po, * 'N, ' *.' .' '.~ ~ b* ~ lh 4,~ I- I. ,. .. 'I,., ' 0 I . . Elk . i 0 WV , -.- The Michigan Daily - Weekend etc. . Secretly T o my frustration, society.con- tinues to refer to certain mem- bers of this human race as "half white ard half Black." Not only does this terminology make no sense, it's also a retention of the old American racism which makes life harder for so many people, like a friend ofmine, The Tragic Mulatto. That title probably sounds quite mean-spirited to you, but not to worry. TheTragic Mulatto lovingly refers to himself in such terms. It's an expression of irony which, I'm sure, nobody appreciates more than he does. I'm also sure that, to the racial purists who came up with such a concept, the joke couldn't be any more offensive. Butit's the so-called TragicMul- attos all over the planet who can laugh freely, knowing that all the precious boundaries, amenities and secretlies which make the issue of race so controversial add up to a big joke. Ironically, the concept of race means something different to every person. Butmanipulativetermssuch as "half Black and half white" cal- lously ignore the fact that Black people have been supposedly "mixed-up" for centuries. So what purpose does it serve? Black people retain Blackness out of a sense of cultural pride and reverence, as well as necessity - not because each of us holds some vaunted percentage of pure African mitochondria. One lesson that )V04 F"0, #J Forrest Green li 4' Americans need to learn is that the concept of race has no scientific validity. Personally, I define true Black consciousness as living and ex- pressing, fearlessly doing what needs to be done, and not worrying so much about getting concessions from the powers that be. That's my definition. Of course, there's a hidden agenda for all of this. Sure, white supremacy isn't as blatant as it used to be, even if Black people still have a legitimate need for texts such as The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy) by Frances Cress Welsing, MD. Public Enemy's Chuck D., who hitme to Welsing, attacks apiece of American legislation which I've never seen but still should be men- tioned here. The legislation, passed circa 1961, says that anyone with a single drop of Black blood is auto- matically Black This law serves nb purpose other than to set the de- scendants of slaves apart from whites, effectively celebrating and legitimizing the iniquities of the past. It's legal traditions like this which ensure that in many small towns across America, men will continue to be their own fathers. And until such white suprema- cist legislature is exposed for what it is and as Chuck D. suggests, we "kick that Apartheid shit out of here," ludicrous concepts like the Tragedy of the Mulatto will con- tinue to be accepted with a nod and a smile. Is there fear of a Black, or un- afraid, planet in 1992? You betcha. What's my slant in all of this? Well, I'm not a Tragic Mulatto, per se. Besides what I see as an aberrant crease in basic notions like equality and i ustice. the status auo makes Overture . . March 19, 1992 0 :. Paae 1- ( i " Annette Petruso:."Such short spans of time in punk had such massive effect ..." Jon Savage: "Well, everyone, was taking amphetamines." .e - the Atlantic? Why did the music take to learn about pop culture. We had to you by the balls and throw you learn popular culture. It's not an in- around? Savage's book reveals the digenous form. To us, fashion is al- roots of punk - boredom and dis- ways an important part of pop cul- satisfaction with life. ture because that was part of our learning process. ... Ther.e is no future! In England's "While to Americans, it seems Dreaming" really inauthentic and fake, it's very - "God Save the Queen" real to us Brits. So; we have a com- The Sex Pistols plete, if you like, emotional authen- AP: "Why write the book in the first ticity expressed in highly inauthentic place?". " forms, i.e. the fact that fashion and JS: "The first motivation really was music get involved with one another the sense that I had, and a lot of is part of the whole thing. That's the other people had, of unfinished busi- way that English pop music works." ness in punk rock. And I think there AP: "Where does the music fit in? was a lot of unfinished business ... The fashion seems to me to become "It has to do with collapsed ideals more important than the music." and the fact that a lot happened very JS: "You see, one of the good things quickly. And there was also a lot of about England is that nobody really very good ideas that were never thinks in terms of these distinctions. taken up, and there was a very pow- Basically, a group has to come up erful feeling that became dissipated with a great look if it's really going and yet remained in people's minds to mean very much, even if it's an and took people quitea long time to anti-look. Every English group deal with." comes with a hook, or they did in the "I tell you it was a frame ... ... they only did it 'cause offame" - "F"[ The fashion in England's Dreaming comes from one very spe- cific source: Malcolm McLaren. Though his companion Vivienne Westwood physically did most of the designs and helped create and run the many forms of McLaren's King's Road shop, it was McLaren who foisted his unique point of view and hunger for public outrage on to the world in his forming of the Sex Pistols. Savage's research explored many angles of punk, but, he can carefully discuss McLaren's strengths and shortcomings without judging them. "God save the Queen/ She ain't, no human being ... Jon Savage's book England's Dreaming - Anarchy, the Sex Pistols and Beyond reads as a thor- ough popular social history of Brit- ish punk, focusing on the Pistols.