From Anarchy in 1916 and 1976, to Anodyne in 2006... Happy Birthday!This is not 1916, we are not drawing up a Dadaist manifesto; nor is this 1976, the anarchy has turned to apathy now that seemingly we have nothing to struggle against… both these movements were fighting against the status quo, and now we have no one around who wants to challenge our way of living, because we have found acceptance. But it really is worse now than ever, because the enemy is everywhere, yet invisible: it is the conglomerates and the multinationals, they act like they’re your friend, but they will bleed you until you hand over your last penny. They will sell you a product and make you think you can’t live without it. They pretend to offer choice but have destroyed all competition, and I can’t see that there is a choice when I am offered something I don’t want or need.
This is 2006 and we need to remember that every penny we spend we have earned, and I don’t think a ringtone or a magazine that tells me what sunglasses a footballer’s girlfriend wears is worth any amount of my money or time.
The punk revolution in 1976 was 30 years ago, it’s funny to think now that the Sex Pistols was a reaction to society and the music establishment of the time, as if they had had to suffer decades of soulless, mindless pop music: The Velvet Underground started making music nine years before them; The Stooges only seven; Bowie was about to reach his artistic peak and Elvis’s career was a dim memory, only stung into action with his death the following year.. no problem there you’d think. However, punk was less about the music or the sound, and more about the attitude. It was about doing it yourself, because you knew no one else would; it was about making music and for a lot of bands it meant bypassing the established labels and being your own label.. Factory, Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet, Crass Records released some of the best music of the time with no assistance from the likes of bigger labels like CBS, A&M, RCA, and where are they now..? Rebadged and owned by multinationals, while Rough Trade still releases some of the best music of the age... but they were always about music and never about money.
So where is the music industry now in 2006? No further forward than we were in 1976; if anything it is worse. Music publishers generally will not accept new material from unknown writers; record companies will not speculate, and will only stay with what is safe and inoffensive. Society’s standards have been systematically lowered over the last two decades, and it takes a teenager from Sheffield to remind the world that “there’s only new music, so that there’s new ringtones”, before it is too late. We are heading toward a future where songs will only be 10 seconds long, because that is all we will ever need, or want to listen to. Of course this will not happen, because there is always a group of writers and musicians who work outside of the establishment, and little by little, like the Dadaists of the last century and the articulate northern monkeys of the moment, they are chipping away at the ugly monster that we as a society have constructed. They are making loaves of bread into birthday cakes, they are making records with their late grandparents, they are setting up independent records labels like Elementary Recordings in an attempt to expose the music industry for the fraud it really is.
“The Birthday EP” by Alan Neilson, released by Elementary Recordings in early June is the single most anti-religious song since Lydon screamed: “I am an anti-Christ”. Although “Birthday” doesn’t quite punch you in the face, its underlying theme of making the most of a life, because there really is nothing else, is honest and brutal. It is an uplifting experience when someone says for the first time in a pop song, softly and simply: “Someone should tell you there is only this”. I can hear the Vatican City being shaken to its foundations already, as this small whispered voice stands against everything every religion the world over stands for. But this is not the ravings of a young nihilist, far from it; Neilson celebrates life for the once around the block ride it is: “The first lesson of the day is that we are special.. the second, and third lesson is we are unique”.
We need to hear this. We need to remember that there is too much trivia. We need to remember a hundred years ago there was Dada, a very small group of artists who turned the art world on its head and their actions still reverberate around the world today. In a hundred years from today, what will be remembered; what is being produced today that will still have impact in a century? I’m struggling to think of anything but the music made by Alan Neilson.
