Sinister: if not for explication, at least for explicitation

[P F]

NOC

NOC

Hold

Lose

Gain

NOC

Waking up in a pile of spoiled ballot papers outside Romsey Town Hall, I 
found my thoughts drifting yet again to that issue of extra tracks, formats 
and the like. This business about a 'new single from Belle and Sebastian', 
about which I'd had pink dreams, struck me as probably a load of mild 
morning air; certainly I'd seen neither Herbie Hyde nor Tony Hares of it. 
Anyway, I hazed as I stumbled into the station and awaited the first service 
out of this place, the point was that some folk, somewhere, some time, had 
been complaining about the practice of releasing two formats of the same 45, 
with one track different - or was it one format of the different 54, with 
two tracks different? Hard to be sure. I hailed a passing Shirley Williams 
and demanded a strong espresso, wondering when it was that we all started to 
say 'espresso' rather than 'expresso'.

The argument, I recited as I watched green England fly past, the argument is 
that the kids are in a sticky spot cos they have to buy every release, and 
thus releasers of multiple formats have the kids over a barrel. But why do 
the kids have to buy everything? Cos they're hardcore, or softskinned; cos 
they're devoted, acolytes, apostles as some Northern soul used to dub them 
(into Romanian). They love buying the records, they live for it: when the 
relevant Monday nine o'clock rolls around they're waiting outside 
Spin-a-Disc, liquorice allsorts in hand, about to revel in financial tribute 
to their heroes. They hand over the relevant fiver with joy. Spending. 
Buying. Consumption. Blowing cash on what they love - that's what the kids 
want.

The train pulled into Paddington, and I closed my copy of The Revolution In 
Everyday Life. But hang on, I thought, pulling the emergency cord in my 
head. If that's what the kids like doing, why isn't a *favour* to them to 
release things in many formats, so that they can go to Select-a-Toon more 
than once a week, or two Mondays running? They can stand at the window and 
wonder which format to go for, till a voice inside says 'I can have both'. - 
You're forgetting one thing, said a leather-jacketed bruiser as he bumped 
into me on the concourse. I looked up. It was Joe Strummer, dragging behind 
him his new combo the Ciabattas. - You're forgettin', Joe went on, that the 
kids can't afford to buy all these formats.

We discussed it over a Jail Guitar Door in the station bar, and Joe conceded 
that for lots of the kids nowadays, another four quid isn't so much to ask. 
Apparently, he assured me, they're all selling each other 'drugs' for 
sixteen quid a go. After three quarters of an hour he said he'd changed his 
mind, and would release three formats of his new 45 'Gringo Gangster Riot 
Stabbing Time'.

But was it true, I wondered, that the kids actually liked buying multiple 
formats of things? I decided to find out.

It was very hot.

In Market Harborough I found kids crying on the street outside Our Price. It 
seemed that they were upset that the CD version of 'Roll With It' contained 
all the tracks available on the other formats. - You see, sobbed Hayley (15 
- not her real name), we can't justify to ourselves our favourite activity, 
buying multiple formats of the same single! In the background a live version 
of 'Live Forever' thumped away. I realized that it was August 1995. Someone 
told me that the intro of 'Roll With It' sounded like a Who song. I know, I 
said. I said I know I do. Things were getting hazy. It was very hot. Marc 
Atkins passed with a camera over his shoulder. We asked the owner of 
Sell-a-Spinner to play 'Roll With It' at high volume, and agreed that there 
was a submerged influence coming through from 'Like A Daydream' and 'Taste'.

That was the end of the first part of the assignment.

In Buxton I passed the fountain in the market square and entered Mr 
Chippy's. A sign on the wall declared 'It's a Fishy Business'. I stood near 
the counter, clicking numbers on a counter. The counter told me, when I held 
it up to the light of a can of ginger beer, that the same bunches of kids 
had been buying cod and chips, skate and chips, haddock and chips, sausage 
in batter and chips, and pastie and frites. In vinegar I scrawled on my hand 
the conclusion. Here too, the kids did indeed like buying the same things in 
different formats.

In Banbury we hung around the second floor of a bookshop. Banbury Books is 
one of only three shops in Banbury to consist of more than one storey. Odd 
customers browsed the Literary Theory section. One of them, a young man with 
a flange and a fringe pedal, bought three books. It was now or never. We 
followed him down the stairs and into the brilliant light of the street. - I 
say, I said, could you show me those books you just bought?

At a café table we sipped diet pink lemonade at 65p a glass, and studied the 
books and their contents. They were all by Roland Barthes.  One was called 
'Infinity of Hesitations', a rarity shipped over from Canada. Another was 
'New Critical Essays', the usual thing, if overpriced for a slim volume. The 
third was a limited-edition Barthes Reader, produced in Doncaster by a Mr K 
Langley. Why the sudden rush of Barthes? Our young customer confessed: he 
was such an admirer of the essay on La Rouchefoucauld. Shyly, he drew our 
attention to one sentence in particular. - I have never, he whispered, found 
another sentence of such length. It's a one-time thing, I know.

We read.

We might be tempted to make this degrading relation (since it demotes 
appearance for the sake of an always less glorious reality) into the logical 
expression of what has been called La Rouchefoucauld's pessimism; doubtless 
the restriction, especially if it starts from the virtues to end with the 
accidents and passions, is not euphoric: in appearance it is an avaricious, 
constrained movement, it corrodes the generosity of the world, and its 
diversity as well; but this pessimism is ambiguous; it is also the fruit of 
a thirst, if not for explication, at least for explicitation; it 
participates in a certain disillusion, no doubt, consonant with the author's 
aristocratic situation; but also, surely, in a positive impulse of 
rationalization, of the integration of disparate elements: La 
Rouchefoucauld's vision is not dialectical, and for that reason it is a 
despairing one; but it is rationalistic, and for that reason, like every 
philosophy of clarity, it is progressive; copying La Rouchefoucauld himself, 
we might say in the restrictive form so dear to him: La Rouchefoucauld's 
pessimism is only an incomplete rationalism.

Back in London we compiled our results so far. There was no getting away 
from it: it looked as though the kids actually liked buying the same things 
in different formats at inflated prices. I took my Courage in one hand and 
called Tim Hopkins to tell him.

Ring.

Ring.


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