Is it Gustav Holst we have to "thank" for heavy metal

Who's to blame for heavy metal? We have a new data point.

Robert Fripp -- guitarist extraordinaire and King Crimson leader now for nearly 60 years! -- was just sent a passage from the Geezer Butler autobiography (he of Black Sabbath, whose first album appeared in 1970) which contains this observation under the heading 'The Devil in Music' ...

A breakthrough came in May 1969, when I saw King Crimson at Mothers club. As part of their set, they played a version of "Mars," from Gustav Holst's Planets suite. I was dumbfounded, couldn't believe what I was hearing. The following day, I went out and bought The Planets on LP, and I couldn't get enough of "Mars, the Bringer of War." I'd never had much of an interest in classical music, but this was angrier and more menacing than most rock music I'd ever heard.

At our next rehearsal, I was playing the main part, the so-called tritone, on bass, when Tony started playing a tritone riff (in medieval times, the tritone, because of its sinister, foreboding sound, was known as diabolus in musica, or "the devil in music"). That song would eventually become "Black Sabbath."

Naturally enough Fripp's eyebrows were raised.

I've seen it written that Holst invented heavy metal [says Fripp]. That might be stretching things a bit, but you could argue he inspired heavy metal's first riff. And since we wrote that song, the tritone sound has become synonymous with metal.

But did Black Sabbath even invent heavy metal? Nah, says a commenter on Fripp's post. "If he saw King Crimson in 1969 and they played 21st Century Schizoid Man then Heavy Metal had already been invented!"

In which case, since Fripp had pinched that riff from Bartok (String Quartet #5, from memory), could we say that it's Bartok we have to blame?

In any case, the first time the term "heavy metal" was used in print was arguably in a November 1970 Rolling Stone magazine article on the new Humble Pie album, calling them "a noisy, unmelodic, heavy metal-laden shit rock-band."

It's a shame the term "shit rock" didn't take hold instead.

Here's Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

Revenge?

Is revenge a dish best eaten cold? Or not eaten at all. 

There are moments, writes Allan John, when 

the urge for revenge can feel irresistible. We tell ourselves that one bad act warrants another—that striking back will somehow restore justice or bring relief.

But revenge rarely solves the original problem.

And most importantly, it doesn't heal the hurt. The Count of Monte Cristo shows a post-escape life wasted in seeking revenge. The story illustrates the idea that "it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them." 

Nick Cave and his wife Susie chose another path: after their son's tragic death, they chose to find happiness "as an act of defiance or 'revenge' against the overwhelming pain." As they say, the best 'revenge' is outrageous success.

You can't choose what others do to you, or what is done to you. But you can choose how to respond, and whom to become. As the philosopher Diogenes observed, "How shall I defend myself against my enemy? By proving myself good and honourable."

It might be self-defeating. But that doesn't mean it don't feel good. Here's a Nick Cave song revenging himself on a critic, from a few years before his epiphany ...

Bonus vid: Anita Lane + Barry Adamson with the classic revenge song ....

Spotify Wrapped? No. "A massive thumbs up to anyone that bought a physical copy of anyone’s record this year."

"Lots of people currently posting their 2025 Spotify Wrapped statistics and artists thanking their listeners for streaming their music, so I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone that actually bought a PHYSICAL COPY of any of my records this year. 

"In fact a massive thumbs up to anyone that bought a physical copy of anyone’s record this year for helping to keep the art of the album alive. I’m not naive enough to think that streaming isn't the dominant platform for music listening in the 21st century by a huge margin, but I also believe the relationship between a listener and a physical piece of art is still a magical and special thing that will never be replaced by ones and zeros streaming off a server. 

"So here is Steven Wrapped, 20 physical releases I listened to a lot this year ... "

~ post from Steven Wilson

15 YEARS AGO (LIBERTARIAN SUS ): Let's make Christmas more commercial!

Here's another topical post from the archives, this time from old friend Libertarian Sus who was once a regular poster here at NOT PC back in the good old days. I haven't seen her for many years (let me know if you have her current details, I'd love to catch up). In any case, I trust she's beaten us all, once again, to the first-to-get-up-the-Christmas-tree prize this December ...

I love Christmas. I love everything about it, from shopping to decorating to singing carols. It’s my favourite time of the year, as it is for millions around the world.

There’s something about putting your tree up. I put mine up earlier than anybody I know, with the exception of my sister who occasionally pips me to the post. I usually aim for the last Sunday in November, complete with my favourite festive music. My youngest sister, a mother of three, somewhat violently swears the two of us to secrecy, lest my nephews and niece pester her to get their tree up ridiculously early, too.

The music is important, because it simply wouldn’t be Christmas for us without it. The first is from Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters, originally recorded in the 1940s. My late grandfather was a huge Crosby fan and he and Nana had the record. We played it every Christmas until it quite literally warped – and even then we still played it. Several years ago we discovered it on CD, thereby preserving the tradition for the next generation, who I’m delighted to report know all the words of 'Mele Kalikimaka.'

The second is a relative newcomer, Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas, introduced by one of my brothers-in-law, a musician. Aaron might look like a criminal – and he does - but he has the voice of an angel. I defy the hardest heart to not be moved by his rendition of “O Holy Night” in particular. Occasionally we will permit an interloper on Christmas Day itself, but generally it’s just Aaron and Bing.

Perfect.

Anyway, back to the tree where my decorations are like old friends who visit once a year. Some were picked up in my travels in the days when the offerings in New Zealand were severely limited, but now, thanks to globalisation, we are spoilt for choice. No matter the size of the tree, though, or the quality and quantity of the decorations, they come alive with Christmas lights. The lights provide the magic.

