After stalwartly refusing to deliver on his promises to play some ABBA confusion songs in Oxford with me, Oliver "The Flake" Pyper has also reneged on updating the blog again, and matters have advanced to the point where I feel embarrassed not slapping something down.
So first let me assure the three of you who are still interested that the project is not dead, and that we'll be in The Habit, York, this wednesday (17th) to play a couple of our most famous tunes.
In the meantime, I feel like it's worth explaining 'the confusion' again - partly because writing it down is going to make me think about it in new ways, partly because my perspective on it is slightly different from Oliver's, and partly because newcomers to this blog who don't want to read every previous entry are going to find us pretty confusing and it may not hurt to gloss things.
Put simply, this is a project about artistic authenticity. The questions at its heart are 'What makes music authentic?', 'What's the correlation between authenticity and success?', 'Why is being authentic considered so important?' and 'What the hell is authenticity anyway?'
With these questions buzzing about us like flies, Ollie and I set out for New York with a simple plan - live in and experience the city for a few weeks, attempt to start a band and live the rock and roll dream, fail, and come closer to answering the above questions by doing so. The project is named after ABBA because Ollie considers them the most authentic band ever. I'm fuzzy on the details but I think it comes down to the fact that the jaunty form of their songs belies the serious contents of their lyrics - they aren't relying on any of the signifiers of songwriting, if you like, which puts them in brave new territory. But ABBA aren't considered 'authentic' because no-one except us ever listens to lyrics - they hear shallow pop and that's what they think ABBA is. Hence the confusion. I don't know ABBA well enough to comment because I don't listen to fucking shallow pop enit, but I think you can advance a similar argument about a band such as The Magnetic Fields with a degree of success, and perhaps one day I will.
Our aim, then, was to fail - I'll leave it to Oliver to let you know how that went. For my part, for now, I will deliver some anecdotal answers to the questions posed above. They do no more than suggest at our final conclusions, but I don't want to take the wind out of Oliver's sails too much.
What makes music authentic?
On our last night we went to the worst open mic I've ever been to, bar nothing. The MC was big into authenticity, though I doubt he knew it. "Oh everyone's coming up here, getting emotionally naked onstage", he crooned into the mic for about ten minutes between each performer. "This is such a dynamic and exciting artistic culture, raise your glasses with me". In fact, the artifice of his hippy love-in was keeping anything genuinely artistic well out of harm's way. Most of the performers fell into the "I loved you but you left me" demographic which, as I have just argued when discussing ABBA, is actually far less authentic than it looks.
What's the correlation between authenticity and success?
One of the reasons ABBA are so shunned by the scenesters is, I suspect, that they were so humongously successful. Our experiments did a lot to disprove my suspicion that authenticity and failure are inherently connected - our mission not only achieved nothing but also resoundingly didn't win over the hearts and minds of the New York public - but I think that the converse can certainly apply, that percieved INauthenticity may be connected to success. We were never able to test this notion, unfortunately, but figure to yourself - how many really famous (or even moderately famous) bands or artists do you know of who haven't been accused of "selling out"? "When our friends becomes successful", sings Jeff Lewis, another New Yorker, "we'll consider them our foes".
Why is being authentic considered so important?
We saw this guy screaming emo notions into a microphone in Sidewalk Café. "I believe him", said Chris Butler. "He's authentic". He was also fucking terrible. This is much more my bugbear than Oliver's, but some of the worst music I know is also some of the most authentic. One of the few things I'm not prepared to challenge Bono on is the strength of his convictions, but that doesn't make his convictions interesting and it doesn't make his music good. Especially after our New York adventure, I'm coming to the conclusion that the most succesful authenticity is the kind you filter through a veil of total artifice - I very much hope Oliver's going to develop this idea, because if this were my project it would be the punchline.
What the hell is authenticity anyway?
My perspective on this question is suggested by my answer to the previous, so I'll tell you a story instead. One of the days we were in NYC I abandoned Oliver and lit out for Princeton by myself to see an old friend who's studying there. Princeton, as some of you may know, is an eclectic architectural wonderland - each of the university's buildings are constructed to a different old-world ideal, and it doesn't look like the architects compared notes before they got busy. The result is an Epcot-style fiesta of inauthenticity: you feel that if you lean against any of the buildings they're going to fall over and turn out to be cardboard cutouts. But these buildings house one of the most authentically brilliant schools in the entire world.
So that's us - the ABBA confusion - an authentic music project, an inauthentic video project, and as an academic project who knows where we stand? I'll let The Flake pick it up from here.
- W
Monday, 15 December 2008
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Can't believe we missed it
Oliver promised me he's update the blog today, but he's gone and got wankered instead - proof if proof be need be that the ABBA Confusion's regime in England promises to be similar to the stateside mode. Meanwhile though I attempt to compensate for his absense by posting THIS, which I'm gutted we didn't find while we were there...
