We all-heartedly agree with this sentiment. Henry Rollins, white rebellion relics, the historical moment that can't recognize its own historical nature — why, it's just like the soixante-huitards! Or no, wait, it's just like pretending that late Bob Dylan is as good as the seventh-stringer on Lost Highway!
Our only difference with the tiniest and luckiest of unicorns is in our understanding of how it keeps happening. Because even Henry Rollins' indomitable will is but a sparrow in a hurricane. And the abstract desire of a cultural generation to persist, to keep walking forward zombie-like well after it's dead, is...abstract, just that. It's a material problem, and needs a material solution. They will not go away if you denounce them, or mock them, or explain history/historicity to them.
They will go away if you stop paying them. The television shows, movies, and statues of tribute can be avoided if, and only if, you stop attending reunion tours. All of them. Punk, hardcore, new wave, no wave, paisley underground...the entirety of the rockin' gang of supreme righteous whiteness (plus Bad Brains! no, really, we're all super-diverse!) is a fairly coherent economic subsystem, and if you give money to Pixies, or Mission of Burma, or the Clash, or Celibate Rifles, well, you're just skywriting a message that says We Talk A Good Game But We Will Fund All This Shit Until Our IRA/Keoghs Are Empty — don't blame Henry Rollins or anyone else for keeping that moment suspended in its living death.
Posted by jane at August 28, 2006 05:34 PM | TrackBack