Retailers love the Christmas season and for good reason. For many, it’s the busiest time of the year with December sales representing a healthy portion of their turnover. The big annual spend-up on Christmas gifts is an example of the market at work. Stores are stocked to the brim with goods to sell, employing thousands of staff in the process. Students are gainfully employed as much-needed additional staff to help offset the costs of their next educational year, or to just get through the summer.

Manufacturers work hard to complete orders on time and freight companies are flat out with seasonal deliveries. The livelihoods of many depend upon the Christmas season, and yet every year we hear the same cries that Christmas has become commercialised, as if it is a bad thing.

But why is that so?

To answer that question, it is worthwhile to explore its origins. Here’s a quick look. Christmas is a Christian holiday and like other Christian holidays, it has its origin in paganism.

Saturnalia was a Roman festival in honour of Saturn, the god of agriculture. It began on 15 December and lasted for seven days of feasting and revelry, just prior to the winter solstice that fell around 25 December on the Julian calendar. The solstice included glorification of Mithra, the god of light who several centuries later became known as the god of the sun. The Roman Catholic Church had the habit of absorbing pagan traditions into Christendom, converting the holiday commemorating the birth of the sun god into a “Christ Mass.”

However, Christmas-time celebrations prior to the 1800s still featured much pagan revelry among the British commoners, at times little more than wild carousals. It is believed that this drunken revelry had much to do with Oliver Cromwell – never much of a partygoer – going so far as to outlaw Christmas in the 17th century, forcing it underground for a time. This ban was extended to many of the early North American colonies where “violators” were fined five shillings. After its reinstatement, Christmas still bore much of its earlier debauchery, but some of our current traditions started to appear. For example, caroling began with groups of individuals visiting houses in the community singing songs in exchange for eggnog. Gift-giving, however, was still extremely limited, and virtually unknown within families.

The traditions of several countries are involved. The Yule log came from Scandinavian mythology, “Yule” being the Anglo- Saxon term for the months of December and January. After most Scandinavians had converted to Christianity, “Yule” became synonymous with Christmas.

By the 17th century, the Germans had converted the Christmas tree, originally a sign of fertility, into a Christian symbol of rebirth. The Dutch called Saint Nicholas, an altruistic bishop from the 4th century, ‘Sinterklaas’, who was to become ‘Santa Claus’ in the USA. In 1823 the American professor Clement Clarke Moore wrote the delightful poem entitled 'A Visit from Saint Nicholas,' better known as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.'

But perhaps the greatest change occurred after the publication in 1843 of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, providing lessons on charity and the importance of caring for family and friends. As a result, Christmas became a joyful, domestic holiday focusing on children in particular. It was an illustrator with Harper’smagazine, who first depicted Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole in the latter half of the 19th century, while Coca-Cola ran commercials in 1931 showing Santa as the children’s gift-giver, as we know him today. Rudolf, the much-loved ninth reindeer appeared in 1939 via an advertising agent on behalf of his retailing client, all of which paved the way for the commercialism seen annually for decades.

The festive colour and sparkle brightened the dark days of the long northern winters, with the seasonal sales providing welcome respite during the slower trading months.

But what of Christmas down under, occurring as it does in early summer. Is it not odd to see traditional winter celebrations imposed by early settlers upon warm, sunny days? Christmas cards depicting robins on snow-covered mailboxes? Rugged-up Carolers sipping hot toddies?

Not at all … if that’s what you like. Whether you prefer a traditional roast meal or a barbecue outside, a formal dinner or informal brunch, a church service to celebrate the birth of Christ or a walk along the beach, a large, rowdy family affair or a quiet day indulging your favourite pastimes, is entirely up to you.

And rather than decrying its commercialism, I prefer to embrace it for the wealth it provides and the jobs it creates. It would be a mean-spirited Scrooge who begrudged another his income during the Season of Goodwill. Do some people overstretch themselves financially? Sadly, yes. But the truth is that nobody forces them to do so. Beautiful doesn’t have to be big and bold. It never did. Yes, the Santa sleepwear is tacky. Yes, the reindeer antlers are tragic on anyone old enough to pay full price at the pictures, and ‘Snoopy’s Christmas’ drives me nuts, too—whoever’s singing the damn thing. But it all vanishes in comparison with the beauty of a Christmas tree lit up in the darkness, and the enrapturing melodies of some of the most beautiful music ever written.

May Father Christmas be good to you all.

Tom Waits's Thought for the Day: On gentlemen

 

... attributed, possibly incorrectly, to Tom Waits. 

He's right, you know

"Leading British artists including Mick Jagger, Kate Bush and Paul McCartney have urged [UK Prime Minister] Keir Starmer to stand up for creators’ human rights and protect their work ahead of a UK-US tech deal during Donald Trump’s visit.

In a letter to the prime minister, they argued Labour had failed to defend artists’ basic rights by blocking attempts to force artificial intelligence firms to reveal what copyrighted material they have used in their systems. ...

“ 'The government’s formal position has exhibited a shocking indifference to mass theft, and a complete unwillingness to enforce the existing law to uphold the human rights stipulated by the ICESCR, the Berne Convention and the ECHR,' said the letter. ...

"Elton John, one of the letter’s signatories, said government proposals to let AI companies train their systems on copyright-protected work without permission 'leaves the door wide open for an artist’s life work to be stolen.' ”

~ from the article 'Top UK artists urge Starmer to protect their work on eve of Trump visit'

"The single biggest reason why social media is now a dead-end for musicians is that people can’t remember the names of artists or the titles of songs they like."

"The single biggest reason why social media is now a dead-end for musicians is that people can’t remember the names of artists or the titles of songs they like. ...

"Many will blame GenZ for this disturbing passivity. And even the youngsters admit that the music they hear on TikTok and Instagram is mostly chosen by algorithm, not their own active engagement. But social media platforms are driving these behaviour patterns—and are the real root cause of our threatened culture.

