Liabach

[Adam Stevens]

At 01:21 PM 12/13/98 +0000, you wrote:
>
>In Lester Bangs' essay collection, he quotes Patti Smith as saying that
>part of the appeal of the Velvet Underground was their  "fascism," or
>something like that.
>
>Given the Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol connection, maybe this ain't
>such a stretch.  Interview Magazine's embrace of fascist chic is
>legendary.
>
>But really, in practical terms, there was nothing particularly fascist
>about the Velvets or any other underground rock group.  Most fatheaded
>baby boomers with selective memories about the 60s probably have only the
>vaguest recollection of who the Velvets even were.  These boomers are the
>same idiots who conflate the counterculture with the New Left (and most
>of them were probably members of neither).   If one measures fascism by
>the impact it has upon the majority of the population, then fascist the
>Velvets weren't.
>
>Far more interesting to me is the Slovenian performance art/rock band
>Laibach.  These guys remade The Beatles' Let It Be album in its entirety,
>but in an overtly fascist way, with 'Get Back" done as a goose-stepping
>march with orchestral sweeps.  The theory behind this, according to
>Laibach, is that all Western pop music is inherently fascist and serves
>as a promotional vehicle for capitalism.  Now, I've always sort of hated
>the Fab Four, so I got a cheap thrill out of hearing them denounced as
>fascists by this crazy bunch of Slovenians.  
>
>Laibach also did an EP of different versions of the Stones' Sympathy for
>the Devil, and their album Kapital has a version of Queen's One Vision,
>sung in German, with heavily modified lyrics ("Gibt mir ein leitbild!,"
>loosely translated as, I think, "give me a leader").  All of these are
>also done in the fascist/marching vein.  I imagine how this joke could
>start to wear thin after a while, but I think it serves as a good
>antidote next time some complacent boomer starts to regale you with his
>(mostly imagined) accounts of the good ol' days.
>

Wow, an LBO post about Liabach!  A lot of people don't get the "joke" and
think they really are fascist.  The "One Vision" remake ("Geburt einer
Nation")is brilliant, I think.  They did put out a documentary/collection of
videos wherein they outline their views.  It's pretty rare, but worth
getting if you happen to come across it.