Vicious Cabaret :: Rock Noir

It's been a long time, baby... The last album I was, in part, responsible for - Johnny Zhivago's Some Of The People, All Of The Time - came out in 2001. The cover of that record, in an example of curious synchronicity, presaged the events of September that year (even though the album didn't hit the shops until afterwards, the artwork had been ready for some months before) - a Litchenstein explosion amid a sea of blank faces, and a plume of smoke billowing from two large towers rising from the expressionist cityscape behind...

I grew up in the shadow of the bomb. Popular culture, be it the sci-fi comics I read or the countless Mad Max pastiches we got older siblings to rent for us at the video shop, was rife with images of a post-apocalyptic world. It didn't seem so much a case of if, as when, they were gonna drop the big one... Then the Cold War ended, not with the dropping of an H-Bomb but of a prefabricated burger restaurant on Moscow. Within a few years one almost felt embarrassed about the paranoid fantasies of childhood, of meglomaniac plots on a blockbuster scale. Fukayama's End Of History seemed like it might have arrived; a bland perpetual now, pendulum predictable and shopping mall safe.

Then I woke that morning. Shuffling around my flat, nursing an oily coffee, I got a phone call:

"Have you seen the news?"
"No, I haven't switched on the TV yet."
"You're never gonna believe what's happening..."

But I did. We all did, those of us of a certain age and a certain viewpoint. Something Jerry Lee Lewis once said came to mind - "I'm always right. I thought I was wrong once, but I looked it up... and it turned out I was right." Life was morphing into an American movie. Not the good kind...

Russia continues to embrace the American Dream, but it's the American Dream of Tony Montana. As the court jesters of our new art elite try desperately to court controversy, that lowliest of trash art forms - the cartoon - can spark an international incident. Snuff movies were once the stuff of urban myth - now the death of a dictator is brought to us in living rooms on the late night news, courtesy of Nokia. The Revolution Has Been Televised, but we sold the syndication rights. Some street hawkers came to my door the other day, asking if I believed in the End Times. They said that everything happening in the world now had been predicted in the Bible. They offered me a copy. I just smiled and offered them a dog-eared JG Ballard paperback: "Let me bring you up to speed..."

We've long known the road to hell is paved with good intentions, of course, its slabs laid by deranged visionaries and cemented with the congealed blood of do-gooder dupes. But now it's a toll road. Every morning we wake up to a pile of junk mail on our doormats telling us to save the rainforests. At night we watch the TV news waiting for the sedatives to take effect, because the pills we take in the morning to wake us up won't let us sleep. In that twilight realm on the cusp of slumber, adrift on a narcotic dream, we see old friends and lovers and for a moment can't remember if they're real or if they're just characters from an old TV show that never quite made it into a remake.

Still, The Next Utopia Will Be Better. The one after that at the very least...

Steve Maloney
Dystopia, 2007

THE DEVIL LOOKS AFTER HIS OWN

Leaning out of the hotel window over-looking the Reeperbahn, the nipple-slip of a sallow sun peeking over the skyline, I can see a hundred reality tunnels intersecting in the evening twilight.

Psychic cave-ins outside the fast food franchises and the private clubs, ideological escape artists being dragged screaming from the dogma dirt of forbidden perimeters. Early bird hookers offering their entres to the late workers; the suburbs a long way away for both of them, but in different ways. Puritans of every hue and shade hating what they become the most. The coin flips and we all take our bets. Everyone's got their price - what's yours?

I look at my watch - it's nine o'clock. My glass is empty but the dead man's tux I'm wearing fits me like it's bespoke. My friends are getting restless. But there's still time for one more before we go...

Steve Maloney
Occupied Europe, 2006

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

It's all Led Zeppelin's fault.

For one brief, glorious moment in the seventies, a band and their manager said "jump", and all the middlemen had to squeal in discordant unison "how high?" A former wrestler, manager Peter Grant's refusal to let anyone fuck over his band is legendary - he once laughed in the face of some low-rent gangster who pulled a gun on him when he demanded what the band was owed. "Don't be fucking stupid," he growled. "You're not gonna shoot me over a few grand." Unsurprisingly, he had little time for the bizarre conventions of music business etiquette.

