Four legs good, but no legs best.

[hirez]

You're coming in halfway though a conversation. GWB re-enacting old Gang Of Four records (He'd send in the army) has reminded me to dust it off somewhat.

... such DIJ as I've been subjected to has struck me as distinctly average, so I don't have too much of a problem with not being best impressed with their attachment to themes of a National Socialist persuasion.

Not that musical wossname should be used as an excuse for same, of course. Although it's not like a couple of pop-songs are going to turn me into a fascist...

The thing is, I can't for the life of me understand why INDUSTRAIL(tm) and imagery of a Martial or Totalitarian Nature are so closely linked. Now, you can call me a spineless Guardian-reading pinko, but I tend to think that it's basically OK for, say, the band of the Coldstream Guards to march up and down in shiny uniforms to the strident beat of martial music; but when a mob of clueless children try it, they need a bloody good hiding and/or a series of illustrated lectures regarding the nature of a fascist or totalitarian society and the likely disposition of their chosen
subculture should such a terrible thing come to pass. (again)

[Hint: Newrocks won't do you any good in a work-camp, fucko]

I still don't understand why they do it. When I were a lad, it were all proper industrial round here, and it were perpetrated by people who lived in squats and believed in collective action and were about the complete antithesis of the uniforms-and-marching-about-brigade.

... And because at one stage the INDUSTRAIL(tm) Standard Video was full of blokes in gasmasks and crappy footage of Soviet military parades carefully cut so the squaddies seemed to be marching in time to the crappy drum-machine programming and shouted-substitute-for-singing. FLA, front and centre.

Maybe.

(And don't get me started on the sort of Cold Meat Industry bands who name themselves after terrorist/fascist organisations and use that kind of 'transgressive' malarkey to peddle popsongs. Ok, resolutely not popsongs, but I trust you get my general drift. It's as much about pissing off your parents as Marilyn Manson. Crunts.)

Comments

[reddragdiva]

IIRC it was originally talking about this stuff in the context of Burroughsian social control systems as something they found objectionable. And the cool uniforms, of course.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Um... Yer wot?

I've found some references to Viennese Actionism. At least I think I have.

Hm. Interesting.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes, I'm all for dressing up but there are some people I see in clubs whose uniforms are rather too good...

[reddragdiva]

"We are not the Gestapo, we just dig their cool uniforms" — xthlcm

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Mm.

I'm not much of a one for Doing Politics, but that sort of thing really does make me very uncomfortable.

[operon.livejournal.com]

On the other hand...

My absolute favourite ever example of This Sort Of Thing was a guy at Torture Garden or somewhere once wearing what I think was a vintage Luftwaffe uniform -- with a love heart in the armband instead of a swastika. I had to go and shake him by the hand.

Andrew.

[glitchdrei.livejournal.com]

Damn straight. But I also dislike it when people decide that I'm clearly mislead because I happen to actually like some music made by people with Fascist tendancies; just because I don't agree with some of their viewpoints doesn't mean that I have to restrict myself to listening only to music made by people who have exactly the same political beliefs as I do.

People who are so anti-Nazi that they try to deny that so much music exists are as just as bad as anyone who won't listen to music made by black people.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Quite. Listening to a couple of popsongs isn't going to make one a fascist.

I rather care for certain aspects of Futurism, for instance. I'm not about to beetle off and invade Abyssinia, but it has meant I've found out what fascism really is. (As opposed to the Rik-from-the-young-ones version.)

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

it's basically OK for, say, the band of the Coldstream Guards to march up and down in shiny uniforms to the strident beat of martial music; but when a mob of clueless children try it, they need a bloody good hiding and/or a series of illustrated lectures

and this is why Boys Brigade and Cadets give me the heebie jeebies.

wow. i can't see what i'm typing at all.
not sure about his view...

[operon.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with the cadets?

Andrew.

