The pervert's guide to ideology Partie Cinq/The Rolling Stones Dartford Tour of Becky

"It was already Marx who, long ago, emphasised that a commodity is never just a simple object that we buy and consume. A commodity is an object full of theological, even metaphysical niceties. Its presence always reflects an invisible transcendence, and the classical publicity for Coke quite openly refers to this absent, invisible quality: "Coke is the real thing" or "Coke, that's it". What is that "it", "the real thing"? It's not just another positive property of Coke, something that can be described or pinpointed through chemical analysis; it's that mysterious "something more", the indescribable excess which is the object cause of my desire.

In our postmodern, whatever we call them, societies we are obliged to enjoy. Enjoyment becomes a kind of weird perverted duty. 

The paradox of Coke is that you are thirsty, you drink it but, as everyone knows, the more you drink it, the more thirsty you get.

A desire is never simply the desire for a certain thing. It's always also a desire for desire itself. A desire to continue to desire. Perhaps the ultimate horror of a desire is to be fully filled in, met, so that I desire no longer. The ultimate melancholic experience is the experience of a loss of desire itself. 

It's not that in some return to a previous era of natural consumation, where we got rid off this excess and we're only consuming for actual needs, like you were thirsty, you drank water and so on... We cannot return to that: the excess is with us forever. So let's have a drink of Coke. It's getting warm, it's no longer the real Coke, and that's the problem: this passage from sublime to excremental dimension. When it's cold, properly served, it gets a certain attraction. All of a sudden, this can change into shit. It's the elementary dialectics of commodities.

We are not talking about objective, factual properties of a commodity, we are talking only here about that elusive surplus.

Kinder Surprise egg. A quite astonishing commodity. The surprise of the Kinder Surprise Egg is that this excessive object, the cause of your desire, is here materialized in the guise of an object, a plastic toy which fills in the inner void of the chocolate egg. The whole delicate balance is between these two dimensions: what you bought (the chocolate egg) and the surplus, probably made is some Chinese gulag or whatever, the surplus that you get for free. 

I don't think that the chocolate frame is here just to send you on a deeper void towards the inner treasure, what Plato calls the "agalma", which makes you a worthy person, which makes a commodity a desirable commodity, I think it's the other way around; we should aim at the higher goal, the goal in the middle of the object precisely in order to be able to enjoy the surface. This is what it is the antimetaphysical lesson which is difficult to accept." 

"Ya fue Marx quien, hace mucho, enfatizó acerca de que una mercancía no es nunca simplemente un objecto que compramos y consumimos. Una mercancía es un objeto lleno de sutilezas teológicas, incluso metafísicas. Su presencia siempre refleja una trascendencia invisible, y la publicidad clásica de Coca Cola hace referencia abierta a esta cualidad ausente e invisible: "Coca Cola es lo auténtico", "Coca Cola, nada más". ¿Qué es "nada más", "lo auténtico"? No es solo otra propiedad positiva de la Coca Cola, algo que puede ser descrito o señalado por análisis químico; es ese misterioso "algo más", el indescriptible exceso que es el Objeto a, el objeto causa de mi deseo. 

En nuestras sociedades postmodernas, o como sea que las llamemos, estamos obligados a disfrutar. El disfrute se convierte en una suerte de deber raro y pervertido.

La paradoja de la Coca Cola es que estás sediento y te la bebes, pero como todo el mundo sabe, cuanto más bebes, más sed tienes.

Un deseo no es nunca el deseo por una cosa. Es siempre también un deseo por el deseo en sí mismo. Un deseo por continuar deseando. Quizás el horror último del deseo es ser completamente satisfecho, alcanzado, de forma que ya no se desee más. La experiencia melancólica última es la experiencia de la pérdida del deseo en sí mismo.

No es como si en una vuelta a una era previa de consumo natural en la que nos deshicieramos de estos excesos y consumiéramos solo para saciar necesidades reales, como beber agua cuando se tiene sed y todo eso... No podemos volver a eso: el exceso ya está con nosotros para siempre. Así que bebamos Coca Cola. Se está calentando, ya no es la Coca Cola auténtica, y ese es el problema: ese pasaje entre la dimensión sublime y la excremental. Cuando está fría, apropiadamente servida, consigue una cierta atracción. De pronto, se convierte en mierda. Es la dialéctica elemental de las mercancías.