The band were at the top of their game and they knew it. They didn't have to play by the rules, especially when "the rules" said that the band got the crumbs that were leftover once all the parasites had chowed down on the feast. After years of these bloodsuckers getting bloated on the percentage deals that lesser acts had accepted out of fear or ignorance, Grant and Zeppelin came along and re-wrote the rules they lived by (and off). 60/40 in your favour? Fuck off. 80/20 in our favour - if you don't like it, tough. We'll find someone who does. Finally, it seemed like the people who made the music were getting their due. Then, a few years later, punk finally blew the lid off the music biz scam once and for all (or so it seemed). The Great Rock & Roll Swindle, indeed.

But people with a lot of money have a tendency to try and keep it that way. And they have the means to do so. The music biz got smart, and decided that this sort of thing could never, ever, be allowed to happen again.

The industry consistently shows far greater enthusiasm for promoting disposable, vacuous pop stars than for developing more vitriolic, intelligent acts. I wonder why? It certainly isn't because of any moral qualms. Capital is only interested in the bottom line - a bit of faux controversy is always good for record sales, and no vice is taboo if it shifts units. And it isn't because there's no market for it - you can sell just about anything if you devote enough time and money to it. So why is all that effort devoted to the quick buck, rather than investing in more contentious artists? Is there some reasoning behind it? Or do A&R people just dig lightweight dross?

As a rule, pop performers are young and naive. They're not gonna rock the boat. They're not gonna demand that artistic control clause in their contract, or question the wisdom of spending £100,000 (of their money, ultimately) on some hip producer who probably won't even touch the mixing desk. The company calls the shots every step of the way. They drag some dumb kid in off the street and give him a deal. He can't write for shit, of course, so first on board will be the songwriters. Then they'll put him in that nice new £1000.00 a day studio with that flavour of the month producer (who's also best mates with the head of A&R) for a few months. Next, they'll hook him up with a manager, legal team, stylist, agent, publicist, etc. The kid hasn't even made a record yet, and there's already a lot of people on the pay roll, doing very well for themselves out of our boy's advance. And he doesn't even care, 'cause he gets to go to the same parties as Jordan.

And if he does start to wise up: well, chances are next year he'll have fallen from grace and it'll be the turn of the next sucker...

Of course, that shill of corporate entertainment, the career critic, praises the virtues of disposable pop. Inbuilt obsolescence is essential - capital can't sustain itself otherwise. Novelty is hailed as innovation - the icing gets renewed every six months but the cake underneath is still the same stale, maggot-infested sponge that's been sitting in the window for years. Cleverness is distrusted. The over-educated student union bores who comprise the music press like their pop stars dumb and inarticulate. That way they don't even have to take the time to come up with witty put-downs after the fact when they're writing up their interviews. No one's interested if the man in the car wreck had an opinion - they just want to see his brains spilled out on the dashboard.

Between 'em they've got a beautiful little hustle going, and the last thing they want is some bloody idealist with notions of "artistic integrity" coming along and fucking it up. Some maverick with no respect for the rules of the game making waves.

Access to this cosy little social club is akin to the Masons - via introduction by a member of the brethren only. The face the music industry presents to the world, of an anarchic, egalitarian, creative playpen, is second in hypocrisy only to that of America. For a country that loves to portray itself as the home of the freewheelin' non-conformist, simply trying to buy a beer requires the navigation of state restrictions usually reserved for the acquisition of weapon grade plutonium...

Behind the scenes, at those parties you never get invited to, they're having a rare old time. They're laughing themselves to incontinence at all the suckers they've ripped off and spat back into the gutter as they hoover up another line, smug in their positions as cultural uber-mench. Served by glazed, gone-to-seed groupies hungry for that final vicarious thrill, the coke is chopped out on the deleted records of former signings, snorted up through the rolled up pages of their bum contracts. Each new tune is introduced by the MC with a fiscal statement - the dancefloor is heaving already, and the net profits are barely in six figures. Who knows what heady delights await the throng later on?

