There've been some recent quasi-complaints that the list isn't high-brow enough any more or something -- so, a caveat: this post deals with the "merely cultural" (a phrase stolen from Doug's official LBO-Talk list description).
Dennis Perrin's recent Red State Son blog entry "Doll Play" [http://redstateson.blogspot.com/2007/03/doll-play.html] writes about something I've thought of a lot recently, and I think I even brought it up on-list a year or so ago -- that, musically or even pop culturally, were living in the "throwback era," where most bands are judged in terms of what band/style they're a "throwback" to -- or they want to consciously themselves be as a band a throwback to something before that was better than what they seem to think could possibly exist now otherwise. (Yes, exceptions, exceptions to this!)
The documentary _American Hardcore_ sort of reinforces this; it might indicate to youngsters, "You weren't a part of this exciting thing that happened? Wow, you missed the boat, sorry!" Dennis writes of a 15 year old who laments he wasn't born in the 60s so he could've seen punk first hand but now he's fucked because it's all been done.
So, here's where the weird part comes in. The Internet-only "TV" show Soft Focus has been produced for a little while now, usually featuring some sort of underground figure like Genesis P-Orridge or Henry Rollins. It's an interview/talk show patterned after what Americans' must conceive 1970s Contintental/Euro/French public access philosophical artsy shows must have been like, with a Situationist vibe. (Think Foucault vs. Chomsky "debate" on Euro TV.)
The host is Ian Svenonius, a big fan of Situationism, who presents as a kind of Serge Gainsbourg-meets-Sartre. It's done in front of a live audience and is always amusing. (Svenonius' band Nation of Ulysses made the early 90s aggressive punk album _13 Point Plan to Destroy America-, recorded in Wash DC, it had 13 songs, each a point in their platform, very bizarre, no one knew if it was serious or what, but it was and still is a very good album -- check it out.)
In this particular YouTube clip, Ian Svenonius is talking with Ian MacKaye (Fugazi/Dischord Records/Minor Threat) on "Soft Focus" about _American Hardcore_ and EXACTLY about how all these histories of punk are coming out by "white guys in their 30s and 40s" who are giving the impression the party was on big-time then and it's over now, so tough luck to you, new generation. They also discuss whether the Dead Kennedys accurately predicted the rise of American Empire. Heh.
It's actually pretty funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0yJpaI3v4U
Posted because it deals with Continental post-Situ philosophical posturing-meets-anti-capitalist-punk, aka, the merely cultural,
-B.