"These platforms aim to control behaviour with their algorithms. They encourage passivity. This is all by design. ...

"In a sane universe, the major record labels would fight against this anonymity and ambivalence. But, instead, they have embraced TikTok—assuming that it will create the next generation of superstar artists.

"I fretted about that in a blistering 2022 article entitled “Record Labels Dig Their Own Grave. And the Shovel is Called TikTok.” I wonder if they have figured that out yet.

"I fear they might still be digging."

~ Ted Gioia from his post 'Listeners Can't Remember the Names of Their Favorite Songs and Artists'

The Friendship Test (or, A Test of Friendship)

"When Olga Khazan introduced 'The Big Lebowski'—her favourite movie—to her friend, she was nervous. 'I was worried that she would dislike it so much that she would kind of dislike me too, through osmosis,' she writes. Jitters such as hers, it turns out, are common.

“'If something really matters to you ... there’s a vulnerability in sharing it with someone else.' When we declare a favourite book, movie, or album and introduce it to others ... what we’re doing is saying, 'This is an aspect of my identity that I’m willingly putting out there in order for other people to know me. And if you reject this thing, you reject me.'

"Our friends often do like what we like. The trouble is, we usually want our friends to be even more similar to us than they actually are ... Whether a disagreement over a beloved book or movie sparks friction in the friendship depends on how well you know the friend, what else you have in common, and how important that particular book, movie, or show is to you ..."

~ Olga Khazan from her post 'The Big Lebowski Friendship Test'

Bishop v Walker

I'm astonished to discover that we're starting the news week with folk still arguing about what Chris Bishop might have said about Stan Walker's alleged musical performance. 

Why is this even news?

Why is it still news?

And why should we care what either think of either?

I like simple principles. And on this question I follow a very simple principle. It's a principle that says "You don't look to a musician for their tips on politics any more than you'd look to a politician for their tips on music."

Which is very helpful advice, I think — especially if you enjoy the melodies of one Richard Wagner. 

If your favourite muso's slogans do resonate, mind you, that gives you a little extra. But you look to music for the emotion of it (or perhaps its danceable emotion) which lasts a lot longer than simple sloganeering.

So get on and enjoy The Clash and the Manics as much as you like without guilt.

Here's The Beat:

Elton John: A.I. copyright changes are "criminal" — "committing theft" from artists.

It's been a very long time since I've praised Elton John ...

.... okay, in truth I've never praised the bald, bland, over-played jingle-maker.

But this morning, I come to praise Mr John, not to berate him.

The issue is so-called artificial intelligence (AI). And the rights of "content creators," from whose content the "learning models" steal without either attribution or payment.

The US is facing what Trump calls a "Big Beautiful Bill" that will add a staggering $3.8 trillion to the national debt. It also includes a 10-year exemption from regulation for artificial intelligence (AI)— a "safe harbour [that] would give Big Tech another free ride on the backs of artists, authors, consumers, all of us and our children." (No coincidence that Trump fired Shira Perlmutter, the Register of Copyrights, "less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models." This, just after the Copyight Office finalised their report they've been making for 2+ years, concluding that Generative AI trained on Copyrighted works is probably NOT "Fair Use." )

Similar legal protection for theft of copyrighted works is being introduced in the UK, where Elton John has (correctly) branded proposed AI copyright changes there as "criminal" and accused officials (again, correctly) of "committing theft" from artists.

Should the government proceed with the plans allowing AI firms to use artists' content without paying, they would be "committing theft, thievery on a high scale," the music legend said. 

He's right, you know. Exempting 'Big Tech' from complying with copyright law simply hands the creative output of every individual to AI companies. 

For free.

"The danger is for young artists, they haven't got the resources to keep checking or fight big tech," John said in a BBC interview on Sunday. "It's criminal and I feel incredibly betrayed."

Betrayed because he supported Starmer on the back promises to support young musicians. Still, it's the first time I've felt sympathy for the world-class purveyor of middle-class muzak.  Because even tedious tunes best used for sleep still need to be written by someone before they'e copied by a prowling plagiarising-information-synthesis system (PISS) — and, if the plagiarising process is legalised, then every creator's work becomes fair game for misappropriation,

John's statements come in response to a controversial proposal that would ease copyright laws in the country, allowing AI developers to train models on any creative works to which they [currently] have lawful access. ...

Concerns around artist permission and compensation guarantees have brought John alongside an alliance of artists to gather support in an open letter to help warn of how the government's planned changes could affect creators.

The artists are calling on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to back amendments filed by Baroness Beeban Kidron over the so-called Data (Use and Access) Bill, citing an urgent need for "transparency over the copyright works ingested by AI models."

The open letter was signed by notable figures like Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ed Sheeran, and Dua Lipa, along with over 400 signatories from groups including the National Union of Journalists, Getty Images, and Sony Music Publishing. ...

McCartney told the BBC that the proposed changes could disincentivise writers and artists and result in a “loss of creativity.”  

The former Beatle said: “You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off.”

“The truth is, the money’s going somewhere … Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote Yesterday?”

“We’re the people, you’re the government. You’re supposed to protect us. That’s your job. So you know, if you’re putting through a bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them.” ...

In December 2024, McCartney ... signed a petition, alongside actors Julianne Moore, Stephen Fry and Hugh Bonneville, stating that “unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

John told the Sunday Times that he felt “wheels are in motion to allow AI companies to ride roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods." 

This will allow global big tech companies to gain free and easy access to artists’ work in order to train their artificial intelligence and create competing music. This will dilute and threaten young artists’ earnings even further. The musician community rejects it wholeheartedly.”

Last week, disagreements over the Data Bill raised concerns about whether AI companies should disclose the data used for training models, as legislators pushed for stricter rules to help creators determine if their work was scraped.

