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Thursday, February 21, 2008
NO COMPUTE
Funkadelic
Cosmic Slop
Westbound : 1973
[Buy It]
COMPUTER COWBOY (AKA SYSCRUSHER)
Neil Young
Trans
Geffen : 1983
[Buy It]
WE HAVE A TECHNICAL
Gary Numan
Replicas
Beggars UK : 1979
[Buy It]
MISS CLARKE AND THE COMPUTER
Roy Wood
Boulders
EMI : 1973
[Buy It]
I have a friend who divorced her computer. She went off email, off the Web, offline entirely. The computer became a typewriter. She did it for a book project. "Internot," coming next fall to brick-and-mortar stores near you. No, no. Just kidding. She didn't give up the computer just to write a book about giving up the computer. That would be self-indulgent. I mean, she's not a blogger! She gave up the computer so she wouldn't have to give up on herself.
When she divorced her computer, she called me on the phone. She was in withdrawal. Divorce is hard. "What did I do before the computer?" she said. The question was, sadly, not rhetorical. There are countless essays--some profound, some superficial, some insightful, some moronic, some alarmist, some complacent--about the ways in which recent communications technology has changed our minds and the world in which those minds circulate. Andy Warhol said, famously, "When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships," but post-television technologies have cut back in the other direction and tried to remedy that problem, often with disastrous results. These days, technology does not simply alienate. It connects, and by connecting alienates in much more complex and deceptive ways. Technology has allowed correspondence to proliferate while simultaneously destroying the letter. Technology has brought people together more efficiently than ever while at the same time obliterating the idea of togetherness. I have a young acquaintance, a college student, who will sometimes write to ask my advice about women. That sentence was hilarious. The thought of it! At any rate, when he tells me that he has spoken to a woman, I know to ask him what he means by that. Usually, he means Facebook or MySpace or email. Sometimes he means that he put a comment on a blog. Only once or twice has he walked up to the woman in question and opened his mouth. I have counseled against this, or at the very least counseled against calling this "speaking to."
That friend, the young man, will not divorce his computer. He's not even married to it yet. He's still hot and heavy. My friend who divorced her computer did so because she was becoming, by her own account, an addict of new communications technologies. By nine in the morning, she will already have read most of the newspapers, clicked on links where links appear, sent out emails, worried that they haven't been answered, sent out more emails to treat the anxiety produced by the first wave, and then surfed around to numb the anxiety produced by the second wave. "What did I do before the computer?" she said, not rhetorically. I didn't answer her question. I didn't know the answer. Instead I told her what I did, back in the old days, when Reagan was President and the Challenger hadn't yet blown up and computers were only beginning to find their way into the home. I killed time the way time should be killed: kaleidoscopically. Instruments of its demise included snacking, showering, walking in circles, going outside, playing basketball, whacking off, doodling, echolalia. "Yeah," she said, "I remember that. Snacking and whacking off." Her tone was mock-wistful, which is a valuable strategy for concealing actual wistfulness. "Now I'm more likely to go online and try to find a video of someone else walking in circles around an apartment." There was a pause. "Found one," she said.
"I'm going," I said, not unkindly. I meant to stand up from the computer and take a walk. But the computer has music on it.
Funkadelic's "No Compute" was released in 1973. It starts out deceptively, as if it might be an exercise in warm, psychedelic soul, and the spoken George Clinton vocals might blossom into full-throated singing. They don't. Garry Shider plays lots of guitar, and Clinton goes right on telling his story, which is about a man who wakes up, feels bored and lickerish ("the hornies occupied my being"), and goes out in search of a remedy:I spotted a lady who was also on the prowl
I could tell by her makeup, plus the scent was there
So I sashayed over to her, and, ah, spoke of my plan
She screamed and said, "Are you asking to make love to me?"
I said, "Is pig what's in pork?
Or you gonna play hard
After all the trouble you went through to get chosen?"
