Letters to the Editor

indie essays by Greg

the 90s revival

(posted on 2009-11-17 00:42:39)

Some people are saying that a 90s revival is imminent. They base this on the previous pop-music decades having usually been reprised around 15 to 20 years after they ended, and on signs of incipient revival, such as the Pavement tour. I got to thinking about the music-decade-revivals we've had to date, and mused about why they happen and what a 90s revival might look like. Well-known blogger Momus discussed revivals earlier this year: I add a 'cause' to his model, as detailed below.

Of course this discussion relies on it being meaningful to divide pop-music history into ten-year chunks, rather than some other quantum. This seems to be a common convention. However it would be interesting to consider whether genres have a different lifespan: I have speculated at other times that it is either 7 or 15 years. I also choose to focus on music rather than movies, clothing, zines or other genres. This may be personal bias, but I think music has had the most social impact of these, and been a primary driver of pop culture.

Each musical decade from the 50s to the 80s has been revived. But what about the decades before? There was pop music before World War 2, and fashion and record industries, but pre-war styles seem not to have survived well in post-war pop-culrure. There was a folk revival in the early 60s, and the Beatles and Joe Jackson indulged in some pillaging of the 20-40s, but this wasn't taken up by many.

The first major pop decade revival occurred when the 1950s were revived in the 70s. Its signs included the tv show Happy Days, stage musical the Rocky Horror Show, pop musicians such as Racey and Suzi Quatro (and in Australia Daddy Cool, Silver Studs and Ol' 55), and some of the memes of punk rock such as its rejection of hippy culture and a propensity to cover 50s songs (for example Sid Vicious' interpretation of Eddie Cochrane). The original bodgies and rockers were reaching their early forties, an age when one sheds one's last hopes of being glamorous. With nothing to lose, forty-somethings are at risk of shamelessly reliving their youth in public, thus creating a market for nostalgia.

In the mid 70s, with the solo Beatles gone to seed and the hippy movement mostly over, there was a distinct element of "we lost our way in the 60s" among both ex-rockers and working-class youth, and an unholy alliance of these groups brought us the 50s revival. I suggest that a similar meme-complex defined each subsequent decade-revival, and will define the 90s revival when it comes: that is, a nostalgia for one's youth, combined with a belief that music "went wrong" in the years between the original decade and the time in which it is revived.

The 60s were revived, in turn, during the 80s. Some genres became particularly influential. 'Garage' or 'Detroit' bands revived the sound of the Stooges and the MC5 and were influenced by the Pebbles compilations. In Australia this sound was indie-dominant for several years. The related 'psychedelic' scene, including the Church, the Stems, the Sunnyboys and others, did a kind of Revolver / Byrds sound wearing pointy boots and paisley shirts. At the time I thought musicians were exhibiting a tendency to revive the music their parents played when they were toddlers. Since then I've realized that cultural politics as much as sound drives revivals.

A major but often-forgotten theme in early-80s culture was the widespread denigration of 'rockism'. The long hair and swagger of 70s bands was ridiculed in the punk and post-punk scenes, and many bands who had been riding high fell out of favour (to witness this, compare the Rolling Stones' confident clip for Miss You, made at the peak of their popularity, with the nervous self-parody of Start Me Up, made just a few years later after a drubbing from punks.) Guitar became an uncool instrument, and bands stopped holding them like phalluses. Some scenesters complained even that the Birthday Party were 'too rock'. Many contemporary musicians were unhappy with this state of affairs. The 60s revival allowed young upcoming bands to 'play rock' without looking too much like the 70s dinosaurs that were on the nose. This became the thin edge of a wedge of a rock counter-revolution that developed during the 80s, via the American hardcore scene, the Australian grunge scene, and bands such as REM and Sonic Youth.

The 70s revival happened on cue in the 90s. While it began innocuously with ironic op-shop clothes and Abba parties, the fast-building rock revival soon exploded in the Seattle scene and worldwide grunge movement, which mined the look and sound of 70s hard rock. This hair-and-guitar revival so dominated all levels of pop music that other genres of the era can be seen to an extent as being reactions to it. I argue that, politically, this revival's purpose was the same as that of the previous two. Grunge rolled back the English-dominated, anti-rockist 80s, making space for a new generation of musicians taking their cues from America. Praising the past to criticize contemporary developments is not new: Luddites, Romantics and other activists have used the same strategy.

Subsequently, round 2000 we saw rumblings of an 80s revival. Bands such as Interpol appeared, doing the 80s sound and making it popular among young fans. Compilations of early-80s post-punk were released (Australia's Can't Stop It was an early example). This new/old sound built momentum, and before long all the popular young bands sounded like Joy Division, The Fall, Gang of Four, Wire, etc. Classic-rock stations added the Human League and Depeche Mode to their playlists, and K-Mart bought Counting the Beat for ads designed to make the new cohort of 40-somethings think about their happy days while shopping. A generation of young 80s-reviving bands swept the old 70s-reviving 90s stars aside, in the process offering aging actual-80s bands, who had been dormant for a decade, an opportunity to reform.

So what is the anatomy of a musical revival? It seems that the first moves get under way about ten years after the decade in question ends, in the form of ironic fashion, club theme nights and novelty cover bands (perhaps earlier: David Nichols recalls 80s nights, focusing on especially ridiculous bands such as Duran Duran, being held in Sydney in the mid 90s). By about 15 years post original decade, the revival is well under way, with young bands doing the sound and clothes shops selling the look. By the 20-year mark it is mainstream and has run its course.

The key difference between this essay and Momus' lies in what we think motivates revivals. Momus says that people revive because an insatiable demand for 'new' styles exceeds the supply of ideas, leading people to pillage old material as early as they can get away with it. (He then answers the question, "how early?".) I agree, but add that revival can also be a political strategy: in the struggle for cultural supremacy, generation 'next' conspires with generation 'previous' against generation 'current'. They are not just plundering a past style, but holding it up as superior to the current style they are trying to displace.

Nothing in real life follows clean patterns of course. Music revivals have a wide adoption curve. Some bands do it early (Jesus Lizard, 80s in the 90s), others do it late (The Darkness and Wolfmother, 70s in the 00s). Musical decades are not genre monoliths, but encompass parallel threads of musical evolution: for example in the 90s grunge, indie-pop, techno and trip-hop co-existed, each with its own internal dynamics. Some argue that 00s music consists only of revivals. There are exceptions to every rule: still, I think the pattern I'm describing can be discerned among the noise.

The 80s revival has lasted most of the 00s, a decade which is about to end. If the pattern plays out, we should see a 90s revival some time soon, driven by the desire of forty-somethings to relive youth, reform bands, re-issue albums and have one last tread of the boards, and by the desire of new bands to deflate the currently popular 80s-revivalists. There are incipient signs, with '90s nights' already a feature in clubs, and reformations of Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, and some of the Seattle bands under way. The next step would be re-issues, theme compilations in which current bands cover early-90s songs, and young bands who don't really remember the sound spontaneously emulating it. Has enough time passed for people to perceive "the 90s" as a revival, rather than an old sound that is not-quite-dead? Until recently I'd have thought not. Then I happened to listen to a Chapter compilation from 1994, and ate my unspoken words. There is most definitely an 'early 90s sound', it is distinct from today's, and it is copy-able.

What will a 90s revival look like? Will different sub-cultures emerge along the original fault-lines, such as "new grunge", "new indie-pop", or "new rock-techno-crossover" (or for that matter "new techno", "new triphop" or "new drum-and-bass")? Will there (again) be recognizable Nirvana bands, Pavement bands, and Nine Inch Nails bands? Will it be driven partly by nostalgia for the comfortable days of America between the wars? Will there be an accompanying ironic resurgence of dial-up Internet, skateboarding, tattoos and post-modernism? And will it be curtains for the 80s-revivalists who have ruled the roost this past decade?

(Thanks to David Nichols, Peter Jetnikoff, Ian Wadley, Andrew Bulhak and Keith Urquhart for advice on this piece.)

reply 1 from James Earthenware: I like your theory, although it's not just 40-something's reviving...it seems many of the 20-something hipsters are really obsessed with reviving 90's fashion. Possibly they are bored with reviving 80's fashion, but I don't think there's much politics involved in this, probably just nostalgia for movies and music of their growing up, yet now they are old enough to consume products, so stores are selling products with 90's icons on them. I think revivals are always "innocent" or "apolitical" because if we are talking about nostalgia for youth, most of our youth is spent ignorant of these political realities. ie: I didn't see any kids holding 80's parties calling for a return of Thatcher or Reagan. In fact the reason I hated most 80's revivalist bands is that they had completely lost the political motivations / awareness that inspired the original sounds. "Edgy" / "abrasive" guitars are not so edgy without the "edgy" lyrics and "cold" / "gothic" synthesizer sounds are not as frightening without the political back-drop of mutually assured destruction. Besides, the generation Y, who are buying-into all these revivals are too self-obsessed to consider sociological/political issues. A lot of indie bands seem to be re-claiming these 90's sounds, I was listening to a show on PBS recently and was really enjoying the 90's revival sounds. But I guess my question will always be why were these sounds forgotten in the first place? Why is the market so superficial and fickle? Most of the CD's I purchased 1995-98 I still listen to and enjoy...and I'm still discovering music from that era that I missed because I was too obsessed with particular artists or couldn't afford ALL the bands records that I liked. I think most of the 80's revival bands were garbage, and there's just too much new music that we are bombarded with to begin with...so there's no need at all to mine the past for ideas...there's too much music already...so I have to avoid it to maintain any enthusiasm for it. I guess my opinions on this don't count, most of my peers have careers and jobs so they can afford to participate economically in the 90's revival. I can't, so while I am happy that the Pixies, Pavement, Big Heavy Stuff, Screamfeeder etc. can achieve recognition they may have missed out on I won't personally be supporting this. I mean, I've been buying 90's CD's for the past 20 years...maybe I will switch to selling if they are suddenly deemed "collectable" instead of filling up the $2 bin at dixons where I usually find all my "classic" 90's Australian albums. Again, economically, like the 80's little band scene...the records start selling for a lot on Ebay...so it becomes viable to re-issue the album whereas before it wasn't. Sorry for this badly constructed contribution, I am not well and too hot to think clearly, hopefully you will get the point of what I am saying...that it's more an economic shift and is really pointless artistically. I do agree it's a real phenomenon and worth analysing from all perspectives however and I commend your efforts in this regard! ;) Great work!

reply 2 from Greg: I agree, some of it is driven by 20-somethings' nostalgia for the music they heard as young kids. This is in conjunction with 40-something' looking to make a comeback - nostalgia of a slightly different kind. It's a "music scene politics" I'm referring to rather than "government politics" - the politics of what is in or out and by extension who is wired or tired. A large chunk of the music business is geared to manipulating that.

reply 3 from James Earthenware: Wow, I keep looking at everything regarding the 20 year cycle thing, it seems so correct. From Devo's covers of Hendrix/Stones to Sid Vicious doing My Way and that other 50's track he recorded. Perhaps it is just that humans have such short memories, that they can only rebel against what has immediately preceded them, and after 20 years, the fashion or culture has depreciated to such an extent that it is cheaply/freely availible. ie: the idea has lost all it's currency, value and relevance and hence it may be appropriated/recycled and given new value/meaning. SO this may be a positive thing, in that we are not about "wasting" cultural artefacts. It could also be an expression/manifestation of the human condition which seems perpetually discontent with it's present. Musical forms are imported from other cultures because we cringe at our own culture, so perhaps if people cringe at the present state of the world, they can look forward, or backward for comfort or inspiration. For all intents and purposes we may consider that the previous ten years to be a part of the "present" hence the "past" falls into the 20 year period. I would like to look up some psychological studies or experiments to try and understand better how human beings perceive or define time and memory. When I have more time I will try and find some studies in the area and if I find any relevant results I will forward them to you. Which reminds me that I really liked Brian Eno's ideas when he was talking about his involvement in the development of the Millennium clock, a device built to help humans re-define their concept/perception of time. Eno was very interested in the issues of time, originally because he would compose by slowing down tapes so instruments changed timbre and then when he had to compose the 3 second microsoft sound, this also made him think of time differently. I guess the ambient works also fall into that category, because he was increasing the time/space between notes, but I think that exercise was mainly about space, but it COULD have been a time based exercise as well. I realised after i wrote my comment, the type of politics you meant. Sorry for being a bit out of it and closed minded when I wrote the post!

reply 4 from what's your name?: Hello! I`m from Norway (born in 1973). I have just been throwned out from a program in the style of the Idol for the fourth time. I think it`s because of the fact: I have a handicap (a little bit). My talking voice has always sounded a bit strange, that`s why I don`t reach 99 points at the karaoke-game SING STAR (I have reached 97). I don`t have any records by Dave Graney yet. My VISA card got robbed after I had bought three compilations by the Scientists. Now I have learned the paypal. (I have more than 2000 cd`s). I got a backstage-passport and a free ticket from Daniel Johnston. I met him outside the hall. I didn`t knew that Kurt Cobain was a fan of Daniel until after the meeting. Kurt had a Breeders-cd on top of his 100 fave-albums. Breeders are very similar to the Bangles. Dave Faulkner is a good friend of the Bangles and Kim Salmon. I`ve got a lot of e-mails from one of Dave`s friend, Rod Radalj. I hope anyone will meet me on my vocal-session trip to your studio in 2010.

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Whither indie amidst depression?

