, no index, a few typos (“that that” on pg.80, no notes section for Late Kinks to let you know when/if it was originally published) but you won’t miss them. It is too short a book for an index and really feels, unlike so many essay collections and largely due to the editing, like a cover-to-cover read. The cover is a medium weight card-stock while the pages are a medium weight, ivory paper that feels nothing like the newsprint I expected when I heard this book was only $18! Did I mention, this book is only $18? This means you could buy it from Amazon for $12, but that would make you a bad person, especially if you live in New York. Pick it up at Printed Matter, Specific Object or directly through D.A.P. and buy back a little of your soul.
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