[smogo.livejournal.com]

Yes. I met a bloke a few months ago who had turned up to the Dev in a German military uniform, and he talked about nothing except (a) how much he wants to buy a tank, and (b) what the best industrial songs are to "Seig Heil" to. What a fucking idiot.

By the way, why is the text so pale and tiny when I'm commenting on your journal? My eyes, my eyes!

[glitchdrei.livejournal.com]

Was he actually serious or just taking the piss?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

As you say. Should be walloped with a rolled-up copy of 'searchlight'.

Beats me. It's as plain a S2 style as I can manage, because anything other than black text on a white ground makes my eyes bleed.

(No, I'm not reading anyone's LJ in anything other than &style=mine)

[operon.livejournal.com]

Great, this is one of my favourite things to argue about.

I think the phrase 'military-industrial complex' suggests where the association comes from in the first place, but I think you have to distinguish between "imagery of a Martial or Totalitarian Nature" and more explicit bandying-about of objectionable symbolism.

After all, peace protestors have been wearing army surplus since at least the 60s and possibly before, and Charlie Chaplin's Ado Hinkel and Benino Napoloni characters were hilarious and laudable in every way. Indeed, the fact that Tanz Mit Laibach is about them rather than their inspirations is part of why Laibach are so much better than every other uniformed industrial outfit.

Remember too that stealing elements of military culture and displaying them in an ostentatiously freakish manner is very good for annoying squaddies and the like. It's precisely because we'd be first into the camps after the Jews, gays and gypsies that it's funny, shirley. And I would much rather see a ragtag bunch of perverts, deviants, druggies and libertarians jumping up and down to Laibach in uniforms than see the Coldstream Guards, a pack of hired killers, marching up and down to brass band music in uniforms.

Just don't get me started on juvenile power electronics bands with serial killer fixations...

Andrew.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

But the phrase "military-industrial complex" is generally reckoned to have been coined by Eisenhower in '61, in the context of reining in rampant spending on weapons just because. It was well after WW2 and the enemy were the Commies (who were almost as cleverly dressed). And to be fair, the British Army are what stood and still stand between our freedoms and anyone who might want to take them from us... if marching bands make them better at it (and they do) then fine by me.

[diffrentcolours]

Personally, I just wear military gear because it's comfortable, practical and cheap. I actually put on a pair of jeans the other day after alternating between different pairs of lightweight DPM combat trousers for a few months. It felt very strange.

When I have run into actual squaddies (usually at Stockport station, for some reason I've not yet fathomed), I've usually been greeted with a friendly nod rather than "Oi, you shaven-headed dreadlocked twat, what are you doing wearing our kit?" Maybe it's the fact that I keep my boots polished...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It also may well be that I've misunderstood the concept of 'industrial' when applied to music.

My take on it has always been that 'industrial' music was about (indeed celebrated, in the case of The God-like Genius Of Kraftwerk) the products of an industrialised society, or was produced among the remnants of 'industry'. In that regard, there's scope for calling CV, Test Dept and E-N 'post industrial'.

Written down like that, it looks hopelessly naive.

It seems to me now that the 'industrial' that everyone else calls 'industrial' is, as you remind me by pointing at Chaplin (Modern Times, in this case though), a grim evocation of the worst parts of Taylorism. 'Industrial' in that regard absolutely must be a four-square and dull pounding that sounds the same no matter where it comes from, and the people involved can only be an army of marching drones. Not music about brickworks, but music with the ugly soul of a brickworks.

I'm only half joking. I much prefer my version.

[reddragdiva]

I think of an ex-flatmate of mine who once voiced his negative opinion of most Jews. Then I pointed out that my current girlfriend at the time (bar_bar_ellaand an ex of mine he really fancied (raven_) were Jewish. He shut up about that.

That was a great house. It showed me what I love about goths: in what other subculture will your completely straight housemate and his completely straight friend spend three hours in the bathroom trialling each other's makeup for the weekend and talking about chicks. Love 'em!

