Public Carmodism

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Discussion on the tournament thread about GHOST TOWNE by the Specials - is this the biggest example of Carmodism being generally accepted and written into the executive summary of rock history?

(Definition of Carmodism for the 99% of you who won't know what I'm on about: the belief that the state of the charts reflects the state of the nation, or at least the belief that it makes for more interesting analysis to pretend it does. From Robin Carmody, cultural critic and high practitioner of the art.)

Comments

[koganbot]

And also reflects "the mood of the nation," hence would be grist for Carmodism, I'd think? (Is this an Authenticity thing, Tom? Where if you're calculating your impact it's not as real as if the impact just happens? Either way, why doesn't the fact that people are willing to feel the impact reflect what's going on in the nation?)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

No, you're right, both of these are Carmodism as I phrased it.

I guess what I'm interested in on this thread isn't the impact on the mood of the nation (I don't believe unintended impact is more authentic than intended, either), but the way a critical story (or Hero Story - am I using that right?) builds up around the record. And the stories are different depending on the intention.

What interests me about "Ghost Town" is that the Carmodic interpretation - Ghost Town is great because it reflected the riots - has become so accepted: I'd guess the majority of critical writing on GT tells or references that story. I'm interested in other songs where those kind of interpretations do or don't become part of the story of the song.

[koganbot]

Ah, I see. But also, Robin isn't altogether unsubtle. So what I often see in his analyses is something along the lines of "Britain's relationship to the U.S. - how much of it is subservience and how much is sustenance? - is the giant pink elephant in the room, so how do all these songs I'm recounting on my livejournal accommodate or orient themselves to that elephant?" (Robin, I hope I haven't misrepresented this.)

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

From an American perspective, it's not a misrepresentation at all. It must seem obsessive, and to be honest it often does to *me* when I look back at my posts, but that is Asperger's Syndrome again: single issues, assumption of universal meaning where it might not necessarily exist, conspiratorial tendencies ... I should be more subtle, more willing to let songs acquire their own meanings, to show ambiguity, to let my readers think for themselves, but I think I'm getting better in all these fields (compare the *unanswered questions* and conflict of my recent piece on New Musik's "Living By Numbers" to my early livejournal entries; clearly the work of a much more rational, balanced man). I often shudder to think at how incomprehensible my postings must be to non-Brits; even British people often don't get most of the references, although I think that a lot of people in the rest of Europe would feel reassured by my stance, and wish that more British people thought like me (a lot, but certainly not all: cult followers of Alec Empire, if there are any left, would probably consider me a neo-fascist).

To get back to the original subject, I'd hardly call the most widespread interpretation of "Ghost Town" Carmodistic, in that it was around - and very much the norm - long before I started doing this. I think it's just *blindingly obvious* in that case (and of course there's other stuff it can be analogised with; Charles and Diana as Official Distraction). It's one of the few cases where a connection is so clear as to overpower the usual residual impact of Great British Compartmentalism.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Riots?

Is there a "you had to be there" aspect to 'Ghost Town's appeal?

I am really sceptical about Carmodism, I don't believe particularly in "states of the nation" (always written in retrospect, by people mapping their own perceived sense of collective on to others who may or may not have shared it, and who for whatever reason aren't involved in the writing of history). In the past, oh, 10 years, only two events even stand out as even being considerable for State Of The Nation status - Dianadeath and 7/7. The first - I didn't feel anything and neither, I suspect, did most people here. The second - I felt it but I was on the spot. And I left London the weekend after, and (fairly obviously) the "state" of Brighton was v different from the "state" of London. "State of the nation" is a means of exclusion, while pretending it's about inclusion.

And I don't really believe any one song is big enough to capture any putative state of the nation in any case. Unless it actively tries to, in which case that will make it irritating.

Plus, like Frank, I place more importance on people's personal lives.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"you had to be there" is the opposite of "stands the test of time" -- you should be pro it, lex, it is VERY POP

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

I was thoroughly indifferent to the Cult of Diana; in retrospect, though, I've come to see her as symbolic of the forces diluting both pop culture and the old bourgeois culture, which has become a central theme in my writing (I was too young/interested in other things/*not wanting* to realise it to see just how important she was at the time). There's a whole genre I think of as "Diana music": basically anything by the British members of the Live Aid Rockocracy. And I dramatise the conflict between right-wing consumerism and right-wing traditionalism in terms of the battle between Diana and the fervently anti-pop Charles (someone who I never understood at all until I started researching the inter-war Agrarian Right, an earlier area of interest for me; then it all fell into place). I think I first did that when writing about Wham!'s "I'm Your Man" (a song with a particularly fervent anti-gentleman-amateurism hook, although maybe I'm just parodying myself there) on ILM.

I don't think, though, that the actual chart singles *of the time of her death* can be related to her or her death in any way; by 1997, "Diana music" had been in decline for some years, its place largely taken by what you might call "Blair music", namely Oasis and their followers, the music which represented the dilution of what had been vaguely called "indie"/"alternative" which I see as analoguous to the dilution of the Labour Party (like many Carmodic ideas, this was in fact first stated by someone else; I vividly remember Simon Price drawing the analogy in Melody Maker just before the 1997 election). But despite the disconnection between her and the driving forces in chartpop by the time of her death, she's an absolutely key figure in the change in what pop is, relative to the "official culture" ("state of the nation" *is* a means of exclusion of dissenters; that's precisely why I find it interesting, to analyse precisely why there is a desire to see certain people excluded). I wouldn't rule out the possibility that had we had unswervingly traditional young aristocratic women marrying into the royal family during the 1980s, people who ignored pop culture altogether and were happy to hunt, shoot and fish, we might not have James Blunt et al now ... but then the fact that we had Diana rather than a stereotypical Country Life "girl in pearls" is for me basically a result of Thatcherism (and I also see Diana as an analogy for the drift of Thatcherism from pretty much unbridled neo-feudalism to an unprecendented radical-reactionary hybrid - "radical-reactionary" is Sinker again, sorry - and the ideological confusion and breakup of the British Right since the Leaderene fell; c.f. my Flambards piece passim).

Part of Carmodism is undoubtedly a result of my Asperger's Syndrome; in other words intellectualisation of everything and an immense difficulty in relating to people as people or in terms of their personal lives. But also it's a result of my loathing for the cultural and intellectual compartmentalism which is so dominant in Britain, now the most baneful legacy of the old class system (which in practice has now been largely replaced by an American class system, i.e. something about finance rather than culture, and has been twisted around by time so much that, as I once got into a *lot* of trouble for suggesting, the hard Left are in some ways the last High Tories in terms of their belief in who "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things; that may be a Blair/Reid belief, but there's a grain of truth in it). I may be wrong, but I don't think there'd be anything like as much wariness of my way of seeing things if I was French and was debating them mainly with French people.

I know a rockist when I see one

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

My gut tells me that the reason the Carmodic interpretation has become so accepted is for the reason that you and Frank clarifying here - the reason the riots have been linked to the song is exactly because it foreshadowed them and didn't retroactively describe them. Or, in other words, its impact was unintended* and therefore more authentic.

*But Dammers was totally political, wasn't he, so "unintended" doesn't the right word here. But I'm nitpicking, so just ignore me.