MP3 players and the privatization of public spaces

Yes. I know. In the past I have argued for mp3 players being

1. a B-A-D thing
2. a privatization of public spaces
3. used by pedestrians (pedo's as we used to call us/them/us in my Wolverhampton school days) with a deathwish
4. used by people with a premature deafwish

Well. Hold on there a minute. Friday afternoon I was offered a used, one careful owner, iPod Nano 1GB. Being in a happy mood, as I was off on a big weekend, I agreed to buy it. Thus it was that I acquired an iPod. When I bought it, and because of my big weekend still, it contains an appalling miasmic melange of musical mishaps - "power ballads".

That was Friday. I've had a four day break from computers. Now I am trying to download iTunes and load some decent stuff on to it. I was thinking some Miles Davis, some Einsturzende Neubauten, some Pere Ubu (and associated projects), some Regina Spektor, and some (and this will annoy loads of people) Gilad Atzmon.

A friend sent me a copy of "musiK - Re-Arranging the 20th Century" by Gilad Atzmon & the Orient House Ensemble with Robert Wyatt and Guillermo Rozenthuler" which is, on a totally unbiased viewpoint, a damn fine eclectic album. Yes, Atzmon has some opinions that suggest that for a politician he's a damn fine jazz musician and for a jazz musician he's a bloody awful politician. I think it comes down to can you like the art of someone whose politics you disdain?

In the case of Atzmon I think you can because his music is good. It's second division good (obviously before the inflationary innovation of the Premier League) but it's listenable with a certain amount of challenging content. Carrying on with the football analogy, Atzmon is a Millwall, "everybody hates us and we don't care", rather than an Arsenal. Much of Atzmon's writing is ill-thought out, ill-argued pseudo-intellectual (drop a Lacan, a Freud, a Heidegger and you have a specious academic style) and fundamentally not very good as either argument or polemic. But as a musician he's good. And that surely is what it's all about.

Drawing up the Cloud in Trouser Model for the relationship between your aesthetic appreciation of art and the stated political beliefs of the artist we have:

• Like Politics - Like Art
• Like Politics - Ah Um Art
• Like Politics - Detest Art


• Ah Um Politics - Like Art
• Ah Um Politics - Ah Um Art
• Ah Um Politics - Detest Art


• Detest Politics - Like Art
• Detest Politics - Ah Um Art
• Detest Politics - Detest Art

Too many Ah Ums suggests why bother. When you like the politics but not the art of an artist I find there is a tendency to go "I should like it and I don't but if other's like it that's good". In that lacuna of "Detest Politics - Like Art" lies real difficulty.

But, anyway, I really like some of Atzmon's music. So there.

And back to mp3 players. As I have written before¹ they are a

1. a G-O-O-D thing
2. a privatization of public spaces
3. used by pedestrians (pedo's as we used to call us/them/us in my Wolverhampton school days) with a deathwish
4. used by people with a premature deafwish.

When I'll actually listen to it is another matter.


¹ Anyone finding any reference to any such writing probably has a painting of Nat Tate's at home, above the mantel.