However, the House of Commons has rejected certain amendments proposed by the House of Lords, including those requiring AI firms to obtain permission before using copyrighted materials.

It's said that it's no big deal. That any man's work is public property. That artists have always "borrowed" from each other.

Artists have been learning from each other for centuries. When you create, you expect that other artists will learn from you. You learn from myriad sources, including active & passive learning from other art, studying textbooks, and taking lessons. Much of this you (or someone) pays for, supporting the entire ecosystem. 

In generative AI [however], commercial entities valued at millions or billions of dollars scrape as much content as they can, against creators’ will, without payment, making multiple copies along the way (which are subject to copyright law), to create a highly scalable competitor to the training data. It is beyond belief that people suggest these should be treated the same. I feel increasingly confident that people only use this argument because other arguments for gen AI scraping are, incredibly, even worse.

Jingle writer Elton John supported Starmer's election, and his alleged support for young musicians. 

Now he sees betrayal: “It’s really disrespectful, it’s really disheartening. I supported this government, 

I did a thing for them at St Paul’s Cathedral, when Keir Starmer said, ‘I want to help young people 

in the music business, I want to support them’ - well, he’s not doing it.”

As a creator himself, of tunes for which people willingly (and unaccountably!) pay money, Elton John recognises that the Bill “will allow global big tech companies to gain free and easy access to artists’ work in order to train their artificial intelligence and create competing music. This will dilute and threaten young artists’ earnings even further. The musician community rejects it wholeheartedly.”

"We're complaining about people's legacy, whether they're young writers, whether they're young playwrights, journalists, whatever; some people aren't like me, they don't earn as much as I do, but when they're creative and it comes from the human soul and not a machine — because a machine isn't capable of writing anything with any soul in it — [then you're going] to rob young people of their legacy and their income.

"It's a criminal offense, I think.

“I think the government are just being absolute losers - and I’m very angry about it, as you can tell.

“Big tech has so much money - and if you’re a young person and you’re fighting big tech, good luck. 

“I want the government to see sense; I want it to come back on our side. Because if they don’t, I’m going to feel like a suffragette.”

AI's developers have created something themselves. That's clear. But their creation, as they know, is an industrial-scale process for scraping copyrighted content, while leaving the artist's soul behind.

A hallmark of the AI developers is that they routinely discount, or even detest, the artistic soul, going so far as to both ignore it and then try to claim all of its enduring, exalted riches for themselves. They foolishly value mere money and market caps, whence, over the long term, it is the soul alone that is the best long-term investment, as the soul alone is immortal. It is the artist and creator who invests in the soul, it is the artist and creator who risks it all to express their vision, and it is the artist and creator who thus naturally and rightfully owns their art, and who owns the right to profit from it. ... 

“Hell is the soulless place where all art, music, literature, film, philosophy, religion, history, science, and poetry are generated by AI. Even Dante would be horrified.”  

The elephant in the room is that AI does nothing well, not even cheating. AI can only cheat as well as its creators teach it to cheat.

 

Never Fade Away

"Age shall not wither them...".

Hey, hey, it’s Easter!

Christus Hypercubus, Salvador Dali.

IT'S GOOD FRIDAY. AND YOU know what that means here at NOT PC: time to call out (again) the 2000-year ethic of sacrifice as nothing but inhuman. In a more rational place, we'd view the worship of human sacrifice not with celebration, but with horror. ("If you knew a father who gave up his only son to be killed in expiation for the crimes and misdemeanours of other people, would you call that chap a loving father? Or would you call him a psychopath?") 

"What's the theme of Easter, and of Easter art? In a word, it's sacrifice: specifically human sacrifice. And more specifically, the sacrifice of the good to the appalling.
    "That's the Easter theme we're asked to respond to every year."
    Easter through art 

"Let’s summarise. In Pagan times, Easter was the time in the Northern calendar when the coming of spring was celebrated -- the celebration of new life, of coming fecundity. Hence the eggs and rabbits and celebrations of fertility. Indeed, the very word  'Easter' comes from Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, and means, symbolically, the festival celebrating the rebirth of light after the darkness of winter. 
    "But with the coming of Christianity, the celebration was hijacked to become a veneration of torture and sacrifice ..."
    Easter Week, Part 4: Surely There Are Better Stories to Tell? 

"AND MAN MADE GODS in his own image, and that of the animals he saw around him, and he saw these stories were sometimes helpful psychologically in a a pre-philosophical age. But one of these gods was a jealous god. For this god was so angry at the world he sent one-third of himself to die to expiate the sins of those with whom he was angry, for sins that (in his omniscience) he would have always known they would commit.
    "It’s not just history the christian story challenges, is it. It’s logic."
    Easter Week, Part 3: The Holy Art of Sacrifice 

"Christianity didn’t start with Jesus, any more than the Easter story did. Paul, who never even met Jesus but who played the largest part in explaining his life, and his death, had a big hand in both.
    "Jesus’s death was a secular event his followers struggled to explain."
    Easter Week, Part 2: Enter Hercules…

"IT’S EASTER WEEK – a time, since human cultural life began up in the northern hemisphere, when men and women and their families came together to celebrate.
    "To celebrate what?
    "Why, to celebrate spring, of course. ..."
    Hey, hey, it’s Easter Week! 

Oh, and a gentle reminder that the state still owns your shop at Easter. And it still owns you all year. That's the secular sacrifice demanded by the Season.

Cartoon by Nick Kim

And a note that the greatest artists can nonetheless find the sublime within the story. Here's Wagner's 'Good Friday Spell,' aka Karfreitagszauber.  Turn it up!

We are living in the Age of Slop

"A century ago, the creative world was buzzing with exciting artistic movements. Everything was fresh, new, and vital:

• You could be a Surrealist or a Futurist or a Post-Impressionist or a Cubist. 
• You could align yourself with Art Deco or Dada or Bauhaus or Fauvism. 
• You could proclaim your allegiance to Imagism or Verismo or the Harlem Renaissance—and dozens of other creative movements.