No hablamos de propiedades objetivas, concretas de una mercancía, hablamos aquí del excedente elusivo.

Un huevo Kinder Sorpresa. Una mercancía bastante fascinante. El excedente del Kinder Sorpresa es que este objeto excesivo, la causa de tu deseo, se materializa aquí disfrazado de objeto, un juguete de plástico que llena el vacío interno del huevo de chocolate. Todo el delicado equilibrio se produce entre dos dimensiones: lo que compraste (el huevo de chocolate) y el excedente, fabricado probablemente en alguna gulag china o lo que sea, el excedente que obtienes gratuitamente. 

No creo que el marco de chocolate esté ahí sencillamente para lanzarte a un vacío más profundo hacia el tesoro interior, lo que Platón llamó el "agalma", y que te convierte en una persona digna, que convierte una mercancía en una mercancía deseable, creo que es al revés; deberíamos aspirar a la meta más elevada, la meta en medio del objeto precisamente para ser capaces de disfrutar de la superficie. Esta es la lección metafísica que resulta difícil de aceptar."

Text by Slavoj Žižek from The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012).

All pictures taken on 14th January 2017 in Dartford, Kent, England, United Kingdom. Special thanks to Finn and extra special thanks to Becky for making my childhood and teenage dream come true because Dartford is the future capital of the world and I'll fight anybody who tries to convince me otherwise and there's the sun, there's the moon, there's the air to breath and there's the Rolling Stones.

MUSIC: Interview with John Mayall: "You don't need to be loud to get your music across"

Photo by Terry Bert. 

Father figures hold the dogmatic and almost bewitching power of being both fear and awe inspiring. Still, and in spite of the devotional nature of their influence, their numeral range is programmed, by the laws of biological anthropology, to be rather limited, no matter how big of a Mormon or a pussy killer your father claims he was at the tender age of 23; not only on pollination subsists the man.

With blues father figures, however, the potency reach is unlimited and its potential danger skyrockets consequently. Unless one is John Mayall, of course, unmovable father (together with Alexis Korner, Cyril Davis and two or three other cool cats) of the unfairly disdained British blues. In that particular case, not one single fuck is given about popularity, record success or actually answering what the interviewer is asking. On the occasion of his forthcoming Iberian tour, we talked to the walking guitar legend to try and decode the mystique of the blues. Spoiler alert: we failed miserably. We didn’t even get close to it. Cool your jets, people, don’t get too disappointed. There was no chance. We’re sorry.

They say that people stop discovering or caring about new music as soon as they reach the age of 30, statement that obviously wouldn’t apply to somebody who never really cared about “new music” in the first place. Are you contented with being regarded as, undoubtedly, one of the most crucial and productive blues revivalists of the past century or do you actually see yourself as a rather misunderstood innovator in some less evident way?

I certainly never feel that I’m being misunderstood because there are enough people out there who follow my music and it makes me feel very proud of my achievements. I also feel lucky that throughout my career I’ve seldom had issues with the various record companies, and now that I have great contact with Eric Corne of Forty Below Records, who owns and engineers sessions with his artists, I’m in really a good place.

As a larger-than-life figure who literally has been instrumental and fundamental in giving shape to the blues during its most popular and mainstream historical period, the 1950s and 1960s, do you see any future for the genre in this contemporary age of computerized music?

The blues will always be with us, as in every generation there are always new artistes coming up who keep the music alive.

Having been a pivotal participant in the British blues movement during the 1960s that, from quite a far geographical and chronological distance, revitalized a form of black American art which had been neglected by its originators for decades, do you have any clues on why the blues has historically appealed to British kids more than to coetaneous generations in the US? What was it that made you relate and connect with something so apparently remote as a child and teenager?

I started collecting and revering blues and jazz records at the age of ten, and the main reason that American blues artists never had the same acceptance in their own country is because, up until the 1960s, black people had to live a separate life from white people. Racial division in US history meant that their music wasn’t heard by people in general.  However, they were idolized in Europe for what they did.

You backed Sonny Boy Williamson II when he first arrived in the UK with his inseparable bowler hat and umbrella, amongst other greats like John Lee Hooker or Champion Jack Dupree. How did the experience of meeting, seeing and playing with those who really knew what the blues was about, who had it running through their veins, change your perception and style of approach to the music? Did it intimidate you or legitimate you more in your dedication to it?