(posted on 2009-01-13 15:17:00)

Indie economics is a curious thing, and I'm curious about how it will hold up during the impending economic doom. Predicting the future is fraught (hence the doom) and I can foresee several very different scenarios. I've been discussing this with people and have heard a range of views including:

1. Recession, what recession? It's all a scam by big business to get bail-out money, and the economy is imaginary anyway.
2. Creatives are well and truly fugged, even more so than the mainstream who have jobs making essentials like food.
3. While the climate-wrecking mainstream economy goes down the plughole, indies will continue to make our living as we always have. Short form: we're used to being broke.

I have some sympathy for all of these views, but they can't all be right. I think the devil will be in the detail of how each individual handles their 'indie career'. Let's look at these possibilities in more detail.

1. recession, what recession .. You hear variations on this a lot, especially at parties and gigs. But it seems an unlikely position, with 100% of the world's governments predicting major disaster in 2009. Indies are an optimistic lot, and society tends to admire optimism (a tendency I find odd, since every disaster is preceded by it). It's also said that generation Y doesn't believe in recessions, because they've never lived through one. Because culture-towns like Melbourne have supported a large number of gigs and galleries for 10 years, and musos and artists have found casual unskilled work without too much trouble, we've been coasting along in something of an art boom. Will this still be the case when the family guy next door is competing for your dishwashing/phone-survey job, and your unemployed fans can't afford to buy beer or music? (Does anyone still buy music anyway? That's a separate debate.)

2. we'll go down even harder than the mainstream .. The argument for this point of view begins at the end of the last paragraph. Youngsters focussing on nascent art/film/music careers tend to earn their food and rent money from the kind of casual jobs that might disappear the fastest when no-one is spending, ie hospitality, retail and so on. And when career workers fired from day-jobs are desperate for that same part-time work, creatives may get a smaller share of a smaller pie. On the other hand, these two social groups tend to live in different circumstances. Many mainstream workers are supporting a family and a negative-equity mortgage. Job-loss for them is an instant disaster and these people are, rightly, worried about 2009. Indies without children, already living on next-to-nothing, don't have as far to fall. Some might go live with mum and dad for a while. Obviously there exists a range of circumstances, and mileage will vary. The parent option may not be feasible for over-35s.

3. art is immune from economics .. This seems obviously wrong, though a lot of people are saying something like it. It depends whether you depend on art for your income, and by definition most indies don't. If you have a job, and keep it during the recession, art/music/etc is your hobby and there's no reason it can't continue to be. And a mighty fine hobby it might be when all around is bleak. Indie has been going in this direction for years anyway. Rents have risen significantly relative to wages, bands can't afford cars or practice rooms, and no-one's really making a living from music. When you take costs into account, few even break even. Frankly I like the idea that music/art/whatever is done for love, not money. I know every 18-year-old yearns to 'make a living from music', and I have had disagreements with a few would-be-rockstars on this issue, but in my experience, when people treat music as a career, it leads to a preponderance of 'music about musicians', culture made by people who know nothing beyond sound-checks and the tour van. It's boring and irrelevant to workers. Part-time art is the best art, as it's by, for and about real people. But what happens to part-time artists who lose their day-jobs in 2009? Do our art careers flourish, with extra time devoted to it while we live on the dole? Not unless we're prepared to move to Colac, I suspect. I've heard some say that there will always be a demand for art (or at least entertainment) during a depression - however most of the paying customers would presumably be the well-to-do - do we really want them as our only audience?

Indies are ahead of their time when it comes to economic disaster. The rental crisis gripping Melbourne since 2006 has meant that anyone who's not a full-time earner of a good wage is being squeezed out. So many times last year I heard: "when my lease came up for renewal they jacked up the rent and I have to move further from the city". There is a shortage of accommodation, and renters with good jobs are willing to pay more. Landlords know this and are hiking up rents as fast as the law allows. Indies, who forego some of their earning time to make art, can't compete against full-time workers, and the latter have snapped up the inner suburbs where culture can most effectively be produced. This happened in Sydney in the 80s, ending that city's reign as Australia's music capital, when all the bands moved to Melbourne. Where will we all go next - Adelaide? Some have suggested Hobart or Bendigo - we could do worse. The irony is that inner-city property values only rose because creatives moved there in the first place, looking for cheap rent in what was then an undesirable area. The indie scene has become a large, unwitting, property-value-raising machine that moves from suburb to suburb, improving neighbourhoods with enthusiasm, aesthetics and social capital. Economically speaking, we are an early stage of gentrification. We move to cheap rent and improve it to the point where we can't afford to live there, whereupon we are turfed out in favour of big-earners who want in, now that it's groovy. This is such an established process (witness Carlton, Fitzroy, Brunswick, Northcote, Newfarm, West End, Newtown, Darlinghurst, Williamsburg ...) that I expect landlords in as-yet-ungentrified suburbs are competing to be the wandering creatives' next homeland. Preston welcomes indie rockers. Just import some good baristas and open a venue, guys - we'll see you in a few months.

Have you noticed that as the financial crisis moved onto the front page last year, the environmental crisis disappeared from view? I was living in the US during the election campaign and I swear the environment was not mentioned once, by either candidate. It illustrates a problem with 'old thinking': the belief that the economy is only healthy if it's growing, meaning more people consuming more resources to make more crap to be sold at Harvey-Normans. When the economy is 'growing healthily' we wring our hands over the damage it does to the environment. Then the recession is the disaster and the environment is forgotten, as governments scramble to get people buying crap again. I have argued in this blog that it is only the owners of businesses and real estate who want endless growth, because it pushes up the selling price of businesses and real estate. During periods of growth, owners get to make money simply by sitting and waiting for values to rise. For the rest of us, too much growth is a disaster. It is the cause of the coming environmental crash, which may make the stock market crash look like a walk in the park. The key to solving both problems at once is sustainability. Instead of endlessly expanding consumption, we only produce what we need, and stay in equilibrium with the environment. Owners of things won't make money as easily, and will be the reactionaries in this revolution. Sustainability is easier to say than do, sure, and will require significant systemic change. I refer you to specialist authors on sustainability. The wikipedia article is a good starting point. One message that the unfolding crisis is sending us is that we should each be responsible for finding something worthwhile to do, instead of just producing any old crap for which there is a demand. When times are tight, if something is crap, demand for it will stop soon enough. Environmentally speaking, this may prove to be recession we had to have.

The Age had an article just before Xmas that illustrated the wrong way for musos to think about the downturn. Cover-bands were complaining of a lean holiday season, because recession-fearing corporates weren't hiring them to play at office parties. This is like Harvey-Norman complaining that consumers aren't buying enough plasma TVs. It's sad, but only for the complainer. The world will be better off if there are fewer plasma TVs, and corporate parties.

It's time for creatives to lead the way on sustainability, rather than worry that their bottom line will be affected when the masses consume less alcohol or plastic discs. Instead of competing for the ever-shrinking disposable dollar, let's beat our guitars into ploughshares and produce things the world really needs.

reply 1 from David Nichols: Have you sent your manifesto to Pluto Press yet? Not that I don't agree with everything you say, because I do.

reply 2 from FJSG: plenty of good baristas in Bendigo

reply 3 from what's your name?: I recently watched something on TV on British pubs that were lowering the prices of pints to 99p in light of the fact that 5 pubs a day close in Britain. While the division of opinion that the price drop attracted was probably not black and white, in essence middle class commentators bemoaned the incentive for poor people to binge drink and live unhealthy lives while working class commentators welcomed the drop since it meant that poor people did not have to sit at home in isolation and drink cheap supermarket-bought booze in isolation. Instead, they could continue to drink in company and, in effect, could afford to socialize. I suppose this commentary is intended to suggest that the crisis that affects indie bands in terms of punters not drinking enough booze (as well as purchasing music...bt perhaps we can 'blame' the internet for this double-edged sword of access to the world's music & musicians in an instant and non-mainstream dissemination of music etc but, on the other hand, the almost irresistable appeal of getting all and any music for free) is perhaps a social crisis as poor people are forced to drink (and play music) at home and in isolation. once preston is reached - as it has been - by the forces of indie, there are few suburbs beyond it that offer high streets and venues. what then? these suburbs, however, offer cheaper rents in the main and backyards for vege gardens. So what? I'm not sure. To some extent, the rental crisis and inner city aspect was also caused by manufacturing industries moving out to the outer suburbs (for cheaper rents and larger premises) and taking their workers with them so they are closer to their workplaces etc. Then, rockers and artist took advantage of these premises as you say. Great article, Greg, and apologies to all those who read this piece of mine and now want those 5 minutes of their life back.

reply 4 from casey: Great post Greg. You should get talking to my friend Karl Fitzgerald - he hosts a radio show called Renegade Economists (5.30 - 6pm Wednesdays on 3CR - 855AM You can stream it from www.3cr.org.au) and runs free classes called 'Economics for Activists' About time we took matters into our own hands. I don't want to leave Melbs, dammit! Or get a 'real' job. Check his work at http://www.earthsharing.org.au

reply 5 from mark.h: Greg - I also agree with what you say here. Some thoughts: anyone at a party in Melbourne saying there is no economic problem whilst living in their comfortable little art bubble should immediately be cast forever into the Yarra unless they can wake up to a world without art, beer and gigs as a sole means of existence ! It is true that the poverty kids move into cheap places, create 'atmosphere' which real estate agents then stick their teeth into down the track. The flipside to this situation is that artists love to complain and would not have the incentive too create if there was not these social/economic obstacles to negotiate. So you can have a protest whereby all art inclined humans move into new 'cheap' part of town and do nothing. No art, no gigs, no parties, no vegan cafe's etc... no nothing. Just shopping But of course this will never happen and art will always exist and always be made. The tide is shifting, especially with regards to music. The entire musical output of art in the 20th century was 'warped' by commerce. From the very start of that century this form of artistic expression became a commodity. So you had varying reactions to this - the embrace (so called 'mainstream' music, 'indie labels' etc..) the reaction (so called 'avant-garde' 'outsider music' etc..) but all were intrinsically tied to the $. We have a situation where what little money is left for 'fringe' music is dying out. Music, everything about it; the conception, the creating, the recording, the release are all a luxury for those with spare time and spare money. Being in London this is highlighted further as the nature of this city hinders free time and the cost of living provides little opportunity for people to entertain the idea of creating some masterwork, let alone acting upon it. (oh and what's your name? ... the 99p pints here is only one pub chain and only one type of (shit) beer, otherwise it's still b/w £2.50 - £3.50 at most haunts! Also, i am not sure they are closing so many pubs in London as such, that would be the only thing to get these people out of their passive robotic worker 'must drink copious amounts of lager to cope' existence - ie: it would be mayhem!!) So possibly this is why musical output in this country for recent years has been limp, hedonistic, bland day glo party nonsense (the world's going to blow, let's get wasted kind of thing). Ironically, where the rock kiddies are embracing ecstasy and group utopia, underneath this the electronic scene, once euphoric is now super edgy, paranoid, dark and social aware of a collapsing economy or in the very least that, 'something is up'. Art/Music can help people understand or articulate their environment. It is no need but it is 'needed' (in a way, even as a means of communicating collective anxiety for example, this helps people relate/understand) Regardless of social/economic woes art will exist, whether commercial backed or backyard defiance art will never stop. People will still make art in 1000 years, the current crisis will just make people re-adjust personal values and ask why they make art in first place. And possibly, this could lead to more socially conscious 'creatives' whereby priorities are shifted away from door lists and riders and for a start, at least, some thorough research and understanding reagrding what is going on in the world economy today, how 'we' got to this point and where to from here (a wonderful horrific tale if there ever was one!!). Personally the less artists complaining 'woe be me' that they can't live off art, the better. Just get on with it and be aware of the 'real' world around you. YOU latte lapping bubble human YOU!

reply 6 from James Earthenware: That blog was incredible! Well done! I guess one possible contention I could add is, that while artists do "improve" their environs, I think traditionally they inhabit inner-city areas, and since manufacturing and farming industries have died out there's not much work to do in the outer-suburbs anymore. That's why peak hour is busy going into the city mornings and out of the city in evenings. So, my point would be that it's a matter of convenience for these "workers" to move to inner city so they save money on petrol/time etc. My case in point would be that when they DO move to the inner city they complain about "violence", "graffiti" and "noise" from the clubs and bars. Hence you have ludicrous policies like 2am lock-outs to appease these yuppies and cashed up bogans who are only used to the peace and tranquility of suburban living and hence the bars are sent broke installing sound-proofing technology and paying for security to keep meat-heads out. I think if all the artists moved to say Dandenong...or Pakenham...I don't think it would suddenly become gentrification-worthy because there is just no infrastructure there to support artists, and even if there was, the punters would only want to see Cold Chisel cover bands...or watch football...not original indie music. Of course the artists could spend more time making art...but it would be like a tree falling in a forest since they would simply have no outlet for it. Although there seems a big art scene in Newcastle, I spoke to people complaining how they were abused while traveling to and from events/workshops. Perhaps this is the kind of tension that inspires great artists though. (As you or another comment mentioned). I guess there would be a fourth way...some artists might be able to poach high-paying jobs and entrench themselves in the inner city. ie: Triple R is well and truly entrenched now they have purchased their premises. Perhaps some artists who did make money during the boom period could have secured or inherited infrastructure as well. Considering this, maybe a huge economic crisis will just cause a "fragmentation" or "decentralization" of the artistic community. Some will be able to stay...some will have to move back to live with parents.

reply 7 from Andrew: okay, you're describing gentrification. Now this is an economic process, and it points - possibly - to how Creatives/Indies are still part of capitalism - a first wave perhaps. If there is to be some kind of change, maybe making art that's more politicised in terms of the strategies it might use to exist could become important. I'm finding something interesting in gigs I put on in Hobart - make them free to get in and don't have them in a pub. Try and find a place where one can sell beer and sell food - and do it. you might make enough money to get ahead. Of course, I'm living in a small community and I'm a practiced networker who can find a room, a PA and the legal permission to sell booze for nothing. I'm not sure how it applies to you Melbourne types, but I note that forgetting about standard ways of doing things and actively trying to cut corners and costs can yield useful results in these harsh economic times. I've directly gone to community organisations and asked them if they can help in ANY way and gotten useful support along the way.

