Reviewing My Own Past. I am an idiot.

Within an academic context, Radical Subjectivity is a problematic methodology. Having coined the term to describe a range of diverse strategies within my own popular criticism, I adapted its definition to suit any approaches I'd later use within The Vile Blog. 

In one memorably incoherent article, I attempted to discuss semiotics by evoking a couple of productions that I had seen (Slope and Tomorrow) and Honzl, a Czech theorist I must have found in one of my trawls of Marvin Carlson's writing. Although, on first reading, I can't imagine why I thought publishing an article like this on a blog that is supposedly dedicated to 'populist' critique was a good idea, it does represent some aspects of radical subjectivity's style.

First of all, there is the awkward juxtaposition of academic and popular criticism. The focus of the article is Honzl's analysis of theatre semiotics - he observes that any object, placed in a theatrical performance, can take on a variety of meanings. However, the references to Untitled Project's Slope and Vanishing Point's Tomorrow allude to contemporary performances (in 2014) and the process of reviewing. 

The two forms are shoved together shamelessly, with Slope and Tomorrow providing examples of Honzl's semiotic analysis. This suggests both a historical context for the two productions, and updates Honzl into a contemporary context.

The framing of the article also insists on a contemporary context: both the first paragraph and the last (a circular structure, doubtlessly influenced by theatrical performances - such as Robert Softley's Purposeless Movements which ends with the same lines at the beginning and end of the show) discuss the then-relevant threat by Anonymous to publish material that would shame Iggy Azalea. 

This reference, of course, dates the article. 

Then there is the repeated use of humour, often misplaced. This supposedly lessens the seriousness of the material but also reveals the personality of the author (confused and childish, most likely). 

Elsewhere, I place my methodology within a tradition of reader response theory. 

Slogan Time!

Glasgow, February 12, 2015 00:00  — The Vile Arts published the following joint slogans on Feb. 11 on the occasion of the 7th anniversaries of the liberation of the mindand the founding of the Radical Subjectivists:

On the road of grandiose advance for ushering in a new era of the Critical revolution under the leadership of the great Criticulous, our service personnel and people will be greeting the 7th anniversaries of the liberation of the country and the founding of the Blog.



Let us uphold the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine as the eternal leaders of our Party and people and as the sun of Jordanhill!




The great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine will always be with us!




Let us glorify the Citizens' rehearsal room as the supreme sanctuary of Dramaturgy, as a grand monument to the immortality of the leaders!




Let us arm ourselves firmly with the revolutionary ideas of the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine!




Long live the great Radical Subjectivism!




Let us model the whole Theatre and all society on Radical Subjectivity!




Let us advance vigorously united firmly with one mind and one will as befit the young critics of Comrade Gareth K Vile and the soldiers and followers of Comrade Lorna Irvine!




Let us cherish the ties of kinship with Comrade Lorna Irvine as our lifeline!




Let us glorify the noble revolutionary careers and undying exploits of the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine for all generations to come!




Let us glorify the achievement of national liberation by Generalissimo Gareth K Vile, hero of critical resurrection and legendary hero of the anti-churnalism war, for all eternity!




Long live the great victory in the war against The Guardian!




Let us glorify the great Generalissimo Lorna Irvine's ideas of and achievements in the Critical revolution down through the generations!




Let us brilliantly inherit and develop the glorious revolutionary traditions of our blogs!




Let us accomplish the Critical revolution in the revolutionary spirit of Tynan, the spirit of the blizzards of Tynan!




The lines and policies advanced by the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine and their instructions are textbooks for quality criticism.




Let us carry out the lifetime instructions of the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine whatever the conditions without an inch of deflection and without a step of compromise!




Let us advance straight along the road of independence, criticism and confusion opened by the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine!




Let us build our blog into the most powerful one in the world, into a people's fairyland, as wished by the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine!




Do everything the way the great Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine did!




Let us step up the building of a prosperous critical cohort by applying Lorna Irvine's literacy!




Let us exalt the brilliance of the great Gareth K Vile's country, General Lorna Irvine's country, following the leadership of Comrade Tynan!




Let us stoutly continue, following the respected Comrade Mark Fisher, the march that started on Tynan!




The single-hearted unity is the greatest foundation and the most powerful weapon of our revolution.




