CHIRP: The Chicago Independent Radio Project

Cameron Gray writes

We Want To Listen

Election years prompt historical comparisons. Or bittersweet reflection. In a period of rampant doom and fear-mongering, aided and abetted by a media that is curiously incapable of telling it like it us, we’re left casting a wide net for a voice of reason. And it is abundantly clear that the sought after voice isn’t on TV, it’s not in print media, nor is it coming from mainstream radio.

If you find yourself listening to favorite albums hundreds of times, vivid scenes from novels and images from paintings and photographs raining down on you at odd times, you start looking for connections, patterns. Maybe you convince yourself that the authentic voice of artists sends a beacon out, a semi-anguished cry reflecting ugly politics, social distortions, or dim economic prospects. Nebraska-era Springsteen; much of the Stones albums through the early and mid-60s; the early Steve Reich tape loops recorded on the streets of Berkeley; the Fahey recordings of the early 60s; the early ambient work from Brian Eno; the Velvet Underground albums recorded while John Cale was still with them; maybe the embryonic forms of ska, punk, rap. In the sound of Joy Division at the end of the 70s, it’s hard not to hear the effect of a ravaged Manchester economy.

Two of the most exciting writers of the last two decades stretched the bounds of the literary form, taking as their material stuff that American writers don’t touch. J.M. Coetzee, tellingly, set his first book in the twin climates of Vietnam-era America and the Dutch Boer War in South Africa. From his first work to be translated into English, W.G. Sebald took up two lost decades in post-WWII Germany. In the last year, Damien Hirst and Francis Bacon sold works for more than $75 million. Coetzee is the only writer to have ever won the Booker Prize twice. Nirvana recently moved into the first spot for most albums sold. And, well, Joy Divison has been a focus of films half a dozen times in as many years. Is subversive work subversive after it becomes legitimized with official recognition?

Will the present climate in America spawn a new twisted form of artistic authenticity? How subversive will the new works be? What are American artists prepared to do?

At the close of perhaps the most disastrous administration in 200+ years, what next? At best, a dismal situation, and in all probability much worse. The reality is that not much will change. Talk is cheap and no politician in the country is ready to risk her career telling it like it is. US dependence on fossil fuels isn’t declining. Oil supplies are dwindling and have been for years. No candidate will touch Social Security, notwithstanding the deafening sucking sound. Reducing carbon emissions is pretty rhetoric, but we wrote the Kyoto Protocol and promptly opted out. Way cute. The budget deficit is twice as large as reported by virtue of the new math the kids at GAO and CBO involve themselves in. And then there are ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stratification of wealth in the US hasn’t improved in the last 25 years. Name your comparison, they’re all good and they’re all very ugly.

Music business models are changing quickly. Radio business models are too. These new possibilities, they can unleash the kind of subversive work that has been sorely missing for years. What is left is enormous opportunity. The demand for the real stuff is big and growing. With the times getting uglier every day, the demand for artists that bend the rules and invent new genres and scream out is palpable.

What’s left of capitalism around here, it will drive a new breed of artists. It is right now. Make music. We want to listen. Harder, faster, nastier. Authenticity is powerful.