I certainly wasn’t intimidated by working and playing with them on their club tours, but I did learn one thing and that was that you didn’t need to be loud to get your music across.

Having met the man himself, do you see any amount of truth or are you able to empathize with the late Sonny Boy Williamson II when he famously declared that “those British boys want to play the blues real bad, and they do”? Do you think British blues isn’t given enough credit as a genre of its own, just as a movement that paid homage and helped to revitalize another?

I know for a fact that Sonny Boy was referring to the Yardbirds when he made that famous quote, but that was part of Sonny Boy’s alcohol fuelled wit. I never had any trouble working with him.

For years, you were the mentor behind the scenes for some young and ambitious blues lovers who would later grow to become the biggest rock & roll stars on the planet. Was talent that easy to find during those days or do you have a particularly infallible eye to recognize it? What do you think was the combination of circumstances that made so many brilliant artists gravitate around you?

If I choose someone to work with me, it is always because I admire and am excited by their playing, and when they work with me they are allowed to express themselves and soon develop as a result of that musical freedom.

Talk About That will be the 66^th album of your career, and that’s a milestone that not many can take pride in! What’s left to say for a musician who has his 80^th Anniversary Tour already behind him and is still going strong? What percentage of it is just the pure pleasure of playing the music and what other intends to send a message, to say something out loud?

I have always enjoyed being on the road performing for the people wherever they may be, and without hit record success I’ve always had freedom to play as I feel.

I’ve read that you have a tour with around 130 dates ahead of you this year. Would you say the blues makes more sense with the rawness and spontaneity that a live performance offers, and not so much around the production and premeditated atmosphere of the recording studio? Is this a sort of unique trait of the genre? Or do you recognize that the blues can also be as thought-out and intricate as progressive rock, for example?

Studio work and live work are very different in that with a live show, you explore the medium regardless of whatever sound system is involved, whereas in the studio you get to shape the music into something permanent.  In the studio, however, I always try and capture the same spirit as live performance.

There’s something about the music you do that, across generations and continents, still makes people fall head over heels for it. What is it that separates the blues from any other art form that has ever existed? What’s that universal human struggle that it manages to capture so uniquely well? Would you dare saying you’ve succeeded in pinpointing its incomparable mystique after so many years? 

The blues is the historical base of most popular music in that it speaks of the situations in life that we all go through.

And last but not least, and as Nardwuar the Human Serviette (great contemporary Canadian music journalist) always asks at the end of his interviews, why should people care about John Mayall?

Because it is true to our ways we deal with life.

Whatever that means. Ladies and gents, that was a legend talking.


Lee aquí la entrevista en español con John Mayall para Muzikalia.

MUSIC: Interview with The Wave Pictures: "I think they've got shit coming out of their ears, they’re so full of shit"

Photo by James Loveday. Via The Wave Pictures.

Posthumanism approaching. Robots play the violin better than your cousin already, and it’s a matter of time that they will take over everything else. A final android planetary crusade is just a click away, as it is the resurrection of a tinplate-bodied David Bowie with a short-circuited talent. No, this is not the pretext for a musical version of Terminator 7, but the latest oracle from David Tattersall, songwriter, singer and guitarist for The Wave Pictures. On the occasion of their new album release, Bamboo Diner in the Rain, as well as their forthcoming Spanish tour, we catch up with the three incombustible from Leicestershire about Deep Blue versus Gary Kasparov, the Internet possibly being Satan on Earth, Bob Dylan’s much undeserved Nobel prize and, in general, how marvellous the Wave Pictures are in every sense of the word and how full of shit all the rest seem to be. But these are just opinions, mind you.

Being the Wave Pictures such a famously prolific band since their very early and even-more-unpolished-than-now beginnings, 2016 has been a particularly inspired year even by your standards; before Bamboo Diner in the Rain last month came A Season in Hull in February, recorded with one microphone, no mixing and released only in vinyl. Don’t you think you have it tough enough these days, as a guitar-driven act in a contemporary music landscape widely dominated by computers? What was the intention behind this bold (if not self-sabotaging) move?

I wanted to make something that was not for the Internet. To me, it’s a very romantic idea. It's like a message in a bottle that you throw out to the sea. To listen to those songs, you have to listen to the vinyl record. It sounds really wonderful and I was very proud of the songs and I think it's a very lovely idea. I don't like the Internet anyway. I'm sick to death of it. It is eating away at everything that I like.

