This week’s song of the week was suggested by MIA reader Dan Frey:
“‘Englishman in New York’ is a tribute to Quentin Crisp, who bravely expressed his identity in early to mid-20th century England. Despite facing discrimination and life-threatening situations for living authentically, Crisp remained true to himself. He eventually moved to New York City, where he found a more accepting environment for his gender expression. The song’s refrain, “Be yourself, no matter what they say,” resonates deeply with me. As someone living with a serious mental health challenge, I often face negative reactions from those who don’t understand. This message of authenticity and resilience is why I chose this song.
However, the field of psychiatry tends to be materialistic and judgmental, often placing individuals into rigid boxes with labels that lead to further judgment. By these labels, we are often defined and our behaviors scrutinized. The consequences of being our authentic selves—especially when those selves are unconventional or nonconforming—can be severe. The more we deviate from societal norms, the more likely psychiatry will intervene, often seeking to suppress our inner experiences rather than support our personal growth and development.”
Quentin Crisp was a witty man, he was.
If you can get hold of The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp, you won’t regret it. That and The Naked Civil Servant are well worth it. Can’t vouch for any others as I haven’t read them.
During difficult times in my 20s his wit and resilience was helpful.
I agree he’s an inspiring person to anyone struggling against social and cultural and political aggression and bullying.
Happy New Year!
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A banging chorus showing why we loved him in the police but everything else about this song is tainted by the bourgeois pretentions he unconsciously developed from being an accepted and secure celebrity. I would go back to The Police – Roxanne and even better, The Police – Message In A Bottle. They have a very sexy sound in these songs and I mean this in a deeper sense: the musical mimetics of the song produce very sexual sonic architecture both in the instruments and in his vocals which become an instrument, and his vocal style here has the features of repressed male sexuality: tight, quite clipped vocals, and instead of subtlety of emotional expression which we see more in this Sting song (to a fault) we have instead in the police pure force, and this is against mimetic expression of the force of social repression (including sexual) busting through. They have a lustful sound you might say, and this clipped, emotionally unexpressive, tight, explosive vocal style is the characteristic sonic architecture of the healthy British socially conditioned sexually repressed male vocalist. Another great example of this kind of vocals can be found in James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers, but when it’s mixed wit drugs you get a Mick Jagger drawl with the force or if you mix it with lots of sex and guitar you get the layed back vocals of the singer from Diar Straights if you know them. But I hear you. Too much information.
I don’t know how I’m such an expert in this cuz it’s nice to see all this in others but it’s not much in my personal experience. But if I’m really sexually repressed I might begin to be attracted to letters in the alphabet, like PJ harvey was (“the curve of your G, your long L”). And if you need a feminine antidote to these songs by Sting and the Police just dive into Kate Bush Wuthering Heights immediately after and it’ll be like stepping out of the baking, scorching sun into a shady rock pool.
The only reason why British music is historically surprisingly good given all is that because despite the propaganda of history, we ‘citizens’ have always known it was one big sh!thole run by and for the idiots or evil zealots, and therefore we didn’t waste all of our spunk and energy in patriotism or lag waving or trying to appeal to the masses. Instead we it all into anything but here, i.e. the only alternative to this ‘here;, which was subculture, the easiest and most accessible form being music. Before it was subcultural fashion before it degenerated into an industry. At times radical art has emerged but that immediately gets swallowed up by corporate vampires waving their checkbooks. The only exception is Britain’s most famous living artist called Banksy but that’s only because he’s anonymous and so rebellious he sold a painting that unbeknownst to the byer would automatically self-destruct on purches by being dropped into a shredder live at the auction house.
Anyway, eventually almost all such British radicalism was almost completely put out by the 00s, exchanged for drug addictions, suicide, emigration, hate speech, and being a shameless rabid vampire set on crushing and pillaging the rest of us, so a bit like America. The brilliance in music all but disappeared by the 90s for sure, with very few exceptions. Every idiot with a guitar these days (about a quarter of youth these days) is just mimicking other artists. They have no memory of the fact that you need to mimic, or convert into audio form, your own sexual power and lust for something far beyond all this misery we live in: obviously mimicking the last girl or boy with a guitar obviously produces an inexorable slide towards caricature, which is what we see today, to the point that what counts as ‘underground’ or ‘alternative guitar music’ today often sounds like it could be released in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s. They are sometimes quite well executed – quite well studied you might say. But this is academia not youth music, which youth have not noticed has slipped away and been replaced with book learning in musical form. But music has died an even worse death in America so I suppose we should thank our horizontal and vertical and diagonal lines and then go on and cuss them. If we were in America we’d have to instead wipe our arse the stripes and stars and pledge allegiance to the toilet roll. Anyway sorry for talking sh!t.
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Music has not died a death in the USA or anywhere. It’s thrivingly alive and buzzing as it ever was, you simply have to seek out and explore the places the great independent artists are gathering.
Commercial outlets are very narrow, and have got narrower, in terms of what they output, and how much. This has been the case for as long as I can remember, way back before 00s. Auto-curated onlne streamers are problematic because they throw back stuff they guess you already like, but shy away from the radically new. However, even these platforms have improved in recent years, through machine learning, and are much better at introducing that sought-after element of surprise.
To prove my point, spend a few evenings clicking around Bandcamp.
I don’t agree that all good music or musical performance arises from sexuality. And it is possible to empathise with the struggles of Quentin Crisp and not be experiencing sexual struggles yourself. However, some music is improved by sexual energy. Mostly I believe it’s about alighting you imagination and taking you emotionally to new or revived places.
Best wishes and don’t make the pause in seeking mean there is nothing left to seek.
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I didn’t say all good music conveys repressed male sexuality – I said The Police and Manic Street Preachers do, and we can name plenty of others – Jamarique is another excellent example, and he is again British. I think British social conditioning does tend to emphasise the expression of repressed male sexuality in music, because there is the opposite repressive force operating in the social conditioning of heterosexual women – to reduce them to objects either functionary or sexual, so there is a rebellion and a tendency towards subjectification (all the great British women solo musicions – not the conformist ones – tend to show this tendency, and Polly Harvey’s carreer really dramatises a whole journey from a dark rebellion against all these female tropes to a boroque characeture of them to a confident female subjectivity into true subjectivity beyond male and female. But then onto being an old fuddy duddy in her last album – well worth pretending that one never happened.
There are many other trends in even good British music – this Sting song reflects mainly the bourgeous aesthetic of British artistes. So please don’t reduce everything I say to sexuality. Actually we have many centres of conscious energy and they include expression of anger, anxiety, fear, desire, egoism, sexuality, natural creativity (unified forces), mental or conceptual creativity (borgeois aesthetic), spiritual creativity which is creativity out of silence or no self so no emotional or intellectual expression involved.
And if you think there is anything but the dying embers of truly creative or transcendent music today then I’d ask Ronald McDonald to conduct a funeral service for your brain and charge people $5 dollars entry fee to pay for it. And sorry I no longer am correcting my spellings but I am beginning to prefer spelling mistakes to correct spelling. I blame culture at large. At the very mention of Ronald MacDonald all of our otherwise highly disciplined beefcake vagenitals suddenly all go cross eyed.
PS, if you’ve read this far and still maintain there is truly good and creative music alive today then put your money when your mouth is. We want names! Please, I’d be really enormously happy to discover some. Otherwise I’m liable to discover that you’re another for whom corporate mass produced culture has become our dear leader. Most people know Beyonce’s backside better then their own.
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