33 rebellions per minute
"This is dead stock and reduced to sell"
1999
Bis, SOCIAL DANCING
It is my firm belief, despite occasional moments of yeah-like-I-was-there nostalgia, that more good music is made each year than the year before. I believe, furthermore, that the rise is a steep one, such that were I to make a Best Of 1965-to-1976 list, limiting one record per band, it would be only somewhat stronger than a typical year in the 1990's. I understand, of course, how circumstance distorts my viewpoint. I started buying records in 1990, and both my monetary and time budgets for music have been radically greater since 1997 then ever before that, so obviously I will be far more aware of music made today then earlier. Then again, I've been very determined in rooting out copies of all the best-loved records of music's various movements, and the end result is that I'm somewhat amazed by what could pass for greatness thirty years ago. The Rolling Stones probably _were_ one of the best bands of all time, when rock music's "all time" was a couple of decades; John Fogerty probably _was_ among the canniest songwriters in the medium. But the Rolling Stones and John Fogerty had one unavoidable disadvantage next to music made later: they couldn't benefit from learning from the successes and failures of the Rolling Stones and John Fogerty. For every album like FRAGILE or AQUALUNG or SOUNDS OF SILENCE that sparkles as brilliantly now as ever, there were three dozen more that sank beneath the burden of excess originality, but might've been extraordinary with a few more licks available for the makers to pilfer as a base. Plus the old recording technology was pretty feeble, of course. Right now as I speak, some unknown guys with one-fifth the talent of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are probably recording albums which, were their songs to be blasted over the radio and in bar bands for the next thirty years, would seem fully the equal of, at least, GOAT'S HEAD SOUP and STICKY FINGERS.
Rock music is, like all art forms, recombinant: take some good ideas from here, some different ideas from over there, vary them by some mix of instinct and formula, toss in a dash of originality. The more ideas are out there to steal, the more interesting the recipes can be, if the average cook's talent is a constant over time. More than most art forms, though, rock also benefits from a radical (far more than hundredfold) increase in its number of practitioners, because every year it becomes cheaper to record and distribute a new album. Looking at the surface of the rock world -- the Billboard charts, the Spin Magazine Official Designated Cool People -- one can easily regard some eras as good, some eras as bad, simply judging how much one likes whichever combinations happen to be popular. But styles don't die. They don't have to. For every three hundred people abandoning ska for electronica en route to rap-metal, there's another couple of dozen who found their holy grail at one of the intervening stops, and are more than happy to explore it further. And they will do so with a generation of previous talent at their disposal.
Thus it is that one of the my favorite albums of the New Wave was just made a few months ago, soon arriving at my house in brand new vinyl form. Bis's SOCIAL DANCING does not, as far as I can tell, quite imitate anything. Bananarama lamed themselves with generic unison barely-in-tune vocals, where Bis singers circle around each other energetically, pitting the girl (Manda Rin)'s chorus directly against the guys' (John Disco and Sci-Fi Steven) on "Action and Drama", or trading the sarcastic throwaway "thank you Ricki/ Thank you Jenny"s on "Making People Normal". X-Ray Spex and Penetration had singers who could manage the chirpy enthusiasm of Manda's backing vocals, and Lora Logic could've managed her articulate cold lead on "I'm A Slut", but the complete package is new, and only Penetration among those had any of Bis's mainstream '80's dance polish. "Eurodisco" could be New Order, but earns its title a bit too faithfully in the jittery 16th-notes and Giorgio Moroder fake-drum tones, and the telegraphed echoes of the chorus are like Duran Duran singing with Pat Benatar. "The Hit Girl" sees Manda singing in a clipped anxiety worthy of David Byrne ("She won't. Be seen. Today. Cuz. She was. Let down. By those. Near."), and the sketchily ambitious synth melody behind her could be Missing Persons, but the chorus is too singably upbeat for that, and John's yelped "This is not! My idea! Of a good! Existence!" is an obvious shout-out to a 1995 Garbage song. Of course, Garbage are also a New Wave band in their way, a further example of everything living on and accumulating extra merit; but Bis's many-track layering is still far less dense than anything Butch Vig would tolerate, and far more exuberant. "Theme From Tokyo" recalls another newer wave exhibit, "Tubthumping"-era Chumbawamba, in its half-hearted spy-movie hook, its genuine string quartet, its synthetic hints at metallophone and Jethro Tull-style tongue-flute, and its shouted chorus. "Shopaholic" could be early Madonna without Manda's cutely subversive maneuver of singing her own echo in real time, and "It's All New" is fundamentally bubblegum. But "Am I Loud Enough" makes the Vapors and Devo seem laid-back; "Sale Or Return"'s menacing chorus is ambushed by the effort to cram "This is dead stock and it's in your kitchen still inside a plastic bag" into space normally mean to fit "Is it sale or return?"; and "Detour" is trip-hop Ennio Morricone.
Common elements to the music: enthusiasm. Loud beats. Simple catchy tunes. Angularity breaking up flow, rigid awkward rhythms dictating
odd delivery of phrases, synthetic everything. Devo lost their rebelliousness by the time they got this bouncy, and Talking Heads glazed all this music with icy reserve, and Angel Corpus Christi made cartoon doodles of these songs, and Bis saw a gap and filled it. They probably _did_ see a gap, too, I'm not just trying to impose a critic's view; these are hyper-conscious songs, a running commentary on the dictates of fashion, the commercialization of subculture, the simultaneous need for symbols and fear of their co-option, and the role of men in forcing women, especially, to follow trends for their own safety. Bis know they aren't original, know in fact that they're reactionary. But in a culture whose foremost dictate is to constantly destroy itself lest people run out of things to buy, conservatism isn't an option. Saving something worth saving is an act of radicalism. So, for that matter, is "I may be a boy, but I'm a feminist/ it's not a contradiction in terms" -- if we lost that value, division of sexes, we'd have only half as many products to market, so Stephen's position remains a rebellious one. And if radicals get to wear cool clothes and dance, it may not be part of a logical anti-consumerist package, but it does seem like a deserved reward, and I'll value my chances to join in.
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