2 many DJs, Soulwax sessions volume eight
5th generation rock and roll. Amateur poetry in a middle English voice. Floating and left-wing. After one session of Soulwax already, my mind feels like a catalogue. I don’t know either of the songs mixed together and I have in front of me a can of Pepsi full of drink and a can of coke half-full of ash. The computer (Microsoft, nearly micro-frost) recognises coke and not Pepsi. Don’t pick up the wrong one for a cheeky swig.

They say we had beautiful girls. Is this kind of music beautiful on the radio and in person rather like an uncle at a wedding rooting through their favourite greatest hits? Editing and editing; creation through choice is a truly consumerist music. In this exercise, I know I’m going to be listening to a glut of an artist at a time… the alphabet is all but what if you get just too much of a person? Like a love affair you wear down to dirty socks and improvised breakfasts of contempt and familiarity? And there the singer confirms it with “Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, don’t let the bedbugs bite”. What if I acquire a new love? It’s impossible to have a monogamous relationship with music. It will lead you into tawdry rendezvous’ with architecture, history, maths, engineering, literature, art and technology. It’s ten o’clock, do you know where your teenager is? The party of bpm never stops and too many djs in control.

God, I haven’t recognised a single sample or track so far. That might have been George Harrison asking me, Liz Kearton, how I feel but I’m not sure.

An amateur choir, children, singing away mixed over a very electro-stylee backing…how is the listener supposed to recognise that? If recognition is the game? Or is this how 2 many DJs have evolved…the new superstardom where one works actively towards amateurism and mediocrity? It’s not fashionable to say so but Daniel Johnson, over-rated and beloved of those who chase “authenticity”, lacking it themselves... you could say his whole canon of works espouse this…is this where punk led us? People who are shit and are applauded for being shit? Who write hokey little songs that follow no structure, no pattern of the brain or the eye and are instead stream of consciousness with nothing save gratification? But then I love Finnegan’s’ Wake which is the ultimate in this format…

Punk and democracy – that terrible tag-line for a broadband/cable company that says “If you can, you should”. What if you are untalented but you still want to? And the people listening support that anti-oppressive, liberal get up and have a go, anyone can do it idea? Then the gates are open and the act is whored for the sake of doing it. Very little responsibility is taken for the musical animal who is birthed from this then, everything can be justified by “because you’re worth it” and similar. In the world of art, we can’t discriminate against those that have no talent. We are all shoppers now. Music as therapy and self-expression certainly but like all that free jazz that just goes on and on and on, you have to ask if the music there for the performer or the listener? I know this feeds well into John cage’s inversion of the triangle of composer/performer/listener and it’s healthy to challenge preconceptions of the structure (and politics of the structure of )music, but the danger of it turning into musical masturbation of a sort is always there. Therapy’s not a bad thing, but do you then publish it? The risk is there then of disenfranchising the skill and art behind confession, and I’ve seen at first hand the distrust, contempt and even hate at times of a trained musician.

I’ve found something on the shelf I know now, a familiar brand. Beats International featuring some-one I forget. Dub be good to me. Why do I listen closer now? I’ve seen an old friend with a new haircut; older and embittered, showing that the new is preferable. And now linking and loving with another on the tip of my tongue…what is this one with the heavier, decadent beats? Serge Gainsbourg begs me to listen to him while he sings a requiem (I can’t be sure, I have no French on my shopping list today). Is the recognition the highlight? A DJ has saved my life (again) and I do have to get up and get out, but not for an hour or so before work starts.