"And what about today? …..

"Instead of aesthetic manifestos, we get web platforms. They have machines to make big decisions—and the machines have invented the dominant art style of our day.

"It’s called Slop. And it’s everywhere.

"There’s Slop music and Slop visual art and Slop video. There’s Slop enough for all of us—because the machines Slop nonstop. ... It’s easy: Just find an AI bot, and give it a prompt—the goofier the better.

"So I created this image of Vladimir Putin and Taylor Swift on a motorbike, with teddy bears celebrating the couple’s impending nuptials.

"Yes, I am deliberately creating something ridiculous. But that’s the essence of Slop. ...

"AI image generation is boring unless the results are stupid. That’s the consensus view. And it’s why AI artists are in a race to make the most abominable Slop they can extract from the bots.

"People collect and curate these images. Entire social media accounts are devoted to stupid Slop. ... The supply is endless—because AI never sleeps.

"We have come a long way from the days of Impressionism and Naturalism and all the rest. Those were serious movements. They happened because of dedicated artists committed to their craft.

"Slop is the opposite.

"It’s the perfect aesthetic theory for twelve-year olds with no artistic sensitivity—but possessing a crude sense of humour and lots of pop culture detritus in their heads. ...

"[N]one of this happens by chance.

"AI does not possess a self. It lacks personhood. It has no experience of subjectivity. So any art it creates will inevitably feel empty and hollow.

"Any human quality it possesses will be based on imitation, pretense, and deception. None of it is real.

"AI doesn’t even have a direct sense of objectivity—its knowledge of objects is all secondhand, assimilated through data. This results in a lack of depth or felt significance in any artistic work it creates.

"That why Slop is inevitable in an Age of AI.

"But this will not stop it from dominating the aesthetics of our time. ...

"In a previous day, people who got rich quick but lacked good taste were called vulgar. I don’t hear that word much anymore. But maybe it should have a comeback."

~ Ted Gioia from his post 'The New Aesthetics of Slop'

What's the damn point of a musical biopic?

 

What's the damn point of a biopic? Any of the damn things, not just this latest one.

It's sold as a biography. (Hence the "bio.")

But the story is contrived.

The impersonations are laughable. (Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas? You have to be kidding.)

And in the age of YouTube, even if I liked the musician (which is rare anywhere with these things), why see someone impersonating a musician, badly, when you can watch the real thing over and over again as many times as you like?! 

Even (to cite examples contrived for the latest of these things) the actual (but pretty ordinary) 1964 Baez-Dylan performance at the Newport Folk Festival, or the actual (and much-mythologised) 1965 Newport Folk Festival a year later — when folkies allegedly boo the 'newly'-electric Dylan* (which is not at all how I hear it on my bootleg records, by the way, which don't use any fancy audio enhancement).

And if it is Bob Dylan you're after, that confirmed plagiarist, then there's already plenty of films of the actual Bob to watch made by genuine film-makers like D.A. Pennebaker, Martin Scorcese, and even Bob himself (though you really, really don't want to go there).

If there's one Bob film you do have to watch that truly captures lightning in a bottle (and also, incidentally, the real demise of the Baez-Dylan relationship) then it's Pennebaker's Don't Look Back.

The fly-on-the-wall Don't Look Back (a year before that 1965 Newport appearance) is the only one you really need.

Oh, but, the biopic's actor spent five years learning to play guitar just so he could copy Bob! Really? Bob spent years learning to really be Bob; why watch a piss-poor imitation when the real thing is so easily available? 

Oh, but the screenwriters made a better story out of real life than it would have been otherwise! Ugh, you mean the life-story depicted isn't so much bio as it is fiction? Right. 

Oh but, but ... But me no buts. Don't waste your time (or mine) on these things.

I look forward to the time when film-makers learn how to tell actual stories again, instead of comic-book action flicks or contrived pseudo-bios that are done better elsewhere.

* His Bobness had been 'electric' on record since his first single way back in 1962, and a whole side of an album earlier that same year. 

Tidal Wrapped

 

I'm still hearing folk talking about what their "Spotify Wrapped" told them in December about their favourites. Interesting.

I don't use Spotify.  When I'm at the office I use Tidal. Tidal has higher-quality streaming, pays musicians more, and takes more care about crediting the artists. Tidal doesn't have a "Wrapped" thing showing you your favourite artists just once a year — Tidal does it all the time ...

How would your Top 49 look?

Socialists once argued that socialism was superior to capitalism because it would deliver a higher standard of living and more consumer goods. When it became abundantly clear that this was bollocks, the socialists shifted their arguments and began to claim that socialism—while perhaps economically inferior—was superior morally and philosophically. And thus was born the post-modern denial of that outrageous success in human progress, and environmentalists' objection to it. 

Stephen Hicks writes about this in his 2004 book Explaining Postmodernism. Ludwig Von Mises was on to this a half-century before when he penned his short book The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, explaining why the intellectuals of his day so loathed the free market.... 

The Noneconomic Objections to Capitalism

by Ludwig Von Mises

1. The Argument of Happiness

Critics level two charges against capitalism: First, they say, that the possession of a motor car, a television set, and a refrigerator does not make a man happy. Secondly, they complain that there are still people who own none of these gadgets. Both propositions are correct, but neither casts blame upon the capitalistic system of social cooperation.

People do not toil and trouble in order to attain perfect happiness, but in order to remove as much as possible some felt uneasiness and thus to become happier than they were before. A man who buys a television set thereby gives evidence to the effect that he thinks that the possession of this contrivance will increase his well-being and make him more content than he was without it. If it were otherwise, he would not have bought it. The task of the doctor is not to make the patient happy, but to remove his pain and to put him in better shape for the pursuit of the main concern of every living being, the fight against all factors pernicious to his life and ease.

