![]() Inexplicably, Hegarty fights fire with fire, arguing that Merzbow defeats the "paradigm of collectability and cultural capital, aided by a rhetoric of extremity" by creating a rhetoric of extremity in the content and distribution of his material. I can just see a version of Jack Black's character in High Fidelity ripping on some noobie for only being into entry level shit like Noisembryo, and not having tracked down the tape version of Timehunter yet. As Hegarty himself admits, it takes commitment to truly process and begin to see a Merzbow album as music, and the ability to lord that over someone must be irresistible to Noise music buffs. I completely agree with Smith that Merzbow plays into a paradigm of cultural capital. It ties in with Smith's argument at the start of the excerpt. It comes with a certain hollowness I feel about his music, a shallowness that relies on the esoteric, the feeling of a joke being played on his audience. Perhaps it can best be summed up as I feel noise is too broad to have a single "kingship" that Merzbow seems to have been crowned with. And likewise I respect his work's necessity as an antithesis to "music" and as a philosophical statement on, "what is music?" "what is noise?" but again, this role rings untrue with my idea of noise. I see how the sonic agony he creates is "ultimate" noise as sound but to me that's far different from the idea of noise. So this probably is petty, and I'm happy to admit that, but I really can't get over Merzbow's position as the ultimate noise. I would argue that Merzbow gets around this by limited editions, releasing on many different labels, in different formats, thus making collecting farcical, extremely effortful and unlikely to succeed - thereby presenting a deconstruction of all collecting." Hegarty, 157-158. "Smith has complained that Merzbow offers a paradigm of collectablitiy and cultural capital, aided by a rhetoric of extremity. The final ellipses I'll touch on in my last section. I love that noise provides that opportunity. Where Merzbow can articulate an oscillation or frequency, the amateur orchestra can only play its heart out, all or nothing. It becomes pure expression because it can't be controlled, merely stopped or started. Indeed, the amateur noise artist is the bravest and most profound statement, because it cannot be mediated by their own skill or ability. It serves as a means of expression without equal for accessibility, requiring only a willingness to purge oneself of neuroses or challenge an audience with something boldly, and with abandon. What all this adds up to is my thought that noise is a crucial weapon for the proletarian/uncultured/existentially incensed in society. While he backs off the "authenticity" claim for the second stage of the band, he seems to give the members of the Pistols credit for their behavior outside their onstage performances (if the performance ever truly ended for them) in living the lifestyle of destruction and nihilism that gave them a sense of credibility. Hegarty talks about part of the Pistol's power coming in their ability to usurp the cultural critique of elites as a means of judgement or degradation of their "art" by embracing the aesthetic of failure and destruction as their medium. Noise's position as a great equalizer, disregarding ability or technical skill, makes it an incredible medium for outright statement and pure emotion. I thought this passage really summed up the amateur aspect of noise that's been attractive to me throughout the course, and the political role I think noise plays well. The second format of the group can be taken as a logical outcome of the first: having broken down initial resistance, and shown the emptiness of society, and reflected it back, what else was there to do but wallow in the exposed spectacle of collapse.?" Hegarty, 95. ![]() The Sex Pistols, though, were close enough to nihilism, first in the hands of Lyndon's lyrics, where everything is to be demolished, then in the capering form of McLaren's manipulable Pistols. Their power was to lie in a lack of concern about talent and ability because the message was one of authenticity, albeit in a highly and always already mediated way. "At the insistence of Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols were portrayed as musical naifs, barely able to hold their instruments. ![]()
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