How do I know what I like? This is the question at the center of this podcast. Do I like what I like because it's what others like, or do I like it because I like it. Another form of this central question is, is it even possible to be authentic? The language that you speak, the concepts that you think, and the desires of your heart, all came from outside of you. So, what can authenticity even mean to a self that has been determined by outside forces since before it came into being? Let's try to get to the bottom of this, is authenticity an illusion, or is it possible to get free? And let's use 70's DeeJay culture to show us the way.

Trying Too Hard

The sorts of collage art that we in the Generation X made at school involved cutting up magazine pictures and gluing them in bizarre configurations on a piece of paper. Sometimes they were just random, but sometimes we tried to make a statement, like when we were supposed to make collages about "what it means to be an American," as I had to do multiple times in Social Studies Class. The collage shares a lot in common with the concept of the remix. The remix allows one to put different pieces in different places to different effects as well as to different affects, while retaining some fractured continuity with the past. Remixing the past is the only way that we can intervene in what already has been. Nostalgia is a desire to repeat a past that never was out of hatred for and fear of difference. The remix is a desire to reinterpret that past to renew the present as a presentation of difference. Sample-based music was the heart and soul of Generation X's love of pastiche, and its desire to rearrange the past to make the world new.

Trying Too Hard

Generation Jones may have been cynical because they came of age during the 70's economic downturn and after the failure of the Hippies to produce a revolution, but they weren't reactionaries. Their most enduring musical productions, Glam Rock, Punk, Disco, and Hip Hop were testaments to openness, inclusivity, and exuberance. It was the reactionary Boomers of the Love Generation who tried to squelch their high spirits by proclaiming, "Disco Sucks!" The "Disco Demolition" at Comiskey park in Chicago witnessed the destruction of records that had little to do with Disco per se, and more to do with a barely disguised hatred of Black and Latin music, and of the Queer Culture that these bigots associated with Disco. Unfortunately, the 80's also saw a growth in the reactionary punks of the "hardcore" scene who just like the reactionary bigots of the Right sought a return to some sort of lost purity. However, the Disco and Funk party of the 70's couldn't be stopped. Dance music went underground and became house music, and Funk and Jazz got sampled and became Hip Hop and Electro. And Punk fractured into a million difference "Post-Punk" subgenres that you were only allow to like with something like detached irony rather than direct enjoyment.

Trying Too Hard