Before we begin, here’s a brief list of musicians
whose work has not been pulled off
streaming services, whose records are still for sale online and in shops, and
whose labels did not issue massive recalls:
Remy Ma,
who shot someone, and then while on trial for the shooting had a group of her
friends beat up the boyfriend of a witness.
Jerry Lee
Lewis, who married his 13-year old cousin and then broke into Graceland in
1974 to try to murder Elvis.
Rick James,
who locked a 24-year-old woman in his basement for six days, raped her
repeatedly, and burned her legs and genitals with his crack pipe.
Phil
Spector, who pulled a gun on 4 separate women who refused to sleep with
him, and eventually shot a 5th woman in the woman in the mouth,
killing her.
Mark E.
Smith, the world’s angriest-looking man and serial domestic abuser.
Chuck Berry,
who installed cameras in the bathrooms of the restaurant he owned and taped
women as they peed.
Ice Cube,
who beat the shit out of a female rapper at her record release party while his bodyguard
threatened to shoot anyone who tried to intervene.
Ian Watkins,
lead singer of Lostprophets, who convinced several
female fans to allow him to rape their small children. When police confiscated
his computer he had to give them his password so they could unlock it. It was—I
swear to god—“ifuckkids.”
That’s just the first several that popped into my
head. I didn’t even need to google them. And that’s also just very major
offenses, not including minor crimes such as when Paul Simon appropriated
African culture, or when Vampire Weekend appropriated Paul Simon’s
appropriation. Or that Jamie Killstein guy who got popular for being Super Woke
but then wasn’t nice enough to the groupies he fucked. Or Iggy Azalea and Azalea Banks—I forget
which is which, but I know one is bad because she is white and raps while the other
is a black woman who thinks that gay people are demons.
So, okay, let’s talk about a hot musical act
called PWR BTTM. They are a pair of queer, gender-fluid youngsters who write
painfully simplistic teen angst rock.
The music is middling, I think. I’m frankly happy whenever I see any
young people playing guitars, but their sound is also reflects the boring edgelessnes
that classifies “indie” music in the late twenty-teens. Maybe I’m just getting
old, or maybe their music is objectively dull. I dunno. At any rate, it’s
inoffensive but doesn’t do much for me.
In interviews, the kids seem charming:
introspective enough for people in their early twenties, honest, pleasingly
effeminate, self-possessed but not cocky.
There’s no obvious signs of idiocy or pretension.
Their shtick is shtick, only now shtick has become
conflated with people’s deep-seeded (inalterable, unquestionable) identities,
so it’s super loaded and dangerous to comment upon. So, umm, they’re gender
fluid. And they express that by covering themselves in glitter. Which makes
their concerts seem safe to other kids who indentify as non-binary. I’ll accept all that at face value.
Yesterday, the group’s new album had just dropped
and it was getting rave reviews: 4 stars from NME and Rolling Stone, and
a B+ from Consequence of Sound. Stereogum
compared them to Sleater-Kinney, Fugazi, Husker Du, and the Beatles. Again, I am not a musicologist and my taste
is just my taste, but I own literally every album released by each of those groups
and I can find zero trace of any of them in PWR BTTM. But that’s just me.
Woke Social Media was even more effusive in its
praise. They were, in actuality, borderline violent in their praise. This
morning, I found over 20 accounts that were angry the album was getting
less-than-perfect reviews (B pluses instead of A’s) and accused the
aforementioned publications of being all sorts of phobic. It wasn’t enough to
compare PWR BTTM to the Beatles. PWR BTTM needed to be called better than the
Beatles.
But then god shrugged. Posts began to emerge. PWR
BTTM, it turned out, were not woke purveyors of safety and inclusion. Oh no.
They were rapists.
A lone facebook poster said she knew of several
people who had been somehow molested by the group—details were sparse, but they
alluded to bandmates hitting on people who didn’t want to be hit on, trying to
sleep with people under 18, and “violating consent.” Others posted, as well, all saying not they
themselves were victims but that they had heard of others who were victims.