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the hand that cranked the volume knob

(posted on 2008-03-04 19:29:37)

We are seeing the beginnings of a movement away from overly loud music. For example, this recent article in Rolling Stone talks about over-compression robbing modern music of its sound quality and emotional intensity. It is argued that the competition for each album to be louder than everything else is part of the reason that people are losing interest in music and turning instead to other media. I think there is a similar problem happening in venues, causing people to vote with their feet and go somewhere else.

Constant loud background music has bad effects on people. I'm not just talking about hearing damage - though that is a health problem that entertainers shouldn't inflict on audiences. More subtly, loud music stops people interacting socially. I'll describe a recent situation which clarified this for me.

I went to a social event in a hired hall. It was good - a happy occasion, about 100 people in a large room, most of them knew each other, plenty to catch up on - you get the picture. Not long after I arrived I was chatting with a group of people when I noticed a guy fiddling with some sound gear. Someone said it was the DJ trying to get the PA up and running. I had a premonition of doom. Eventually the PA started, and proceeded to drown out everyone's conversation. The effect on the party was kind of sad and funny at the same time, and similar to what you see a lot in venues.

When people gather in a social setting, they form themselves into groups. Occasionally pairs form, but usually people like to talk in groups of about 4 to 10. This is a good size for discussion - everyone gets a chance to talk, yet there are enough voices to ensure variety and checking of opinion. In situations like these, ideas are honed, plans made and problems solved. But loud background noise reduces the distance over which people can project their voices, and this kills off group conversations. People might stand in group-like formations but they're really only talking with the person beside them. A conversation between two people lacks the dynamism of a group discussion. People get bored and turn to drink. They find themselves having to repeat snippets of conversation with several different individuals during the course of the event. The need to shout to compete with the PA strips the subtlety from speech. In short, people are cheated of the social interaction they expect when attending a venue.

Anyway, back to my story. After the music started at this event, people started leaving the hall to stand outside and talk. Within two hours the entire party was out in the sun, sweating in their finery during a Melbourne heatwave, and the hired hall sat empty, the DJ comically playing his cd collection to no-one. People preferred to put up with the heat and glare outside than submit to the loud music inside.

We see things like this every day in venues, cafes, parties and wherever people socialize. Venue proprieters, bar managers, DJs etc try to force people to listen to loud cds, and their victims try to escape it. They shout over the music, talk in the toilets and even stand outside the venue they paid to get into, because what they really want to do is converse with their fellow humans. I hear punters complain about volume a lot, but very rarely does anyone walk up to a DJ or mixer and ask for the music to be turned down. It's as though the volume knob is a sacred relic. One volume knob - a hundred ruined evenings.

You may be thinking "big deal, it's only background music - there are more important things to worry about", but in a way that's exactly my point. A lot of our culture's interesting, informed, progressive people meet each other at venues. When they're allowed to communicate with each other they come up with valuable ideas. But fighting the volume knob is an impossible task, and they often give up on discussion, resorting to yelled pair-wise exchanges of "What have you been up to? - Nothing much". They might as well have stayed home to watch tv, which is what most of them end up doing eventually.

When venue-goers complain about loud music they are usually told one of the following.
(I've added my suggested counter-arguments.)

• "You are anti-fun."
  Exactly the opposite. We want you to stop stopping us from having fun.
• "You want to stop the DJs / bar-staff having fun."
  If your idea of fun is forcing a room full of people to listen to your cd collection, then yes.
• "But my high-energy set is empowering the people to overthrow the state."
  The precursor to effective action is communication, and you're preventing that from happening.
• "You should dance."
  Hardly anyone wants to, and it's silly to try and force us to with volume.
• "You can't hack the intensity of my rock."
  You're not extreme - your volume knob is. If you want a grim experience that proves how hard you are, take up boxing or something.

A trickier question is whether music by live bands is too loud. It can be argued that people have explicitly come to see the band play, and therefore the music should be at a volume that makes an interrupting conversation impossible. But whenever bands play, people try to talk to each other over the music. Does it offend the band to have people talk while they play? Does that matter, considering the punters are paying the band to be there? Do we defer to the people or the band? If a band can't hold people's attention with message or music quality, should they be allowed to force it with volume? Does talking by semi-interested patrons ruin the experience for interested patrons? They all paid to get in - which group gets to dictate to the other?

reply 1 from Pat: I've been complaining about band volume for as long as I can remember. But it's not a simple issue. Whether or not I perceive a band as being "too damn loud" depends on the type of music, how good the band is, whether early or later, venue empty/crowded, the sound engineer's skill, if the PA's distorting, no. of beers, how anxious/autistic I'm feeling, recent levels of exposure to loud music and so on. It seems ears do a good job of protecting themselves from high volume by 'dampening' (compression?). Trying to have a conversation maybe counteracts this. I've had what feels like instant ear damage from someone shouting straight into my ear and also peals of microphone feedback. Er...I could go on & on about this and other points you've made. Later perhaps.

reply 2 from Indifference Engine, age 73.: Greg, it's about time someone spoke up about this (pardon the pun). Background music should be in the background during a social event - otherwise it's foreground noise! An observation - there is a relationship between the average age in a venue and the volume of the music. Young people go to noisy pubs and pizzerias, and consider complaints about volume to be boring/anti-fun. But older people regard sitting, essentially alone, being subjected to someone else's music, to be boring and un-fun. Perhaps loud music is actually just a shield for awkward social skills. Many young people would probably be less bonkable if you could hear what they were saying (or if you could tell they had nothing interesting to say).

reply 3 from Andrew: Funny you should raise the issue of people talking during the performance of a band or artist. This was something I raised on a forum just recently. For mine, if people are paying to go to hear some music they should do both the performers and other punters the courtesy of shutting the fuck up while the performance is on. If they're not into the music that's one thing, but to treat everything as mere furniture music (Satie has a lot to answer for) for their busy inner-city lifestyles is just arrogance. I'm thinking particularly of performances that don't involve volume but are actually quiet; people playing soft ambient music for one, music that demands a listener's attention for more than five seconds. To me that's a different issue from canned music, especially between band/performers' sets. I'd rather not have anything playing at all. People should pay attention to music, otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of going out and listening to it. So my perfect world would involve people actually getting into the music (whether that's thrashing like ravaging maniacs or sitting calmly and meditatively focusing depends on the music itself) and silence in between for people to focus on actually communicating with each other. No chance of it happening but a man can dream.

reply 4 from what's your name?: Hello Greg. I may be getting this entirely wrong but tonight I was doing a little historical research into Loser Magazine tonight as I've just posted a blurb on me blog about it : http://eggstationzebra.blogspot.com/2008/07/loser-magazine.html It never occurred to me that you may still be out there somewhere but as Google came up with this & I'm pissed & tired I'm gonna punt it out & go to bed. If it's not you sorry to bother you but if it is have a read & tell me if it sounds vaguely accurate. I'm in London now, Melbourne spewed me out for reasons I can't explain here. Looks like you're busy anyhow... Doug

reply 5 from Indifference Engine: Recent article in The Australian: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24013337-23375,00.html An idea whose time has come?

reply 6 from Greg: This New Yorker article on the evolving atmosphere of classical concerts is an interesting contrast to this debate http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2008/09/08/080908crmu_music_ross?currentPage=all

reply 7 from James Earthenware: I agree with Andrew, people should shut the fuck up when an artist is creating amazing music (albeit quietly). That's the reason volume kept increasing, was to drown out the talking. Obviously this means to and end, has unfortunately become an end unto itself. I would LOVE it if there was just silence between bands so people could catch up on conversation they missed or discuss the music. It's patronizing to have the attitude that people must me "entertained" and constantly "stimulated". Yet some punters have this expectation, hence they become angry, restless or whatever when there is any sort of pause or break in entertainment. I think we first need to remove punters unrealistic expectations...performers are not machines, or television sets designed to constantly bombard and spoon-feed people info-tainment. Enjoying music/art requires effort/emotional engagement on behalf of the audience. Volume is used like a bludgeon in order to force people to engage but it doesn't work because people will just leave unless it is a type of music that needs to be administered at ear-damaging levels, in which case I just bring ear-plugs.

reply 8 from Bernard Langham: The Luminaire (somewaht artay London venue, home to minimalist electronica/acoustica and...Mark "Bleeding From The Ears Chopper" Read o_O http://www.theluminaire.co.uk/live-music/October/2009/1012/ANAL%20CUNT%20+%20HAGGIS%20+%20MARK) has a strictly enforced "no talking during gigs" rule. from their FAQ: "Q: I'm an idiot who likes to come to gigs and stand at the bar talking very loudly, ruining the performance for others. I don't seem to be able to accept that I'm being rude, inconsiderate and disrespectful. Am I welcome to come in? A. No. You can fuck off." http://www.theluminaire.co.uk/content/faq

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Let's talk about TISM

(posted on 2008-02-24 16:28:50)

Has enough time passed since the demise of Melbourne "band" This Is Serious Mum (TISM) for it to be reasonable to reflect on the career of this unique outfit? You shouldn't post-mortem a band too soon or too late - too soon and the air is still acrimonious; too late and your understanding of their social impact is lost amongst nostalgia and fading memories. I think it's time to talk about TISM, and I'd like to start the ball rolling. There is a good biography of TISM on Wikipedia, so I won't try to write their life story - I'll just comment on some aspects of it.

First let me suggest that TISM were not really a band. TISM were more "about" bands. (Dare I say "meta-band"? I just googled this and was asked if I meant "metal band".) I've heard people debate whether TISM were a good band, but this is a category error, like asking whether CNNN is a better current affairs program than Four Corners. TISM were especially un-band-like in their early days when a lot of their output was written text, situationist performance and media stunts. No-one wants to call TISM an "art collective" or suchlike, so for simplicity I will do what everyone does and call them a band. This allows me to succinctly opine that TISM were one of the best bands ever. Not everything they did was great art, but enough of it was good enough to get the message across. Perhaps "most valuable player" is closer to what I'm trying to say. Part of their positive influence on our culture was simply to be there, threatening to take the piss if someone wanked too hard. They were the bouncers at pop culture's party. But they polarized music scenesters - why?

One of the intriguing facets of the TISM saga was their sudden mid-career phase-change from indie to top-forty, and then back again. There is a glass ceiling above indie bands and few break through it. Most that do, do it early in their career and were never really indie in the first place. How TISM managed it will be worth a chapter in their bio-to-be. TISM were indie darlings in the late 80s, then in the mid 90s jumped up a level to JJJ rotation - at a time when airplay on that station mattered - and then up another to commercial airplay and chart success, only to return shortly afterwards to a kind of underground status. In their final years (2001-5) they were as good as they had ever been. They released a great album (De Rigueur Mortis) that received relatively little attention, along with an innovative attempt at "communal video clip making", before finally packing it in with a typical live spectacular at the Hi Fi Bar.

What brought about these career moves, one up and one down? I think radio station JJJ was instrumental in both - though they are not the whole story. When JJJ went national in the early 90s, their auntie-meets-indie sensibility became very popular among Australia's young music-consuming public. JJJ liked loud guitar-meets-techno pop-rock, and had a penchant for novelty songs. TISM must have seemed like their ideal band. In the mid 90s TISM released a series of techno-flavoured instant hits which were atypically well-produced and funny without being too dark. JJJ played them constantly. Soon TISM had record sales, tv appearances and national tours.

Then TISM did two things "wrong". First, they spilled the beans about the increasingly-powerful JJJ. Their 1998 single Thunderbirds are coming out, with its teenagers-as-puppets theme, included the line "I get my political views from my youth radio". I can imagine TISM realizing what JJJ had become and choosing to bite the hand that fed them. JJJ in turn chose to bite the band, who quickly fell from high-rotation to kill-file. At the same time, TISM began to annoy indie music fans, who had been their support base in the 80s. More accurately, the indie music fans who had supported TISM were growing old, their places filled by a younger crew for whom TISM had never been more than a novelty top 40 act. Nineties coolsies hated synthesizers and drum machines, hated satire and irony, and wanted "credible", ie American, rock. Most of all they wanted themselves and their heros to be taken seriously. TISM were a piss-take of serious rock, right down to the band name. Their post-punk, tall-poppy-syndrome anonymity jarred with the careerism creeping into indie back then. They were a risk, a lose canon, and had to be shut down.

I don't know the inside story of these career moves. I wish someone would do the research and tell the definitive TISM story. It could be a great 5000 word article, and easily a good book. A retrospective at the NGV perhaps? Plenty of me-too bands get their bios published - let's see one about a band that actually did something.

