Hello and welcome to this week’s Melendy Avenue Review! It is a beautiful spring here in Watertown. I am halfway vaccinated. I am working on a book. I did not produce any video content, but will have some next week, probably. This week, I have a review of a sociological book about antifa, a Discography on some bands many of you probably know better than me, and an Observed Life. Enjoy!
CONTENTS
Reviews-
Stanislav Vysotsky, American Antifa
Discographies-
The At the Drive-In family tree!
Lagniappe-
The Observed Life, with Peter: Easter Beasts
REVIEWS
Stanislav Vysotsky, “American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism” (2021) - I figured I’d have a look at this new social scientific work on antifa in the US. I’m not sure what I expected but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s nice to see someone in the academic guild get something basically right about this fraught topic. The writing, predictably, plods, as social science does these days, with a lot of name checking and theoretical hedging. Vysotsky carefully classifies American antifa in relation to the literature on social movements, subcultures, etc. It’s also worth noting that Vysotsky did his primary research with antifa groups (“Old City” and “New City” Antifa) between 2007 and 2010, which is to say, years before antifa sprung into the news around the 2016 election. He has plenty to say about post-2016 antifa debates, but a lot of what he observed happened in the time when a few groups, mostly anarchists ensconced in punk scenes, were keeping the antifa thing alive.
The basic thing about antifa, Vysotsky argues, is that it is opposed to fascism. This sounds like a “duh” but given where the rhetoric around antifa has gone — and not just on the right, where it’s basically official that antifa is an underground army for communism/the Democratic Party — it is helpful to ground it some. Vysotsky describes antifa as a classic “countermovement.” The shape any given antifa group takes largely depends on its fascist opposition. Given that the research mostly took place before 2010, a lot of what this book looks at is groups dedicated to dealing with street fascists, generally open about who they are, often in and around punk scenes. This is pretty different from much of what I’ve worked on, where we deal with a range of fascists between Trump supporters and open Nazis, and are largely trying to keep their political movement from taking root in the area. But the general idea is accurate. Any antifa group that goes in already decided about what they want to look like and do, without a clear strategic purpose, won’t last long or do much good.
In any event, as Vysotsky makes clear, action other than violence — education, intelligence work, securing events, etc. — takes up more of any antifa group’s time than street fights, even for the most roughneck groups. This has certainly been true of local practice- I’m writing a book about this stuff and am worried I’ll bore audiences, there’s so little fighting. This is a nice marriage of practicality and ideology. Practically speaking, it makes sense to set some basic parameters, and within those parameters adapt your practices to the situation, when facing an enemy like fascism. Ideologically, anarchists kept the embers of the antifa flame going for a long time before it blossomed again post-Trump, and their emphasis on direct action, decentralization, and voluntarism has placed an indelible stamp on antifascism. Communist groups often participate to the extent they can hang with those values. As for us democratic socialists, well, let’s just say the decentralized decision-making structures in certain chapters of the largest democratic socialist organization stateside give us some leeway a “smaller tent” might now allow… There are times where the voluntaristic aspects of antifascist work can be frustrating, especially to the “frustrated officer” in every nerd boy. But it has answered, so far.
If anything, Vysotsky probably could have afforded to criticize antifa a little more in this book. They/we get stuff wrong. There’s infighting, posturing, ideological foolishness there the same as there is anywhere else on the left, or really in any kind of politics. Going into dangerous situations demands more organization and accountability than some organizations involved want to or can provide. But I think insofar as “American Antifa” exists as a corrective to conservative (both pop-journalistic and criminological) accounts, it is a valuable book. ****’
DISCOGRAPHIES
At The Drive-In and it’s assorted offshoots! I basically missed the indie rock boat. I didn’t get into the old stuff in adolescence, when I wallowed in a classic rock cul-de-sac. When I started to emerge, the oughts-hipster wave of indie rock had already basically crested. Going to bars or karaoke with my fellow millennials who weren’t raised in my odd circumstances is often interesting, the emotional valences they give songs I’ve never heard, a language I don’t speak. For the most part, I often find myself appreciating the craftsmanship of these songs — they’re usually quite catchy and that doesn’t happen by accident — but I don’t rush out to track them down. I have my own music I like, and one thing about most indie rock I encounter is it’s not that bluesy, not soulful. A lot of it seems to borrow from eighties pop, not my favorite sound. And I often feel cheaply emotionally manipulated by it. Give me Gary Clark, Jr. wailing about how he cheats on his woman and vice versa over that Mountain Goats guy nasally (and calculatedly) tugging at my heartstrings any day.
But I did wind up listening to The Mars Volta, somewhere close to their peak. I believe the transmission vector was a roommate I had in New York, a younger, cooler man and a Texan, like the members of the band. The Mars Volta does some stuff I don’t like in rock or music in general. I'm not big on theatricality and more abstract jazz elements. But something was compelling- I guess the heaviness and variety, including some Latin American elements, the simultaneous self-mythologizing and unselfconscious vigor of the band’s first two records, “Deloused in the Comatorium” and “Frances the Mute.” In typical style, I started listening to them and then that friend I was living with said that they’re nothing next to the band that The Mars Volta emerged from, At the Drive-In. I guess they’re not really indie but “hardcore” or “post-hardcore?” It’s true, they don’t sound much like The Mountain Goats, but neither do a lot of bands that seem pretty “indie.” It’s all the same to me.