She resists. He keeps on point. Soon she comes around. "There was fun to be had, love to be made." Afterwards, the hornies have been satisfied, and the bloom is off the rose:Well, suddenly as she laid there, mouth wide open, wig half off, snoring
Breath smelling like a 1948 Buick
I was sick with the filthies, and she smiled in her sleep
As if to say, "All looks are not alike, all holes are not a crack." Some have suggested that the "wig half off" marks the conquest as a transvestite. That seems fair enough, and if so, it inserts "No Compute" into a long line of flipping-your-id songs that include The Kinks' "Lola" and Schoolly D's "Saturday Night." The title of the song is about the woman's (understandable) confusion when confronted with Clinton's come-ons. That's what she says when she doesn't get what he says: no compute. But it's probably also about the fact that sex isn't equational, or even rational. She doesn't want to go with him, but there she goes. I will also declare, with three decades of warping hindsight, that the song is about the difference between sedentary calculation and a more active extension into the world. As soon as you're alone again with your thoughts, you get sick with the filthies.
Sex isn't the only kind of human connection that's ruined by technology. Neil Young's Trans has been assessed and reassessed several times, generally in an upward direction, as critics and fans come to terms with the fact that Young employed the stiff, vocoder-heavy sound in part because it permitted him to communicate better with his son, who was born with severe cerebral palsy. If the music uses technology, the lyrics bemoan its abuse. For starters, there's "Computer Age," a wonderful and wonderfully vague condemnation of the digital age that has been covered by Sonic Youth, among others. And if there's any question that Young is taking aim at technology for its alienating effects, well, just go outside the song and look at his comments on everything from CDs (they destroy music) to high-tech war (it destroys our souls), or for that matter go three tracks deeper into Trans, to "Computer Cowboy (aka Syscrusher)." It's one of the least-known songs from the album, in part because it seems batshit crazy, but it's also one of the most interesting, playing like a foretoken of Laurie Anderson's entire career. The cowboy lives in a world where everything is programmed, or mediated by programming: Well, his cattle each have numbers
And they all eat in a line
When he turns the floodlights on each night
Of course the herd looks perfect!
Computer Cowboy. So, "No Compute" and the songs that flow down from it investigate the ways that technology thwarts sex. Trans leans toward love. But there's agreement that human touch is compromised.
Gary Numan's Replicas was an offshoot of a book project in which society is controlled by beings called Machmen, androids wrapped up in skin to look human. As a kid, I resisted Numan and his Machmen; he was too straightforward in his sci-fi ambitions. Later, when I hated sci-fi less, I came around. "Me! I Disconnect From You" is a brilliant title, not to mention a brilliant song (I always think it's Robyn Hitchcock for a good solid five seconds). "Down in the Park" is beautifully desolate. "Are 'Friends' Electric?" is known to all, or should be. But my favorite song from Replicas wasn't even on the record. "We Have a Technical," a stepchild from the original sessions, was included on expanded editions; it has a buzzing central riff that sounds like "My Sharona," and the lyrics illuminate what happens when the machines shut down:I suppose it's very shady
At least until the lights go out
Advertising posters on the wall
And the young boys singing softly
Do they ever come back
Or is it always at the wrong time
I could crawl around the floor
Just like I'm real
And move a hand in front of my eyes Reality and romance get even stranger treatment in the hands of Roy Wood, the mad genius behind the Move and Wizzard and the earliest version of ELO. "Miss Clarke and the Computer," a madrigal from his first and finest solo album, Boulders, straightforwardly relates a love affair between, well, Miss Clarke and a computer. Plenty of women love their computers--my friend, for example--but in this case Wood relates the affair from the computer's point of view, complete with highly processed vocals. At the end, the computer's heart is removed, and his voice slows down, and only the delicate strumming of a guitar remains. Is that the sound of romance dying or a sound that permits romance to be reborn? This question is not rhetorical either.
The day my friend divorced her computer, she ventured out into the real world. She thought she might pick someone up, or at least talk to someone. She saw people on laptops, people on cell phones, people on Blackberries. Finally she saw a couple in a doorway. The man's hand was on the small of the woman's back. My friend passed close by. "I'm so glad we met," she overheard the man say. "Yeah," the woman said. "I never thought I'd find someone online." The man laughed. "I have to get home," he said, "but I'll text you soon." Are you going to play into technology's hands after all the trouble you went through to get free?Labels: ben, rock and roll
posted by Ben
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