Losing My Canon

In the past couple of days, I’ve read a post by Jeremy over at Antip­ixel on Musi­cal Lit­er­acy, the recent I Love Music thread on imag­i­nary Rough Guides To…, and par­tic­i­pated in a faintly ludi­crous dis­cus­sion of the lyrics to LCD Soundsystem’s I’m Losing My Edge. All these things, in one way or anther, are about estab­lish­ing a musi­cal canon.

Just in case you’ve already lost your edge, I should explain that the LCD Soundsys­tem song, which you can listen to here, is a won­der­ful dead­pan mock­ery of a cer­tain type of music fan. The sort who makes lists, who insists on their long famil­iar­ity with the most obscure artist the moment they rise to promi­nence, and who makes sus­pi­cous claims to being present at key events in music his­tory. As the title sug­gests it also mourns the inevitable pas­sage from cool to over-​the-​hill, while, of course, mock­ing the notion of cool itself, best expressed by this little line:

I’m losing my edge to the art-​school Brook­lynites, in little jack­ets and bor­rowed nos­tal­gia for the unre­mem­bered eighties

It is, with­out doubt, the best comic song of the cen­tury so far, if only because of the neat trick it plays on the lis­tener: you have to be the sub­ject of the satire in order to under­stand it, the joke is truly on you, me and us. And it makes you dance like a bastard.

Anyway, here are the groups and artists men­tioned in the song, in the order which they appear, stripped of the wit.

• Can
• Suicide
• Cap­tain Beefheart
• Daft Punk
• Larry Levan
• The Beach Boys
• Modern Lovers
• Niagra
• This Heat
• Pere Ubu
• Outsiders
• Nation of Ulysses
• Mars
• The Trojans
• The Black Dice
• Todd Terry
• The Germs
• Sec­tion 25
• Althea & Donna
• Sexual Harrassment
• A-Ha
• Pere Ubu
• Dorothy Ashby
• PIL
• The Fania All-​Stars
• The Bar-​Kays
• The Human League
• The Normal
• Lou Reed
• Scott Walker
• Monks
• Joy Division
• Lower 48
• The Association
• Sun Ra
• Scientists
• Royal Trux
• 10cc
• Eric B. and Rakim
• Index
• Basic Channel
• Soul­sonic Force
• Juan Atkins
• David Axelrod
• Elec­tric Prunes
• Gil Scott Heron
• The Slits
• Faust
• Mantronix
• Pharaoh Sanders
• The Fire Engines
• Swans
• Soft Cell
• The Sonics

Posted at 4pm on 22/01/04 by Jack Mottram to the music category.
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Tags: comedy, music