Time to wreck the party, I think. The steroid-addled goons or the door will be easy to buy, easier still to out-smart. Who's game?

Steve Maloney
Occupied Europe, 2005

WELCOME TO THE COUNTRY WHERE NO ONE CAN MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS

They're trying to sell us ID cards again. It's a debate that comes around almost as often as the sales drives pushing all those other spurious cards we're supposed to cough up for - Mothers' Day, Valentine's Day, et al. This time around though, it looks as if they might actually make the sale.

The idea has always had its advocates, of course. In the past, however, derisive allusions to 1984 and judicious sprinkling of the word "draconian" into any debate on the subject were usually enough to send these people shuffling back to whatever bitter little authoritarian think-tank they crawled out of.

But with the pardigm shift to the right that has occured, a question of "why?" directed at those who would restrict our civil liberties is now simply met with a derisive "why not?" The CCTV cameras that once had no place outside of a dystopian science fiction novel are now commonplace. Whether or not they actually make the streets any safer is still open to debate, but it's a debate few seem interested in having. Intoxicated by fear and disinformation, the mood is ripe for increasingly repressive legislation.

If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear, goes their mantra. The same logic could be extended to put spy cameras in your living room, of course. After all, what does your prudish desire for privacy count for, in the grand scheme of things? It's selfish and antisocial, is it not, to put your feelings before the greater good? These days, twenty four hour surveilance isn't a totalitarian nightmare - it's prime-time entertainment.

It has yet to be explained how it benefits the individual for people to be able to find out, with the swipe of a card, who they are, where they live, what the last book they bought on Amazon was, etc. If you want to prove who you are, there are already ways you can do that. And how and when you do so is your perogative.

So the question is really "How does it benefit others?" At the very least it's another tool for marketing goons in their eternal quest to get you to buy more stuff you don't need (if half as much effort was spent on medical research as on trying to flog useless crap it's likely we'd have cures for many more of the diseases that still go unchecked by science - but I digress...). More insidiously, though, it allows government and law enforcement to build up even more detailed profiles of people, marking the card of any "undesirables" - starting as soon as children enter school, psychological profiles are composed to isolate potential troublemakers. And ironically, by creating this one definitive form of ID, it seems possible it will make it even easier for criminals and terrorists to commit the very identity theft it's claimed these cards will eliminate.

The apathy of the great sedated public will be one of the factors that let this go ahead. The other, as already mentioned, will be fear. But no matter how legitimate ones fears maybe, believing everything bad in life can be prevented by legislation is either dangerous naivety or intellectual laziness.

Those who do complain against such a measure on the basis of principle will be scoffed at for juvenile whining, or derided as paranoids (when at the same time wars can be waged on the flimsiest of evidence). Don't make a fuss, do as you're told, pitch in me old son... In an age when politics is just another sales pitch, it is worth asking yourself what exactly their shoddy little products can do for you and, more importantly, what's in it for them if they get the sale.

Because no salesman is a philanthropist. William Burroughs once said something about a world "where no one is allowed to mind their own business". Let's hope he's found a little bit of privacy where he is now, 'cause it's at a premium around here.

Steve Maloney
Occupied Europe, 2004

WHERE ARE THE DISSIDENTS?

I saw a review of some Crass re-issues in a music magazine the other day that asked the question: "Where are the dissidents?"

Well, I don’t know man - you tell me. One thing I do know is, you won’t find them amid that teetering pile of press releases and PR freebies in your West End office. I think you know that too, but it doesn't seem to stop you looking.

You won't find them parading their schtick in those "banned" videos that still seem to appear fifteen times a night on cable.