- W
- W
Friday, 5 December 2008
Rebranding
Oliver is on his way back to Blighty right now, and before I depart myself there's just time to post our latest video. Stay tuned though because although we're leaving New York we've still got lots of unedited footage and our adventures are by no means over...
- W
- W
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Friday, 28 November 2008
You're always at the wrong party..
We've created a terrible confusion here. A huge, snorting hulk of a double negative. I'm finding it difficult to write objectively about this when we're writhing in the belly of the authentibeast, but nevertheless I should fill you all in on what we've learnt so far..
Week 1
Sans William, was mostly spent either in the New York Public Library (Oliver <3 Free Internet Access 4eva), or blindly trying to charm people with clumsy Englishness and talk about ABBA. It seems to work. People want to play music with us. Then I play a complicated, underwritten song at the antifolk cathedral, Sidewalk, and about five people join me on stage to reproduce the sound of impotent agony. People are notably less enthusiastic. I tell people that the project is about failing and produce fliers with 'ABBA' in huge letters at the top. I expect people to get the joke.
Week 2
William joins but is mostly away on other duties. I miss Sidewalk this week in favour of performing a guest spot as part of Will's gig at a Brooklyn house party. This is much more succesful in terms of 'musical' 'quality', but a majority of the attendees have already heard about us and are not interested. Already we have the feeling that a scene which is based around irony was perhaps not the best place to present a conceptual project that is essentially a huge, ironic joke. Still, we press on.
Week 3
The dark comedy is turning into thick, oily sewage. We play at Sidewalk, both as The Abba Confusion and Faceometer. Will is unsatisfied with his performance and The Abba Confusion seem to be being viewed as something of a recurring curiosity that, rather than be integrated into the scene, is viewed from afar with big glasses. Cue a massive wordcry on video (see this post). The same thing happens as last time, people get on stage with us and play. This time it's less painful to listen to.
We have to start looking at this in a different way from now on. Correct me if I've got the wrong end of the antifolk pole, but we're now looking at the context of failure in a scene where success seems to be viewed with suspicion, within a country where success is the national lifeblood. It's a complicated situation, but it's made even more complicated by our refusal to define boundaries or definitions. What exactly did we want to achieve from this? We seem to achieve our three basic aims every time we play at Sidewalk, that is playing a gig, forming a band and making a recording. And if authenticity comes from spontanaiety and spectacle, then we certainly achieve that. There's so many different genres of music at Sidewalk, so many different kinds of people, and they get on fine just using it as a place to present what they love doing to their friends and a wider audience. Maybe by playing music that I don't usually make, being more emotionally honest than I usually am, by playing music in a scene that I don't usually engage with, by framing it in this artistic ho-hum, maybe that shows through in the music we make. Or maybe it's seen as essentially disrespecting the inherent authenticity of the people who are doing it for the love of creating. Maybe, against all my beliefs and prejudices, pop music and artistic thinking are just not made to mix. Like oil and an A-bomb. I've certainly had a better response from artists and comedians and writers and generally people who work outside of the field of making music for the joy of making music. The thing that I love about the Beach Boys, and ABBA for that matter, is that they make it seem absolutely throwaway and effortless, but there seems to be something of the divine in them, which only shows its beauty within that context. It's beautiful because it's so disposable. But then there's music like Steely Dan, XTC, Scritti Politti, The Waitresses, which I love because it's using the pure form and playing with it, adding dissonance or wit or coke and hookers. If we were trying to do something like that, and I'm not sure if we were, it's hard to tell if we just chose the wrong place to do it, or there just wasn't enough of the concept in the product. It might be a bit of both. Or we might just be crap. Or have no sense of humour. Nevertheless, we need to get the songs out there. That's the point. It goes on.
Will told me about a lecture that was given by his tutor at Oxford, in which he says something along the lines of.. Picasso is essentially different to cubism at large because you can tell that he's a trained painter, and a student of art history. My natural reaction to this was to take the punk angle and spit in Will's face. How dare anyone say that art is inherently better if one has knowledge or 'better' technique! It presupposes a couple of things - firstly that if the end result of an untrained artist's work is essentially, to most people, indistinguishable from the work of a trained artist, then the trained artist's is better because of the process. And I'm naturally suspicious of either mystification or demystification of the process, my usual thought is that process shouldn't matter in the first place. Secondly, it presupposes that without the training, the unschooled artist is less aware of what he's doing when he creates. And that just made me cry bullshit. Until Will pointed out that his lecturer wasn't making any kind of value judgement. I have confused views about art, ABBA is just the beginning, and it's difficult to think objectively about this, which is all I really want to do, when I'm so full of contradictions. I hate the idea of somebody having to put something of 'themselves' in art, some emotional value, which is sometimes given as an indicator of authenticity. I hate the idea of art having to mean anything authentic. But, to bring it back to the only art form I really understand, I am also naturally averse to anybody singing in an overly affected voice, shouting out 'weird' and theatrical. But Rock and Roll is built upon theatricality and the abnormal. And more importantly, if I'm so averse to the idea of an intangible 'authenticity', then why the fuck do I care about it so much? Why does anyone care? To the aim of establishing a more objective angle, we're interviewing people. Really cool people. Watch this space.
