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]

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.