One of TISM's two front-persons has started a new band called "Root". I saw them for the first time at the Sydney Road Festival the other day. Describing Root in one line I would say that the lyrics are as good as TISM though musically they are quite different - a mix of country rock and related genres. The country sound suits some of the themes well, giving it a kind of homespun round-the-bbq feel. Some people will like the country genre, and some won't - an ex TISM fan who was there said he'd rather read the lyric sheets. IMO to get the best Root you need to see them live.

reply 1 from Richard Hagen: [I sent this to Greg via email.] I've had a skim over your TISM piece. There's a big oversight: the loathsome TISM fan base. There might be a paper about ironic and satirical performers attracting the dullest, most unselfconscious and humourless followers. Apart from TISM, I'm thinking particularly of Chris Morris (who did Jam, Brass Eye, etc.), and maybe even Monty Python. Many TISM fans are thugs. I'll give it a proper read tonight.

reply 2 from Greg: I know the legend of the awful TISM fans, and TISM themselves have referred to same, but I'm not fully convinced. Virtually every fan I ever knew had impeccable character. I bet if you did research you'd find no fewer ratbags moshing to other bands. But if we accept there were a few in the TISM mosh pit, how to explain it? I bet most were nice folk for whom TISM's high-brow content and low-brow form were releasers of their inner bogan.

reply 3 from Ms .45: Sorry Greg, I've only just gotten around to reading this. About the loathsome TISM fan base: I have still got a t-shirt in my possession that is covered in blood (not my blood, though I washed it several times) from one of the most violent TISM shows I ever saw. Is Richard referring to the Cold Chisel-alikes that inflicted that kind of damage (the word "thugs" suggests yes)... or to the more wanker end of the spectrum who never get that the jokes are about them as well? I also disagree that Thunderbirds brought TISM down. TISM's songs are too noticeable, too distinct, and too lyrical (you don't have to think they're great lyrics, but they do command attention) for JJJ's aural wallpaper format. Combine this with the capriciousness of the yoof record-buying public, and career death is ensured.

reply 4 from Greg: I'll defer to Richard and Ms45 on the subject of thug fans - you have the evidence. Richard also points out the paradox of the satirical band that ought to repel dickheads but seemed to attract a few. But w.r.t. TISM and JJJ, bear in mind that the band were on high rotation for a couple of years, so there can't be an inherent incompatibility between band and station. The station changed from a position of supporting the band to a position of not.

reply 5 from Indifference Engine: Greg, I think your observation that TISM was a meta-band is very perceptive, and helps explain the extraordinary longevity of the group - their music always used a variation on whatever genre was current as a vehicle for their commentary, so their performances successfully infiltrated pop culture even as the real practitioners of those genres were swept aside by the next wave of musical fashion. Your theory is not refuted by the presence of thuggish audience members at many of their gigs. After years as a TISM fan, I became convinced that TISM's method of in critiquing the rock industry, banal teenage 'rebellion', celebrity, etc., was very close to the technique Laibach (and more broadly Laibach Kunst, as Laibach was also a meta-band) used to undermine Yugoslav totalitarianism. The technique was to embrace and embody the unexamined ugliness of their target, collapsing the categories of subject and object. Laibach's performances, lyrics, artwork and interviews presented repression, conformity, political fanaticism and alienation as admirable traits shared by the band and the state. When the state and its allies responded by repressing the band, this confirmed the message. When asked in the Prva TV Generacija interview why they had been attacked by red workers and banned, Laibach responded that 'the Trbovlje action' (rock performance) was a test of the social self-defence mechanism. The action was a success, because it was actually meant to be banned. In the same interview, the band's unbandlike indeterminate membership raises a very TISM-like question (Who are you? What are your professional occupations?... Are you all here or are there more of you?"), which the band diverts directly to its critique of the system. As Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek pointed out, Laibach's message was "we want more alienation". But in equating the Yugoslav status quo with fascism, at first glance it appeared that the 'jews' were missing. But on closer examination, the band/collective members were both the fascists and the scapegoats. They presented themselves as a sacrifice, that their people might see Truth and be set free - this Christ-like sacrifice is expressed in their "Jesus Christ Superstar" album. Where then do TISM fit in? The band's anonymity is not merely a tactic for avoiding litigation. This anonymity (which TISM values because, "unlike other bands, we choose it"), *proves* that TISM is not really a band. Rather than maintaining the false subject-object dichotomy of singer and listener, prima donna and adoring fan, powerful and powerless, TISM relinquishes personal aggrandisement and dissolves the distinction between band and audience. Like a German at the Nuremburg Rally, the audience member experiences a strange combination of adoration and hatred - but the band directs both emotions to themselves, as representations of the rock star (true 'rock icons'). This condition is precisely expressed in "The 'B' Attitudes" ('I'm one of the boys who stands up the front to see TISM'): "But although there is nothing can get me in such a rage/As when they slag off TISM in the pages of The Age/Yet there is a strange contradiction that haunts me within -/Because if I met a member of TISM, I'd kick the cunt's head in." TISM brilliantly used the audience as a canvass. The audience member who attempted to crush my testicles as I crowd-surfed during one TISM performance was unwittingly engaging in performance art. During the last TISM concert I ever attended, at the Hi Fi Bar, one of the bouncers assaulted a number of audience members, in one case leaving a man unresponsive to external stimulus for over 10 minutes. At one point he held me in a headlock and informed me that if I crowd surfed again, "I will hurt you". Towards the end of the performance, RHB leaned forward and shook the bouncer's hand. Recall RHB spitting at the audience, and diving into the crowd, despite the fact that this often led to members of the audience punching him repeatedly on the arms and legs and tearing off his clothes. RHB was simultaneously Christ and the Romans, Hitler and the Jews, rock preener and audience member. The band's early Nazi references flag the band's intention to, as Laibach would put it, "harness the totalitarian impulse of rock". Cf 'The Ballad of the Semitic Nazi', 'U2, Brute' (Adolf Hitler did not die/he invented rock n roll) and 'Defecate on My Face' with its cryptic references to the workaday grind (see Guide to Little Aesthetics p123 for a hint) and Ron Hitler Barassi's own fascist/suburbanite name. One of the group's key messages was that true rebellion lies in courageously subjecting oneself to the anonymity of mediocrity: "[Byron] was lucky. All he had arrayed against him was conventional society. Today, we've got to put up with anarchists. Byron's employment of the classical Plutarchan a b a b a b c c rhyme structure was, paradoxically, one of his most rebellious gestures." (Ibid, p.x.) If you think being a rock star is hard, the band says, try taking the 8am train to Flinders Street every morning. Consider this quote from Guide to Little Aesthetics (p71): [Q] How many members are there in TISM; who are they; and what do they play? [A] You are all members of This Is Serious Mum. We died that you may live in us. Thomas, do you want to put your fingers in the hole left by the nails? [etc]" The rest of this 1986 faux interview contains a synopsis of TISM's critique on rock music (pp71-75). Or Flaubert's answer to an audience question at the 2005 ACMI appearance: [Q] If I saw a member of TISM in the street, how would I know? [HBF] You would be able to identify us by the fact that we would look just like everyone else." In other words, we are you, you are TISM, and we are united by our anonymity and mediocrity (and by implication, our ability to produce something genuinely valuable without ever gaining personal recognition). Ms .45, please don't try again to wash the blood out of your shirt. Don't throw the shirt out. Frame it. It is a priceless artifact, the transubstantial blood of Christ, a proof of the miraculous, liberating revelation of rock music's banal totalitarianism.

reply 7 from grims: Well Greg I just read your TISM article then. very refreshing, it's nice to see that TISM isn't dead and gone and forgotten, lets home more people write insightful text appraisals of them like you have.

reply 8 from Greg: after writing this blog post I interviewed DC Root, an ex TISM member and current member of Root .. see Webcuts magazine

reply 9 from James Earthenware: Triple J would only have been allowed to keep playing TISM if Ben Folds had recorded a cover of a TISM track. After your 15 minutes of high-rotation they prefer to switch to playing an obscure and horrible de-contextualized cover of your hit song. After that point you are never heard of again. You are no longer relevant if no-one is covering your hits. Note all the albums they release of bands covering other bands songs. Preferably on piano or acoustic guitar. TISM should have covered their own songs, releasing them as acoustic ballards to get continued triple j support.

reply 10 from what's your name?: Brilliant original argument and brilliant reply from Indifference Engine. I'm glad there's people out there who in some way 'get' TISM.

reply 11 from datakid: Is that meant to be a reference to CNN or CNNNN? Now I'm confused :S

reply 12 from Greg: Sorry, I meant CNNNN. The tv show 'Frontline' would also be a suitable example. Trying to argue that TISM were not a band, but were 'about' bands, and so can't be compared against regular bands, for the same reason that CNNNN can't be compared against regular news shows.

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top ten Australian songs

(posted on 2007-12-29 00:00:00)

At this time of year everyone does their best-ofs - it reminded me that I have been meaning to compose an "all time best songs" list for years. Trying to choose ten songs is obviously impossible for anyone interested in music so I'm restricting this list to Australian indie recordings. Even so it is ridiculous to pick only 10 - watch it grow into 20 over the next few weeks.

I like to distinguish between a band's social impact (Sex Pistols) and their song-writing ability (Radiohead) and here I want to focus on the latter. The former is more about politics and publicity than sound, and while it is arguably more important, it will require a separate list-making exercise.

Some bands have one standout song but most have several, especially if they straddle genres or have multiple song-writers, so where I can't pick one I've listed two or three. I'd be interested to read your comments, alternatives and omissions. In no particular order my list is:

• The Birthday Party - Figure of fun / King ink / Mutiny in heaven
• The Laughing Clowns - Clown town / Every dog has its day
• The Poles - Over and beyond and through
• The Go-Betweens - Apology accepted
• TISM - If you're ugly, forget it / What are ya? / Greg! the stop sign! / The apology of the Thai drug runner
• Minimum Chips - Out of touch / Cold afternoon / Swish
• Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes - Rock and roll is where I hide
• Small World Experience - Leave
• Hunters and Collectors - Judas sheep
• Sleepy Township - World of bees
• The Cannanes - Not quite right

The argument:

Birthday Party: I have always had an interest in "loser literature". There's less of this about than you might think, perhaps because famous authors tend not to have the problem. Dostoyevsky's Notes from underground and Vonnegut's Deadeye Dick are good examples. Figure of fun is another. I include King ink for its great riff and clever autobiography. Mutiny in heaven has great lyrics and a wild multi-tracked vocal that sounds disturbing even today.

Laughing Clowns: This classic band, possibly Australia's best, were more of a sound than a set-list, which makes it hard to choose one standout song. Clown town is a good example of their "melancholy" genre while Every dog has its day exemplifies their manic jazz humour.

The Poles: This Brisbane band released this single in about 1981 or so. It got some airplay on 4ZZZ and our household acquired a copy. They didn't seem to play long before breaking up. They were older than me and I never met them. They don't get as much press as many bands of this era, though they are in the book Inner City Sounds, and there is an Australian website selling a DIY compilation with this song on it. I recently mentioned them to Mark Louttit and to my surprise he remembered them and has the single - the first person I've met outside Brisbane who does - hang on, Mark is from Brisbane ... The song is moody and rambling yet catchy. It doesn't really sound like anyone - maybe a touch of early Clowns. I sing it in my head a lot but haven't heard it for ages. Next time someone does an early 80s post-punk compilation, please include this song.

The Go-Betweens: One of those early 80s bands that no-one in commercial music paid any attention to at the time but everyone name-checks now, the GoBs most famous song Cattle and cane would be at home in this list. But their output was long and bits of it have been neglected by history. There was a time, between their very early singles and their mid-80s "semi-commercial period", where they got quite angular and weird, and some of that stuff, such as Man o' sand to girl o' sea is very good but rarely heard. During their "semi-commercial period" (I just made that term up and accept responsibility for your pain) they released the Liberty Belle album, and perhaps because it got more attention on release than most of their other albums (the clip was on tv etc) it seems to be down-played today. I don't know if I was just in the right frame of mind at the right time to receive it, but it seemed to me to be the band's coming-of-age. A few songs could be chosen, this one will do.

TISM: The binary distinction made in What are ya? suggests that genius must either be high-brow or low, yet in their long career TISM found a way to combine both. This song is three minutes of right-between-the-eyes social commentary on Australia's class system. If you're ugly, forget it is so hard-hitting it's bleak, until the "we are the world" chorus makes you fall about laughing. The catchy Greg! the stop sign is one of their big hits, a classic Ron Hitler-Barassi rant about vississitudes of life as seen through the lens of a TAC ad. I hear the hilarious Apology of the Thai drug runner as a take on "Chase the dragon", but you be the judge. Many TISM songs have outstanding videos - go to YouTube for a whole extra dimension to your TISM experience.

Minimum Chips: If I write about music I like, I have to eventually deal with the problem of mentioning people I know, which runs the risk of looking like nepotism. I have played in / recorded / mixed / mastered / driven the car for so many bands that I can't simply exclude them. Worse, my brother has played in several good bands. Often he was drumming, so I can get away with mentioning them on the basis of the old joke that a drummer is someone who hangs around musicians. Anyway Min Chips have written some of the best songs I've ever encountered. It's difficult to choose one, so three there are. Out of touch is not one of their best-known but in my opinion wins by a nose. Keith Urquhardt did a masterful remix of the stately Cold afternoon, and the original is great. Swish was an early favourite and has a nice video set around Fortitude Valley.

