The Original File-Sharing Network
January 19th, 2008 by Vicki BakerAs some of you may know, bloggers like us are destroying “our economy, our culture, and our values.” At least according to one Andrew Keen, who also says we are “betraying Judeo-Christian ethics,” but we knew that already.
The Knackered Hack has an interesting response to Mr. Keen, recalling a time not so long ago, in a country that no longer exists:
…Keen’s attack on the amateur and self-published is, in my view, a little bit Stalinistic.
I’d like to contrast the world he defends, where what we watch, hear and experience should be mediated by professionals, with one still in the recent memory where to self-publish was a political and democratic act and a gesture of defiance.
Samizdat, (Russian for self-publishing) was the process whereby some of the most important literary and politicial texts of the Soviet era were preserved and circulated. Each recipient of one of these precious, dangerous texts would make additional copies, either handwritten or typed with carbon paper, and pass them on.
Later, when cassette tape players became available, another culture of magnitizdat grew up as a clandestine distribution network for singers like Vladimir Vysotsky, whose material was too edgy for the official state recording company.
Which brings us (again following the lead of the Knackered Hack) to Viktor Tsoy of the Russian band Kino, the most famous rock star you’ve probably never heard of, and certainly the only internationally famous rock star who never gave up his day job (as a boiler operator in an apartment building; you can see him at it here.)
The Knackered Hack writes:
Tsoy and Kino are noteworthy for a number of reasons in the history of 20th century culture, and arguably much more iconic than all those indie bands that we neurotic boy-outsiders modelled ourselves after in our youths — those that were invariably selling out while pretending not to.
(Aside: The part about neurotic boy-outsiders resonates with me, as a former girl outsider. I distinctly remember buying my first Talking Heads album - More Songs About Buildings and Food - at a record store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska - about the most uncool place imaginable to buy such a record, now mostly known as the scene of a shooting rampage.
The record store clerk was impressed with my choice, I remember, and flirted with me. This was the first hint I had that a certain taste in music might be a possible key to success with really existing boys, as opposed to the ideal boy of my dreams, who hung out at CBGB’s and generally lived in a realm of mythic coolness beyond my reach.
Aside within aside: My record collection was later confiscated by my parents - the concept of a band named the Sex Pistols was just too much for them. If you want to get a picture of what’s it like to believe that rock and roll can save your mortal soul, while living with parents who believe only Jesus can save souls and that the electric guitar is the Devil’s invention, think Lane and Mrs. Kim on the Gilmour Girls, but without the fixation on health food. )
Back to Viktor Tsoy. Tsoy was born in 1962; his mother was Russian, his father Korean. The years of his musical career, from the time he started writing songs at seventeen, to his tragic death in 1990, coincide with a momentous period in Russian history. In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; 12 years later the Soviet Union collapsed. (Something to think about, Bush & co.)
What is astounding about Viktor Tsoy is the way he is very much alive in Russia and indeed in much of Eastern Europe. Graffiti slogans such as “Tsoy zhiv” (Tsoy lives) and “Vitya Tsoy navcegda” (Vic Tsoy forever) can be found everywhere in Russia, but especially on the famous “wall of Tsoy” on Arbat Street in Moscow. Whenever two or more Russians below a certain age are gathered together in the presence of a guitar, you can be sure that at least one Kino song will be sung in the course of the evening.
No doubt his iconic death as a martyr to rock and roll plays some part in his posthumous fame. He fell asleep at the wheel while driving back to Leningrad from Riga, where he had recorded the vocals to what would be Kino’s last album. The tape miraculously survived, though the car was completely demolished. The recording became Kino’s last album, the Chyorniy Albom (Black Album.)
One of my favorite Kino songs is Последний Герой/Posledni Geroi (The Last Hero):
The cryptic lyrics describe a would-be hero who doesn’t quite measure up; the chorus is an ironic greeting: Dobroe utro, posledniy geroy!/Dobroe utro tebe i takim, kak ty,/Dobroe utro, posledniy geroy/Zdravstvuy, posledniy geroy! (Good morning to you, our last hero!/Good morning to you and those like you,/Good morning to you, our last hero!/Hello, last hero…)
The irony is perhaps a reflection that the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan didn’t measure up to the myth of the heroic Red Army and the cult of the Great Fatherland War (WWII). Definitely there are resonances with Lermontov’s 19th century novella A Hero of Our Time and its anti-hero, the “superfluous man” Pechorin. And of course, the final layer of irony is the hero-worship that surrounds its author.
Because he died young and left a beautiful corpse, Tsoy remains frozen in a time when hope was in the air, for Russian and the world. The Kino anthem Перемен!/Peremen! ([We're waiting for] Changes!) embodies the mood of the perestroika period for many Russians. Now that hope is mostly gone as Russia slips slowly but surely into what can only be described as fascism.
But another key reason for Tsoy’s continued fame has to be that, literally, no one owns him. Hardly any of Kino’s songs or recordings are copyright. As KH points out, samizdat and magnitizdat were the original creative commons. The fact that he really, truly never sold out is part of his legend.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Vicki: Thanks for the delightful excursion into Soviet underground music. It makes me wish I had been a part of that movement. The pure unsullied energy of that concert leaps from the video you attached to your post.
