Disco decadents, punk poseurs:

...Even super-staid maniacally-cropped hairdos, faces that lead vocalist Jon Anderson jokingly inMike Douglas, the overlord of afternoon scream out curses and counterthreats at troduced the group's classic piece, the performers, drool beer and grimace "Roundabout," as a special encore "for GERRY O'SUtLIVAN is the editor of Point, the madly into space...

...In The Rebel, Camus "Universal Soldier" and Phil Ochs's In the case of disco, "meaning" be- wrote that "nihilism confounds creator figure of the heroic martyr in his song came an effectively saleable commodity...

...Without a solid order to make it accessible to this logical manipulation and we replace the will to understanding of the philosophical ori- apparatus...

...Discos over- Fleshtones," "Tuff Darts," "Suicide," only proved abortive to all attempts at flowed with John Travolta/Tony Manero and "Richard Hell and The Voidoids" furthering rock as a potential, truly look-alikes...

...What was missing leading thinkers of our time to their final, controlling the world...

...Indeed, the '70s are charac- lyrics pound the message into the mind and- means of approach...

...of a logic that could accommodate none happy days when James, Royce, Hock- of the questions that mattered most to ing and Santayana were shaping the Louis Dupr4i him...

...William A SEARCH FOR MEANING Mathematicus=a book as notorious for Barrett's thoughtful reflection upon our IN A TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION what it omits as for what it includes...

...The claims made by symbol was no longer a banner beneath tive means of safely channeling human disco and punk devotees to the effect that which students rallied to demand an end need and emotion into the pockets of big their music is some kind of logical out- to the mass-slaughters occurring in the business...

...The nation's Tony Man- songs such as the Ramones' "Beat the ment" lost its leaders to the establish- eros spend fortunes on tools of vanity - Brat" and fashion habits such as.cropment and the "good guys" and "bad hair styles, blow-dryers, gold neck- ping the hair, wearing chains and razor guys" were no longer 'easily distin- chains, polyester three-piece suits and blades and the use of broken bottles by guished by long hair and gray suits, the massive, gleaming, gas-guzzling au- performers to lacerate chests and arms, Commonweal: 342 shows that the senseless lashing-out of of disco's Studio 54 and the decadence of sit back...

...They call it disco...

...Each morning as I drive to and onto trains and buses...

...How can analysis and critique of Wittgenstein...

...Books: BEING & THE WILL 70 PRAYER A WELL-WRITTEN book in philosophy TEE ILLUSION OF TECIUIIUE: answer in the Tractatus Logicohas become a rare surprise...

...roll, punk is its miscarriage...

...Those with an lenting loops of simplistic snare beats artistic sense left turned to the neoaccompanied by the high-pitched shriek- progressive "new wave," represented ing of apparently overjoyed background by groups like Talking Heads, Blondie singers...

...But out of lowering tides of consumer madness...

...day-glo yellow across buses city-wide...

...The ingly menace one another at the bar and seen fit to provide my car with an best became inescapable...

...commercial and self-serving ends, punk the same mire that produced Woodstock, Disco and punk grew out of this mad- is the stance of the individual who not Alice Cooper and Jimi Hendrix came ness, offering individuals new value cen- only refuses to "play the game," but songwriters who sought to rally the ters, new "places to go," and presented seeks to obliterate it and himself as well...

...Like T.S...

...What, queried Susskind, music is through either of the two out- Watergate only served to further was the underlying purpose behind the growths, and not independent of their generalize distrust...

...When sion in rock music...

...Those people interested in preSaturday Night Fever to be filmed and pack themselves into the tiny cafe to hear serving the versatility of progressive rock released...

...This "be-all and symbol America had, the office of the unanimously agreed that their only real end-all" thinking is opposed by those presidency, had been betrayed by a man purpose for participating in the weekly who are constantly' seeking out new for- who had gained overwhelming support in disco-ritual was sexual-they sought mulas and approaches to artistic expres- his reelection...

...the cornered, frightened animal...

...and created in the same blind fury," and "Crucifixion" called listeners to self- The electric guitar, once wielded like an no statement could be truer in describing examination and a sense of social action...

...axe by rebellious anti-establishment punk rock...

...Their sense of violence is that of pravity before the Hitler years and the ply "offered them something more...

...Yet technological age, couched in a literate, William Barrett soon he lost faith in the meaningfulness highly personal style, harks back to the Doubleday, $12.95, 359 pp...

...The remaining question was: When we reduce the cosmos to a reflect...

...The "progressive" hustle, New York hustle, tango hustle, winos, junkies and lunatics, inconspicu- mentality is epitomized by such groups ad nauseam...

...in a language that remembers the past and pace...

...lute negation...

...A while back, David Susskind come or pinnacle of what rock has always jungles of Southeast Asia...

...What followed was a tide only to pick-up or get picked-up...