Either way, At the Drive-In was a well-regarded band by the cognoscenti in the nineties and early aughts. It split into two bands, the more “emo” Sparta and the altogether weirder The Mars Volta. Then the family tree gets squiggly, weird, and recursive. The Mars Volta broke up but its main creative elements, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, got together and formed two new bands, Bosnian Rainbows and Antemasque, that produced one album apiece in the 2010s. Rodriguez-Lopez is apparently a musical machine, producing dozens of albums on his own. Sparta plugged along, doing it’s thing, releasing an album last year. At the Drive-In reunited for a new album in 2017. I thought I’d try to listen to the whole “family tree,” less the all too numerous Omar Rodriguez-Lopez solo projects, in chronological order.
This wound up being sixteen albums released between 1997 and 2020. I won’t discuss all of them, but there is something of an arc. First, of course, you have At the Drive-In. If you come to At the Drive-In from The Mars Volta, as I did, the former sounds stripped down, more “punk” and early on, more grunge too. As far as I’m concerned, they came into their own with their last album (before their 2017 reunion), “Relationship of Command.” There seemed to be more going on there (you can see why music criticism is not my main thing) and there was less of the kind of strained-petulant-shout vocals that characterize a lot of hardcore and emo singing and that I do not like.
You can see why the Sparta guys and the Mars Volta guys split off. Sparta basically took the more emo side of the At the Drive-In heritage. I basically didn’t like any of their albums. I didn’t hate any of them but I wouldn’t voluntarily listen to any again. Strained-petulant-shout-singing, lyrics that are obscure without being poetic, a little of that manipulative feeling I get with indie rock. The Mars Volta went in a different, more prog-rock direction. I’m of a few minds about prog. If there’s still riffs, ok. No riffs, no rock, as far as I’m concerned. Those first two The Mars Volta albums had good riffs and fun freakouts. They had weird, eery backstories, complicated, almost Borges-esque yarns about friends finding diaries in repossessed cars or throwing themselves out mental hospital windows. They were appropriate for the times, too, the freakouts of the Bush years and the recession, this El Paso-based band singing, sometimes in Spanish, about impending surreal doom, across the river from Juarez, the femicides there, the madness. It seemed to go hand in hand with Roberto Bolaño’s emergence on the literary scene (and his death). I read “2666” (my least favorite Bolaño, as it happens) around the time I got turned on to The Mars Volta.
If I have a controversial opinion here, it’s probably that The Mars Volta’s middle-period albums, “Amputechture” and “The Bedlam in Goliath,” deserve more respect than they get. I especially enjoy “The Bedlam in Goliath,” it’s weird religious themes, it’s riffs and freakouts, and that’s saying a lot for me considering that Cedric was in high falsetto much of the time, not my favorite vocal style. Apparently they wrote it to dispel the bad vibes of a fortune-telling toy they bought in Jerusalem? I hope it worked! The latter two albums from the band, “Octahedron” and “Noctourniquet,” are pretty bad. I’m thinking prog-rock bloat, creative differences, and maybe some romantic difficulties and cocaine made for some less than thrilling songwriting.
Then there’s Bosnian Rainbows and Antemasque, both of which released one album in the 2010s named after themselves. I understand that Omar occasionally threatens more but it doesn’t seem to happen. They’re interesting. In Bosnian Rainbows they made the compelling choice to bring in a female vocalist, Teri Gender Bender. They produce a kind of goth-pop-eighties sound? Not my normal cup of tea but not bad. Then, Antemasque, which brings Omar and Cedric together with Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers (and The Big Lebowski!) and the drummer from Blink-182, of all things, to do… surf rock? With Christian overtones? Some good rock songs on there, some less good. Then At the Drive-In got back together in 2017 to record an album whose title has annoying typographical tics. It’s pretty good- if anything, a little weird how smoothly they got back into a vibe they left behind seventeen years before. Sparta released an album last year. It was a Sparta album.
Favorite album? Hmmm… part of me wants to say “The Bedlam in Goliath” just to spite the haters, but it isn’t right. “Relationship of Command” has much to recommend it, especially the song “One-Armed Scissor,” a great, bleak scifi novel in the form of a four minute rock song. In the end, though, it’s hard to deny “Deloused in the Comatorium” and “Frances the Mute.” Consider it a two-way tie, or a four-way with the others if that’s too lame. Worst album? I didn’t like any of the Sparta albums, but I didn’t expect to from an emo band. But I expect to like The Mars Volta, and Noctourniquet was just a slog, especially at almost sixty-five minutes. All in all though, I’m glad I know at least this much of the “cool” music of my century.
Next on Discographies: the band that made the first CD I ever bought!
LAGNIAPPE
The Observed Life, with Peter: Easter Beasts
I went to the suburbs to visit my (vaccinated) family for Easter. This entailed seeing some animals they live with. My family is fond of anthropomorphizing the feelings of their pets, and so demanded that I satisfy their pride by featuring their photos alongside Mithra’s. Who am I to deny them?
Here is one of my sisters with her dog, Olive. Olive is very friendly and requires a lot of attention.
Here is Piper. She is a cat my sister got when I moved away to college. She’s still kicking! Living with my mom. Here she is showing her characteristic welcoming spirit.
We celebrated Easter at my aunt and uncle’s house. They have a little dog named Toby. My cousin also has a little dog, named Donut. They both had dapper neck decor for the occasion.
One of my aunts and I both had on black doc marten boots. Hers were shinier.
My nephew got a toy from the Easter Bunny which is some kind of combo Juggernaut-Collosus. What a combo!
My other nephew is more of a Cyclops guy. Perhaps when he’s older he’ll start to see Cyclops as something of a martinet, as people tend to do, or perhaps he’ll “keep the faith.”
What does Mithra think of all this? She likes it here on Melendy Avenue!