The futile search for authentic experience (1 .. n)

[hirez]

Dear nice people in bands.

You were probably keeping the existence of 'road worn' guitars from me because you knew I'd go off on one and/or jabber randomly about (post)modernist theory. I'm sure your intention was good, but the Koons-style cat is out of the Fendi (probably. It would be a bad idea to try to make me care.) knockoff bag.

For Fuck's Sake. When I were a lad and had ambitions of a semi-musical noisemongering nature, the entire point of buying a new guitar from the shop was that it was shiny and new and didn't smell of beer and sweat and the inside of rusty vans yet. You played the thing lots and after a while you worked out how to get filthy noises out of it and over time you and the guitar left scars on each other that actually meant something.

There was, if you will, a long period of becoming.

Now you can buy guitars that are more-or-less identically pre-knackered at the factory. There is no becoming or experience, there's just some manner of ersatz is-ness that you buy in the same way you buy 'authentic' coffee or 'authentic' 'ring-spun' 'pre-worn' jeans.

I guess it's just another example of the commodification and marketing of alleged rebellion. I can't say I'm surprised.

(Is this what I'm going to be doing for all of 2011? )

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Pah! You ought to watch Rich Hall's "Dirty South". You and he would get on.

"Ring-spun"? Do they really know what that means, and has it really been snapped up as some signifier of credibility?

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Until I clicked the link I thought that "road worn" was just another way of saying "second hand", like 'vintage' for musos.
Do they attack the guitars with a sander and a greasy rag dipped in JD, or is there a back room full of pale, shy indie-boys and girls hammering the frets 24/7? A battery farm of instrument battery.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. One would assume the pale Telecasters get special attention from muscle-shirted Noo Joisey types windmilling away at 'Born to run'. I guess it's one way of dealing with the EU tribute-band mountain; set them to work in guitar factories. After all, it would be no use buying a guitar with the wrong sort of wear. Imagine the terrible noise that would result if you bought an instrument that had been subject to nothing but Country & Western, and started bashing out angular post-punk with the thing. Madness.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Probably not. Yes, it was.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

It's the next logical step from jeans with holes already in them, I suppose.

(I had jeans with a hole in when I was a teenager. It was because I had put a hacksaw through the knee while cutting posts for building a withy fence. Yeah, I'm a country girl at heart.)

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

It's one step away from "ready-broken", I suppose, which is itself just one step away from Reginald Perin's "Grot".

There will then be a rebellion against the rebellion, and all the hip and trendy kids will become Young Conservatives; not the Ministry T-shirt and combat-trousered Young Conservatives that I was part of, but the kind of Young Conservatives who own brand new tuxedos and get their photos in the Telegraph.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

In a similar vein, apparently it is the fashion for newly-appointed barristers to subject their wigs to a thorough stomping in the gutter, so's not to look like a pupil in court. Don't know if Ede & Ravenscroft have started producing pre-distressed wigs though.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is clearly a classic fork. 'authentic' has stayed put, and 'Authentic' is headed off in the opposite direction and now means 'fake'.

You'll be wanting some of this, by way of an antidote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

[quercus.livejournal.com]

There's a powder one can purchase for doing it, from Trumpers. I believe it was intended as "essence of youth" in the aging president market, but it turns out to work well for distressing horsehair.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

You scoff at my bookshelf of wabi-sabi and iki theory!

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Only at it's earnestness.

I'm totally down with the idea that stuff ought to show its age and look better as it ages. Not so sure that it needs to be mouse-grey to do it.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I'm really not keen on the alleged agile progamming usage. A 'state of ongoing imperfection' is in serious chocolate fireguard territory.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

You're not saying you've found an app that's not got a bug in, are you ? :-)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Good heavens. The very idea. Etc.

There's a difference between 'shopping trolley widget is not the correct shade of green' and 'Eats all the memory and needs restarting every eight hours'.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Are jeans sans holes actually a scarf? I suggest we might need the services of a jobbing Topologist[1] in order to be sure.




[1] Knowing all the words to 'Fiddler on the roof' does not count.

[reddragdiva]

I would not say no to one and am quite sure they're exceedingly nice guitars. That, of course, does not in any way make the marketers less cuntish.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Given that the 'authentic' ones are circa twice the price of the cooking ones, they would have to be seriously good.

[reddragdiva]

Rock musicians are enormously lucky: for a few hundred quid they can get an instrument that will last them for life. Compare classical musicians, who can have instruments in the thousands.

The guitars could well be seriously good - it's something you'd need to test on an individual instrument basis, with the player and their accompanying guitar-nerd friend play-testing each instrument. That is, I suspect the variation between individual instruments would swamp the variation between instrument lines.

[reddragdiva]

arkady is pointing a gun at my head and telling me I'm going to learn guitar at long last, particularly given I've taken to constructing bleepy shite. These are the hazards of going out with a musician.

(The other hazard of going out with a musician is that musicians are excused musical taste. She plays Bon Jovi, I play the Moodists, we come to a detente.)