REVOLVER: BRIAN BOYDon music
I’LL SPARE HIS name in print (though I do give it out in public for the price of a drink) because I still like his work and he’s one of the good guys. But during a talk with a Grade A rock star a few years ago, we got on the subject of his appearance at a recent Free Tibet benefit gig. I brought up getting a work visa for China (an emerging music market) and the rock star said: “What’s China got to do with it? Tibet is in Africa.”
There’s always a tragi-comic disconnect when musicians get anywhere near politics. It’s understandable: a musician’s job is to be maddeningly solipsistic, idiosyncratic, eccentric and contradictory. As such, they’re best not let anywhere near policy issues that affect the rest of us.
Be that as it may, the luvvies have just co-opted musicians to their arty support network for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Following the setting up of the “Occupy Writers”, “Occupy Filmmakers” and “Occupy Comics” websites, “Occupy Musicians” (occcupymusicians. com) went live this week.
“There is a sizeable force of musicians from across every genre who support this movement,” says a spokesperson. “This is a website for musicians to show solidarity and help co-ordinate performances at protest sites.”
Early signatories include Lou Reed, Tom Morello and Jello Biafra, though the talking points will be the big names who haven’t signed yet/or refuse to sign. But expect a lot of local rock heroes to get their PR people to announce that they have signed up to overthrow the military-industrial complex. Hell, they might even go to the trouble of tweeting about it at some stage.
Musicians have never met a meme they don't like. The Occupy meme is the talk of the town, so best hitch a ride. Sure, music has (mainly in the past) helped to work as an agent of social and political change – you only have to listen to Strange Fruitto understand its magical potency. Still, it speaks volumes that the only two musicians (that I know of) who have actually gone to Manhattan's Zuccotti Park and performed there are Arlo Gutherie and Pete Seeger – names from a different political time and place.
The fact is that most big-name musicians are in the top-tier tax bracket, and more than a few privately hold very right-wing views. One of the main tenets of Occupy Wall Street is a protest about the undue influence of corporations, particularly the financial services sector, on government policy. But the music industry is a corporate body and many of its biggest stars have benefited handsomely from it.
It will be interesting to see who does and doesn’t sign up to Occupy Musicians, and who makes the biggest PR commotion about adding their name. Will it be for the optics, or will any of the musicians actually understand what still is, as Jan-Werner Mueller notes, “a curiously undefined and under-analysed” movement.
While some are comparing the Occupy movement to the actions of the “enrages” of 1968, the political scientist Ivan Kratsev argues that we are in fact experiencing 1968 in reverse: “Then students on the streets of Europe declared their desire to live in a world different from the world of their parents. Now students are on the streets to declare their desire to live in in the world of their parents” – a pre-Recession, pre-credit crunch world.
Who dares to rage against the Wall Street machine?
MIXED BAG
- The New Leonard Cohen studio album confirmed for January. There simply is no better songwriter.
- There be talk in the town that The X Factorwinner's song this year will be U2's One. Remember what they did to Snow Patrol?