It may be true that there are among Buddhist mendicants, living on alms in dirt and penury, some who feel perfectly happy and do not envy any nabob. However, it is a fact that for the immense majority of people such a life would appear unbearable. To them the impulse toward ceaselessly aiming at the improvement of the external conditions of existence is inwrought. ... One of the most remarkable achievements of capitalism is the drop in infant mortality. Who wants to deny that this phenomenon has at least removed one of the causes of many people’s unhappiness?

No less absurd is the second reproach thrown upon capitalism — namely, that technological and therapeutical innovations do not benefit all people. Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little. The innovation is first a luxury of only a few people, until by degrees it comes into the reach of the many. 

It is not a sensible objection to the use of shoes or of forks that they spread only slowly and that even today millions do without them. The dainty ladies and gentlemen who first began to use soap were the harbingers of the big-scale production of soap for the common man. If those who have today the means to buy a television set were to abstain from the purchase because some people cannot afford it, they would not further, but hinder, the popularisation of this contrivance. 

The inherent tendency of capitalism is towards shortening the interval between the appearance of a new improvement and the moment its use becomes general.

2. The Argument of Materialism

Again there are grumblers who blame capitalism for what they call its mean materialism. They cannot help admitting that capitalism has the tendency to improve the material conditions of mankind. But, they say, it has diverted men from the higher and nobler pursuits. It feeds the bodies, but it starves the souls and the minds. It has brought about a decay of the arts. Gone are the days of the great poets, painters, sculptors and architects. Our age produces merely trash. ...

'Fallingwater,' Frank Lloyd Wright, 1936

Among those who make pretense to the appellation of educated men there is much hypocrisy. They put on an air of connoisseurship and feign enthusiasm for the art of the past and artists passed away long ago. They show no similar sympathy for the contemporary artist who still fights for recognition. Dissembled adoration for the Old Masters is with them a means to disparage and ridicule the new ones who deviate from traditional canons and create their own.

John Ruskin will be remembered — together with Carlyle, the Webbs, Bernard Shaw and some others — as one of the gravediggers of British freedom, civilisation, and prosperity. A wretched character in his private no less than in his public life, he glorified war and bloodshed and fanatically slandered the teachings of political economy which he did not understand. 

He was a bigoted detractor of the market economy and a romantic eulogist of the guilds. He paid homage to the arts of earlier centuries. But when he faced the work of a great living artist, Whistler, he dispraised it in such foul and objurgatory language that he was sued for libel and found guilty by the jury. It was the writings of Ruskin that popularised the prejudice that capitalism, apart from being a bad economic system, has substituted ugliness for beauty, pettiness for grandeur, trash for art.

'Nocturne in Black and Gold: TheFalling
Rocket,' James McNeil Whistler, 1875

As people widely disagree in the appreciation of artistic achievements, it is not possible to explode the talk about the artistic inferiority of the age of capitalism in the same apodictic way in which one may refute errors in logical reasoning or in the establishment of facts of experience. Yet no sane man would be insolent enough as to belittle the grandeur of the artistic exploits of the age of capitalism.

The preeminent art of this age of “mean materialism and money-making” was music. Wagner and Verdi, Berlioz and Bizet, Brahms and Bruckner, Hugo Wolf and Mahler, Puccini and Richard Strauss, what an illustrious cavalcade! What an era in which such masters as Schumann and Donizetti were overshadowed by still superior genius!

Then there were the great novels of Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Jens Jacobsen, Proust, and the poems of Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, Rilke, Yeats. How poor our lives would be if we had to miss the work of these giants and of many other no less sublime authors.

Let us not forget the French painters and sculptors who taught us new ways of looking at the world and enjoying light and color.

Nobody ever contested that this age has encouraged all branches of scientific activities. But, say the grumblers, this was mainly the work of specialists while “synthesis” was lacking. One can hardly misconstrue in a more absurd way the teachings of modern mathematics, physics, and biology. And what about the books of philosophers like Croce, Bergson, Husserl, and Whitehead?

Each epoch has its own character in its artistic exploits. Imitation of masterworks of the past is not art; it is routine. What gives value to a work is those features in which it differs from other works. This is what is called the style of a period.

In one respect the eulogists of the past seem to be justified. The last generations did not bequeath to the future such monuments as the pyramids, the Greek temples, the Gothic cathedrals and the churches and palaces of the Renaissance and the Baroque. In the last hundred years many churches and even cathedrals were built and many more government palaces, schools and libraries. But they do not show any original conception; they reflect old styles or hybridise diverse old styles. Only in apartment houses, office buildings, and private homes have we seen something develop that may be qualified as an architectural style of our age. Although it would be mere pedantry not to appreciate the peculiar grandeur of such sights as the New York skyline, it can be admitted that modern architecture has not attained the distinction of that of past centuries.

The reasons are various. As far as religious buildings are concerned, the accentuated conservatism of the churches shuns any innovation. With the passing of dynasties and aristocracies, the impulse to construct new palaces disappeared. The wealth of entrepreneurs and capitalists is, whatever the anticapitalistic demagogues may fable, so much inferior to that of kings and princes that they cannot indulge in such luxurious construction. No one is today rich enough to plan such palaces as that of Versailles or the Escorial. The orders for the construction of government buildings do no longer emanate from despots who were free, in defiance of public opinion, to choose a master whom they themselves held in esteem and to sponsor a project that scandalised the dull majority. Committees and councils are not likely to adopt the ideas of bold pioneers. They prefer to range themselves on the safe side.