It seems like your trademark productiveness is not a quality that can be generally applied to most bands that fall under the category of rock of some sort, especially compared to the never-ending flow of work produced by their hip hop and electronic counterparts. Do you perceive a creative drought in the current state of rock?

Yes, I do. In fact, I think that there is very little music in any genre that is being made with fire in its belly. Everything seems complacent and commercialised, not just in rock but across the board. Everyone lives in their own little box. They have forgotten that music is for fun, and for expressing yourself. The robots have taken over the place. It would be very easy now to replace human beings altogether.

Bamboo Diner in the Rain is similarly described and felt as a battle “against the robot music apocalypse”. What is it that you categorize as “robot music” and why is it something that should be confronted? Or rephrased from a constructive point of view: why is an instrument-based recording style still worth reclaiming?

You want to hear the human spirit on tape. Machines can beat a man at chess, machines will soon beat a human football team at football. They will undoubtedly soon fight our wars for us, and not long after rise up against us, as you see predicted in the Terminator movies. People have a terrible weakness for technology. They think that machines can do everything better than people can. This is not true of the arts. A machine will never be able to play music like Skip James. Skip James was a true genius and his music could never be created by a machine. But people have been tricked into believing that people like David Bowie are great geniuses. Actually, David Bowie's music could be made by machines at some point. It is not unfeasible. If a computer can beat Kasparov, surely a computer could make Hunky Dory? I think I fear these developments and I think that the human spirit is the principle element that you want to hear on a recording. That's what it boils down to: the human spirit. Personal expression. Is someone expressing themselves? Does it move me? All the rest is just cleverness and commercialism.

You guys have talked repeatedly, and again in the means of pin-pointing the influences of this new album, about the impact that blues and other forms of primitive black American music has had in the Wave Pictures. Why do you think blues has historically appealed to British kids more than to younger generations in the US? With the likes of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Alexis Korner and many more being regarded as the ultimate blues saviours during the 1960s.

I think that's something to do with the racial segregation that existed in America, nothing to do with music.

Having experimented with cover albums already, as you did with Daniel Johnston’s Artistic Vice in 2014 during a recording and two-week tour under Houston Party’s initiative “We Used to Party”, have you ever thought about publishing a collection of your own blues and American folk favourites? If so, how would the potential track list look like? I’ve heard you tried with the Stones’ England’s Newest Hitmakers, for instance, which includes some bluesy covers itself.

I think that Robert Johnson has truly extraordinary songs, the poetry is exceptional and mysterious. This is in addition to his extraordinary, supernatural guitar and vocal abilities. I have often thought of covering his songs, but instead I get inspired to write my own songs when I listen to him.

The Wave Pictures have been recurrently described as a band that writes songs for fans of songwriting, referring to the more often than not abstract, melancholic and complex nature of your lyrics. Anybody from an outer perspective would agree that this obscurantist motivation is still palpable in Bamboo Diner in the Rain, but as the creative minds behind it, what, if anything, would you say has changed about the way you wrote the songs for this album, style and subject-wise?

No, I don't write songs for fans of songwriting. I don't write them for anyone. I write them for myself. It's a fluke that later anyone likes them.

But when you are writing, you cannot think about what anyone else thinks, otherwise you will go wrong. It's enough to try to get it correct for yourself. You become addicted to this, and that's all there is to it. Then, afterwards, it's good if other people like it, but it isn't the essential part. Furthermore, I don't have any obscurantist motivation. I just have a motivation to make up songs. You put all your eggs in that basket, you put all your focus on it, and then you disregard absolutely everything else that would get in the way of doing it. And as long as you disregard everything that will stop you it is very easy and pleasant. Everyone wants to slow you down with theories and with work. That's the way people are. But as long as you focus, it is easy. It is not difficult. It is a great pleasure! You just have to block out all the other voices, then it's like turning on a tap and the water comes rushing out. I turn on the songwriting tap and out come the songs!

However, to write songs you need solitude and contemplation and I think that with the amount of time people spend on the Internet now, and with the Internet on their phones, there will be no solitude for people, and no good songs. I like to take long walks in the city myself. I think solitude is the most important rule of songwriting.