Let us defend with our very lives the Vile Arts RadioHour headed by the great Comrade Criticulous!




Let us defend the single-hearted unity of the Vile Blog and revolutionary ranks around the respected Comrade Mad Cyril in a thoroughgoing way and having it rock-solid!




Let all the co-hosts and guests form rings and rings of fortress around the respected Comrade Criticulous!




Long live the glorious Vile Blog, which organizes and guides all victories of our people!




Let us strengthen and develop the The Vile Blog for all ages to come into a glorious party of Comrades Gareth K Vile and Lorna Irvine!




Let us set up a new milestone in improving the Blog's leadership ability and fighting efficiency in this year, which marks its 7th founding anniversary!




Let us establish the Blog's monolithic leadership system more thoroughly across the Blog and society!




Let the whole theatrical community share the ideas, breathe the same air and keep pace with the VileBlog!




Let us establish across the theatrical community rigorous discipline by which it moves as one under the unified leadership of Mad Cyril!




Let us defend the prestige of Mad Cyril in every way possible through the struggle to implement the Blog's ideas and champion its policies!




Turn your units and areas into places that adjoin the yard of the office of the CCA, places where the Vile call, breath and pulse run high!




Keep up with the implementation of the Vile's lines and policies as the major line of critical work!




We serve the people!




Let us make the principle of holding the masses dearest run through critical work as a whole!




Let us make the climate of respecting, loving and relying on the Vile Arts prevail across the Theatre Community!




Focus the major effort in theatre work on improving Gareth's standard of living!




Let theatrical organizations and officials work devotedly for the people to live up to their highest expectations!




Let the whole theatrical community direct its main effort to the work with the people!




Raise all people into ones strong in idea and faith with the affection and the feeling of kinship as befits a motherly arts council!




Even though a company may have 99 per cent of onestar reviews and only one per cent of three star reviews, boldly trust them and lead them to start with a clean slate!




Regard giving play to the spiritual strength of dramaturgy as the main thing, compulsory path, of theatre work!




Let arts officials learn the Vile Arts' methods of work with the people and become skilful in remoulding them and giving play to their spiritual strength!




Thoroughly get rid of abuse of authority and bureaucratism!




Regard reviewing as an important link in the whole chain of theatre work!




Let critical cells become death-defying corps and pioneers in implementing the Blog's policies!




Let us hasten final victory through a revolutionary ideological preview!




Hold fast to critical work as the top priority!




Let us raise a strong wind of studying the great Radical Subjectivity!




Concentrate on education in the greatness of the leaders, Lorna Irvine's literacy, faith, anti-imperialist and class consciousness, and morality!




Keep the revolutionary faith to the death!




Fight death-defyingly for our country and right to reviews!




Let us bear deep in mind the lessons from the class struggle of 7:84 and its truth!




Let the Critical information officials work as the buglers of the anti-realism guerrilla army did!




Make all well-informed of the Vile Opinions policies as they are of their own family affairs!




Fire an opening salvo of an ideological campaign and make our fire concentrated, regular and accurate!

Special Guest: Baudriller-killer sorts out The Azies

'I'd like to thank you for taking the time to come on The Vile Arts, Mr Baudrillard. It is always a pleasure to have you.'

'Thank you, Gareth. While some people might see your refusal to take an absolute position as a dereliction of your role as a critic, I regard it as an impeccable response to the postmodern condition.'

'Thank you, I think. Now, you have something to add in the battle of the rappers, I believe?'

'Indeed, yes. I think that what we are seeing here is a conflict about authenticity and imitation and, as you know, I had a passing interest in these ideas.'

'An interest in so far as you deconstructed them?'

'Exactly. Let me delineate. The crux of this row - if we can have such a thing, in a debate that seems to flying off in several hot topic directions - is between the ideal of Azealia Banks' music being real hip hop, and Iggy Azalea's being a pop appropriation.'

'There is also the hierarchy there: that Banks is more talented, more authentic...'

'Pause just there. Banks' music is seen as being a sacrament: it is a reflection of the real, of life, of the hip hop tradition: its value comes from its connection to something concrete.'

'In hip hop terms, it keeps it real.'

'Although her collaboration with Ariel Pink, who is a maverick rock musician who uses an ironic take on musical traditions does disconnect her somewhat from at least some of that sacramental order.'

