morsel:

Peter Schilling's 'Major Tom (coming home)' is the first 45 rpm single he ever bought, and he even bought two, giving the second one to his neighbor friend as a gift. There wasn't anything symbolic about it at the time; they must have spent a recent moment appreciating it, and he wanted to return the favor after the slightly older friend had loaned him some albums.

In retrospect, he likes this single as his first. It represents his gravitation towards songs based on their merit, rather than their chart status. A fluke hit (kissing cousin to Nena's '99 luftballons') that retells Bowie's 'Space oddity' with more synth parts to beef up the futurism, 'Major Tom' also boasts a killer chorus with an irresistible outro. The b-side, sung in German, didn't do as much for him, because the plot is so good, like a Ray Bradbury short story.

Decades later he danced to the song (the original, not the diluted 1994 remix) for the first time in a nightclub setting, and it was strangely emotional and rapturous. A homecoming, of sorts.

A thorn in his side

When Morrissey filed suit against NME this past week for defamation, I was only mildly interested. After all, it's an entirely plausible scenario from both sides: Magazine distorts contents of interview with Musician to spark controversy and increase sales. Or, Musician makes provocative comments to Magazine (possibly with the intention of flirting with controversy and getting attention) but regrets it and seeks the moral high ground in an attempt to recover.

What was more interesting was my discovery of the history of racist controversy that Morrissey has accumulated over the past fifteen years or more. I consider myself to be a Smiths fan, and a more casual solo Morrissey fan, but in both cases I've pretty much stuck to the music, and not followed them or him as celebrities, so these controversies have escaped me.

I'd certainly noticed that Morrissey's nationalism runs deep. His songs mostly fall in one of two categories: maudlin love poems or social commentary; British identity, particularly the working class British experience, is a favorite examination in the latter. Of course there is a dangerous grey area between nationalistic pride and racism, as history repeatedly demonstrates.

I'd realized that 'Suedehead' was a skinhead reference, but since that song falls into the maudlin love poem category, I'd chalked it up to another of Morrissey's regular themes: homoeroticism. And lyrics like 'we are the last truly British people you'll ever know' from 'We'll let you know' have intrigued me at times, but I didn't find them offensive.

I have trouble feeling like I know enough to label Morrissey racist. I can't locate the original, but there is a quote attributed to him (oddly, by NME in 1992) from an interview in Q Magazine back in 1991: "I don't want to sound horrible or pessimistic but I don't really think, for instance, black people and white people will ever really get on or like each other. I don't really think they ever will. The French will never like the English. That tunnel will collapse." That statement dances somewhere between social observation and passive oppression, and, disclaimer or not, it's definitely pessimistic. But I also know that this is a man who cultivates a mysterious and sometimes provocative persona, celibate and faux-hearing-impaired, so is a statement like that enough to pass judgment?

I don't think this is a similar situation to Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, who has made black and white political statements with which I disagree, and whom I would feel principled in boycotting if I had ever bought anything of his in the first place. I think it's much more like that infamous photo of David Bowie at Victoria Station, May 1976, when he was caught mid-gesture in what may or may not have been a Nazi salute. Bowie is another artist who sought edginess and occasionally missed the mark. Because of that personality trait, people expected and interpreted him to be edgy even when he didn't intend to be.

I'm not going to condemn or defend Morrissey; I'm satisfied that his music doesn't cross into the territory that I consider to be racist, and I haven't seen anything from him that disturbs me as much as endorsing a fatwa on Salman Rushdie. I would say that if NME had a stronger since of journalistic responsibility, they might have sought to reconfirm what they thought were inflammatory remarks before they bandied them about. But that's a bit much to ask of most publications, it seems.

I would also say to Morrissey, I hope you take an excessively conscientious approach to this subject in the future, realizing that you are a lightning rod. If you need to learn more about people who are different from you, you're no different from the rest of us, except we don't give interviews quite as often.

And I would also say to people who are seeking to build a case against him, you'd better come up with more substantial evidence than what I've seen so far. If you seek to write seriously about a serious matter, it is your responsibility to make a clear and well-supported case, or else you are doing a grave disservice to your subject, your readers, and the profile of discourse on the internet.

Morrissey official website

Jean-Paul Sartre

I see the future. It is there, poised over the street, hardly more dim than the present.... This is time, time laid bare, coming slowly into existence, keeping us waiting, and when it does come making us sick because we realize it's been there for a long time.

Nausea, p. 31

ANNE CLARK - SLEEPER IN METROPOLIS

There are well-established formulas for pop music - 4/4 time, simple structure, combinations of certain instruments, accessible lyrics, a melody that's easy to sing and remember. The more one departs from these norms, the more an audience is going to notice the song itself, rather than accepting it without question.

Anne Clark's 'Sleeper in metropolis' was never intended to be a hit song. Sure, the 4/4 time signature is there, and the four bar loop is exceedingly simple. But a spoken word artist who collaborates with a keyboard player (David Harrow) is unlikely to write simple lyrics, nor is she likely to come up with a great melodic hook since she had no intention to sing at all. Somehow, 'Sleeper in metropolis' became an instant cult classic. I supposed cult classics are revered as much because of their eccentricities as despite them, but this one avoids the 'novelty song' epithet, which is an accomplishment for a spoken word song.

It's a hypnotic dancefloor experience, pessimistic but rife with forward motion. The subject matter reinforces the low-tech synth and drum loop arrangement; because the song is about the malaise brought on by the domination of machines over nature, a sterile electronic arrangement seemingly created by a cleanroom, rather than in one, is only fitting. It does not subtract from the experience to be reminded of a time in the early eighties when anxiety about the culture of technology was vogue (think Blade Runner, 1984, Brazil.)

'As a sleeper in metropolis / you are insignificance.' It's a great first line because since it couldn't be sung, it sets the tone for and justifies the spoken word meditation that follows. This metropolis is not a monster or a macroorganism as it is seen in many modernist works, but a vacuum collecting nullity and futility. Anne compares it to a cancer, a disease that devours all in its path, but nothing is anthropomorphized, and the spreading deathliness is superseded by the deathliness of the city itself.

The body has become an inconvenience. Air conditioning has outmoded breathing, and viscose has obsoleted skin. All the ghosts in our machines - dreams, desires, love - are filtered and manipulated by the technology around us to warp them into paranoia. Any resistance is easily trumped by the city. The citizens of metropolis are zombies, automatons, drones, barely conscious, victims of the urban triumph they labored to create.

It's bleak to say the least, but something in Anne's voice embodies the last elements of humanity, of organic will. Her manner might have been the inspiration for the public announcement voices in 1984, but cockney-like hints in her speech, and the way her accents fall on the most sentimental words (soft, warm, love, contact) make it clear that she observes these things not as a clone but as a rebel, a one-woman resistance movement, hoping to shake just one of us out of our tranquilized complacency.

Among the clatter and repetition of machines that surround her (each loop is punctuated by the coldest interpretation of the most basic dance music convention, the double handclap) Anne hopes to wake us up and prod us into action. 'Sleeper in metropolis' wants to make us dance, but the relationship between dancing and being free is subverted; if we dance, are we submitting to the sequencer's control, or are we asserting our individuality? I believe it's the latter; while machines might be able to mimic dancing, they will never be able to dance well, because they will never dance with spirit.

Anne Clark followed 'Sleeper in metropolis' with the similar 'Our darkness', and the themes of modern alienation have appeared repeatedly in her work, though not always as starkly. But the tension between human and machine is captured most perfectly in this track. 'Love is dead in metropolis', but it's an epic death.

Anne Clark official website