No Music Day - Soulseeking

Fuck Bill Drummond and his superior attitude - telling us to stop listening because we are losing the meaning of music. Pish, utter pish. If he is getting jaded then so be it, but don't expect any of us to agree with the virtuosness of a single day listening to no music in order to heal our minds and make them more receptive to sounds again, or rediscover what the meaning of listening truly is or other such balls. I'd just written a much better response than this, then clicked the stupid side button on my mouse which is the most inconevient invention ever - so you're stuck with this. Drummon - come to me if you're bored with music and can't find any to excite you. I'm in a constant state of excitement almost every day with something new and each listyen gets more exciting and more detailed than the next. if I'm losing anything, it's respect for you Mr Drummond.

I think that you are being a little harsh on the roundtable discussion. Only Morley complained about Busted. Nick Cave came over particularly well. I especially liked the description of his feeling of creating music.

Actually, I think part of the problem is that Drummond did not go far enough. I remember that about five or more years ago, Luke Haines was trying to promote a No Culture Day (Do not actively consume culture if you can help it). Of course, the general consensus is that Haines is a prat - and I won't argue that too strongly - just to say that his idea did foresee, to quote Misty's Big Adventure, the current "Bland Age" of music (a huge overgeneralisation to be sure). I think, in any case, that in his and Drummond's case, the idea isn't REALLY to actually observe the day, so much as the suggestion of the day itself is meant to draw the attention of people who were not, unlike Stylus readers and writers, all that aware and/or actively engaged with the fact that on some objective level, various forms of popular culture today suck, outright (Although when have they not, even in the so called "golden ages" of any pop art-form?, etc.). The suggestion of the boycott also points to the idea that audiences ought to use their veto powers and not consume the shit that some artists are peddling; putting the onus on them to not play the art business game at the cost of virtues that audiences value (which can be summed up by the concept of "being true and uncompromising with respect to one's artistic vision"). In light of that, jadedness and cynicism would be to attack that kind of concept, as high-minded as it may be. The real key, as anyone who lives in a culturally-vibrant (or better: -viable) city would know, it is both the individual hard-work and collective support of a local artistic community that represents the only challenge to art business, even if so-called cynics will forsee such communities (at least parts of them) eventually succumbing to the corporate world through plaudits and wider awareness, which is a function of time. So in sum, if take Drummond and Haines or others who declare the death of (insert art-form here) with a grain of salt and understand that they're trying to raise people's awareness (to which we, here, are "the aware"), we can realize that attacking them is ultimately at cross-purposes to our concerns.

maybe drummond should have used all that money he burned to buy more back catalogs and delete them so there wouldn't be any music to listen to.

There is no public place in this country, save for libraries -- which have their own soundtrack thanks to the hordes of small children that are allowed to run free, and teenagers gabbing among each other while checking Myspace pages on their computers -- where a person can sit quietly and read or study without being pummelled by loud music. But it's not something that anyone else seems bothered by. If anything, people want MORE of it.

I'm sorry, but this article really is a wealth of stupid. Doesn't Unterburger have a list or something you guys could publish?

Badhaircut, what you describe is the soundtrack in those places -If I understand what you mean. I think that's the point. Fewer and fewer people are hearing the world around them thanks to the headphones they wear, and it's this background noise that unifies us with the world around, and which we distance ourselves from by covering it up with our choice of music directly injected into our ears. Though you are surely wrong when you say there are no public places which do not bombard us with loud music - I can think of many with no music or very quiet background inoffensiveness. Mostly cafes and coffe shops though to be honest. You have a problem with children running around? That's a different topic of discussion altogether, and not one for these pages, I'm sure.

. o O (punk philosophy? i thought that was about zines and community-based anarchy, not major labels and distributors...) O o .

I'm fully in favor of no music day, though it's impossible. Not so much for Drummond's reasons (as an American, I've never used the word "prat" but it seems super-applicable here). My ears are tired for all of the reasons outlined in Nick in other articles. On top of that, there's so much music piped into every environment ... I could do with a one day palate cleansing.