Coral Snakes: For a while you heard this song everywhere. It seemed to be on JJJ rotation for a year. I was sharing a house with a guy who wasn't "into" music but would stop what he was doing to listen whenever this came on the radio. About eight years after its release I was doing some live mixing for Dave and Clare's band of the day and had an interesting experience concerning this song. They were playing in a suburban pub east of St Kilda that was a popular dinner-and-music venue for families, I guess many of them former music fans with small children. Most of the audience were having dinner with their kids and only half-noticing the band. Then Dave played the opening riff of this song, and from the desk I saw every adult in this large room look up in recognition, watch the song, then go back to their families. It was eerie. I told the band about it later, because I get the impression they felt embarrassed to play this old hit, like it was their "Stairway to heaven". It was in the top forty and on that basis could be excluded from an indie list, but these guys have their feet firmly planted in the real world.

Small World Experience: There are lots of great indie song-writers - rarely do you strike one who could genuinely hit the big time if they wanted to and the right social mechanisms fell into place. Pat of SWE is one of these song-writers, yet he lives a quiet secluded life and seems to be invisible to the world of commercial pop. The fact that he doesn't record in studios may not have helped. There are several SWE classics but Leave may be the best. This song should be as well known as Galveston or God only knows.

Hunters and Collectors: Judas sheep was released by "version one" of H&C, before they underwent their mid-80s transformation into the anthem band that torments Gold 104 listeners to this day with the likes of Holy grail. The early H&C made innovative post-punk-funk that was challengingly atonal and darkly funny. This song is my favourite of that era. Talking to a stranger is a better-known example with a good video but not as funny. Their final pre-commercial album, Jaws of Life, is very good too: go to YouTube and see the great video for the lead song from this album, Betty's Worry or The Slab, which I suggest to you was the first example of "bogan chic" in an indie band.

Sleepy Township: Several of today's Australian indie stars did time in this 90s pop band. They were better known for their live shows then their records, but there are some gems and World of bees is arguably the shiniest. Simple, melancholy verses and choruses give way to a majestic instrumental section. I think there are a few different versions of this floating around - the longer one is best.

The Cannanes: "better known outside Australia than in it" - this phrase is over-used in local writing but is true in this case. This long-running group has gone through many releases and band members but their song-writing revolves around a core duo, providing continuity. Communicating at an unknown rate doesn't seem to have captured people's attention like some of their other albums, but according to my objective music-judging device it stands out for its maturity and song-writing skill, and this particular track, while deceptively simple, has a classic melody and lyric. I have usually kept this preference to myself around Cannanes members and fans as I figure most of them prefer the rockier numbers, however I fessed up to a band member recently and he agreed.

reply 1 from datakid: This is the song is my fave Cannanes track - I only have this album, but the song is gorgeous. Reminds me of B+S's Electric Renaissance, and Mirah's Recommendation - not rock at all :)

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MySpace and music

(posted on 2007-10-16 09:49:41)

During the past couple of years MySpace has revolutionized indie music - not the music itself, but the way the scene organizes itself through interactions between bands, fans, labels and promoters. There is barely a band without a MySpace page now and it's normal for advertisements and back-announces to refer to a MySpace page for more information. When someone wants to contact a band to arrange a show or a release, they assume the band will have a MySpace account to send a message to. MySpace must have achieved close to 100% uptake in the indie subculture in a few years - a remarkable case of technology adoption. The case is ripe for research, though I haven't discovered many publications about it. I'd like to have a go myself one day - in the meantime here are some musings. Note that I'm not talking about general use of MySpace or other social networking sites - just use within this specific sub-culture.

To me what makes the MySpace revolution interesting is (a) the fact that it happened despite flaws in the product that are widely acknowledged, and (b) the eerie fit between certain features of the technology and the psychology of the scene it services.

The beauty of MySpace is that all the world's bands now have an easy-to-find web page and communication channel. Because of a well-timed postgrad stint in 1991 I got on the Internet early and like everyone else quickly realized how useful email and the web are for organizing projects, especially across geographical distances. When I did the Spill compilations in the early 90s there were one or two contributors on the net, but most of the interstate and international communication was by phone and, believe it or not, letter. I remember wishing that all bands were on the Internet, and now they are.

MySpace mixes together on one page several different functions that traditionally have been performed using separate applications:

1. information about the band (some bands did this with a regular web site, and before that, people looked up the band up in a book)
   
2. communication with the band (previously done by email, phone etc)
   
3. an index of band contact details (was do-able with Google but before that quite hard - you can't look up a band in the White Pages)
   
4. a representation of the band's social network (previously stored in people's heads, encoded in album credits etc)
   

Part of the weirdness of MySpace is this mix of several functions on one screen. Finding out information and sending a message are quite different activities and don't necessarily mix well. Everyone has a gripe about MySpace - here are my top three:

1. The pages are cluttered, with the kind of fugly design you used to see in the "blinking text" 90s. Everyone complains about this. How can such a popular site have such a bad interface? Why do users continue to accept it? Is it because they are young and didn't live through the design hell of the web's early days? Surely it would take the MySpace devs about two days to fix this - though some of the clutter is due to advertising, which I guess is not going to go away.

2. It's great that every band has a webpage now, but most of the content you see on a band's MySpace page isn't written by the band, or even about the band, but consists of links to and messages from other people. Most of these provide no useful information - they are add thank-yous, messages that don't make sense because they are half of a conversation, and gig spam unrelated to the band you are looking up. Most bands have information there but it is hidden amongst other people's dross.

3. The public friends-list feature began as an ugly competition to be linked to high status people, and has degenerated from there into complete meaninglessness now that most bands accept every friends-list request. MySpace's attempt to engender social anxiety with this feature is clumsy and feels like a bad parody of a school playground. MySpace exploits this anxiety to get users to spend more time at the site.

But despite its faults, MySpace has close to 100% penetration in the indie music scene. What interests me is the uncanny fit between the software and the scene. It's almost as though the former was designed for the latter. I won't bother with jokes about nerds socializing online, partly because not all indies are nerds and partly because someone who wants to socialize online could do it somewhere other than MySpace. I'll also ignore for the moment the fact that MySpace is owned by News, the wrongest media organization on the planet, as I'm not sure in my own mind what the implications of that are for the bands using the site. What I do want to argue is that the indie scene has some awkward problems which MySpace subtly exploits and accentuates.

1. Social balkanization .. Indie has always suffered from the fact that a given town has many seperate music scenes that exist like parallel universes whose inhabitants are unaware of each other. Many bands are legendary among their social group and unknown outside of it, and rather than change the world by preaching to a large audience, they play only to people they personally know. This is part of the charm of indie but it is subtly disempowering as well. It used to be that you'd look at a gig guide, find the bands you know you like, and go see them. That process tended to create stagnation and balkanization, but at least at the moment of reading the guide you were finding out about bands you didn't know, and potentially considering seeing them. But in the MySpace age people tend not to read a public gig guide: instead they subscribe to bands they already know and receive gig information directly from them. So the only people who find out that a band is playing are the people who are already into them. This catch-22 reinforces social fragmentation and reduces the likelihood of DIY music being a mass medium through which change can be effected. The upside of decentralizing the music media of course is that it's now harder for bad bands to dominate a scene by getting into bed with media people.

2. "My friends are cooler than your friends" .. This has always plagued indie, despite the fact that one might expect an alternative culture to rebel against heirarchies of this kind. Too many people at indie gigs try to be seen talking to whichever dude got a good review that week, went overseas, signed to a cool label or whatever. It's sad and self-defeating, and even the perpetrators don't really want to be doing it, but it's part of our culture. It would have been nice if the scene's online socializing tool worked against this cringeworthy tendency - instead, we got the friends-list.

reply 1 from Clinton: Nice post, Greg. Interesting that MySpazz has realised it is falling behind the 8-ball and is frantically Facebooking itself, copying various features. I personally despise how MySpace looks, but recognise I must deal with it if I want people to find me. I actually don't accept all friend requests by any means - I think your friends list reflects on you. There is probably an equation you can do where the size of your friends list is inversely proportionate to how many actual friends you have anyway. I actually use Facebook as a truly social network, whereas MySpace is a promotional tool to me. Others seem to do this, too.

reply 2 from Greg: Thanks for your comment Clinton. You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to think that I just don't like friends-lists. I didn't like them in Friendster, in MySpace they have become silly, and I've resisted the lure to Facebook (and a guy in Sydney took my name anyway). I don't want to use a technology where I have to define whether someone is my friend or not. No-one older than primary school think that way, and it's quite nerdy when you think about it. In the real world people regard each other as anything from close friends to aquaintances, people vaguely known and so on. In other words there are shades of grey, not just a binary distinction between "friend" and "not friend". With email etc anyone can talk to anyone, I wonder whether unease with the clumsy friend thing underlies my gripe with social networking systems.

reply 3 from Greg: When I wrote the post I couldn't find many publications on social network sites, but the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication has just released a special issue on this topic.

reply 4 from Greg: ... and Cory Doctorow has published an article identifying problems with Facebook and arguing that it will follow Friendster and all the other social network sites to the internet graveyard

reply 5 from what's your name?: I wouldn't mind being on MySpace myself if they had an "enemies" list, instead of a "friends" list. I'd spend hours combing MySpace for people to hate and adding them as enemies. MySpace is true lowest common denominator appeal. People add themselves to it simply because everyone else does and thus it's become "popular" in a kind of ruthless peer-pressure way. It thus attracts a lot more media attention than other free website spaces (Tripod etc.), and therefore the public's attention. The "friends" list takes up the bulk of the individual pages, which is what makes them bulky, ugly and take so long to load. I don't use it, so I'm not sure if it's possible to not have the "friends" list; I've noticed at least one band's page has no such list. I do know of a few people who have been making their own music for years who support MySpace, however. Zan Hoffman has said he finds it a valuable networking tool, so it does depend on how it's used.

reply 6 from Andrew: Sorry, didn't put my name up last time. Ho hum.

reply 7 from ianw: firstly, it's easy on mySpace to choose, from your 257 total friends, the 'top friends' list displayed on your page (and whether this will be a top-4, 8, 16 etc) .. it seems to me that mySpace users (and I am one) interpret the 'friends-list' semi-intuitively (at a glance it's usually simply to guage who is, in real life, a friend/contact/musical-hero). ACB said (interestingly) the other night, considering it's origins in spammer-biz, the site may actually have become less evil when Newscorp bought it. The appeal to me has always been the ease of listening to music while online (initially, for me, because checking e-mails at Rmit, mp3s were blocked) and the friends-list is an integral part of this: once you are done hearing X, you just glance around and decide what's on next (um, as some of you know, I can barely listen to an entire song; albums and even compilations are only an option on random. I imagine I'm not alone here, if it a little extreme). Unfortunately the speed of machines + connections in some parts of the world mean some people have little frustration with the slowness of mySpace. The e-mail feature is a nightmare, actually deleting old 'sent' mail (my problem with e-mail in general is difficulty recalling if I've sent something or just composed it in my head) but it remains the only way to keep in touch with some people. Similarly to (above) the friends lists and bulletins tend to remind me of things I meant to ask people, or look up on their crappy myspace sites, in a random taking-a-walk-thru-mySpace kindof way. Facebook has comparable nightmare-features eg. the tendency for people to clutter their (and others') page/s with beside-the-point stuff, but then this clutter may function to remind people of random stuff? I've noticed some people seem to prefer Facebook to regualr e-mail, so began to notice the same, in regard to just a few people, the same in myself. This can be interesting (to wonder: what is it just because I need to see their face? etc) but ultimately, for reasons i said above, I prefer e-mail. I could go on: Mac Mail is useful to search for keywords in the body of an e-mail (and is awesome for delivering random lists of old e-mails as a result, reminding me of random stuff etc see above; but it seems to be unable to search for an e-mail address, so it's back to the online interface search for that. Zzzzz in my dreams the revolting look/feel of mySPace will inspire music websites everywhere to incorporate flash-players and front-page friend/links recommendations. No-one (including me) seems to be rushing into it though.

reply 8 from Ms .45: May I please make just one small pro-MySpace comment - for me, MySpace eliminates problems of balkanisation. I don't have a scene - it's not true to say I have no friends (no! It isn't!), but I have, say, one friend who's a goth, and one friend from a job I had three years ago who's a 50-year old church-goer and I don't know what music she listens to, and another friend who's pretty mainstream, and my sister listens to just about anything, and my ex-boyfriend likes Waits and Cohen... as you can see, I won't be getting any listening tips from them (or I'll be getting such a variety that it won't help me much). MySpace allows me to see a band listed in Beat or InPress, type their name into MySpace and instantly hear if I'll be wasting my limited funds or not. It's objective (the music is good or it is not) and it can remove the "does this fit in with my scene" factor because of this. I pay little or no attention to the "friends" list - my own "friends" list includes my cousin, John Weeks and a whole bunch of bands I like. I think you're reading way too much into the word "friends". (Whereas Facebook is a total wank, and although I use it, it's actually LESS useful for music fans.)

reply 9 from James Earthenware: Ms .45 has some good points, as I use it like a wiki to check if a band's review or gig guide description actually matches it's sound. It's also good for finding "lost" music because, browsing through "friends" of friends you find all sorts of amazing sounds. I think the paradox of myspace is that is uses very low resolution MP-3's, (96k?) so you can easily load and stream with the flash player, and this also provides security for bands because it's a pain to try and rip this stream, and even if you do it's low quality sound. I think myspace's success is built on the crappyness of it's MP-3 encoding, while it simultaneously defeats itself by allowing people to FILL entire pages with high resolution jpegs and video links that take forever to load. Facebook became popular I think because it found ways to limit spamming and didn't allow people to customise their pages, leaving a cleaner interface, but I really hate it because if you can't customise the page it is hard to make the page visually reflect the mood or attitude of the music. Usually if I "contact" someone via myspace, I will ask for/provide an email so I can contact them in an archival-friendly format. I think in this respect, myspace works like a filter, so you can distinguish spam, fans and friends, and maintain a distance from people you don't want to give your email to. It's just sad that the developers/users haven't done more to discourage spam, because I am near enough ready to give up on maintaining myspace. By the time you sort through all the trash-friend requests which are simply advertisements for really horrible bands pleading you to "check out my new song/fashion label/ studio) there's no time left for building or maintaining meaningful connections. Also, there's so many errors in the HTML code that will NEVER be fixed, especially now that people have migrated to facebook, and now are migrating from facebook to twitter. It's a pretty crap revolution really, you can get a robot program to generate you 100,000 friends, but still struggle to get 10 people to your gig because all those friends are overseas / underage. lol.

