The ____ Drama

There was once somewhere on this blog a detailed description of my exasperation with various artists wasting their time and energy accusing each other of things they may or may not have done on the internet. And they wasted so much of their time on it. And getting others to care and waste their time on it. And then they started telling me that if I deleted my comments they would book me at their festivals. And I thought, what a silly world some have created for themselves.

So I deleted the old post because it had too many specific clues in the URL but I wanted to keep some of the words because they are worth saying. I also deleted it because the less specific inter artist drama that I or anyone else gets sucked into and clogs up the internet with, then the better.

In fact I think the points, which are good and valid and ought not be deleted, that I am trying to get across here works even better when you don't know who exactly is being referenced. You could read it and think it is about someone totally different and that might be the case because a lot of people like to start controversies with each other rather than doing other things.

Needless to say I won't be playing any festivals this winter anyway. There's no money in it, and hanging out in ghost towns taking pictures and writing books is a heck of a lot more profitable and interesting way for me to spend my time.

Here ya go...


* * *

I have known ______ for a few years. _____ has stayed at my house before a few times when I lived in DC....

It's kinda hard for me to understand the drama because I've been living out west for a few years where neither of these artists visit often and I've been pretty bogged down by my personal life as well. My only real connection to the issue is various email updates or pages like this I see from different people online. Different sides post links to different archived articles or emails and I have no idea if any of them are real or where just invented because anyone can write an html document that looks like anything.

As far as I know either BOTH sides are right... _______ perhaps said some insensitive rude comments once in an email, AND _______ has blown things out of proportion and unleashed legions of fans to attack faint internet ghosts of intolerance while very real and a lot more socially important far right nuttiness (ex: Arizona's racial profiling law, Global Warming Deniers, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Fox news in general and the vast majority of the know-nothing Tea Party) is never mentioned or opposed by their "organization" anywhere.

Or, perhaps NEITHER side is right... there never was an insensitive email or internet post, ______ never ripped of _______, and _______ has been forging documents to make _____ look like _____ is being attacked in an effort to get publicity and support... _________ and ______are right to expose and denounce _____... Yet, perhaps they too are involved in the conspiracy... maybe the wiley ol _______ himself is the one who wrote _____ comically partisan and juvenile defacement to his own wikipedia page in an effort to make ________ fans look stupid and overzealous. Could I ever prove that? No. Could I ever disprove it? No. Is that even *likely*? Probably not.

The point is that me trying to use the internet here to figure out who is right is completely pointless because the internet can never prove a document is real or not or who wrote it or when they wrote it. As much as I dig around this stuff there is no revelation, no catharsis, just mud slinging which makes me want to support BOTH artists at the same time that it turns me off to BOTH artists. Sort of like presidential elections- where both candidates have a bit of dirt on the other, they sling it, and then you end up voting for no one because you're turned off to both of them. Here though I don't know whether any of the dirt is real or who to believe.

The only solution to this controversy is for the next ____ Festival to host a sort of mock trial with each defendant representing their own case, internet experts as professional witnesses to certify the validity and timing of certain documents, and a jury of peers to hear the evidence and vote for one side of the other, awarding damages as justified. Of course that would never happen because people want to go to _____ to drink, listen to bands, and have a good time. Another reason it would never happen is because then the controversy would die. At this point BOTH artists are able to generate fans and empathy and support by keeping the controversy alive as long as possible allowing each of them to appear "besieged", without ever being able to definitively prove or disprove anything because all the "evidence" I have seen so far is hearsay and internet links to archived documents.

I think somewhere long ago there was a time when industrial bands stood for something and said what they believed in. I have already elsewhere and at length described the decline of that culture from a cutting edge, avante garde movement to a fashion-centric commercialized dance scene of overblown egos, Press-Play DJ's, Top 40 hits, no local support, and "bands" consisting of one or two people standing behind laptops, staring at backing track playlists, not moving, or pretending to play midi controllers that are not plugged into anything and basically just standing there looking bored with fixed eyes.

So perhaps it is fitting, that, rather than supporting one band or another for their courageous stand against apartheid, animal testing, mental institutions, war, bigotry, homophobia, or class inequity... today we should all be supporting one or another band against the ghosts they see in other bands, ghosts which might never be proven, and which might never even have existed in the first place.

Of course one side or the other might be right. The great bulk of circumstantial and written evidence I have seen so far is currently leading me to support _____ . But the damage is still done. Instead of attacking the outside world with intense music to *make people think* this scene- advanced in its state of terminal decline- turns in on itself to attack itself, to defend itself from the attacks of one another, attacks which in all likelihood are based on fictitious insults. "Industrial" has completely lost its relevance, its *raison d'être*, and its ability to direct its energies against the outside world. ______ drama is indeed the black hole of the internet. It is also the intellectual manifestation of the highest, final, parodic stage of this genre's development. I am eternally grateful to it for relieving me of those extra braincells I had been burdened with for so long.