Carl's Rock Songbook No. 122: Allah-Las, "Could Be You"
The Conservative Foundations of Rock Bohemia
Some rock songs contain snatches of lyrics that stand-out as vivid commentary on the present scene, even though the song itself isn’t a major lyrical statement. One example is the (2016) Allah-Las song “Could Be You,” and this particular bit:
Standing on the soapbox, proselytizing of the end,
of all the things, you once considered good…
and now they came, and wrecked your neighborhood.
The soapbox declaimer addressed here was at one point lamenting the fading away of a number of special things considered good, but in fact, they turned out to be bad, and not in danger of ending. He got what he thought he wanted, as those things came roaring back, and ruined his neighborhood. He’s like a New Yorker nostalgic for the leftist politics and scuzzy crime wave of the 70s, blathering on about “the glory days of CBGBs and Bronx hip-hop!” Nor does he seems all that educated by his own experience of the things he wanted turning out bad, as the next line asks:
But if you had the chance to,
would you do it all again?
Often over the last five or so years, and especially during the riot-protests of last summer that in many cities were made worse by leftist mayors and councils, these five little lines have come to mind. Portland and Minneapolis, and perhaps even Seattle, suffered so much neighborhood wrecking in 2020 that they are almost certainly doomed to Detroit-like futures. I also thought of these lyrics upon reading a story today about Austin, Texas, which for decades has been home to one of the most important indie music scenes, and where many residents have vowed to Keep Austin Weird. Here’s the report, from PJM’s Bryan Preston:
Mayor Steve Adler’s Austin is still getting worse. He led the explosion of homeless camping citywide and the defunding of police.
Police are leaving in droves, crime is spiking hard, and homeless camping has spread serious blight all over the city. Now that blight is concentrating downtown, thanks to another of Adler’s addle-brained decisions.
If you walk or drive around city hall in Austin, Texas, now, you’ll see a new tent city. It sprung up after voters in the city overwhelmingly agreed to reinstate the ban on camping on public land on May 1.
So this is a good news, bad news situation. A solid majority of Austin-ites finally had the guts to stand up against the way certain homeless persons (not a few of them vagrants-by-choice, druggies, and aggressive panhandlers) have taken advantage of the public’s sympathy for the plight of the poorest. Austin’s citizens see that however complicated a problem homelessness is, the approach taken by their authorities is not working, and is heading in the direction of outright disaster, of the sort that threatens many West Coast cities’ basic viability.
But the bad news is that an intransigent minority is defying the democratic say of their fellow citizens by leveraging the fecklessness of the city’s politicians.
As per usual, Mayor Steve Adler, Democrat, is allowing the situation to get out of control. He is allowing what amounts to an “autonomous zone” to occupy Austin city hall by calling it a “protest.”
The “protestors” have surrounded the city hall with their tents, and have organized CHOP-style self-security forces—one of these even threatened a city councilwoman:
To say the obvious is easy: Austin cannot be “kept weird,” that is, kept a place where independent artistic creativity, and the in-person exchange needed for it, can thrive, unless the police/justice-system can enforce basic law and order, and unless the trend of tent-city encroachment upon normal urban space can be reversed.
But to take political action is hard. Austin has its new law, but does it have a government capable of enforcing it? And to speak of a separate issue, but one likewise very important to rock-scene viability, is it not the case that without Governor Abbot and the conservative majority in the Texas legislative branch, Austin would still be locked-down as tightly as cities like London?
Supporters of rock artistry, and of bohemian artistic activity generally, need to learn some lessons from recent years. It is now clear that many of the lockdown measures were unnecessary, and that experiments with outdoor gigs, and with limited audience-size indoor gigs, should have been tried out much much earlier, say, in July. At the least, there should have been more public dialogue, and more willingness the part of rock-bohemia’s organizers to have pushed back to allow dissenting artists to have tried more experiments. It should also now be clear that the forces we may lump together as “Blamtifa” are no friend to any viable downtown life.
I’m presently cooking up a couple of Songbook posts on the epic new Van Morrison release, where I will more directly address this failure of putatively liberal and putatively pro-DIY Official Bohemia to stand up for their own the way Morrison has. Unlike him, Bohemia’s captains have resolutely refused to explore any kind of issue-alliance with conservative lockdown skeptics.
Bands don’t play no more--too much fighting on the dance floor, The Specials sang, and I will update the rhyme in this hackneyed but truth-telling way: Bands won’t set the beat--too many lefties in council seats.
Or how about I keep the first part, and just add this: too many cowards in charge of tours?
Indie rockers, what I mean by such “lefties” are the ones who are too dogma-obsessed to stand for flesh-and-blood you. They may talk big globally, but they fail the most elementary of democratic tests, that of governing locally. And by “cowards” I mean those in the gig-organizing business that have been too unwilling to fight for your interests, or who have used the fear of the virus and the burden of the various rules as an excuse not to. Remember some of those 70s/80s stories about the glory of technically illegal underground shows? Why didn’t more of that happen this last year?
It would also be good to recognize that your clearest enemies, as outlined in this SXSW keynote speech by T-Bone Burnett, are the same ones as ours: Big Tech. So in the spirit of Van Morrison’s present yet all-too-lonely rebellion, isn’t it high time for you to join us populist-conservatives on select issues? For it turns out, if you’re going to Keep Austin and everyplace like it Weird, you have got to join the defense of civilization, and of civilized democracy. Confident police departments, and even things like old-time vagrancy laws, are necessary parts of that defense.
Or to re-work the title of a book by our friend Daniel Mahoney, The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order, isn’t it impossible for any real Bohemia to exist in our cities without conservative political help?
P.S. Well, back to my work on Van the man, and regular Pomocon readers, don’t miss the news over in Georgia…
Look forward to the Van-thoughts! He's always been Van the Man; now he's Van the Resistance Man.
Me too.
I read Armond White's introductory notes on Van's provocation & sat down to listen to it myself! I'd be grateful for an essay!
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/van-morrison-explains-it-all-for-you/