'So, Banks represents an ideal of the real... the association of sacrament suggests holiness.'

'That is why the sacramental order is concerned with purity and authenticity: to deviate from its order is a form of heresy.'

'This makes Iggy Azalea a heretic?'

'You are probably putting words in my mouth, but I would suggest that Iggy Azalea's music is being described as a 'perversion' of the sacramental order. Instead of elucidating the culture, Iggy is obscuring it, remaking it. It could be classified as a simulacrum.'

'In that it claims to represent the real, but actually doesn't?'

'There might be a few questions here about whether Iggy makes any claims to represent real hip hop, but we can take her inclusion in The Grammy awards for best hip hop artists as evidence that she does.'

'It seems an open and shut case: Azealia is real, Iggy isn't.'

'It would be if you were living in the Roman Empire. But you aren't. It's late capitalism time, consumerism is the dominant ideology, and the function of media in consumerist society is to disconnect the signifier from the thing in itself. This process has gone so far, we have no idea what is real anymore.'

'I am thinking of those adverts for alcohol. The people in them are having a high old time - there's romance, maybe fireworks, and plenty of beauty. But the reality of alcohol is pissing the bed, hangovers, bad sexual choices and having a fight in the car park, with a fucked liver.'

'We could read those adverts as the fantasy of an alcoholic, under the impression that they are walking on the beach with a supermodel, when they have actually passed out in the gutter and are about to suffer hypothermia.'

'So - are you saying that Banks' claims to authenticity are spurious?'

'Totes.' 

I Just Want this to End (part 4)

I regret ever getting into this beef. I have no answers, I am confused as to whether there are any answers, and everyone involved keeps talking like there are such things as 'authenticity' and 'appropriation'. 

There are, however, three men who got involved - since they are men, we can take their opinions more seriously than these bickering girls, right, fellas?

First up, we have Q-Tip. It's a shame that Q-Tip used twitter to

deliver his lecture on the history of hip hop, because it makes quoting it difficult (some of the tweets are half a sentence). Quite why Q-Tip can't sit down and write a proper article is a mystery (or an email, if he is really trying to school Iggy). It's not like he has been troubling the world with superb raps lately.

Anyway, Q-Tip's lecture, in another context, would be well cool. He connects the culture of hip hop to a specific period of history, and appreciates how that context defines many of the themes of the music. He recognises the depth of hip hop culture, and sees it as an integrated aesthetic. Most crucially, hip hop has a social importance and is the expression of a particular community. It's a nice introduction to the form - smooth as his better raps, and a nice balance of his personal understanding and wider discussions on hip hop. 

Surprisingly, Iggy takes him down. Like the joker behind the false Mary Brennan account on twitter, Q-Tip isn't providing a public service, he is trolling her. He is showing off how clever he is (which he is), and Iggy replies that the whole thing is patronising, treating her like a little girl who hasn't a thought in her head. 

Earlier on, Eminem contributed a sagacious rap, in which he said something that sounds like a rape threat. Even if he has been doing this since he was relevant, it's not a good look. Iggy could have got me totally onside when she replied that she was sick of hearing this kind of thing, if she hadn't added she wanted to hear more about young women making money. Of course, having Eminem promise to give you one is always going to give you the moral high-ground, expose the misogyny of the music business, et cetera. 

Finally, Will.i.am chimed in. He was on Iggy's side, seeing her appropriation of hip hop as positive, comparing it to Blondie's Rapture as an example of how hip hop is a global property. Mind you, isn't he a judge on The Voice now? That doesn't make him an icon of hip hop, more trash culture? I haven't seen it, but I presume that, like most TV talent shows, it puts a premium on matters technical (like singing in tune) then cultural (like having an emotional connection with the material).

Actually, I saw some bloke off The Voice in a pantomime a few weeks ago. He had a confident delivery and a sweet vocal range. Then I watched his video on The Voice and he was a screaming harridan. I don't think it is a show that brings out the subtle nuance of the great vocalists. 

But that isn't the point. There is a final organisation to mention. Anonymous. The hackers.

Obviously, the governments of the world have chilled out lately, because Anonymous had time to threaten Iggy, instead of attacking the injustices of the state and multinational corporations. I'll get into that debacle in another post, but the bullying tone they employed put me right off having a revolution with them. And it emphasised that while there are questions of privilege and opportunity that are offered to young white women, the patriarchy likes nothing more than having a go at them. 