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radio

(posted on 2007-08-02 15:53:07)

I like listening to radio more than putting albums on. Some musicians have berated me for this, but to me listening to radio vs album is like the difference between reading the paper - or your favourite blog - vs a book you've already read several times. Sometimes you'll want the book, but typically the paper is more suitable. Radio connects you to the world. It delivers a cultural barometer that your cd collection can't give you - because it's your collection. I have listened to a wide variety of radio over the years - not all of it voluntarily - here is my review of it.

Radio National

I've started with a wildcard entry. RN specializes not in music but in current affairs and documentary style shows, a format which is often called "talk". I know that for many people, especially those under 30, the idea of a talk station conjures up a horror of horse racing, insomniac talkback callers and shock jocks. RN is a rare and shining exception to this. It's like having a great magazine, at the flick of a switch, and constantly updated. Standout shows are too many to mention but include Phillip Adams every night at 10, and most of Saturday's daytime shows. If RN has one problem it is perhaps that it's too interesting - this is not background music for your thinkin' work. As David Nichols has pointed out, it is ironically RN's music programs that let it down, though there are exceptions such as Tim Ritchie's Friday night show. RN is now podcast, so you can listen at convenient times or while insomniac etc. I've yet to get an iPod but I imagine their owners, having discovered RN, need never experience boredom again.

3RRR

It's become a cliche to say it but RRR really is the cream of Australia's - possible the world's - public radio. It has so many good music shows presented by in-the-know announcers that listening to this station is probably the best way to find out about music - certainly more effective than our increasingly daggy street-press. If you live outside Melbourne and are unimpressed by your local public radio, check out RRR on the internet. You'll have to search for the shows that suit you as it would take too long to list the good ones here, and of course which ones you like will depend on your taste in music. There are talk shows too, and some excel, for example Byte Into It, which is kind of a "cool" look at I.T. with a focus on open source, games and the internet.

3PBS

Used to be on a par with RRR but it went in a new direction a year or two back which alienated a lot of listeners. In the daytime especially PBS now focuses on a "roots" genre which to me always sounds like variations on country and western. I know some people love c'n'w, but possibly due to bad childhood radio experiences I can't listen to it, even in its "alt" or "nu" forms. PBS has fewer gems in its crown now, yet those that exist shine very brightly. It's always been strong in a block that might loosely be described as "indie from 5 to 7 pm". The Makeshift Swahili show is one of the best out-there-music programs around, though it is criminally scheduled at midnight on a Monday. For years PBS championed Aussie-accented hiphop, which is now mainsteam.

JJJ

A lot of critical music fans switched JJJ off during the bad old days of the 90s and have never returned to it. At that time JJJ owned the youth demographic and thus had a lot of power in the music industry. For reasons unclear they decided to program only Nirvana-clone bands for a decade. They bludgeoned Australian musicians with the message that if you want to be successful, you need to sound like a distortion pedal, and if you choose not to, you will be invisible. In my view this caused lasting damage to our music scene. Overseas in the 90s there was healthy innovation which often crossed over to the mainstream - Radiohead, Squarepusher and Missy Elliot are random examples that spring to mind. In Australia we produced Silverchair. And this after leading the world in the late 70s and 80s. A lot of good music happened here in the 90s but it was invisible. Some of the survivors have surfaced post 2000, and Australian music is doing well now.

In the years since it lost its popularity JJJ has improved in many respects, and now broadcasts some gems. The daily afternoon "Hack" is as good a current affairs show as you will find anywhere. They have a knack for finding great interview subjects - real people, not just celebrities and politicians - which can make for stunning radio. JJJ's breakfast show stands out at what is admittedly a bad time to be listening to radio. Fenella's sound-art show on Sunday night is very good, though it clashes with some Melbourne radio highlights.

Other public radio

Most Australian cities have public radio. There are too many to do justice to here. The quality varies and few reach the heights of RRR, but there's enough good stuff around. Brisbane's 4ZZZ has a proud history but lost some of its demographic to JJJ in the 90s and is a bit run down now, though it has standout shows. Melbourne's 3CR is like a radical RN, a lot of it worthy, though it is shackled by a low power AM broadcast which many of its potential audience can't receive clearly. They stream on the internet now and it will be interesting to see whether their specialized shows find a new audience abroad. Hobart's Edge FM, Sydney's 2SER and Perth's RTR all have standout shows, though I don't spend enough time there to keep abreast of them in detail.

3AW

I went through a phase of listening to this popular talk station during insomnia and/or the weak timeslots of other stations (these two phenomena tend to coincide) but despite 3AW's claim to focus on hard hitting current affairs, the focus is mostly restricted to Neil Mitchell's morning show. Virtually all the other programming on this station is fluff. If you're into football, or not, Rex Hunt's weekend calls are fascinatingly over-the-top.

ABC local radio

In Melbourne the station formerly known as 3LO is quite successful and along with the Age newspaper is a real driver of the current affairs agenda here. This twin attack on mediocre media makes Melbourne a better town - when you travel elsewhere you see what a difference it makes (c.f. Brisbane - the main newspaper is a joke, its radio not much better, and locals suffer for it). Unfortunately 3LO went through a patch of 3AW-envy a few years back and has a quality-profile which is uncannily similar to its arch-rival. While Jon Faine's morning show is one of the best pieces of radio anywhere, it is bookended by some of the worst, in Red Symons' bizzarely infantile breakfast show and Richard Stubbs' lite afternoon show. These two announcers were imported from commercial media to boost ratings, but ABC, you've won the war - you don't need to copy commercials anymore.

Commercial FM stations

There's not much good news to report here. This has not always been the case. Some of the early Nova programming was innovative and that station led in electronica and hiphop. Today it is a generic FM brain-drain. MMM has had its moments, recently notably in comedy, but has lost its way lately and judging by its ads, considers randomness its main drawcard: in the laundromat the other day I heard Ultravox's Vienna juxtaposed between two classic rocks - bizarre. Most FM stations (eg TT and Fox) are designed to be aural soma for people in menial jobs. Commercial breakfast shows are designed to pep up a populace who are dragging themselves off to a day of soul-destroying activity in workplaces that reward the ability to act happy. It's sad that many jobs are this bad, and that in the 70s when worker power was at its height we got commercial FM. It's sadder when people voluntarily listen to this stuff outside work hours. It is an example of what Glenn Norman has colourfully described as "pulling the wool over your own eyes". I rarely listen voluntarily, though I cop it at the gym, making a painful time worse. In my blue-collar days I once worked in a car repair shop that played 4MMM all day every day - there are classic-rock songs from this period that I still cannot listen to.

Overseas stations on the internet

I haven't got into this as much as I should, due to an uneasy feeling that when I do I am spending too much of my broadband cap. This is probably irrational as most caps now are high or non-existent. However it is a problem on some plans, and not everyone can afford to do this. New Jersey's WFMU is a celebrated example of streaming radio - I know music afficionados who listen to this on computers in their workplace. I can't really do that - music affects me too successfully and I'd get no work done, and I'm sure my employer would disapprove of this use of their bandwidth. Streaming radio is likely to change the world's media landscape in a big way - and differently to how file-sharing services are changing us, because it is a curated medium. I don't think the specialist internet-only stations will make a big splash, but when existing free-to-air stations add streaming it is often successful. Surely it will not work for commercial FM though, as all the world's exemplars are identical. But for specialty stations and their audiences, streaming is a godsend, opening up a new universe as the concept of broadcast range becomes irrelevant.

reply 1 from Ms .45: I actually quite enjoy MMM's "randomness". In reference to your "blue collar days", in MY blue collar days I worked as a kitchenhand in a cafe which played JJJ all day every day... in the 1990s when JJJ had an hourly playlist and you could set your watch when they played Denis Leary's "Asshole". As a result, I pretty much feel the same way about the J's as you do about the M's. I was very interested to read your opinions on JJJ's supposed improvements, but I have tried and I simply can't go back. Silverchair strikes the same cold fear into me that Cold Chisel probably does into you.

reply 2 from Cousin Creep: I used to listen to Future Perfect Radio on line at work but found it extremely distracting, and had to stop it. Mainly due to the links where you can buy the CD on Amazon (too tempting). Worse yet was researching a band when I should be working (time wasting). So now I just bring in CD to work to listen to or put on Talk Radio. If you ever get a chance to stream Michael Savage (the Savage Nation) please do so it’s hilarious. I find I can't listen to RRR anymore except for a few shows/presenters.

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competition

(posted on 2007-07-19 07:00:04)

Competition is worshipped in some circles as a way of improving the world. As someone who's studied biology I always find this idea a bit bizarre. Competition in nature is like disease or death: omnipresent, sure, but not something you'd encourage.

Here's how competition produces an "advance" in nature. You have a population with some characteristic, for example height or strength, which varies among individuals in the population. You arrange for a competition in which the individual with the optimal value of that characteristic lives and breeds, while the other individuals are killed. Depending on the species, the method of competition is either fighting or competitive resource holding that starves others. After the slaughter and unequal breeding, the next generation of the population will have an average value for the characteristic similar to the individual who won the competition - not through magic, the next generation is the offspring of the winner. Biologists don't consider evolutionary changes to be advances - they're just changes. Evolution through natural selection is great if you're enthusiastic about the peacock's tail or the giraffe's neck, but it's a pretty grim way to make changes in human society.

The basic idea behind all the systems of ethics that arose during the past few thousand years is to reward those who are good to others, rather than those who are bad. (Ethics that are exceptions to this usually disappear when enough people find them disgusting.) This simple human invention renounces the "law of the jungle", spreads cooperation throughout the community, and makes everyone better off. So why the current fad for competition as a principle of governance? The problem comes to us from economics, the world-view / uni-degree of the rich and famous. Models of competition drawn from economics textbook are too simple to model human reality effectively and are little more than slogans.

Simplistic economics says something like this: Assume there are several companies that make a product. It's good for society if the price of the product goes down. We therefore arrange that the vendors compete. We only buy from the "winning" vendor, and the others are forced to lower their prices too. If they can't, they go out of business. Some economists would have us believe that this process produced all of the world's advances in technology, transport, energy and so on (some of these "advances" already look ironic). What this model leaves out is the effects of competition other than price movement. What did the companies do to lower their prices? Think really hard and invent something? Not usually - examples like that are the pinups for competition but are rare in practice. In the normal course of events, companies compete by minimizing wages, lowering the number of people they employ, lowering the safety standards of employees and customers, spending money on advertising and lawsuits, and using cheaper, environmentally harmful production and transport methods. And when companies compete by doing this, their suppliers, employees and peers are forced to do it too. Everyone's life is made worse. Governments enact minimum wage and safety legislation to reduce the unsavoury side-effects of economic competition, but without addressing the root cause, all this achieves is that the winners are now those companies that move their operations to countries without the legislation. Our manly "competition" looks more like laziness when it means that all our work is being done by people living in dictatorships and treated in ways that we would not tolerate. Meanwhile McJobs and semi-employment become the norm in the West and we depend for our necessities on problematic international trade and transport systems. Who is winning in this scenario?

A bizarre example of competition-worship is the privatization of public utilities. It took our society a long time to build electricity, water, transport and communication infrastructure, and they are essential - we're not talking iPod covers here. The way in which utilities are run has consequences for society beyond merely the price at which their products sell - environmental impact is an obvious example. And the competition we get when utilities privatize is phony. Utilities are inherently monopolistic, because it would be silly to build several duplicate copies of railroads, water pipes, electricity cables etc. The new private utilities don't build new, better infrastructure, they just rent out the one the old community-owned utility was forced to give them. That's not competition, it's a tarted-up assets sale, which governments hope voters will forget in time for the proceeds to look good on the next budget.