Side table by Eileen Gray, chair by Marcel Breuer

There has never been an era in which the many were prepared to do justice to contemporary art. Reverence to the great authors and artists has always been limited to small groups. What characterises capitalism is not the bad taste of the crowds, but the fact that these crowds, made prosperous by capitalism, became “consumers” of literature — of course, of trashy literature. The book market is flooded by a downpour of trivial fiction for the semi-barbarians. But this does not prevent great authors from creating imperishable works.

The critics shed tears on the alleged decay of the industrial arts. They contrast, e.g., old furniture as preserved in the castles of European aristocratic families and in the collections of the museums with the cheap things turned out by big-scale production. They fail to see that these collectors’ items were made exclusively for the well-to-do. The carved chests and the intarsia tables could not be found in the miserable huts of the poorer strata. 

Those caviling about the inexpensive furniture of the American wage earner should ... [realise that w]hen modern industry began to provide the masses with the paraphernalia of a better life, their main concern was to produce as cheaply as possible without any regard to aesthetic values. Later, when the progress of capitalism had raised the masses’ standard of living, they turned step by step to the fabrication of things which do not lack refinement and beauty. Only romantic prepossession can induce an observer to ignore the fact that more and more citizens of the capitalistic countries live in an environment which cannot be simply dismissed as ugly.

3. The Argument of Injustice

The most passionate detractors of capitalism are those who reject it on account of its alleged injustice.

It is a gratuitous pastime to depict what ought to be and is not because it is contrary to inflexible laws of the real universe. Such reveries may be considered as innocuous as long as they remain daydreams. But when their authors begin to ignore the difference between fantasy and reality, they become the most serious obstacle to human endeavours to improve the external conditions of life and well-being.

The worst of all these delusions is the idea that “nature” has bestowed upon every man certain rights. According to this doctrine nature is openhanded toward every child born. There is plenty of everything for everybody, they say. Consequently, everyone has a fair inalienable claim against all his fellowmen and against society that he should get the full portion which nature has already allotted to him. The eternal laws of natural and divine justice require that nobody should appropriate to himself what by rights belongs to other people. The poor are needy therefore only because unjust people have deprived them of their birthright. It is the task of the church and the secular authorities to prevent such spoliation and to make all people prosperous.

Every word of this doctrine is false. Nature is not bountiful but stingy. It has restricted the supply of all things indispensable for the preservation of human life. It has populated the world with animals and plants to whom the impulse to destroy human life and welfare is inwrought. It displays powers and elements whose operation is damaging to human life and to human endeavours to preserve it. Man’s survival and well-being are an achievement of the skill with which he has utilised the main instrument with which nature has equipped him — reason.

Men, cooperating under the system of the division of labour, have created all the wealth which the daydreamers consider as a free gift of nature. With regard to the “distribution” of this wealth, it is nonsensical to refer to an allegedly divine or natural principle of justice. What matters is not the allocation of portions out of a fund presented to man by nature. The problem is rather to further those social institutions which enable people to continue and to enlarge the production of all those things which they need.

The World Council of Churches, an ecumenical organisation of Protestant Churches, declared in 1948: “Justice demands that the inhabitants of Asia and Africa, for instance, should have the benefits of more machine production.” This makes sense only if one implies that the Lord presented mankind with a definite quantity of machines and expected that these contrivances will be distributed equally among the various nations. Yet the capitalistic countries were bad enough to take possession of much more of this stock than “justice” would have assigned to them and thus to deprive the inhabitants of Asia and Africa of their fair portion. What a shame!

The truth is that the accumulation of capital and its investment in machines, the source of the comparatively greater wealth of the Western peoples, are due exclusively to laissez-faire capitalism which the same document of the churches passionately misrepresents and rejects on moral grounds. 

It is not the fault of the capitalists that the poorer countries did not adopt those ideologies and policies which would have made the evolution of autochthonous capitalism possible. 

Neither is it the fault of the capitalists that the policies of these nations thwarted the attempts of foreign investors to give them “the benefits of more machine production.” No one contests that what makes hundreds of millions in these nations destitute is that they cling to primitive methods of production and miss the benefits which the employment of better tools and up-to-date technological designs could bestow upon them. But there is only one means to relieve their distress — namely, the full adoption of laissez-faire capitalism. What they need is private enterprise and the accumulation of new capital, capitalists, and entrepreneurs. It is nonsensical to blame capitalism and the capitalistic nations of the West for the plight the backward peoples have brought upon themselves. The remedy indicated is not “justice” but the substitution of sound, i.e., laissez-faire, policies for unsound policies.

It was not vain disquisitions about a vague concept of justice that raised the standard of living of the common man in the capitalistic countries to its present height, but the activities of men dubbed as “rugged individualists” and “exploiters.” The poverty of the backward nations is due to the fact that their policies of expropriation, discriminatory taxation, and foreign exchange control prevent the investment of foreign capital while their domestic policies preclude the accumulation of indigenous capital.

All those rejecting capitalism on moral grounds as an unfair system are deluded by their failure to comprehend what capital is, how it comes into existence, and how it is maintained — and what the benefits are which are derived from its employment in production processes.

The only source of the generation of additional capital goods is saving. If all the goods produced are consumed, no new capital comes into being. But if consumption lags behind production and the surplus of goods newly produced over goods consumed is utilised in further production processes, these processes are henceforth carried out by the aid of more capital goods. 

All the capital goods are intermediary goods, stages on the road that leads from the first employment of the original factors of production, i.e., natural resources and human labour, to the final turning out of goods ready for consumption. They all are perishable. They are, sooner or later, worn out in the processes of production. If all the products are consumed without replacement of the capital goods which have been used up in their production, capital is consumed. If this happens, further production will be aided only by a smaller amount of capital goods and will therefore render a smaller output per unit of the natural resources and labor employed. To prevent this sort of dissaving and disinvestment, one must dedicate a part of the productive effort to capital maintenance, to the replacement of the capital goods absorbed in the production of usable goods.

