Punk Rock in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
CD burning, file sharing, and the death of the live show
By Marissa Brookes

For music - especially music with an agenda - content matters. Post-9/11 punk rock has finally regained its sociopolitical charge through lyrics no longer basking in irrelevance (Reaganomics: out; Bush’s war in Iraq: in). But while content is essential, how music reaches the ears of its listeners - its medium and distribution - might actually matter much more than most realize.

The medium’s still the message, and the implications are enormous.

Once-out-of-reach technologies are becoming more affordable and more accessible to the middle class. With the proliferation of CD burners and quick-fix file sharing (RIAA be damned), the instant reproduction and exchange of music has swept virtually every scene. True, mass production of music - notably as a marketable commodity - dates back to early last century; that much is nothing new. But CD burners and file sharing, both controlled by the consumer, make a huge leap from mass reproduction to hyper-fuelled mass reproduction that is faster, easier, cheaper, and more efficient than traditional means. This explosion in the accessibility of recorded music has, in turn, increased people’s proclivity to listen to recorded music.

Compounding this trend is the death of the live show. With a few noble exceptions, live shows are becoming more commercialized than ever (no surprise.) Punks stopped attending huge shows out of good conscience, and bands, for the same reason, are refusing to play corporate clubs. True, long before Clear Channel consumed Boston’s Lansdowne strip, clubs have been struggling not only to stay independent but alive, lest they suffer the fate of the Rat (Kenmore Square’s notoriously gritty and once-vibrant venue exterminated by Boston University in 1997). And yes, a handful of independent venues have survived. Moreover, one could always take refuge in local scenes. But local scenes tend to be fragmented, and when it comes to reaching people on a mass scale, a few erratic DIY shows - while not to be dismissed - simply cannot reach the millions of people that recorded music does. Thus, in the face of these constraints, live shows are superseded by a recorded alternative.

Is this a bad thing? Does the predominance of recorded music curb political punk’s biting edge? Is our high-tech society breeding the apathetic "21st Century Digital Boy" (he don’t know how to read / but he’s got a lot of toys)? Not necessarily. Both forms - the unique, live experience and the mass produced, recorded one - are effective ways to communicate a band’s political message. Still, the impact and meaning of a message can be radically altered depending on how it is received.

Consider the difference between a live show - the here-and-now urgency of screaming passion and ubiquitous noise, the impact of collapse into a teeming fray, the force of collective experience and heartfelt immediacy – and the alternative: downloading the new Stiff Little Fingers album in a matter of seconds and listening to it alone. What’s the difference? Why does it matter?

The form music takes fundamentally shapes one’s experience with it and therefore how one processes its content. Form defines the relationship between music and listener. And this goes for all art, not just music. It is a concept drawn from Walter Benjamin, who wrote “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” over 65 years ago.

At the time of Benjamin’s writing, the mass reproduction of art was still a new and unsettling concept. Mass reproduction not only made art widely accessible to the public (the masses, if you prefer) but also destroyed its "presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." Stripped of its aura and subjected to a slew of reproductions, a work of art no longer emanates a "unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be." Something is lost.

For this reason, I generally dislike "live" albums. Live: From Here to Eternity, though a great listen, fails to capture the full essence of any of the eight Clash performances spliced onto the disc. The music is there, but its effect is diminished. Woefully estranged from the cheering crowd represented through inter-track sound bites, the listener may be analytically aware of their surging, riotous energy but entirely unaffected by it. Sound can be reproduced; feeling cannot.

The band, too, can feel estranged from their own music. Performing in a recording studio not for a live crowd but for a "mechanical contrivance," to borrow Benjamin’s term, alienates the band from their audience. That most albums are recorded not as one fluid set but as an assemblage of multiple components adds to this alienation. Screeching Weasel, with signature irony, addresses these issues in a song by directly referring to the CD on which it is recorded: "The thing you’re listening to is called a waste of time / An inferior and overpriced product of an under active mind."

Yet estrangement is not all that comes out of the proliferation of recorded music. Paradoxically, the upside to mass reproduction is that it brings music closer to its beholder. Transcending temporal and spatial bounds, recorded music affords the listener a direct relationship to it, something essential if the listener is to internalize the music’s message. The masses thus gain greater accessibility to music on levels both material and mental.

Lyrics - key to conveying political punk’s social agenda - become more accessible too. Toys That Kill play an incredible live set, and the message is there, though often in the form of incoherent yelling. Sure, it still sounds like incoherent yelling on their albums, but repeated play (not to mention liner notes) allow their lyrics to penetrate the listener over time. Repeated play also allows listeners to absorb nuances of the music itself. The steady rhythm of "Washington Bullets" is every bit as stirring as The Clash’s reference to Afghan rebels and Nicaraguan guerillas. Propagandhi’s "Anti-Manifesto" exudes sneering sarcasm through an anthemic tone more arresting than words alone.

An even more direct relationship between music and listener (art and consumer) comes from CD burning and file sharing. These technologies put reproduction and distribution in the hands of the consumer, empowering the people with a level of control commensurate with punk’s DIY ideals.

Benjamin was skeptical of art’s mass reproduction, but he also saw its potential for communicating political ideas. Art, stripped of its aura, can direct the masses away from free-floating contemplation toward more focused thought. Powerful music, like a good film, forcefully rebels against the culture of distraction; it does not allow the listener to "abandon himself to his associations." But if it is true that, as Benjamin wrote, "the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration," the question is, do CDs and mp3s really command focused attention? Or does repeated play encourage the kind of passive listening - distraction - that seriously undermines the music’s political purpose? Again, one asks whether the proliferation of recorded music ultimately helps or hinders punk rock’s social agenda.

And again, the answer is twofold. Music played and replayed turns into habit. As art becomes habitual, its impact grows less deliberate and more incidental, a phenomenon Benjamin called "tactile appropriation." Crudely put, you get used to it. Like the pattern of the carpet on one’s bedroom floor, a song heard repeatedly is not something that commands rapt attention. I have become strangely comfortable waking up to Dead Kennedys’ "Kill the Poor," Screeching Weasel’s "Racist Society," and Propagandhi’s eloquently titled "Stick the Fucking Flag Up Your God Damn Ass You Son of a Bitch" with little conscious heed to the songs’ shock value.

Still, the music’s political themes need not become cheapened and ignored. Repetition can reinforce political themes subtly and therefore more effectively. I’ve heard "Racist Society" hundreds of times; rarely does it jolt me into an urgent frenzy. It does, however, remind me every time I hear it "that there’s no such thing as equality / and there might never be / if you don’t change." Whether it’s The Clash recalling that "a lot of people won’t get no justice tonight," Bad Religion pointing out "one in five kids below the poverty line / one population running out of time," or Moral Crux simply declaring that "the time is now / the place is here," the message becomes internalized.

Thanks to mechanical reproduction and new technology, millions of people now have easy access to recorded music. Millions of people able to recite politically charged lyrics by heart - and I do mean by heart - is a step toward mass social conscience, a step toward radical change.

Marissa Brookes writes for and edits The Student Underground, a progressive, independent newspaper based in Boston, MA.

Other articles by Marissa Brookes.

POST A COMMENT

Subject
Name
Email *
Body
Verification (because of stupid spambots)

Note: HTML doesn't work.      * Optional.

Proudly hosted by .