We're Going To Need A Bigger Grab-Bag

In typically ironic fashion, the day after Blaugust ends, I find myself overflowing with ideas and opportunity. So many things I could write about and so much time to do it. 

In my experience, however, it's never a great idea to file away these kinds of thoughts in drafts or notes. There's a shelf-life to everything and ideas for blog posts too often come with a use-by date of right now.

With that in mind, here's another Friday Grab-Bag. I don't know how many items we'll get through because any or all of them could easily fill a whole post on their own and I do have a tendency to run on. At least, unlike Wilhelm, I don't have to worry about what my future self a year from now is going to say. I don't do "In Review" posts and I don't plan to start.

Which doesn't mean I don't curate my own back catalog. One of the prime benefits of having a blog is being able to go back and find out what you thought, even who you were, a few weeks, months or years ago. 

That came in handy when I read this news item at NME, which linked to this review, which reminded me of this post by Redbeard. 

I've mentioned my feelings on the hipster thing before. It's a complex topic, hipsterism. I don't think I ever heard the word used in its current meaning until a handful of years ago but the concept threads all the way through my life, back to my early teens, if not to my childhood. I mean, one of my earliest embarrassing moments came when I was realized I'd been mis-pronouncing the word "menagerie". I was seven at the time.

Once I did come into contact with the extant exigesis (There's a hipster way of expressing yourself if ever there was.) my immediate instinct was to own it. I exhibit so many of the dominant hipster modes of thought and expression, if maybe not the dress sense. Although, come to think of it, I am wearing a lumberjack shirt, ironic tee and straight black jeans as I type this...

The juncture where I separate myself from core hipsterdom is highlighted by something Redbeard says, which in turn exemplifies why the whole hipster mode of being can be so slippery and hard to define. Red says "If there's one thing that I don't like, it is the concept of the hipster as tastemaker and critic.", which would, of course, be one of the aspects I find the most appealing, but I'm not even sure either of those are aspects of hipsterdom.

Hipsters, as I understand it, like to find things first, make book on them while they're obscure, then migrate to the next private island as soon as the first tour bus arrives. That'd be a water bus, I guess. I'm pretty sure a true hipster would have come up with a better metaphor.

The whole point is that anything the masses like, where "the masses" are defined as anyone outside the hipster's immediate circle, is already over. I'm not aware that there's even the least intent to introduce anyone outside the circle to anything and even within the circle the main point is to be first, not to share.

That would make the whole idea of being a tastemaker anathematic to the true hipster and limit the critical function to a basic In/Out function. I don't associate myself with that behavior at all. For me the whole point of finding things first is to be able to bring them to others to share and maybe get patted on the head for it. A bit like a cat leaving a dead shrew on the doormat and with about the same chance of success.

Also, I don't often go off things so my hipster trail isn't littered with dry husks but neon signposts to glittering, living experiences. I do, however, get a dirty thrill from being able to say I was there first. It's not pretty. Also, it's embarrassingly inaccurate nearly all of the time. Usually, when I say I was there first, what I mean is I was there before some bunch of people who weren't looking, weren't interested and don't much care even now. 

By the time I tell you about anything on this blog, you can pretty much guarantee there are already Wikipedia pages and scholarly articles about it and if the YouTube videos don't have hundreds of millions of views they do at least have tens of thousands. If I ever do show you anything that no-one else seems to have noticed yet, you can take it as a guarantee it'll never be heard of again.

We all live in our own universes, though, and my personal world firsts feel as good to me as anyone elses's, objectivity be damned. That's why I feel a tiny bit smug every time I see Wet Leg ascend yet another rung of the fame ladder or when another gatekeeper of the culture swings the doors wide for Lana. I may not have been there first but - damn it - I was there early!

I can't even say that much about Halsey. Their first album came out in 2015 but the earliest mention on this blog didn't appear until August 2019 and even then only in the context of a video of Halsey dancing at a Lana del Rey gig. It's in the post I linked. Go look at it there. I'm not going to link it again. Oh, alright then...

I'm fairly sure that was the first I'd heard of Halsey. The Lana connection would have been the only reason I went on to check them out. I must have liked what I found because a year later, the second time they appear on the blog, in April 2020, I'm coming over all Team Halsey with "I have a real soft spot for Halsey. She seems to get a bad press for not being enough of a pop princess like Ariana or Selina but she doesn't get cred for having edge like Melanie Martinez or Hayley Kiyoko. I have an odd feeling it's a class issue but I can't stand that up."

Well, that's all changed, hasn't it? Along with the pronoun, although Halsey goes by she/they now so maybe not? I confess I'm not totally up to speed with multiple pronouns yet, as in when you use one rather than the other or if they're interchangeable. I need to work on that...

It's great to see Halsey come into their own the way they have. The last album - or at least the tracks I've heard; I have it wishlisted for the coming gift-giving season - is magnificent but to dominate the Reading/Leeds festival the way it's been reported they did is something I would never have imagined possible, back in 2020. 

Reading has always been a very male, very hard, very ROCK festival, the kind where you're likely to get hit in the back of the head by a lager can filled with urine. A whole bunch of tents got set on fire this year and the police response was "the matter was dealt with". Par for the course, in other words.

I'd like to believe that someone with Halsey's gender identity, political stance and pop star profile being able to win over the Reading crowd signifies a shift in the cultural tide, and to some degree I think it must, but mostly what it says is that Halsey is a brilliant live performer with an extraordinary ability to make connections, both through the power of their voice and the power of their words.

Which <Buffs fingernails> is what I said all the way back when. Yeah, all of three years ago. Let's not get above ourselves. Oh, why pretend to be ironic? It's nice to be proved right at least now and again, isn't it? Not attractive to call attention to it, or cool, I'll give you that. But here I am doing it anyway because self-examination and painful personal honesty are so in right now, aren't they? Unlike irony. We're so over irony... (Don't try to follow me - I'm lost too.)

Well, I said this was going to run on and look where we are. I've been so busy patting myself on the back I haven't left room for anything else. I guess all those other topics, whatever they were, are just going to have to wait for another day after all. Let's hope they don't go stale.

There is one other mini-topic I think I could squeeze in. It actually fits quite well, now this has turned into a music post and a meditation on elitism. 

For last year's Blaugust I did a series based around the Pitchfork 25, a list of favorite albums from the last quarter of a century. At #9 in my list came Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino by Arctic Monkeys, an album described as "polarising" by NME at the time of release and generally received with uncertainty by the fancore.

It was my first Arctic Monkeys album and I love it. I play it often, I even bought a book because of it. I'm delighted to hear that there's a new album coming. It's called The Car and it “picks up where the other one left off musically”. There's a single from it out now and it's everything a fan of the last album could hope for.

Let's end with it. It's called There’d Better Be A Mirrorball.

Sometimes it pays to arrive late to the party.