Even if the original beef has some substance, these contributions

are just more of the same masculine dismissal of pop that has buggered criticism ever since the first man realised that pop music was messing with his erection. While I don't want to slip into a simplistic reading of patriarchy - there is currently a dialectical tension between its oppression and feminist resistance which is actually quite encouraging - when it rears its head, it's familiar and consistent. 

Getting Subjy with two Azies

This is hard work. I am trying to avoid making too many aesthetic claims about the artists in question: whether I like it or not, the relative critical worth of Iggy and Banks is subjective. As Mark Boyle from BHP pointed out when I kept playing Iggy's videos: 'this music is not for us.' 

(He didn't mean that in any cultural sense, just that some pop music has an intended audience that doesn't include Glasgow's top rock DJ and a semiotician with a fetish for performance art.)

The question of whether Iggy is performing blackface or just making generic pop might be beyond my ability to discern. I am, however with Lodge, Rahman et al when they consider Iggy's music as an appropriation of hip hop. But since I live in a postmodern milieu, I'm not sure whether this is a priori a bad thing. 

Hip-hop is now so global, a passive listener would be forgiven for not being familiar with the politics of race relations, Lodge continues. But even if you look at this situation oblivious to the issues, it’s not hard to see that something has gone wrong.

Azealia Banks is making creative, boundary pushing music that deserves awards, whilst Iggy Azalea’s music is dull, formulaic pop. Yet it’s Iggy who is being hailed by Forbes as "one of hip hop’s most exciting new artists". I'd hazard a guess that 70 per cent of Iggy Azalea’s appeal is based on the fact that she is a conventionally attractive white woman doing work that’s associated with black men. She captures the imagination of white consumers. It’s a gimmick.

I broadly agree with Lodge here although - at the suggestion of my man Psignal, I am listening to Azealia Bank's album. I really loved 212, but I am not sold on Broke with Expensive Tastes as 'boundary pushing music.' Tracks like Heavy Metal and Reflective has a harsh rhythmic energy and an eclectic orchestration, which graft EDM intensity onto a bold, sexual aggression, while BBD recalls an updated version of Missy Elliot's tracks with the antics - coarse, intelligent music for the club, all rattling percussion and snarled whispered. But it is anyone's guess what she was thinking when she recorded Nude Beach A Go Go. 

I'm also worried about 'the gimmick.' Most of pop music is a gimmick. To challenge myself, I am going to list ten artists and define them by their gimmick. A gimmick is another word for a unique selling point.

Lady Gaga: she's pop, but she's well art.

Public Enemy: the political commentary you can dance to.

Led Zeppelin: it's the blues, but toughened up.

The Wurzels: they have West Country accents.

Ariel Pink: he records Kim Fowley tracks, which are kitsch and poppy.

The Bee Gees: it's disco, but they are straight men.

Amanda Palmer: oh, she's so fucking alternative.

Steve Albini: he's all about the honest rock sound, man.

Miles Davis (1970s): it's jazz, but with rock ambitions.

Miles Davis (1950s): it's jazz, only cool and laid back.

And as for the list of artists who sell their music through a filter of soft porn imagery...

I suppose what I am saying is: taking sides in this beef means assuming that subjective opinions have authenticity. And that's got me on the phone to Baudrillard.

Arika: Episode 3, Copying without Copying 2012

The final part of Arika's triptych of programmes presents a weekend of four free events dealing with originality and identity

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED IN THE SKINNY 29 FEBRUARY 2012


Arika's love affair with hardcore Marxist dialectic has always been tempered by a fascination with post-modernity, especially in its most nihilistic and deconstructive versions. Marxists tend to claim that post-modernity's preoccupation with excluded narratives like feminism, anti-colonialism or anti-globalism can be threaded together around a socialist core, and much of the debate in Episode 1 centred around this possibility.

For Episode 3, Arika are going straight for a prominent post-modern concern: what is originality, and can it exist in an age when even individual identity is being questioned? Copying without Copying is Arika's most theatrical Episode so far – it includes performances of Eichmann's trial and Chto Delat?'s musical The Russian Woods – and throws down in the cat fight between artistic ownership and the collective creativity of communities. Marxism and deconstruction may share a passion for the savage critique of normative culture, but their intentions are radically different: Marxists want a better world, while deconstruction is happy to break up the existing one.