...This neo- scrawled in subways and on park benches Saturday afternoons polishing the car and dialectical mentality holds that the only alongside new all-purpose words like preening the hair in preparation of the route left open to the progress of modem "peace" and "love...

...the part of those interested in progressive Suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, The word was out-disco was in, and rock, a general movement in.contempoeveryone was doing the hustle in count- nobody could stop it...

...It is an outbreak of World War II...

...From the start, Wittgenstein thought as well as the language of their seems to have been that rare phenomenon generation...

...Another of progresfitting polyesters became all the rage, through cheap amps...

...What Barrett modestly an- among human beings-a genuinely relinounces as "a sketch toward a history of gins of the modern concept of science gious personality...

...Wittgenstein has given us his let be by the naked will toy power, we 8 June 1979: 343...

...Eliot's "Hollow gliding merrily and blindly into the jaws dissolution of family life...

...Such a method takes time and then to subject it to logical proce- such a justification, in the end, must be and the reader has completed nearly one- dures of analysis and new syntheses...

...Evening wear consists all the disco people in the audience...

...The 1960s saw an age was in the throes of what Gabriel Marcel emulation, but in the end he is psychologof rebellion against such material ex- termed the "fanaticized consciousness," ically slain by the realization that his life cesses, but too often produced excesses a consciousness which, devoid of mean- is shallow, worthless and without meanof its own...

...trend in American thought which them, they unflinchingly said "no...

...rary music towards new and creative less variations and mutations-Latin In the midst of an army of Bowery modes of expression...

...Print Qiana shirts and tight- pump infantile three-chord earthquakes legitimate art form...

...The greatest living cool, the car and the cologne...

...Turn the volume up to ten and about the Sunday Morning Migraine...

...That all explication must take place unproven assumptions, their ultimate ment had been to isolate an objective within language brooks no doubt...

...Reflection also has meanings into simple, unrelated units, to answer them in terms of a technique of a history, and that history has become an held the key to the understanding of the thinking must miss their point altogether...

...Clearly, those are not quesof their great predecessors usually end up atomism, the divisibility of complex tions of logical method and any attempt paying for their haste...

...feelings of ambivalence towards within a circle, seen occasionally sed the importance of spending one's their modes of music...

...In his early lift his thinking out of its positivist tracks With an assurance and perceptiveness Tractatus he culminates the attempt ini- and most of his followers continued to acquired by long and thorough acquain- tiated by Galileo and Descartes to con- work stolidly within the narrow confines tance Barrett pursues the ideas of three vert thinking itself...

...so many American accident, one pans across a boos on their latest tour from a capacity chromium sheep around newly opened milieu of faces beneath brightly dyed, crowd at Madison Square Garden when neighborhood discos...

...If dance, dance," "boogie, oogie, oogie" disco is the illegitimate child of rock 'n' or "shake their booties...

...These aura of senseless violence and a general phrases are constantly repeated to unre- disdain for life as a whole...

...This is particularly true on the How must we conceive of the world in purely objective realm open to technical subject of technology...

...It all began a few The fringe element inherent in both years back with a rather innocuous little punk rock and disco has resulted in a tune entitled "The Hustle," written by a I certain disdain for the two movements on relative unknown named Van McCoy...

...It is a Carl Jung, the father of analytical has pervaded business, art and politics consumerist, pre-packaged, domineerpsychology, felt man's overall history to over the last few years...

...When you've Men," they indulge in "paralysed force, of a national crisis...

...Keep dancing, got Saturday Night Fever, why worry gesture without motion...

...Disco returned, but now with groups with names like "The fear that disco/punk factionalism has cultural reinforcements...

...The first require- here...

...The music and musicians of the sixties be found...

...very similar historical phenomenon, zens took their own lives in the jungles of Most punks, however, are only namely the rise of German cabaret de- Guyana, all for one individual who simposeurs...

...integral part of the culture on which we world...

...Who wants to hear that, just a devoted "punks" is not only external, punk's CBGB's tends to remind one of a few months back, 911 United States citibut self-destructive as well...

...philosophical world model...

...big night...

...On any given night, sical composers ranging from Bach to lasted just long enough for a movie called hordes of outrageously attired people Copland...

...But prephilosophical intuitions, and then realm from all subjective involvement that fact itself needs to be justified and moves beyond...

...Could it be Who cares about political and social empty, passionless aggression vented in that we in the "Happy Seventies" are apathy, corporate corruption, and the dark cafes...

...Heidegger and James provide the inter- thought attained its ultimate consistency Even with his later, pluralistic theory pretative structure, but the message is before breaking down altogether as a of language Wittgenstein was unable to very much the author's own...

...industries to heighten sales...

...Images Ipatible with the egocentricity of the "me what Albert Camus referred to as "absosuch as singer-songwriter Donovan's decade...

...The done in the light of Being itself...

...American society women, and he's worshipped through mass-materialism...

...In the midst of the din, there is and Television, and by individuals like normally one (usually untalented) lead Elvis Costello who, wary of punkvocalist, seemingly in mid-orgasm, identification, retreated away from the cajoling an unseen audience to "dance, movement, leaving an even wider gap...

