High In Offices We Stared Into The Turning Wheel Of Cities

Over at The Crystal World, my friend and teacher in the ways of Prog, Ed gives us all a very fine introduction to Rock In Opposition (hereafter RIO).

For me, other than producing incredible music, Rock In Opposition has always been intriguing to me politically, as one commentator notes, (negatively) “the “Rock in Opposition” festival was most likely led by anti-capitalist, left wing motives”. As I’ve already mentioned, Deleuze enjoyed a bit of French prog, turning up to eulogise the actions of 1968 on Heldon’s debut record, though they aren’t strictly RIO. Heldon’s Richard Pinhas has solid left credentials, having had a simultanous political and musical awakening at the baracades. I actually had a really interesting piece on the politics of French prog, but I  can’t find it now. It is because RIO is a genre of music, like branches of DIY punk, that sets itself specifically in opposition to the mainstream structures of the music industry, it’s distributive mechanisms and the commercially oriented restrictions placed on artistic endevour. As Ed notes the original RIO concert poster told us that you would be attending to listen to band “the record companies don’t want you to hear” – bands that could not be properly represented by the music industry (emphasis upon industry). Of course, they weren’t all political explicitely, Univers Zero report they fought with Henry Cow/Art Bears drummer Chris Culter on precisely this point – UZ seeing politics as meaningless. Indeed, Henry Cow indeed seem pivotal here, as they arranged the whole affair, formed in May ‘68 no less, and displayed left-wing politics in their music throughout. Key is their 1975 record with an uncredited and also RIO band Slapp Happy, In Praise Of Learning. In the song, Living In The Heart Of The Beast, the revolutionary concepts are front and centre:

We were born to serve you all our bloody lives
labouring tongues we give rise to soft lies :
disguised metaphors that keep us in a vast inverted stillness
twice edged with fear.

Twilight signs decompose us

High in offices we stared into the turning wheel of cities
dense and ravelled close yet separate: planned to kill all encounter.
Intricate we saw your state at work its shapes
abstracted from all human intent. With our history’s fire
we shall harrow your signs.

Now is the time to begin to go forward – advance from despair,
the darkness of solitary men – who are chained in a market they
cannot control – in the name of a freedom that hangs like a pall
on our cities. And their towers of silence we shall destroy.

Now is the time to begin to determine directions, refuse to admit
the existence of destiny’s rule. We shall seize from all heroes and
merchants our labour, our lives, and our practice of history : this,
our choice, defines the truth of all that we do.

Seize on the words that oppose us with alien force; they’re enslaved
by the power of capital’s kings who reduce them to coinage and
hollow exchange in the struggle to hold us, they’re bitterly
outlasting… Time to sweep them down from power
- deeds renew words.

Dare to take sides in the fight for freedom that is common cause
let us all be as strong and as resolute. We’re in the midst of
a universe turning in turmoil; of classes and armies of thought
making war – their contradictions clash and echo through time.

Now all this does a good job of exposing the fact that, contrary to mainstream most rock historians, punk wasn’t a political answer to the apolitical strains of prog. Prog also could be political, both in music and in lyrics, and was not merely escapism from social reality. The Insitute points out that Stormy Six, another RIO band, were not adverse to penning a “profondo rosso” ditty (though not as hardcore as Area) or involving themselves with 1970s Italian militancy through music, by combining their  earlier protest lyrics with vastly more experimental settings. As my anarchist foil housemate of Rhizo-improvisers The Exploits Of Elaine points out, CAN always saw themselves as “never a normal rock group. CAN was an anarchist community.”, and that music, in his case free improvisation, is a way in which new spaces and forms of politics can be enacted. One could also point to famously anti-capitalist Canadians Godspeed You! Black Emperor (analysis), whose internal operations and label Constellation are concieved on collective grounds, and instead of promotional material are fond of sending journalists information about oppression and trace the links between the music industy and arms manufacturers as can be found in the sleeve notes for their album Yanqui U.X.O. All together now “I open up my wallet. And it’s full of blood”.