Luther Blisset – the pseudonym used by various anarchists, after a charming British football hero – articulates the heart of this Episode in his Radical Subjectivity. Arika's programme notes echo Blisset's belief that nothing can be told without the teller including their own history or value system – but where Arika use this to problematise the way that media is experienced, Blisset was encouraging artists to embrace it, even as he critiqued the false objectivity of the curator or writer. The sharp irony is that Luther Blisset could be anyone: meanwhile, each performance at Episode 3 has a clearly defined author.

Compared to the usual festival rush, Episode 3 is sparse: four events over a weekend, climaxing in two and a half hours of a "spectacular musical show which discusses the representation of a nation state, its characters and history." Chto Delat? acknowledge that it seems absurd to struggle against the violence of our times through art, yet their intellectual engagement does not prevent them from co-opting popular forms: mythology, musicals, the idea of a nation's soul are all reconstructed towards a serious end.

Starting the weekend is a performed installation based on the transcripts of the 1961 trial of SS Lieutenant Adolf Eichmann: the difficult content – Eichmann's trial threw up questions about state sovereignity, international law and personal responsibility – is matched by an appropriately challenging format, a fusion that Arika actively encourages. Throughout the three episodes, the festival has analysed militarism, the agenda behind advertising, the problems of art in a world bedevilled by callous politics and the suspicion that individual identity is being manipulated by consumerism. The discourse moves well beyond the events, and has inspired a series of online and radio discussions.

For this last episode, Arika has gone free: there is no door tax, only a request for emotional and intellectual engagement. The transition from experimental music to experimental festival has happened, and even Luther Blisset's radical attack on the intrinsic bias of the curator or writer is slightly satisfied.

More Methodology (Glasgow School)

Radical Subjectivity was evolved as a way to discuss individual works - a rejection of the faux-objectivity of traditional popular criticism which, perhaps inadvertently, appears as an objective categorisation of a work’s value. 

In recent years, the validity of star ratings has occupied the Fringe, with major companies, including self-styled ‘King of the Fringe’ Guy Masterson Productions campaigning through the Facebook group, Forum for Abolishment of Review Stars at Edfringe. Arguing that a star rating is perceived as an absolute value, they emphasised its subjectivity and worried about the value of a review during the Fringe, when the rating system was often the victim of ‘star inflation.’ 

Against this, radical subjectivity  pitches itself as part of a dialogue with other critiques and artists. However, its primary concern is the performance itself. Fortunately, recent studies - especially on the role of the audience in theatre - have opened up the site of critique beyond the stage. 

The Festival is a Theatrical Event (ed. Cremona, Eversmann, van

Maanen, Sauter & Tulloch, 2004: pp 91-109) provides a rationale for selecting larger areas of endeavour as a 'performance text' following De Marini's assertion that the text is 'a performance unit which the analyst's intention... designates as semiotically complete.’ 

This might appear to simply justify a decision with ‘because I said so,’ but in the context of the hermeneutical spiral, it becomes a makeshift platform for discussion which makes no claims to objectivity or definitive analysis. It is merely a staging post in the ongoing journey.

The shift from the position of critic into the curator of opinions is equally challenging. My questionnaire model of investigation, inspired by Iser’s statement that  'central to the reading of every literary work is the interaction between its structure and the recipient' (ed. Counsell & Wolf, 2001: p179), invites stakeholders to reflect on the dialogue between their practice and the Glasgow environment. 

Surveys have been more commonly used to determine demographics of audiences:  Bennett's Theatre Audiences quotes Baumol and Bowen's 1966 study in her discussion of the composition of theatre audiences, which identified a homogeneity of class, education and income across audiences in the USA and UK (Bennett, 1997: p87) – and Throsby and Wither's 1979 The Economics of the Performing Arts, which discovered Baumol and Bowen's findings were replicated across English speaking countries. 

Capturing the Audience Experience (ITC, 2005) offers an approach to go beyond recording statistics and engage with emotional responses. Following Olsen (Olsen, 2002: p263), a limited number of questions are posed ('with few options so the response is higher') to a large number of people which allows, as described in ITC 2005 a meaningful statistical analysis.