Oliver
Week 1
Sans William, was mostly spent either in the New York Public Library (Oliver <3 Free Internet Access 4eva), or blindly trying to charm people with clumsy Englishness and talk about ABBA. It seems to work. People want to play music with us. Then I play a complicated, underwritten song at the antifolk cathedral, Sidewalk, and about five people join me on stage to reproduce the sound of impotent agony. People are notably less enthusiastic. I tell people that the project is about failing and produce fliers with 'ABBA' in huge letters at the top. I expect people to get the joke.
Week 2
William joins but is mostly away on other duties. I miss Sidewalk this week in favour of performing a guest spot as part of Will's gig at a Brooklyn house party. This is much more succesful in terms of 'musical' 'quality', but a majority of the attendees have already heard about us and are not interested. Already we have the feeling that a scene which is based around irony was perhaps not the best place to present a conceptual project that is essentially a huge, ironic joke. Still, we press on.
Week 3
The dark comedy is turning into thick, oily sewage. We play at Sidewalk, both as The Abba Confusion and Faceometer. Will is unsatisfied with his performance and The Abba Confusion seem to be being viewed as something of a recurring curiosity that, rather than be integrated into the scene, is viewed from afar with big glasses. Cue a massive wordcry on video (see this post). The same thing happens as last time, people get on stage with us and play. This time it's less painful to listen to.
We have to start looking at this in a different way from now on. Correct me if I've got the wrong end of the antifolk pole, but we're now looking at the context of failure in a scene where success seems to be viewed with suspicion, within a country where success is the national lifeblood. It's a complicated situation, but it's made even more complicated by our refusal to define boundaries or definitions. What exactly did we want to achieve from this? We seem to achieve our three basic aims every time we play at Sidewalk, that is playing a gig, forming a band and making a recording. And if authenticity comes from spontanaiety and spectacle, then we certainly achieve that. There's so many different genres of music at Sidewalk, so many different kinds of people, and they get on fine just using it as a place to present what they love doing to their friends and a wider audience. Maybe by playing music that I don't usually make, being more emotionally honest than I usually am, by playing music in a scene that I don't usually engage with, by framing it in this artistic ho-hum, maybe that shows through in the music we make. Or maybe it's seen as essentially disrespecting the inherent authenticity of the people who are doing it for the love of creating. Maybe, against all my beliefs and prejudices, pop music and artistic thinking are just not made to mix. Like oil and an A-bomb. I've certainly had a better response from artists and comedians and writers and generally people who work outside of the field of making music for the joy of making music. The thing that I love about the Beach Boys, and ABBA for that matter, is that they make it seem absolutely throwaway and effortless, but there seems to be something of the divine in them, which only shows its beauty within that context. It's beautiful because it's so disposable. But then there's music like Steely Dan, XTC, Scritti Politti, The Waitresses, which I love because it's using the pure form and playing with it, adding dissonance or wit or coke and hookers. If we were trying to do something like that, and I'm not sure if we were, it's hard to tell if we just chose the wrong place to do it, or there just wasn't enough of the concept in the product. It might be a bit of both. Or we might just be crap. Or have no sense of humour. Nevertheless, we need to get the songs out there. That's the point. It goes on.
Will told me about a lecture that was given by his tutor at Oxford, in which he says something along the lines of.. Picasso is essentially different to cubism at large because you can tell that he's a trained painter, and a student of art history. My natural reaction to this was to take the punk angle and spit in Will's face. How dare anyone say that art is inherently better if one has knowledge or 'better' technique! It presupposes a couple of things - firstly that if the end result of an untrained artist's work is essentially, to most people, indistinguishable from the work of a trained artist, then the trained artist's is better because of the process. And I'm naturally suspicious of either mystification or demystification of the process, my usual thought is that process shouldn't matter in the first place. Secondly, it presupposes that without the training, the unschooled artist is less aware of what he's doing when he creates. And that just made me cry bullshit. Until Will pointed out that his lecturer wasn't making any kind of value judgement. I have confused views about art, ABBA is just the beginning, and it's difficult to think objectively about this, which is all I really want to do, when I'm so full of contradictions. I hate the idea of somebody having to put something of 'themselves' in art, some emotional value, which is sometimes given as an indicator of authenticity. I hate the idea of art having to mean anything authentic. But, to bring it back to the only art form I really understand, I am also naturally averse to anybody singing in an overly affected voice, shouting out 'weird' and theatrical. But Rock and Roll is built upon theatricality and the abnormal. And more importantly, if I'm so averse to the idea of an intangible 'authenticity', then why the fuck do I care about it so much? Why does anyone care? To the aim of establishing a more objective angle, we're interviewing people. Really cool people. Watch this space.
Oliver
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