Enthusiasts of economic competition are phonies. Big business doesn't compete in the "nature red in tooth and claw" way that wannabe-macho economists would like you to think they're straining at the leash to get amongst. They depend on a legal system that stops the kinds of competition corporations don't want, for example poor people stealing from them. Competition in general doesn't favour those who are competing - the average might rise but individuals still just occupy a place in the variance. Competition benefits those who extract a benefit from the higher average - think farmers and cattle, bosses and workers, teachers and students etc. The theory of natural selection is a marvellous piece of science which explains how the natural world, including us, came to be. But if it has any relevance for the running of a human society, workplace, educational institution or whatever, it's as an illustration of what to avoid.

reply 1 from Andrew: Belief in the "free market" is to me very religious, replacing the orderly hierarchy of God with the Hobbes-ian social free-for-all of Mammon. It's a faith that withers when held up to the light of rational explanation, but is held onto anyway like any other faith. Hardcore capitalists, those inspired by Rand etc., do geuniunely believe in abolishing any government restrictions on business, but as you've pointed out, would not tolerate any real "competition" from any other source: ie organised workers. For that, they all fall back on the Big Brother govt. they despise to sort out their altercations.

reply 2 from Indifference Engine: When Marx predicted, in the 19th century, that competitive capitalism would lead to a steady decline in workers’ living conditions, he at least had the excuse of a small data set. But in the early 21st century, if you want to defend this theory, you need to explain why mortality rates have declined, life expectancy has been extended, famine is unknown (except in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, in which living conditions are influenced more by tribal warfare and displaced populations than by wage competition) and access to consumer goods, transportation and communications technology has advanced to levels that would have been incomprehensible to the isolated proletarians scrabbling for their next loaf of stale bread in Marx' day. Please explain why the standard of living has improved.

reply 3 from IE: PS I readily accept that Darwinistic evolutionary 'competition' is an inapt analogy for economic competition. For one thing, companies can adjust to circumstances rather than just dying like a short giraffe. For another, economics is a descriptive discipline that defines increasing prosperity as a 'good' to be advanced by competition, whereas evolutionary biology is a descriptive theory that does not differentiate between survival-reproduction and competitiveness (fitness).

reply 4 from Greg: Good point IE, but I'd reply that most of the technical advances and infrastructure development that improved our standard of living were carried out (or at least funded by) governments and semi-government bodies. Even when private companies innovate, it only happens within a framework of governance. I'm not trying to be a flag-waving radical, and I don't hate free enterprise, but I do question the way recent governments have (a) sold the infrastructure built by previous governments, and (b) deregulated everything. (A) is done to give the false impression of a balanced budget, while (b) seems to the exercise of ideology for no gain. Both are justified as promoting "competition", as though it were a tenet of religious faith.

reply 5 from James Earthenware: This has to be one of the best essays I have ever read. I love what you are saying, and it's what I was trying to say with my song "Artificial Selection", that the criteria for selection in our society is no longer based on "nature / fitness" but more based on "arbitrary criteria / wealth accumulation" which means a whole lot of really unfit people are propagating, not only themselves, but also their religious like beliefs in the "free market".
In regard to indifference engine, living longer is not a measure of "quality" of life. Prolonging misery I would call it.
Most innovation comes either from war / space program related (government funded) or entrepreneurial (worker funded) activities. Entrepreneurs borrow money to develop the technology, but have no money to market it, so they go broke/bankrupt. Corporations then buy this technology and mass-produce it and market it, and make billions of dollars in profits. None of this money is ever returned to the governments or inventors of the innovations. Mainly because corporations are able to operate in a manner that avoids paying taxes.
My fave part of the essay, is how you correctly identify all the fake-macho / wild-animal posturing that exists in these economic / neo-con theories. These people are the weakest, most detached /insulated from nature and least manly of all our species, and perhaps their love of aggressive / competitive / macho ideology has a lot to do with their personal insecurities or small penis sizes. A lot more should be written on this topic.
I also agree that using "average" wages is another false measure of "improvement", because of this increased "average", food prices, house prices etc have all skyrocketed, but then everybody I know is still earning minimum wage, which hasn't increased at all. Increasing averages does not mean prosperity for all, it means a greater divide between rich and poor, adjusted mathematically to give the impression that everyone has benefited. It's a complete sham.

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population

(posted on 2007-05-27 05:17:28)

Let's keep this environmental thread going for a bit. Our politicians and media are, rightly, showing concern, though this usually manifests as mud-slinging and exhortations to build more stuff. There is an 'elephant in the room' here. Environmental and infrastructure overloads fundamentally are symptoms of out-of-control human population growth. This is acknowledged in most analyses (the documentary Crude Impact, recently aired on SBS in Australia, illustrated this in a chilling way). There are other factors of course - the existing population, guided by an aware government, can reduce its impact on the planet. But progress will be nullified if the population continues to balloon out of control. Yet some left-leaning environmentalists* are uncomfortable acknowledging the role of over-population in the disaster we are witnessing. I'm interested in why this is a difficult issue for us to deal with.

To take an example, every city in Australia now faces severe water shortages. This appears to be permanent. The populations in these areas increased by factors of two to five during the past few decades - and of course by a much higher factor since European settlement began. During this time nature didn't increase the amount of rain falling. If you have a rising population sharing an unchanging quantity of rain, you're going to have water shortages. You can build more dams, divert water from somewhere else, or build energy-consuming purification and desalination plants, but these create new environmental problems, and, if the population continues to grow, only buy us temporary breathing space anyway.

Basic biology - arithmetic really - says that if you increase the number of animals in a population without increasing their resources, the resources will run out. Typically what happens next is that the animals fight over what's left, until the population returns to a sustainable level. When animals do this we shrug our shoulders and say that nature is taking its course. When humans go thorugh this experience we realize that the "fighting each other" and "population reducing" parts of the cycle are horrific. We need to prevent this scenario.

It's inherently difficult for people to grapple with over-population. For a society to look at itself and say, 'we are too many', is difficult even to describe in a properly grammatical sentence. Who is commanding whom to populate less? To reduce the size of a city means to say to some or all of the people in it, 'You must have fewer children'. This is unpalatable. And you can't "undo" population like you can an ill-advised freeway or skyscraper - we need to act in advance of the problem. I think it's this unpleasantness and ethical complexity, relative to the simple pleasure of attacking political opponents, that stops us from addressing the population issue. However, sensitive environmentalists afraid of being painted as "anti people" and so on can take solace in a critical analysis of the pro-growth position that shows that the latter are the real bad guys in this story.

While population causes the environmental disasters we read about on the front page of the paper, the business section at the back spouts the mantra of endless growth**. This is because owners of real estate, mines and other finite resources want there to be increased competition for those resources, in order to raise prices and rents. Resource owners get away with pro-growth rhetoric because many environmentalists are afraid of responding, for the reasons outlined above. In particular, environmentalists are afraid of angering the religious right, or conversely, being painted as anti-immigrationist. Critically, we need to realize that a desire to prevent a population disaster is not an attack on any group, nation, religion or anything of the kind. This is a cheap accusation and we have to get past it if there is to be genuine action on the environment. The whole world is in this together. I'm not saying the solution to these complexities will be easy, but I do think it is time to face this sacred cow.

Rhetorical / logical failures like the pro-growth argument share a common sleight-of-hand. People in positions of power, for whom the poor are a resource to make a living from, want there to be more poor. It's easy for them to make this desire look like support for the poor. "We want there to be more of you!", shout the landlords over the parapets to the desperate throng outside. When the throng realize they would be worse off were there more of them, the landlords silence the dissenters, accusing them of being anti-church and the rest of it. This sneaky manoeuvre makes resource owners look like supporters of People Power. But they don't really want People Power at all - just more people.

* such as me, and, I'm guessing, you
** the sport and entertainment sections help us forget the whole thing

(added June 08: Sian Watkins at the Age has written an op-ed conveying a similar argument - and received some positive feedback in the letters page.)

reply 1 from Ms .45: Just a thought - when immigrants from cultures that have lots of babies come to countries that don't have lots of babies, in a couple of generations people from that culture are adopting the less-babies strategy. As a result, immigration is good for a net drop in the world's population as people adopt lower family sizes, and Australians (etc) should not fear it. I don't think it's unpalatable to say "You SHOULD have fewer children", or even "Having fewer children will mean oil and fresh water will last longer and there will be less pollution" (which allows people to make their own choice). We can't force anyone, but we can show and tell, and I think that many people will make the right decision. Still, I thank you for bringing it up - not enough people are tackling the Growth Fetish in a serious way.

reply 2 from jim: Hi Greg, check out the writing of James Howard Kunstler - "The Long Emergency" is a good place to start; its like Tim Flannery's "Weather Makers" but informed by hard science & much better written (Kunstler was a staffer for Rolling Stone thru much of the 1970s - he has a great way with colourfully acerbic metaphors). His webpage is at < http://www.kunstler.com/ >. The uncanny thing about this book - I read it about 2 months back - is that Kunstler identifies the sub-prime mortgage racket as the weakest component of the USA economy... it was written in 2004.

reply 3 from Greg: Thanks Jim. I found a precis at http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency . It's a sobering read that makes you rethink what 20th century progress really meant. His view of suburbia is punchy - basically a waste of farmland. He offers little in the way of solutions, and one suspects it is because he feels there isn't one.

reply 4 from Indifference Engine: Greg, yes, many people commenting on environmental problems fail to understand the basic malthusian logic you have laid out. But what we are seeing is not a simple malthusian population-versus-production/resource situation. In Australia, the population has not increased all that much, rather water supply has declined during a ten year drought. This may be due to changed inputs to the environment by humans, but a malthusian diagnosis is inaccurate. Similarly, China PRC has used very unpalatable methods to stabilise its own rampant population growth. But its resource consumption and pollution inputs have ballooned in spite of (no, because of) the stabilisation of the population. People in power/with wealth (i.e. those with a proportionately larger slice of the economic pie) do not usually want to increase poverty, they want their slice of the pie to be bigger. This can be achieved by increasing the proportion, or by increasing the overall pie size. The landlord-masses dichotomy looks increasingly silly in an age when many people live in rental accommodation while owning investment properties; as far as I can tell, my landlord wants my wages to increase. In my opinion, the indicators that we should use to predict or alleviate environmental damage are consumption of resources and waste production, which are only indirectly effected by the quantity of population. In the developed world, we are more efficient in the sense that our ratio of productivity/standard of living to environmental damage is higher, although in total we produce more environmental damage. I.e. we may pollute twice as much as an individual in a developing country while enjoying four times the standard of living. Once you accept that environmental degradation is not directly and irrevocably connected to population, then there is the possibility that we may be able to reduce our ‘footprint’ without draconian measures on population (whose growth has been slowing for some time anyway) or standard of living. Several model cities that are projected to have low or nil net environmental impact are currently being constructed in - of all places - the Middle East, so there is some glimmer of hope (although the technologies required will all come from technologically advanced, developed societies that can spare productivity for technological research - so productivity itself is not the enemy). Please don’t get me wrong though. In the medium term (100-200 years), I do expect increasing pollution and resource consumption, and a worsening of the deleterious environmental effects we are currently seeing (such as changes in climate patterns). But we will not offset this simply by reducing human population. [PS Forgive me spamming your blog with my essays. We have too many interests in common!]

reply 5 from Greg: Thanks for contributing to this thread IE. It's an important topic which I believe is becoming critical. I have to take issue with your assertion though that the population has not increased much. The world population has *tripled*, and Australia's doubled, since WW2 - living memory for many. This has been achieved by more intensive methods of farming and energy consumption - in effect, "taking out a loan from the environment" which we are now beginning to pay back. It's disturbing to see human population treated as some kind of post-modern abstraction, as though our species is not subject to real-world constraints. (Not accusing you of this, but I've seen it a lot.) This isn't my field and I won't repeat the arguments of others. Good explanations can be found for example at http://www.population.org.au .

reply 6 from Poloma: Greeting. There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. I am from Arab and now teach English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "At expedia india, you can get discount airline tickets." Thank you very much :-D. Poloma.

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cars

(posted on 2007-03-28 06:45:42)

Today's Age has a piece by Catherine Deveney about four wheel drives. Ok we all know that 4WDs waste more petrol than other cars, create more pollution, and are more dangerous to pedestrians and other motorists. (Why doesn't this knowledge stop people from buying them?) But she also quoted stats to show that 4WDs aren't even safe for the people inside them. So drivers who think they're protecting themselves and their relatives inside a 4WD are not even being selfish, they're just being sucked in by ads. It's brave of the Age to run this story - one suspects their readership don't want their expensive investment mocked in public.

A 4WD driver I know came out with a clanger once. He said one thing he likes about his 4WD is being up high in the traffic where you can see better. I pointed out that by doing this he is making it impossible for drivers behind him to see ahead and anticipate having to stop. His reply? - everyone is free to buy a 4WD, and should if they have trouble seeing past 4WDs. I was stunned. Do all 4WD drivers think like this? How would they respond if someone proposed to build a skyscraper next door? - add extra stories to their house?

Anyone who lived through the past couple of Melbourne summers knows that climate change has arrived. We now have Queensland's weather. A cold, wet winter normally starts like clockwork in early March. Right now it's nearly April, and still warm. It doesn't rain like it used to. The parks have died and we're rationing water. Under these circumstances the familiar car takes on a sinister aura. It's hard to feel positively about car drivers when we're suffering from bad weather they caused.

The car lifestyle is sad because it doesn't work anyway. Car ads show drivers zipping around mountain curves and racing along city streets, but in real life so many drivers are trying to do this that no-one ever does. A car drive is mostly sitting in traffic, a frustrating series of waits at red lights until the destination is reached and there's nowhere to park. Car companies should be forced to show drivers idling in traffic in their ads, if for no other reason than truth in advertising. Allowing car ads to show happy winners zooming around is like allowing cigarette ads to show sporting heroes smoking. It's not just dishonest, the beliefs engendered are dangerous.

With permanently-expensive petrol costing many drivers fifty to a hundred dollars a week, and climate change and congestion making anti-car legislation inevitable, the car era as we know it is just about over. I don't mean cars will disappear overnight - rather, for most people driving the car will become like catching a cab - an expensive option that we make use of only when it's really necessary.

While it's obvious that cars will go, it's not so obvious what will replace them. Bikes and public transport will be part of the solution for some of the people, but that's all. For parents of young children, people traveling outside public transport routes and times, the aged or disabled or anyone who has to move stuff, cars are very hard to do without.