Most damningly, (which is to say, most specifically) Jezebel published an
account of an anonymous woman who claimed one of the bandmates tried to have
sex with her while she was passed out.
The denunciations came in an avalanche. Their
label dropped them. All, or nearly all, venues canceled. Their opening acts and
touring band members quit. All copies of
their music was removed for purchase from streaming sites, new physical copies
of their album cannot be bought on Amazon, and their label is offering to
refund the money of anyone who bought the record. (Amazon is offering used
copies of their latest for $30.00 per CD; LostProphets’ “Liberation
Transmission,” meanwhile, is free to stream with Amazon Prime and can be
ordered on CD for $5.99, shipping included).
So we have two possibilities, here:
A couple of young queer kids were/are really big
sex creeps, and they’ve been allowed to be open about their predation for a
while because they do a good job of using woke terminology. OR
A couple of young queer kids are weirdos, have
probably creeped out or angered people but haven’t actually done like actual
Assault, but they are now being unduly smeared through thirdhand, low-follower
social media accounts making accusations that are absolutely unverifiable.
At any rate, the only acceptable reaction to an
accusation is enthusiastic and unqualified acceptance. So PWR BTTM’s career is
now done. Period. Anyone who does not
sufficiently distance themselves from the band are subject to immediate excommunication
from polite society. This very overview I am writing, if it gets noticed by
more than a few hundred people, will be considered tantamount to physical
assault, and people will try to identify me so as to get me fired.
And here, my friends, the foundational psychosis
of the Woke Edifice has been laid bare. You cannot provide broad inclusion while
demanding absolute conformity. Absolute
conformity results in blunt reactionaryism, exclusion, violence, and heaps of
obvious and unappealing self-contradiction. One minute you’re demanding the
head of a writer for daring to suggest that a band’s identity gimmick doesn’t
make them the greatest musical act of all time; the next, you’re demanding that
no one so much as begin to question the fact that that band is raw evil.
I don’t want to dismiss the beauty of the connection
that musicians can have with their fans, how seeing PWR BTTM act uniquely queer
was probably very empowering to lots of young people and so these revelations
must really suck. But, like, it’s still
just a band: they were never actually protecting anybody or setting anyone free.
At heart, the identity stuff was a gimmick. PWR BTTM were able to manipulate
their audience—or were able to be taken down so absolutely, so quickly—because the
rules that guide the ethical precepts that envelop and create their audience are both flimsily
constructed and viciously enforced. Wokeness is very, very easy to manipulate
but still somehow almost impossible to control. Once unleashed, it will always
consume its purveyors, the wasters will always become the wasted.
It’s no coincidence that wokeness elevates
cultural trifles into matters of absolute import. By definition, a demand for
conformity must be policed in a harsh and aggressive manner, which leaves no
room for consideration, discussion, or even basic self-evaluation. Blatant
hypocrisy goes unquestioned, and so do takes that are absolutely and
objectively incorrect. The most
superficial signaling is celebrated as enlightenment ,
and any efforts toward complication are considered a sign of evil and disease.
But here’s the neat thing, demonstrated by the
list that began this piece… these rules only apply to the people who subscribe
to them. And subscription is voluntary, for those who don’t work in the media
and/or have sense enough to keep their opinions off of the internet. And every
time a fire like this one starts up, the woke sphere tightens its demands and
gets a little meaner, and it becomes even more unappealing for everyone who isn’t
already initiated.
“One minute you’re demanding the
head of a writer for daring to suggest that a band’s identity gimmick doesn’t
make them the greatest musical act of all time; the next, you’re demanding that
no one so much as begin to question the fact that that band is raw evil.”
It’s like distributed Stalinism. Cloud-based totalitarianism. The good news is that unlike the predecessors, you’re free to opt out.
Excellent Goddamn Post, OP
This just in: Some people who make music are not perfect.