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the martial thing is just a special (and especially unfortunate) case of a wider effect, which has always puzzled me. That's the subcultural enthusiams for what you might call Fashionable Nastiness.

To name a few examples;
- Putting spikes on things at random
- Coffins & all that Tim Burton aren't dead-people-great thing
- Songs about death, suicide, being very glum, the inevitable heat-death of the universe

I'd venture to suggest that the attractive thing about the martial stuff is the same weird penumbra of coolness that all these things get from being basically quite nasty. Only, in some cases there's so much real nastiness in there that it becomes too much to tolerate.

[reddragdiva]

Dude. The punk rock swastika.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Mixed feelings. I've no objection to such imagary per se, soviet or Nazi -- if I were to choose, I rather like the old-style soviet look. Besides, despite knowing the history I still cling to the fact that Stalin looked all chummy and had a big friendly 'tache. Wouldn't wear that stuff myself. Well, not the nazi stuff anyway. The soviet stuff if I had an incentive. Funnily enough I did recently so I happen to know exactly where I draw this particular line -- authentic axis power uniforms are right out for me personally. A little concession to my socialist conscience.

Some types of industrial is supposed to be kind of grim -- hence war footage and harsh BSDM porn images are the obvious things to use for your back projection. I mean if you want to convey inhumanity and soulless brutality it's a great start isn' t it? You're not going to convey this with images of happy workers in a wholefood collective restaurant.

Sometimes people actually do manage to subvert it -- but few people are that clever. I know that saying nice things around Marilyn Manson in these parts is likely to be about as popular as saying "you'll never believe what happened while I was shagging your dog last night" but he did this amazingly well a few tours back.

Lights dip... two red banner drop down either side of the stage. Spotlights pick out huge M M logos on them in gothic fonts (black on white circles) as a lectern rises slowly centre stage and marshal music stirs. I'm starting to think "fuck me, this is all a bit dodgy" and then Brian himself pops his head over the parapet wearing huge micky mouse ears and grinning like a loon and I think drooling a bit. Imagery totally subverted and job done.

[reddragdiva]

"if I were to choose, I rather like the old-style soviet look."

But then, I think of a Polish friend who reacts to casual wearing of the hammer and sickle much as many of the people here would react to casual wearing of the swastika.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

[Sandal-wearing beardie sociologist mode=on]

'Course, there's something about appropriating the imagery of one's defeated enemy - a bit like a scalp, if you will. All that Soviet deco-style propaganda that's now rather twee and adorable. [See above]

I would say that if a band thinks too much about its clothing, its not thinking enough about the music, but that's probably tempting fate and encouraging musicians to look like Wobbly Bob from the Cure.

I'm not sure if I find OMD's 'Enola Gay' more disturbing than punk bands with Swastikas, but it's worth a thought.

[bluekieran.livejournal.com]

Is naming a club "Strength Through Joy" worse than selling a car called the "Volkswagen"? From what little I read on the subject after you first brought this up, the two seem largely intertwined.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the club name and the uniforms (sans swastika/SS insignia) are excusable provided that those running the club/wearing the uniforms make it clear that they reject the associated ideology and it's a subversion thing. If I wear to don a uniform myself, though, it'd either be british or fictional, I suspect.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It's a bit of a different thing, isn't it? One's a pan-European maker of fine cars, rebuilt post-war as part of the Marshall plan, at which time they could have changed the name of the shop to 'Dave'. (I'm sure I read somewhere that Wolfsburg was previously known as KdFburg, so it's not as if there wasn't a precedent)

The other is a north London disco.

See, If anyone's got the idea that I'm bagging on StJ-the-club, they'd be wrong. It was seeing a mob of Front-242 fans dressed in full fatigues in the late 80s that made me stop and think 'Hold on. What the hell's going on here?'

Uniform, in both senses of the word, makes me uncomfortable.