Capital is not a free gift of God or of nature. It is the outcome of a provident restriction of consumption on the part of man. It is created and increased by saving and maintained by the abstention from dissaving.

Neither have capital or capital goods in themselves the power to raise the productivity of natural resources and of human labor. Only if the fruits of saving are wisely employed or invested, do they increase the output per unit of the input of natural resources and of labor. If this is not the case, they are dissipated or wasted.

The accumulation of new capital, the maintenance of previously accumulated capital and the utilisation of capital for raising the productivity of human effort are the fruits of purposive human action. They are the outcome of the conduct of thrifty people who save and abstain from dissaving, viz., the capitalists who earn interest; and of people who succeed in utilizing the capital available for the best possible satisfaction of the needs of the consumers, viz., the entrepreneurs who earn profit.

Neither capital (or capital goods) nor the conduct of the capitalists and entrepreneurs in dealing with capital could improve the standard of living for the rest of the people, if these noncapitalists and nonentrepreneurs did not react in a certain way. If the wage earners were to behave in the way which the spurious “iron law of wages” describes and would know of no use for their earnings other than to feed and to procreate more offspring, the increase in capital accumulated would keep pace with the increase in population figures. All the benefits derived from the accumulation of additional capital would be absorbed by multiplying the number of people. However, men do not respond to an improvement in the external conditions of their lives in the way in which rodents and germs do. They know also of other satisfactions than feeding and proliferation. Consequently, in the countries of capitalistic civilisation, the increase of capital accumulated outruns the increase in population figures. To the extent that this happens, the marginal productivity of labour is increased as against the marginal productivity of the material factors of production. There emerges a tendency toward higher wage rates. The proportion of the total output of production that goes to the wage earners is enhanced as against that which goes as interest to the capitalists and as rent to the land owners. 

To speak of the productivity of labour makes sense only if one refers to the marginal productivity of labour, i.e., to the deduction in net output to be caused by the elimination of one worker. Then it refers to a definite economic quantity, to a determinate amount of goods or its equivalent in money. The concept of a general productivity of labour as resorted to in popular talk about an allegedly natural right of the workers to claim the total increase in productivity is empty and indefinable. It is based on the illusion that it is possible to determine the shares that each of the various complementary factors of production has physically contributed to the turning out of the product. If one cuts a sheet of paper with scissors, it is impossible to ascertain quotas of the outcome to the scissors (or to each of the two blades) and to the man who handled them. To manufacture a car one needs various machines and tools, various raw materials, the labour of various manual workers and, first of all, the plan of a designer. But nobody can decide what quota of the finished car is to be physically ascribed to each of the various factors the cooperation of which was required for the production of the car.

For the sake of argument, we may for a moment set aside all the considerations which show the fallacies of the popular treatment of the problem and ask: Which of the two factors, labour or capital, caused the increase in productivity? But precisely if we put the question in this way, the answer must be: capital. What renders the total output in the present-day United States higher (per head of manpower employed) than output in earlier ages or in economically backward countries is the fact that the contemporary American worker is aided by more and better tools. If capital equipment (per head of the worker) were not more abundant than it was three hundred years ago, say, then output (per head of the worker) would not be higher. What is required to raise, in the absence of an increase in the number of workers employed, the total amount of America’s industrial output is the investment of additional capital that can only be accumulated by new saving. It is those saving and investing to whom credit is to be given for the multiplication of the productivity of the total labour force.

What raises wage rates and allots to the wage earners an ever increasing portion out of the output which has been enhanced by additional capital accumulation is the fact that the rate of capital accumulation exceeds the rate of increase in population. The official doctrine passes over this fact in silence or even denies it emphatically. But the policies of bureaucrats and labour unions clearly show that their leaders are fully aware of the correctness of the theory which they publicly smear as silly bourgeois apologetics. They are eager to restrict the number of job seekers in the whole country by occupational licensing and anti-immigration laws, and in each segment of the labour market by preventing the influx of newcomers.

That the increase in wage rates does not depend on the individual worker’s “productivity,” but on the marginal productivity of labour, is clearly demonstrated by the fact that wage rates are moving upward also for performances in which the “productivity” of the individual has not changed at all. There are many such jobs. A barber shaves a customer today precisely in the same manner his predecessors used to shave people two hundred years ago. A butler waits at the table of the British prime minister in the same way in which once butlers served Pitt and Palmerston. In agriculture some kinds of work are still performed with the same tools in the same way in which they were performed centuries ago. Yet the wage rates earned by all such workers are today much higher than they were in the past. They are higher because they are determined by the marginal productivity of labour. The employer of a butler withholds this man from employment in a factory and must therefore pay the equivalent of the increase in output which the additional employment of one man in a factory would bring about. It is not any merit on the part of the butler that causes this rise in his wages, but the fact that the increase in capital invested surpasses the increase in the number of hands.

All pseudo-economic doctrines which depreciate the role of saving and capital accumulation are absurd. What constitutes the greater wealth of a capitalistic society as against the smaller wealth of a noncapitalistic society is the fact that the available supply of capital goods is greater in the former than in the latter. 

What has improved the wage earners’ standard of living is the fact that the capital equipment per head of the men eager to earn wages has increased. It is a consequence of this fact that an ever increasing portion of the total amount of usable goods produced goes to the wage earners. None of the passionate tirades of Marx, Keynes and a host of less well known authors could show a weak point in the statement that there is only one means to raise wage rates permanently and for the benefit of all those eager to earn wages — namely, to accelerate the increase in capital available as against population. If this be “unjust,” then the blame rests with nature and not with man.

* * * * 

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises' writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. (Some cogent quotes here from the great man.)

This post previously appeared at the Mises Blog.