I have Against Me!'s "Baby I'm an Anarchist" stuck in my head today, a song which I have always kind of loathed for what seems to me a fetishization of radicalism qua radicalism, a shallow and privileged investment in a transparent and extraordinarily limited genealogy of struggle which stops when and where more complex relationships to work and capital and the state become evident and necessary. And no, I'm not saying I'm not an anarchist (though I have many frustrations only in part encapsulated by Andy Cornell's trenchant intervention in his letter in Letters From Young Activists) nor am I talking here about a capitulation to the kind of liberal pathologies Phil Ochs and Josh Eidelson expertly demarcate.
And then there's the HOD...
I listened to Giant Steps tonight for the first time since god knows when. If I were Alek I would tell you that "Syeeda's Song Flute" and "Mr. P.C." are both underrated, but I am not. (And nothing on that album is particularly overrated, although when "Naima" is getting namedropped by Talib Kweli (albeit a decade ago and under somewhat erroneous pretenses (if he loved Naima so much, what do we do about Alice? Or maybe that makes Kweli's simile somewhat more profound than it would otherwise seem), maybe it's more, um, overdetermined. I think I swore to myself I'd never use that phrase on this blog, which hasn't been much of anything lately due to other commitments and/or boredom and/or a lack of interest in or ability to organizing my thoughts and frustrations for pixellation. I like Giant Steps so much more than My Favorite Things. My Favorite Things revolves around the soprano sax, does not involve Paul Chambers, and includes two standards. However revolutionary the melodic phrasings Coltrane et al employ here, I've always found Giant Steps more exciting and rewarding. Maybe that makes me a philistine. I am ok with that.
Ok, Hora Decubitus. Speaking of which I was walking up 5th ave in sunset park today whistling "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" and thinking about the time i missed my cue on "work song" in a concert in 10th grade. And wikipedia says Paul Chambers died of Tuberculosis not heroin, which means someone lied to me in high school.
Don't know if I still have it, but back in college I re-wrote "Baby, I'm an Anarchist" from the point of view of the person to whom Against Me! addressed their original. All I remember is "Baby, I'm an activist/But you're just a lazy dude/So keep breaking your windows while real working people are getting repeatedly screwed..." It probably got worse from there.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I haven't always read that song the same way you do. I don't know a lot about Against Me!'s politics, but I thought they might not be so much espousing that posture as writing from it -- i.e. exploring the humor and righteous emotion in that persona . I dunno.