- Covering a mere three years of one music genre seems deceptively simple. But the subject's complexi- .ties require that Savage write at least 600 pages (reduced from the approx- imate 900-page original draft) to be- gin the exploration: punk rejected the past, present and future, while ironically exerting a heavy influence on later generations. England's Dreaming is not mere- ly an "objective" (a farcical idea if there ever was one) retelling of the evolution of punk. Savage kept a di- ary at the time of the, movement's in- ception and quotes himself through-. out the text. As the quotes indicate, Savage himself followed punk from its early days. In Dreaming he tries, and I would submit, succeeds in getting close to the "truth" about what really happened. Savage's extensive use of inter- views from those that had a hand in punk's creation give his text a depth unprecedented in music writing. Such consultations ma not reveal . "Fashion/ Turn to the left/ Fashion/! Turn to the right ... As, Savage writes it, British punk's roots lie in the fashion, per-! sonal obsessions and political goings1 on of the era that came before punk ever-became the music of the Sex Pistols. A lot of musical movements probably began this way, but have never been explored in the method that Savage uses. The whole idea of the Sex Pistols (and other punk bands) as a con- struction - something Malcolm McLaren shaped by introducing people to one another via his cloth- ing/curiosities shop - is not as arti- ficial as it seems. Yet, the power of punk lies inits awkward self-aware- ness. Self-conscious posing draws more attention than unconscious fit- ting in. ... We're the goon squad/ and we're coming to town- d -David Bowie "Fashion" AP: "To oversimplify, the thesis of the first 'half of -the book seems to be a co-option of music by fashion." JS: "Well, that presupposes that that co-option is bad, you see. I don't think that argument goes far enough. "I think it's obvious that the whole point of the book-is basically about the struggle that's enacted by a particular generation in the media to beat the media at its own game. The great lesson of'the book is that it is sixties, you know one group had the guy with the weird haircut, another had a girl drummer ... "And it's not something anybody gets hung up about. Everyone ex- pects everybody to have the hook, to The Sex Pistols AP: Where does McLaren fit then? JS: "He starts the book and that's very deliberate because I think in some ways, McLaren undersells himself. He's quite a serious person, but he's become sort of a media clown. "And if there was one start to the Sex Pistols - I mean I had to make the decision - if I had to choose one person and one place that was the start of the Sex Pistols, I would have to say Malcolm McLaren. "And so the sticking with him is very important at the start of the book because the Sex Pistols proba- bly wouldn't have been successful, as successful without Johnny Rotten and the other people in the group, but if there hadn't been a Malcolm McLaren, there would be no Sex Pistols. "Lipstick traces... The whole idea of the Sex Pistols as a construction isn't new (check out the other seminal work on the Pistols, Greil Marcus' convoluted Lipstick Traces), but Savage makes the concept accessible. Savage's pre- cise, compact style doesn't waste a , 2 . it , ' her ,z5: - ,----; LL. _a the whole truth and nothing but the truth, for the real truth (whatever that is) passed with the moment - but there's more to the facts than "what really happened." Where did punk come from? What did it mean to the musicians and their co-conspirators? What did it say about society on both sides of possible to beat themedia attits own game, but if you do it, y%'re only going to be able to do it for a short while." AP: "In the second half, image again overtakes music." JS: "What I'm trying to say is that in England - which is. quite different from America - in England we had have the gimmick. I quite like that, 'cause it's very pop. And a lot of the book is to celebrate pop ... " AP: "Then where does the music fit in?" JS: "The music is what gets every- body interested, is what makes it work. 'Cause you can have all the hype in the world, which the Sex Pistols had, but if it's not in the mu- sic, then it won't matter. You can't persuade people to buy things if they're bad. "If the music is true, which the Sex Pistols' music was - a lot of punk music was - i.e. if itexpresses real emotions and it interacts with the emotions of the listener, .and makes them feel things and makes them feel things in a different way, then that's what the music is there for. And that certainly happened with punk. "People are really saying what they feel within forms that appar- ently inauthentic. But that doesn't mean people aren't saying real _d-" 1) 0i Wt' - %nom GHT - f>4 .., El10 Joe, Been anywhere lately Nah, its all played ahtBill G'ettin lo~traight. All rnhrntnc ndI the T-s~hirt illiim,tratirnr riallpri frl'm rrinanr', Prior to the formation of the Sex Pistols, McLaren strove to shock