The truth is that nearly everything in Australia more than five kilometers from a city centre was built according to the logic of the car. You can't live in the outer suburbs without one. I live close to the city and ride a bike to work, but I grew up in the suburbs and know that none of the car alternatives that have been proposed are realistic there. The real issue may become not so much what will replace cars, but what will replace suburbs.

reply 1 from Amber: Nice blog. I can recognise many of my own thoughts in this article, thoughts which I didn't think were shared by many. I simply can't understand why many people are so addicted to their cars, and blinkered to the damage they cause to our environments and society. Many of my friends say to me "but how can you do the shopping without a car?", not realising that before cars were common there were small shops to be found on many suburban and city streets. I think that when cars go people will have to adapt to a slightly less mobile lifestyle. With improved cycling infrastructure, public transport and general health and fitness resulting from more active transport options, most people will remain quite able to get around though. I've always thought if people are not well enough to walk to their nearest bus stop, then they probably shouldn't be driving. For the ill and disabled I think some kind of community taxi/bus service still has a place. Hopefully though, our neighbourhoods will quickly react to people's reduced mobility to lessen the need to be so mobile, and as people start meeting their neighbours again the more phsically fit will help the elderly and infirm! I wonder how many of today's social problems are partly due to a reduced sense of community due to our increased mobility thanks to the car. But as you point out the problems that cars create go beyond pollution, and for this reason I cringe every time I hear politicians proposing "clean fuel" solutions to car emissions rather than simply trying to reduce the number of cars out there. Given the incredible number of fatalities and serious injuries on our roads, and the huge cost of this on our health services, I find it hard to believe that car use is still encouraged by government budgeting more than any other form of transport.

reply 2 from Greg: Thanks Amber. It does seem like an addiction. It's easy to became habituated to anything which is enjoyable, so the vendors of cars trick them out with heating, cooling, radios, cd players, windows that go up and down, plush seating and the list goes on. This shuts out the uncomfortable outside world and gives people an illusion of control. We've been conditioned to schedule our time as if there is no space - we can simply be wherever we have to be whenever we have to be there. Things break down when all the people trying to do this squeeze onto finitely spacious roads.

reply 3 from David Nichols: Another thing people used to do - there are still the scantiest vestiges of this in contemporary life - is get things delivered. You would go to a shop, choose an item or many items (or even, go to a grocer's or supermarket and choose many items), and they would deliver said items to your door. Of course, as all of us know who ever needed something delivered (or a tradesperson to come by), the timing was never perfect, and the system was partially predicated on people (that is, housewives, primarily) being home all day. Most people aren't, and can't be, home all day anymore (when I was a boy though the supermarket would just deliver the groceries to the front door, and leave them there; it was reasonably hidden from the street). Now I said there were only scanty vestiges (some supermarkets will still deliver, for instance) but of course this whole system is back back back. People shop online and have products delivered to their door, even for supermarket groceries, but also for much larger items which are in some cases even produced to order. Personally I like to go to the supermarket and browse like a big grazing cow, even panic buying or allowing myself to fantasise about what particular products might do to enhance my life, and then pile it all into the station wagon and drive home. But I suppose this is learnt behaviour.

reply 4 from David Nichols: By the way the assertion that anything 5km from the city centre is predicated on car use is untrue. Have a look at a map of Melbourne (for instance) in 1930 (which is when the last substantial bit of suburban rail infrastructure came into being). It was very spread out. Obviously, it could have been planned a hundred times better, but my point is that what the car has done is made it possible for closer 'infill' between public transport points which have, in turn, deteriorated as the car takes over - white ants, if you will. As for what will replace the suburbs, I'm a Ted Trainer man myself. Check out his stuff.

reply 5 from Greg: Fair point, the railway lines extended before cars did. But they were arteries - most of suburbia is post-car, or to borrow your term, most of suburbia is the "infill". I could say *most* of what lies further than 5km from the city centre is predicated on car use. I'd suggest this doesn't change the nature of the problem: in environmental and social issues it's the "most" that matters.

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name change

(posted on 2007-03-27 02:54:00)

Rule one on the web: when you come up with a name for your site, search and see if someone else is already using it. I just did and found that another netizen is happily using the name Greg's Opinion for his blog. So I'll henceforth call this page Letters to the Editor.

I was thinking of a name like this anyway, because I want to do an "amateur op ed" blog rather than a "diary" or "interesting things on the web" blog. There are some very good examples of the latter already (eg Boing Boing and http://dev.null.org/blog/) so I won't try to muddy the wwwaters with more. ... On the other hand this post is breaking my vow already.

There's an irony-joke in the Letters title too, like the editor is some kind of powerful being who'll right society's wrongs.

I've added a Reply function so feel free to try it out.

reply 1 from Peta: Does that mean there isn't already a blog called "Letters to the Editor" ?

reply 2 from Greg: There are a few newspaper blogs with names like this (as you'd expect) but I couldn't find anything too similar to what I'm doing here ... in the first page of Google responses.

reply 3 from your mother: Did you search normal Google or Google blog search?

reply 4 from pjm: it's like the masculine version of "Dear Abby"

reply 5 from Noam Chomsky: it's a great name

reply 6 from Greg: This new blog of rejected letters to the editor is vaguely similar in spirit to my blog .. a few differences though

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real estate

(posted on 2007-03-25 05:54:12)

Our system of housing ownership brings about a three-tiered system of economic classes, analogous to, if less dramatic than, the 19th century system of factory owners and workers.

Marx is unfashionable now but his analysis of society as social classes created by money flows still underpins a lot of our thinking. In Marx''s Europe the wealthy owned factories and farms, the poor worked in them, and the middle class performed the clerical, managerial, political and religious functions that kept the system ticking over. Owners paid workers the lowest wage that the market could bear, pocketed the difference between wages paid and goods produced, increasing their capital, while workers never accumulated enough capital to own anything.

We are now, erm, post-industrial, but you can still get a class system if one group owns, over several generations, the things that another group needs to live. Real estate is now the largest expense in many people's lives and I argue that it divides us into three classes: property investors, owner-occupiers and renters.

Property investors buy dwellings and rent them out. Renters work and give a part of their wages to their landlord, generally a quarter to a half of their after-tax income. Owner-occupiers own the home they live in, but no others, and are neutral in this system. To see how home ownership impacts financial situation, take three fictitious people, Larry, Owen and Reg. They start with the average Australian weekly income of about $800 after tax. Larry lives in his own home and owns another, which he rents to Reg for $300 per week. Owen owns one home and lives in it - he neither pays nor receives rent. After Reg pays his weekly rent to Larry, the money these three live on is: Larry $1100, Owen $800, Reg $500.

In other words, even if everyone starts with the same amount of money, the investor's actual post-rent income and standard of living is roughly twice as high as a renter's. Eventually some of these people will have children, and then an entire family will be living off that post-rent income. Raising children on $1100 vs $500 a week makes a big difference. The resources available to their children in turn will be quite unequal. Within a generation or two these families will live in different worlds, even if the circumstances they started out in - job, background, culture etc - were identical. Once a renter family is living on half the income of an investor family, the renters are unlikely to accumulate enough capital to ever own their own home, let alone an investment property they can rent to others.

ABS statistics show that while only 4% of the lowest-income 20% of Australian households own their own dwelling, 97% of the highest-income households own theirs. Cost of housing is the category of household expenditure that correlates most with income. The bottom quantile spend a quarter of their wages on rent and expensive mortgages, while the top spend only half that, because they either own their house outright or only require a cheap mortgage.

Do we want to start a new class system during this generation, and if not, what can be done to stop the process? Following the analogy with old-school Marxism, it seems that Australia can either (1) have a revolution :-), (2) legislate against private ownership of capital, or (3) leave it up to individuals to better their own lot. Option 1 doesn't seem so likely. Option 2 has been popular in the past - governments last century often nationalized factories, railways and other money-earning assets - but the Australian government encourages property investment via the negative gearing tax concession which gives a tax break to home-owners if they buy another dwelling and rent it out. Option 3 is flavour of the month.

But how does a renter pull themselves by their own bootstraps and achieve home ownership? The problem is easy to understand but hard to solve. Buying a dwelling requires an up front payment of about 10%. For a cheap one-bedroom flat a long way from town, this is around $20,000. But after losing a third of their income in rent, most renters will never save this amount. Many barely break even, or spend years of their money-earning life paying off debts. The few who crack that magic $20,000 and buy their flat must then hope to keep their job forever as they begin to pay off a 30-year home loan. At the end of this process - say, around age 55 - they now own their flat. That moves them into the class of owner-occupiers who don't have to pay rent. If they had another 30 years' employment in them, they might become landlords by buying a second home and renting it to someone else.

These amounts are now out of reach for most renters. In a way they're designed to be. That's the problem with the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' solution . In a competitive economy, it only works for a given person if few enough others achieve it. Most renters have about as much chance of joining the top tier of landlords as a 19th century factory worker had of becoming a factory owner.

There is a solution of sorts which many try. If two renters become a couple and live together, they can pool their two incomes toward buying one shared dwelling. But there is a trap. Most couples eventually want to have children. When there are kids to look after, one of the couple's two incomes either has to stop, or be severely dissipated by paying for child care, going part time, or both. For this reason, young couples are having children later (after they've saved some money) or avoiding it altogether. If the couple separates, their one or two incomes has to thenceforth pay for two dwellings, both of them big and expensive enough to conduct their alternating child-raising in. Unless the divorcing couple were wealthy or already owned a home, both are now doomed to rent.

To wrap up, my argument is that current real estate conditions are creating new economic classes which will become obvious over the next few decades. I'm not talking cliches like factory owners in top hats and workers in cloth caps - just regular people moving in opposite directions. These divisions will be self-perpetuating because only landlord families can afford to provision their children with homes and keep them out of the rental trap.

added 27th March: by coincidence ABC TV aired a show last night which addressed a lot of these issues. It was mostly good except for one dude who got too much air time promoting an increase in urban sprawl. I don't think any solution was agreed upon. Negative gearing - in my opinion the major cause of house price increases - was mentioned, but not in much detail. The interesting idea IMO is that we are creating a new class system 'as we speak'.

reply 2 from jim: Hmmm... (sorry greg; previous attempt at reply posting was a little unsatisfactory) What I find fascinating is that the whole renting phenomenon is premised on an anachronistic medieval social relation - we still call these arseholes "landlord" & "landlady". Contemporary renters are just like the peasants/tenant farmers who paid a rental to their noble leige - in the form of goods & military service - a fact which seems embodied in the maintenance of these ye olde titles (something we take for granted in our language so that noone bats an ear - but how does the material fact of owning a surplus dwelling in any way confer nobility?) Lets make the language transparent: how about "absentee pig"? Interesting history to the negative gearing debacle: Susan Ryan, most prominent member of the Socialist Left (remember them?) faction of the Hawke ALP government in the mid-80s, was pushing for federal legislation on rent control. I think a 1.5% per annum rise was the maximum they were proposing; anything more than that would have required landlords to demonstrate substantial improvements had been made to the rental property. But, investors & financial institutions flipped out, & lobbied hard for negative gearing. The idea was that the tax breaks that the federal government provided to property owners, would give property owners enough slack to keep rents down. The ALP caucaus folded, negative gearing was introduced. Institutions & individuals with lots of money generally agreed it was a good idea: by the time of the 1990 recession, the Australian dollar was the 6th most traded currency in the world (after the US$, UK Lb, Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen, and West German Mark). So the whole thing also promoted huge changes in the Australian financial system - in the space of a bare few years.

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my first post

(posted on 2007-03-22 07:49:06)

Here is the first post to my new blog. Why has it taken me a long time to start one? I have been reading and commenting on other people's blogs for years. In my day job I am an official researcher of online communities and teacher of internet technologies. Let me tell you, I know what a blog is. A number of things have held me back, one of them being that I have feared for some time that the blogosphere may be overpopulating. And I spend all my time writing anyway, often for (academic) publication.

The trouble with academic writing, apart from the fact that few humans read it, is that most people have only one topic they can be published on. There are a lot of important issues that affect us all. Our world needs inclusive discussion. I produced zines and indie music in my youth which served as an outlet for non-professional musings. So you see, all the ingredients are in place.

I am pinching the idea for the blog name from Melbourne writer Ben Butler. He may not remember this, but he told me about 10 years ago that he was thinking of starting a zine called Ben's Opinion. (A zine was a home-made paper-based magazine that preceeded blogs.) I thought that was a hilarious name for a zine, and it stuck in my head. (Maybe you have to know Ben to find this funny.) As far as I know Ben has never used the name, and so, at least until he or someone who has copyrighted the word 'opinion' sues me, I'm calling my blog Greg's Opinion.

I was about to press the Create Account button at Blogger when I thought, instead of using a commercial site, I'll program my own. I teach the underlying technologies at uni (database and web programming), so why not reinvent the wheel. It's fun and I might use it as a student project later. I knocked this simple version together in a couple of hours tonight. I can fancy it up as I go. If you'd like to comment on anything you read here, you'll have to wait until I program that in.

I have a website with php and MySql already, which I use for my Spill label. The latter is a tag for a number of musical activities I am involved in. If you're reading this, haven't heard of Spill, and want to, shorten the url in your browser's address bar and you'll go there promptly.

May my blog read well and all who read in her.

reply 1 from acb: Welcome aboard. So far, it looks like an auspicious start. Next you need permalinks and then a RSS feed. :-)

reply 2 from Greg: I added a simple Permalink feature. Too simple? It just works on "PostId" (ie the primary key of the post table) - no dates or topics or anything.

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