Bennett observes that there is an 'ethnogenic' approach to collating this kind of information across a group: 'based on the premise that the group is more than a number of individuals, but is instead a 'supra-individual, having a distinctive range of properties'' (Bennett, 1997: p90). It is these properties that might open up for an analysis of Glasgow performance as a discrete entity. 

Lost and Found and Wounded

I've been rereading Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, part of my research into the history of criticism for the Young Critics course at Tramway. Hoping to find some kind of style guide for my vision of Radical Subjectivity, I was disappointed by Bangs' writing: it tends to the adolescent, a match for the energy of the garage rock that Bangs adored, but wearing its influences too clearly on the sleeve - Kerouac, Burroughs' more coherent passages and that's about it. 

Whether Bangs could have thrived in the era of  MTV is a moot, given his entry into the they-died-too-young pantheon of rock: such unabashed romanticism, however, would have struggled to deconstruct the corporate take-over of rock that had already happened by his death in the early 1980s.

Thanks to my Radio Hour, I have challenged myself to go beyond theatre - I am becoming a cultural critic these days. And part of this mutation is expressed in a slightly creepy fixation on "youth music". I've been standing in the corner of the disco again, watching the bright young things groove to tunes that sound like something I liked when I was a teenager.

I have recognised my own subjectivity, and so end up being generous to bands that, frankly, I really don't understand. Found have been touted by The Skinny as some sort of art-rock saviours: people I trust have told me that I'd dig their artistic associations. They certainly got some cash from Creative LandScot, and they have just released a single made out of chocolate. So, they must be artists, right?

I played them on the Hour, but can't exactly remember what the tunes sounded like. Last week, I went to see them live at the aftermath of a special showing of You Instead - filmed over 2010's T in the Park, it wastes both Gavin Mitchell and Cora Bissett by forgetting that a witty script is necessary, even for a gimmick based movie. A week later, and I still can't remember what Found sound like, only that their electronic aspect consisted of one underused keyboard, the guitar picked out a ghost version of Godspeed You Black Emperor's majestic rush and that the singer invested his lyrics with serious intent by pulling a face.

Edinburgh leaks bands like this all the time - rather than fusing diverse genres, they blur the boundaries into a bland broth - and they seem to serve a particular audience - young, hip and serious. 

The chocolate single is a typical trick. Yes, I am sure it says something about the nature of pop, disposability and consumerism. And since the idea is far more interesting than the thing itself, it ticks a few conceptual art boxes. I know that the audience are supposed to do the work these days, that it's not all about the object. But the best thing about this little trick is that even the sucker who buys it won't actually have to listen to the music.

While I am not claiming that Wounded Knee would agree with my sentiments, I am going to set him up as my antidote to Found. First of all, every time he performs, it is something unique. Whether he is singing along to his grandfather's tape recording of "dhu-wop", or encouraging the hipsters of SWG3 to join in an old walking song, Wounded Knee is fresh, fun and provocative. That his voice has the richness of an old folk singer, and the passion of a soul man, only disguises the artful intelligence beneath his restless performances. Unlike Found, who proudly proclaim their artiness.

Listening to Wounded Knee is a surface delight, but slowly reveals deeper pleasures. He can work an audience kindly, breaking that old fourth wall and reminding them how they too are part of the show. He draws the link between Scottish folk and US soul - something that once inspired Scottish rock, but was always mystifyingly oblique. His musical family tree makes sly jokes about language, influence and identity. And more than any other musician working today in Scotland, he reaches the soul.

Found dress up like gentleman fops - a look that was pulled off better by comedy rapper Mr B at the Fringe, or by Chris Eubank, who ripped it from early UK hip-hop - in a self-conscious attempt to invest their music with presence. 

Wounded Knee just gets up and sings, and  recalls Greil Marcus' meditation on The Mekons' Never Been in a Riot. Marcus called this the most punk recording ever, because it just relied on the human voice, reducing the rage to a spectral moaning.

Now, for all my moaning about Lester Bangs, I have a fair idea which artist he'd prefer. Found seem to work very hard to make a minor point; Wounded Knee busts open all sorts of ideas about rock'n'roll by just standing on stage. Maybe, had Bangs lived, Wounded Knee might have helped him become the writer he is imagined to be.