Peter Murphy: Pyramids of Trash

Ever feel like you’re walking around with a bulls-eye painted on your head? A walking target for people trying to sell products designed to make you feel like the main protagonist in the solipsistic movie of your own sorry existence?

Modern life is rubbish. A junk pile of gadgets and gizmos and portable arcade games with headphones. In this context, rock ‘n’ roll is reduced to the status of leisure option soundtrack and colluder in the mass murder of silence, just another jingle jostling for prominence among the Sega shash and X-box interference and white noise and downloadable ring tones broadcasting the latest Britney hit as somebody’s post-ironic Lifestyle Statement.
Pop as protest? How bout pop as accompaniment to a beer ad, a happy meal™, a synergetic movie tie-in, a car commercial? For shame, you Raveonettes. (You too Iggy. Yes, I know the Stooges were awesome this summer, but I’ll never forgive you for flogging ‘The Passenger’ to some gas-guzzling auto behemoth.)
Then again, even if the talent won’t cough up the product, the boys hired to think outside the box will hire someone to replicate it, just like they did with Tom Waits’ ‘Heart Attack & Vine’. Just like they’re doing with imitation PJ Harvey-lite on a current car ad. As for the U2/iPod issue, well, it beats selling warm beer, but isn’t this just another shuck designed to sell us music we thought we already owned? Upgrade is another word for down payment, the self-replenishing scam of built-in obsolescence. Just clock the mountain of old hard drives and computer monitors stacked in skips outside suburban office blocks.
But if the ever nebulous They aren’t trying to sell you something, they’re threatening legal action for not buying it. Or rather, downloading/illegally recording it. Arrive in time for the trailers at your local fleapit and you’ll get barraged with INFACT copyright theft threats urging you to rat out anyone with a video camera. This is like going to a gig and being harangued for not supporting live music. Or attending mass and having the priest yell at you for being a pagan. It’s not rocket science, people. If we’re in the cinema, we’ve paid for the ticket; therefore we’re not at home gorging our synapticals on pirate DVDs.
Okay, rant over. Far worse things that happened in the world over the last 12 months than infotainment overload, but they were all equally driven by lust for dead presidents. And you have to take your hat off to those who don’t drop trow at the first whiff of a chequebook, who strive to maintain fidelity to unfashionable notions of honour, humility and art for its own sake.
Leonard Cohen. Loretta Lynn. Tom Waits. Nick Cave. Neil Young. Bob Dylan (Chronicles was a howl). Jim White. Mark Lanegan. ­PJ Harvey. The White Stripes. Interpol. Franz Ferdinand. Filmmakers like Andrew Douglas (the brilliant Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus, which will tell you as much about the relationship between poverty, end-times Christian fundamentalism and army recruiting as any Michael Moore film), James Marsh (Wisconsin Death Trip – reissue) and John Hillcoat (Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead – reissue).
Mostly old folks, or young ones with old heads. So to hell with this filthy modern tide.
It’s a wonderful life – if you can find it, buried under the pyramids of trash.