You won't find them among the ersatz seditionaries who think they're being transgressive by dressing down in the temples of the establishment as they accept their tacky honours. There's no better example of the passive-aggressive rebellion of a generation that believes crossing one's fingers as one swears alliegence is insurrection. Pissing on the altar is still a form of devotion, morons.

And you certainly won't find them anywhere on prime time TV. Live from the witch trials, indeed. It's easy to dismiss the rash of "talent" shows as cheap fad television, and those who willingly submit to them as complicit in their own humiliation, but the subliminal message being pumped out as these panels of self-appointed "experts" parade their opinions as gospel is: "Know your place. Don't get ideas above your station - conform to the values we dictate or you'll never do what you want."

Then, once the unsuitable candidates have been filtered out by these professional arbiters of good taste, in the true spirit of democracy (as Oscar Wilde said "The bludgeoning of the people, for the people, by the people") the great ignorant public gets to vote.

The beauty of it! Not only do people get to vote for the people who keep them as galley slaves, they get to vote for servile goons who intone regurgitated platitudes over the jack boot repetition of the production line beats that keep the whole thing moving. Heave, one, two...

So where are the dissidents?

It's highly possible you don't even care. It's only rock 'n' roll, a cheap distraction like popcorn movies and video games. And even if in your more idealistic moments you might think it'd be nice to change a few things, you accepted a long time ago that it'll never happen. It's just immature nonsence to think otherwise.

But if you do, perhaps you should be looking a little closer to home. Someone has to be the first to say "No"...

What are you waiting for?

Steve Maloney
Occupied Europe, 2004

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The name Vicious Cabaret is inspired by V For Vendetta, Alan Moore's dystopian vision of a fascist Britain. The protagonist, an enigmatic figure called V, models himself on Guy Fawkes and quotes Macbeth as he butchers corrupt, homicidal state policemen.

A hero for our times.

Playing to the gallery, in the course of the narrative he performs a song entitled 'This Vicious Cabaret'. If, according to Shakespeare, "all the world's a stage", the world of V is host to a dark production indeed - a sinister vaudeville of internment camps, state surveillance, and government-sponsored street thugs.

Good job it's just a fiction, eh?

Early band rehearsals took place against the backdrop of war in the middle east. The film Cabaret - based on the Christopher Isherwood 'Berlin' stories - acquired a new resonance. The story of people living out their lives in the hedonistic enclave of the Weimar Cabaret scene as the Third Reich closes in around them, it is shot through with a palpable sense of impotence in the face of sinister forces that seems more relevant now than at any time since the end of the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear annihilation was as ubiquitous a part of everyday life as bad television.

It's not a comfortable parallel to make.

The rock concert is a modern equivalent of cabaret, popularist escapism from the mundane treadmill of everyday existence - the real "Vicious Cabaret" in which we are all performers, given roles to play the lines to which we improvise desperately as we're thrust out into the harsh glare of the lights. The name also brings to mind Antonin Artaud's 'Theatre Of Cruelty', which I've often thought has found its fulfilment in rock music. The kind of all-encompassing sensory onslaught he describes in The Theatre And Its Double - the use of sound, light, and gesture to tap into an audience's subconscious desires - has been developed in rock music far more than traditional theatre.

Going back to V For Vendetta, Moore said upon its completion that what had seemed like a dark fantasy when he started writing it in the late seventies had become frighteningly prescient after ten years (then) of Conservative rule. Compared to the smiley-faced authoritarianism of our present regime, one almost pines for the obvious belligerence of Thatcher and her cronies. At least you were never in any doubt where you stood.

Now we sit in the chorus line and take our direction without complaint - we'd have liked bigger parts but for the good of the production we just keep our mouths shut and do as we're told. Leads come and go, ruthlessly replaced when they burn out on the hectic performance schedule. There are shadowy figures in the wings, who keep dragging the director over and tearing the script apart until it makes no sense anymore, and he just goes along with the changes no matter how absurd. And for the most part, so do we.

We're sure it'll be alright on the night. Positions, people...

Steve Maloney
Occupied Europe, 2003