Or, perhaps not....I know ahuthnance is particularly fond of the Abandon Tracks compilation, as am I, because, aside from the excellent selection of songs, we as thantourists visited the very same German tank featured on the cover (it was scuttled by the crew in Vimoutiers, and was slowly sliding down the hill side into a creek. It was salvaged as an historical monument just in time as scrap metal merchants had started cutting it up- however, I can't claim any personal acquaintance with the flaming horse heads featured in the other pic of a corpulent, almost derelict looking Pearce). I thought it was worth putting this link up here as Douglas Pearce is very forthcoming about where he stands politically (use of fascist iconography), his sexuality, the relation of his earlier group Crisis to contemporaries such as Crass. Having read the interview I give him a lot more credit than that other highly dubious embodiment of the "banality of evil", known as Boyd Rice (I did at least read recently that Rice's silly Social Darwinian thinktank Abraxa Foundation has closed down).
A future theoretical assignment worth pursuing would be to situate artists such as Pearce in relation to some of the the resources I've gathered elsewhere on thanatourism. Death in June as architects of thanatourist soundscapes perhaps? I'm also reminded of the criticism Reynolds and Press attracted from some quarters for their book The Sex Revolts, as it was viewed in such instances as propounding "gender tourism" (into the heart of darkness of male psychopathology). It seems to me though that aside from scattershot references to psychogeography and Grossberg's work on the affective colonisation of everyday life, much work remains to be done on the spatial dimension of music in relation to the commodity form of tourism. Musicians are generally referred to as going on "tour", but how exactly are their experiences mediated, what are the most relevant feedback mechanisms that can account for their work which distinguishes it from "leisure" experiences? How are such relationships reflected in the cultural consumption patterns of their fans? Is it proper to speak in terms of the famous study, The Time of the Tribes, if so, is this the most adequate explanation for the globalisation of "the homeless mind" (to quote Peter Berger), as markers of certainty are dissolved in a liquid modernity? (remember, the tourist and the vagabond are two of the archetypes Zymunt Bauman uses to illustrate his sociology of postmodernity, concerned with the relationship between mobility and the feasibility of cultivating ethical relationships with the stranger) As Gang of Four anticipated long ago on their album Entertainment!, "at home he feels like a tourist." Will Chris Rojek start talking about music as the soundtrack to such commodified experiences, or will the field become dominated by hauntologists more fascinated by Jameson's essay on The Shining in tandem with readings of Derrida? Can these preferences be situated by a social epistemology?
And while I'm on this topic, thinking back to the cover story of The Wire, why has Sleazy from Throbbing Gristle relocated to Bangkok? Might this have anything to do with the commodification of the "zones of distinction" discussed elsewhere on this blog? Much investigation required, which seems more than coincidental, once it is accepted that Throbbing Gristle provided a template for many bands, not least of all, Death in June..........
And boy oh boy, isn't the following blog, now primarily an archive it seems, quite a scary sampling of possible elective affinties between Death in June and other cultural phenomenon in general? The blogger profile alone is enough to send folks running to the hills in fear:
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