Not in School - Volume 1

just because I’m not in school doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to ramble on about such things. I’d love to, thanks. Is there any correlation between Dick Hebdige’s subculture: the meaning of style, the films of R.W. Fassbinder (In a Year with 13 Moons and The Marriage of Maria Braun in particular), and the music of Rob Hood, REM, and Justus Kohncke? Besides the fact they’ve all been on my plate recently? It’s all well and good to pursue incidentals of such high cultural value, but wouldn’t it be nice if they were married? Well, Germany – most of these things are directly related to germany. Fassbinder was the face of the New German Cinema of the 70’s, and he lived there most of his life. Justus Kohncke releases records on Cologne’s Komakt Records. Rob Hood is a Detroit-based techno artist who hydro-gov-war said “bridges Detroit and Berlin.” Much less directly, Hebdige claims the swastika was often accessorized as part of the punk style. As it suits the purpose of his book, there are different ways to “read” this “signifier” (the german swastika). You could make reference to the punks’ identification with the mythology of an evil german enemy – most characteristic of the punk style here would be the Enemy aspect. But the reading that rings most true is also the most obvious: the swastika was meant to shock. Maybe less obvious is the insight here that nothing is articulated through this “sign.” No message, no meaning, just the appropriation of something that shocks: a method of deceit. Okay, so the Deutschland is, well it’s not much to go on. It’s hip and i can be very impressionable, but what about REM? Why REM in the first place? Because I wanted to refresh on the production of ‘chronic town’ and ‘murmur’ mostly. But then I had to check out their newest stuff b/c I hadn’t yet. And it’s mostly bad. I like a few songs off ‘monster’ but after that it’s very rare to find something I like. the fist couple records have a spooky sound to them, random noises, wolf sounds, great reverb on the snare, etc. in contrast, jump 20 years ahead, the new stuff is dominated by an inappropriately articulate lyricist that has to have the lyrics written in the artwork. I do like the ambiguity of the old stuff – so that you can make what you ‘want’ out of it, or find what you find in it. Nostalgia! so even if GERMANY is a weak link to draw between all these things, can it actually be drawn to REM? [no, this has nothing to do with Audubon park, I’m sweet rb and I’m bored at work.] and I forgot to talk about fassbinder, probably the highest quality material I’m considering here. How about this: dicky Hebdige for culture-context, Justus kohncke for slap-happy funnin’, R.W. Fassbinder for epic theatre intimacy and distance, rob hood for minimal hypnotic deceptive effect, and rem for nostalgia-murk. How about that?