Bourgeois Art Threat

The great confluence of posts about creativity, class, and the "creative class" continues, though so far circumstance has conspired to keep me too busy to compose a proper reply. In the interim, here's a mix of music about class tension, the offspring of the obscene embrace between art & commerce. Not insignificantly, a number of the songs most declaratively aligned with the Working Man are by people who've assuredly never felt the sting of sweat in their eyes if not under stage-lights. A few of the acts - the JSBX, the Dandies, and of course the Shat - damn near disappear up their own asses in acts of self-satirisation. Meanwhile, for all their Fela-esque anti-capital populism, The 3rd Generation Band were actually the official Ghanaian state police band - but of course, capital adopting anti-establishment postures is as old as the rebel yell itself.

Also occupying my headspace: a couple of recent posts over at I Cite mentioned the difficulty of creating consensus, a difficulty aptly demonstrated by others who smugly self-paralyse with ping-pong rhetoric and infinite regresses. Discussions of the Symbolic with neither the Imaginary nor the Real and a theory of "progressive" tourism aside... One of the problems facing post-modern politics is that there isn't an ideology, that is neither essentially nihilist nor religious, which accepts that people just don't get along - that in all likelihood, we hate each other. In spite of this being a fundamental consideration of Enlightenment philosophy, there seems to be not the barest bones of any progressive agenda that incorporates a status quo of everyone hating each other's guts. This is not a new problem, as I certainly wouldn't be the lone member of a previously-proposed People Who Hate People Party...

Middle Class Revolt
(click on the title to download)

1. Tricky - "Money Greedy" (00:00)
2. The Fall - "Prole Art Threat" (05:24)
3. The 3rd Generation Band - "Because of Money" (07:18)
4. Pete Wiggins - "I Don't Work For a Living" (13:07)
5. The Wu-Tang Clan - "C.R.E.A.M." (16:08)
6. The Constantines - "Working Full-Time" (19:57)
7. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - "Sweat" (23:51)
8. Talking Heads - "Found a Job" (26:51)
9. The Beastie Boys - "Mark On the Bus" (31:42)
10. XTC - "Day In Day Out" (32:36)
11. Public Image Ltd. - "Careering" (35:41)
12. Fugazi - "Five Corporations" (40:09)
13. Buck 65 - "In Every Dream Home There Is a Heartache" (Roxy Music cover; 42:25)
14. Wiliam Shatner feat. Joe Jackson - "Common People" (Pulp cover; 46:55)
15. The Dandy Warhols - "Bohemian Like You" (51:25)
16. Tom Waits - "Heigh Ho" (54:54)