Who could possibly be against such a grass roots revolt against oppression? Apparently, Andrew Keen. I hadn’t heard of this clown prior to reading your article. I hate to give him any publicity, but I can’t restrain my frustration after reading the paranoid power-mongering elitist tripe he published in the Weekly Standard.
I mean, come on! He equates the Web 2.0 with “Marxism”? What is this guy afraid of? Apparently, the People. We’re just too damned stupid to think for ourselves. Therefore, we need empowered “authoritative” gatekeepers like Keen to keep us from screwing up the country. And that’s obvious to Keen: It’s all of those amateur bloggers who are screwing up the country! Remember how the invasion of Iraq was a grassroots movement? I don’t.
And isn’t it obvious who Keen associates himself with? The gatekeepers. After all, without those super-intelligent people associated with the establishment, we wouldn’t have “Hitchcocks, Bonos, or Sebalds. Just the flat noise of opinion–Socrates’s nightmare.” He claims that the bloggers are bringing us only a “cultural flattening.”
Keen wrote this particular nonsense in 2006. Just think, though, how the bloggers successfully kept the corporate media from ignoring numerous important stories (many of them involving government abuses) since 2006. Thanks to Keen’s empowered cultural elite, we know all about Britany Spears instead of the torture and corruption rampant in Washington DC.
Just consider how little we would have known about most important issues without the dedicated writers, musicians and filmmakers of the blogosphere cranking away, chipping away. And just consider that most of these allegedly ignorant know-nothing people would have had NO VOICE had there not been a Web 2.0 revolution. Keen wrings his hands and bemoans an “over-abundance of authors.” For Keen, the information providers rightfully form an exclusive private club. How DARE all of those people without proper credentials express their ideas! We didn’t give them PERMISSION! What constitutes proper credentials? Sucking up to wealthy corporations who control all forms of media except the Internet. But they’re working on that too. Here’s the obvious place that people like Keen can be expected to be found: among the forces attacking net neutrality. Beware . . .
But oh, dear! All of those annoying bloggers running around spreading their ideas. Keen cites to Socrates to support his version of oppression. What about John Stuart Mill, John Locke and Thomas Jefferson?
According to Keen, we’ve got to minimize the power of those bloggers, because many of them aren’t high quality. Has Keen dared to actually look at the crap being spewed out by the corporate media lately? Maybe he doesn’t watch corporate network news. Maybe he doesn’t listen to Clear Channel’s ultra-safe repetive and reassuring sounds. Maybe he doesn’t dare to consider that most of the “information” produced by the corporate media is utter crap, and that “proper” information is filtered by powerful interests that have thoroughly corrupted our national government. Not every mainstream movie-maker is a Hitchcock, Keen.
Can you see how angry I am, by the number of CAPS and exclamation points? What an arrogant, self-important, elitist scoundrel Keen is. His writing could have been ghost written by Dick Cheney. Really, time to start water-boarding those out-of-control bloggers—they are ruining the country (I can imagine Keen thinking), because many of them aren’t excellent like Alfred Hitchcock. I’m so very glad Keen is feeling some pain due to the success of Web 2.0. It’s because of people like Keen that we needed Web 2.0.
Keen does have a point, of course. There is a LOT of garbage on the Internet. Many of the citizens have poor writing skills. Many of them are incoherent and uninformed. Many of them have been seduced by “creeping narcissism.” But is that a reason to cut them off, to tell them that they have no voice at the community table? I’ll tell you who has the most virulent form of narcissism and it isn’t the largely unpaid blogging community. It’s the profit-driven corporate media.
When some of us see a flawed process like Web 2.0, we strive to help make it better. We encourage others so that they can have a voice too. We realize that the government should include all of the citizens. Other people (like Keen) pile on criticism as a thinly veiled excuse to disparage and gag the millions of citizen journalists who are making a difference and whose potential to get this country back on track is virtually unlimited.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Very good post. I love the information about Tsoy and will have to follow up on it. Erich, good comment too. I sense that elitism annoys you a bit.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Chaplain: I am “a bit” annoyed. After all there is The First Amendment and there is that supposed foundation for our country that it should be run by all of those who live here. There are many people in positions of monied power who would like to claim that these foundational rights belong to themselves more than they belong to ALL of the citizens. I think it was that thought, more than anything else, that caused me to begin blogging about two years ago.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Erich, I hope that didn’t get your blood pressure up too much. Just ignore Keen, would be my advice. You give good rant, though.
I’m glad you and the Chaplain enjoyed the intro to Viktor Tsoy and Kino.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I found Vicki’s picture more interesting.
You usually sound so sensible, I thought you were older.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Yeah. Let’s fire Vicki and get someone older. What a rip off!
January 21st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Sensible! You wound me deeply!
Here’s a tip: Photoshop levels adjustment + desaturation + colorizing=better than make-up.
I’m definitely younger than some of these old farts though.
btw, I also posted about this on my own blog that I just created: http://www.commonplacejournal.org/
January 21st, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Vicki: Please name the old farts so that I can consider whether we should be keeping them around.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Did I say old farts? I meant “respected elders.”
January 21st, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Oh, I forgot
January 21st, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Quit hiding behind that emoticon! We know what you look like now.
January 23rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I probably should have said, “erudite.” Someone who goes around provoking people just can’t be sensible.
Btw, I find maintaining a blog kind of tiresome. I feel pressurized into writing stuff to keep my tiny readership. I probably could ramble all day long about things, but the moment I have to write something I don’t want anymore.