I have solitude. I have been able to make great advances in the song. I changed the syntax of songwriting altogether. I broke every rule of lyric writing that there was. I always did this. Nobody does it the way I do it. I'm a better poet than Bob Dylan. I was better than Bob Dylan at writing lyrics when I was 14 years old. I already knew at that age that you had to break the form. You had to break the form to give it life. What you want to get is not a reflection of life, but something as vivid as life itself, that in and of itself is as alive and as real as anything in the real world. Not a picture of life, but life itself. Truth itself. No one can touch my lyrics. They can't even understand them!

Three out of ten of the songs in Bamboo Diner in the Rain distinctively stand out for their non-blues infused sound: Bamboo Diner Rag, Meeting Simon at the Airport (the only instrumental piece in the entire album) and the title track, Bamboo Diner in the Rain. Why did you deem appropriate to place these more folkish, Appalachian-reminiscent tunes in the context of an otherwise straightforward house-rocking electric blues album?

I wanted the emotional heart of the album to be instrumental, to focus the listener on what the guitar was saying, to make them listen to the guitar as if it was a voice. I thought it worked personally, though I don't know whether people thought it. The heart of the album is Meeting Simon at the Airport because is it the most moving, the most emotional moment. That is the heart. It was an experiment, I like to experiment and to release the experiments.

The heart of the album is Meeting Simon at the Airport and the soul of the album is Bamboo Diner in the Rain. The whole album takes place within that song. It is the title track. It presents the key to everything that has unfolded before it. It is a very beautiful song. Mystery and emotion.

As for Bamboo Diner Rag, it seems totally real to me. I think you perhaps wouldn't consider it blues, but in fact it is a blues piece. It’s a blues piece in the ragtime style of Reverend Gary Davis. East Coast Blues, guys like Blind Blake, Barbecue Bob and Sylvester Weaver, they did a lot of blues pieces in this kind of style. I think we nailed it. I love that piece. I was very proud of it. If you want to learn more, there's a very good compilation album called The Rough Guide to East Coast Blues.

We opened up something inside of ourselves on this album, and we found there was a lot more in there than we had realised. I don't think anyone has ever put this kind of instrumental together with the kind of songs we do. I think it’s a totally original album, which I realise, does not interest anybody at all!

A sublime video for Now I Want to Hoover My Brain Clean, second single of the album, has just been recently released. Some of the most popular Wave Pictures’ clips succeed in pulling out very conceptually intelligent and subtle ideas in a lo-fi, rustic format (the one for “I Love You Like a Madman” comes to mind instantly as a very illustrative example). To which extent are you involved in the creative process of making these videos?

I hate music videos. To me, they are an insult to the art form. When you buy a novel, you don't get given a CD of music to listen to while you read it. Why should music have videos? It is saying that music is not interesting enough on its own, you need a film as well otherwise you will be bored. I hate them. I appear in them only to be nice and helpful. I have no interest in what they look like and I don't like to watch them. If you like one, it is the work of the director, not me. Same if you don't like it. I wish they didn't exist, not just for me but for anyone. Personally, I like to listen to music without a film to accompany it. Or I like to watch a proper film.

It’s been announced that you’ll be playing Primavera Sound 2017! Next year’s line-up has been an unbeatable surprise for some and a bit of a disappointment for others. I’ve been told you guys are not crazy about festivals as attendees, but what’s your opinion on it so far? Looking forward to seeing any specific band?

I don't like festivals because I think they should be free. I think that the idea of festivals should be free events for the local community. Instead they are terribly expensive. I think a nice hippie idea has been commercialised out of all recognition. I think people are being ripped off, robbed in broad daylight. There is no community spirit to festivals, just money men selling the faded image of Woodstock to new generations.

Last but not least, and as Nardwuar the Human Serviette would ask, why should people care about the Wave Pictures?

It's not for me to say. You can't beg people to like you! I can tell you my opinions, but they aren't worth any more than anybody else's. I really love The Wave Pictures. I think we're truly exceptional and totally original. I think we’re really a band of exceptional genius. I think that everyone else is full of shit. I think they've got shit coming out of their ears, they’re so full of shit. I think The Wave Pictures are the real deal. Totally honest. Pure genius. Pure innovation and invention. I think we are true artists, magicians, shamans, wizards. Gods. But this is just my opinion.


Lee aquí la entrevista en español con The Wave Pictures para Muzikalia.

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