Emma Warren - Dance Your Way Home

S is for solidarity. (Actual or imagined.)

Your writing is good enough for you to be a writer like Frank.

Gillett Square today. I was going to say I felt a sense of community there. But fuck it.

False consciousness. Great disagreeing!

There are points that we can agree on while disagreeing on others - agreed?

Why did you take the preface of my post and ignore the conclusion?

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I didn’t. Haven’t we already discussed the conclusion?

Yes, that’s more like it. You were talking like I was being an idiot for not realising you were totally disagreeing with me.

Thanks, @MusicForHangovers, for your long and considered reply. I plead guilty to using the word “intention” in something of a new age/American way. I’m surrounded by such abuse of language and occasionally my native English cynicism has trouble breathing. Of course, empathy can arise without intention, which I think is your point. If I’m wrong and have misinterpreted you . . . well, you know, please have empathy.

However, I will argue that, regardless of the intentions of those paying to get in, the intentions of the DJs, the promoter, the doormen, everyone working the gig, can have an effect on the outcome of the night or the club. If you’re just doing the thing to pile up cash and take the lowest common denominator approach to the whole thing, you’re probably going to have a different result than if you carefully select the most uplifting tunes, have a conscientious door, etc. One would hope so anyway.

Regardless, the idea of a spontaneous arising of empathy is interesting and worthy of more attention.

I do my very best to avoid hangovers these days. The last one was three days and not fun. I don’t have time for that any more. However, if I were to have a hangover, I suspect your music would help alleviate the condition.

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My original point was nothing more than it was laughable to call it solidarity.

Hard as it may be to believe but Edward Heath was Prime Minister when I left England! So perhaps understandable that many of your references go over my head. I very vaguely follow UK politics - or FUK for Former UK as my brother has it - but I have never quite understood the ruckus over Corbyn. I suppose after Blair anyone with any kind of spine must seem very threatening to the Tory grandees and their bloody horses all ready for the fucking.

It would be nice to have more solidarity - and more explicit solidarity towards the unions at that in particular, but I’m of the opinion that a lot of DJs are not innately political and want to be left alone to enjoy the music. Music is my sanctuary ‘n’ all that. There are many days I feel that way despite my long history of rebellion and belief in music as a force for change. Ultimately, it’s a big tent and there’s going to be a variety of opinions - not to mention, intentions. Strength through diversity is the way forward I think. And sometimes, by any means necessary.

Not entirely by coincidence I started my day with Fela Kuti, who may fairly be described as one of the most committed musicians ever in his many campaigns for change. Also, today, I got a book in the mail, Pop Grenade - From Public Enenemy To Pussy Riot: Dispatches From Musical Frontlines by Matthew Collin. Maybe it will cast some further light on the issues of music and solidarity!

PS I always drive as though there are eggshells between my foot and the pedals. No rollovers since then! Getting banned from a forum is a drag. It’s near happened to me and that’s a long, convoluted other story that may or may not be told in this forum. But it involves DJs and may fairly be described as DJ history. (Although nothing to do with anything most denizens of this forum would know much about.) The outcome was not pretty and some believe that it ended with a fatality. So, you know, I understand caution although I have no idea about JockeySlut and whatever it was about Disinfected or whatever it was you were referring to.

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But we’re not laughing, are we? We’re having a long and involved discussion about it.

No, I’m laughing at “Disinfected” now. :rofl:

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Can anyone recommend any good books about AGAs?

Not to frighten off every other person in this forum, but we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of music as a force for social and political and even economic change, questions of solidarity in a medium that essentially tends towards the individualistic, and false consciousness however it may be interpreted.

Not to be overly hardcore about it, but the entirety of human consciousness is considered false by some philosophies, which does raise the issue of the falseness or not of those philosophies themselves. I’ve been banging my head on questions of consciousness for years. Most days I feel like I know nothing.

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I should go back and check, but was “Dick Infected” what you were referring to?

Wait! Given that it was JockeySlut you were referring to, perhaps it was “Dick Infested” you said.

I really should scroll back.

EDIT: Sorry, I didn’t mean “Dick.” I meant “Disc.”

Clumsy typing. Bad autocorrect. Very naughty AI.

If I do decide to buy it, I guess I should try to use this bookshop?

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Of course, the dank underbelly of solidarity are conformity and groupthink. I try to avoid those dispiriting influences in my life.

Bought the book. Ignored the solidarity board - on account of not quite knowing whether I was meant to a giver or a receiver.

Both a giver and a receiver be!

Think I’ll be ordering the book tomorrow. I’ve been a little reluctant to add yet another book to the piles that surround me.

That’s probably the point.

Looks good, I’ve ordered it but fuck me some amount of shite getting spraffed about it by no one that’s actually read it

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Really? I’m half way through at least. It’s very sweet.