...It poured out of in the hog-stall deco bathrooms...

...ing sexuality devoid of feeling or intenbe one of a search for new and better When the "old symbols" and "old sity, tamed by the clothing and cosmetics symbols, symbols which could stand as values" died, a tremendous gap was left...

...a universal, strictly logical language for Being be permanent and yet be revealed But the result justifies the deliberate all that man can legitimately talk about...

...youthful audiences around generally not only new trends in music but in fash- Punk builds its musical and philosophical positive symbols of love, peace, com- ion and attitude as well, an attitude com- foundations upon active nihilism, on passion and a respect for nature...

...when he returned, years later, he was a major philosophies...

...Disco, indeed, has become a My Disco" have taken on anthem-status its force and mass-appeal...

...The peace boon to the economy as well as an effecwith rock hardliners...

...But the sexuality ALL ART, as we know, is symbolic...

...Hardline rockers sweated ously hidden in the darkness off Bleecker as Emerson, Lake and Palmer, who've out the phenomenon until what appeared Street, sits a rather dingy-looking little sought forward motion based upon clasto be a peak and sudden decline, but this club called CBGB's...

...How third of the book before he realizes that young Wittgenstein experienced no must Being be understood to allow comhe is dealing with more than yet another doubt about the possibility of discovering munication within language...

...The aggressive excesses of When a so-called "peace" was estab- types, became domesticated by the the punk-mentality, characterized by lished in Vietnam, when "the move- cash-register...

...into a technique for of his early program...

...AM radio which I instinctively record stores, car radios and massive What began in New York in the late turn on the moment the key clicks in the two-speaker portables carried by kids '60s and early '70s as a reactionary ignition...

...Faddism reached new heights, If disco is representative of the effecwallowed (and often drowned) in a pool sweeping across America in rising and tive exploitation of human sexuality to of mad-dash libertarianism...

...It was now devoted an entire show to interviewing a attempted to be but never could also give merely an inverted trident enclosed group of regular disco-goers who stresrise to...

...survival of the fittest" mentality which of disco is not a personal sexuality...

...WKTU, once a movement in rock, typified by Lou Refrom classes, I deftly exercise my fingers rather snobbish mellow-rock station in ed's Velvet Underground and David on the selector buttons, trying desper- New York, did an overnight switch to an Johansen's New York Dolls, steadily deately to avoid an endless barrage of tunes all-disco format and subjected motorists generated into minimalism and finally with titles containing such amazing to their new "DISCO 92" logo slipped into the throes of nihilism, leavexamples of Newspeak as "boogie," emblazoned in amphetamine-shriek ing only a dismal shell surrounded by an "get-down" and "freak-out...

...terized by the ominous label of "the me and the style of dress serves the same decade," a label which aptly signifies the purpose, like plumage...

...ing, seeks out meaning wherever it can ing...

...Ford ham University student opinion of haphazard combinations of torn Frank Zappa's "Disco Boy" ("Leave magazine...

...Impatient critics,who find no time In his early days with Russell at Oxford, anticipates the future but only speaks in for the distant and often indirect analyses nothing appeared clearer than that logical the present...

...Wittgenstein, With Wittgenstein technological changed man...

...I say, attempted art form) which sets in- has led us to a frightening sense of mass- Everything about disco is sexual-the escapable parameters for style, content solipsism...

...Through the dark- sive rock's premier and pioneering and sparkling white Monte Carlos and ness of the interior, decorated in Early groups, Yes, evoked a mass-chorus of Cutlass Supremes flocked like...

...The opulence America...

...With characteristic philosophy in our century" presents, in and of its philosophical revisions the honesty he withdrew from the fact, a critical interpretation of the cul- critique remains almost inevitably within philosophical enterprise altogether and tural drift of our age in the light of its the perimeters of technological thought...

...Jung feared the sterility crazed grasps after new forms of expres- father reborn amidst an industrial and one-sidedness of modern symbols, sion, clawing about in the rubble for horde-he's got all the macho, all the which he felt to be representative of something to-cling to...

...John truly representative of the totality of Individuals floundered about, making Travolta is simply the Freudian primal human nature...

...those who see the of political and social apathy, a "so asked if anything else really mattered to stifling nature of any art form (or, should what...

...T-shirts, chains, safety pins, rubber and his hair alone/but you can kiss his 8 June /979: 341 comb"), as well as the Tubes' "Slipped once-important symbology of the era lost tomobiles...

...ELECTRIC GUITAR TRANSFORMED INTO THE CASH REGISTER Disco decadents, punk poseurs sweet talk, began featuring disco groups, leather, and is displayed on the backs of GERRY O'SULLIVAN fashion shows and owners on his pecul- blank-staring exhibitionists who mockTHE CHRYSLER Corporation has iarly middle-American program...

...The panel glorious influences...