Saturday, October 04, 2008

v/a "Artrocker Unsigned 4"

So this was a free CD that came with Artrocker magazine. I like Artrocker in theory, as it covers the kind of yeow! rock sounds I profess to love. However, the issue this came with was pretty dull, so I have not really got round to listening to the disc (which is meant to be of unsigned bands of the sort you will all be loving tomorrow). There is also the creeping fascism of the magazine, whose editorial was full of praise for that Tory bastard Boris Johnson.

I noticed the other day that I am not the only person perturbed by Artrocker's incipient conservatism – a recently revived thread on I Love Music revealed that the magazine's rightwing tendencies have been under the spotlight for some time. One person theorised that conservative music and conservative politics go together. There may be something to this – people who are totally bound up in retro musical scenes may well be the kind of people who think everything was better back when everyone was white, the gays knew their place, and young people had respect for their elders. Or maybe the idea that retro politics go with retro music is a nonsensical position.

What do you think?

4 comments:

Ammonite said...

Knowing neither the magazine nor the music I can't really comment, but the conservative music/conservative politics equation does have the kind of glib feasibility that generally underlies false assumptions. So I would say no.

ian said...

It also sounds like a dangerous generalisation from a small number of cases - deducing or surmising that all/most people into retro music must be into regressive politics just because one retro music magazine editor is.

Andrew Farrell said...

Well, it's worth pointing out that the third pillar of your retrogression is entirely optional these days - it's possible to hark back to say the 60s in a very narrow way (Oasis as always the first band to my mind here) and still believe in the power of the kids, man. It's not clear what exactly Noel Gallagher believes the kids want, but I imagine that an end to this black- and gay-tainted dance music would fit in it quite nicely.

CarsmileSteve said...

there are *a lot* more posh kids in indie these days though, which doesn't help. there was another artrocker thing ages ago where he was moaning about teh homelesses...

...i *think* he's just an idiot...