In (Partial) Defence of 'Sodcasting'
That being the apparent neologism for the recent phenomenon of bus passengers, usually young and in the euphemism of the day 'urban', playing music from their phones or iPods out loud rather than on headphones. In the early 80s Greg Tate bemoaned the emergence of the Walkman, not out of his (occasional) defender-of-the-funk luddism, but because it took music away from the commons and into the head of the individual listener. Rather than the soundsystem, the block party, or their commercial recuperation the 'ghetto blaster' (and what a dubious phrase that was), the tape recorder with headphones was an escape away from the streets, taking the portable bachelor-pad ethic of the car stereo and making it more mobile, and even quieter. The reasoning was, that if the sound of the street could only be heard by one person at a time, then it wasn't the sound of the street any longer.
Obviously in 21st century London there is a lack of block parties, although certainly not a lack of noise. By all means, the chap with Newham Generals blaring out at the back of the bus will be enormously irritating to most folk without interest in such things. Yet: doesn't this go against so many of the trends in how music is listened to and consumed (iPod, MySpace, etc etc)? The aforementioned public broadcaster wants everyone else to hear the music. It would actually sound more powerful, more bass-heavy, more audiophile to listen to it on the headphones rather than screeching out of a tiny, tinny speaker. It's not for his own benefit, it's for everyone else. Sure, there's a fuck-you, anti-social element to that, which is the only element anyone seems to have noticed. But isn't there also an attempt, doomed obviously to failure, to make the music public again, to have it listened to outside, in groups? You can see a hint of that when it's a group, rather than one person, listening together to the bleeps coming out of the mini-speakers over the rickety roar of the bus.
Obviously in 21st century London there is a lack of block parties, although certainly not a lack of noise. By all means, the chap with Newham Generals blaring out at the back of the bus will be enormously irritating to most folk without interest in such things. Yet: doesn't this go against so many of the trends in how music is listened to and consumed (iPod, MySpace, etc etc)? The aforementioned public broadcaster wants everyone else to hear the music. It would actually sound more powerful, more bass-heavy, more audiophile to listen to it on the headphones rather than screeching out of a tiny, tinny speaker. It's not for his own benefit, it's for everyone else. Sure, there's a fuck-you, anti-social element to that, which is the only element anyone seems to have noticed. But isn't there also an attempt, doomed obviously to failure, to make the music public again, to have it listened to outside, in groups? You can see a hint of that when it's a group, rather than one person, listening together to the bleeps coming out of the mini-speakers over the rickety roar of the bus.
posted by owen hatherley at 5:21 pm
21 Comments:
Recently, I witnessed a teenage girl being thrown off a tube train and pinned to the ground on the platform by two people (who never once identified themselves) for;
a) playing music from her mobile phone, and
b) turning the music up when asked to turn it down.
The two who grabbed her were in plain clothes, one male, one female. They spoke loudly, so all around could hear, contradicting the cries of the girl,
-I can't breathe!!!
-Stop shouting then...
etc.
They also mentioned 'section 5 of the public order act', and ordered bystanders to call the police, which suggests that they themselves were not police. They held her to the ground after a struggle; she may have violently reacted to them originally so I cannot be sure that they instigated the physicality. They spoke to the driver of the tube, who summoned security, fellow staff and the police, before leaving them behind.
One thing the male assailant said to the girl was;
-You won't play your music loud again.
I've been half-expecting k-punk to write about this 'phenomenon' for some time, especially seeing as oop north it seems to be niche (sorry, bassline house) rather than newham generals that is the music of choice for the young rascals.
Reminds me of the moment in the little too-contrived Do the Right Thing where Radio Raheem gets his stereo blasted by Sal for having it up too loud.
I think there's an unsung (no pun intended) element of cynicism that seems present when you hear somebody attempting to "give music back to the masses". Perhaps its the usual hypocrisy of this 'revolution' being filtered through laptops and Blackberries, but the usual reaction I get is mild annoyance for seemingly unmediated self-approval: look I LISTEN to.
Then again, I'm American, and despite London and Austin being music-inclined, there's a type of mythical uniformity that we're just preprogrammed to be wary of. The other day I was at a trendy diner, and two kids by me felt the need to purvey their unequivocal music knowledge by naming every song played by the opening chords/lyrics. Thanks, assholes, I think everybody here knows what Radiohead sounds like.
You need to jump through a lot of sentimental old punk hoops to say that its about social broadcasting but its an interesting point about the quality being so awful that is not played for the benefit of the person with the mp3 but for everyone else. or possibly for anyone at all. then again isn't most adolescent behaviour largely for the benefit of everyone else?
Mark wrote about it happening at the bus-stop, which is marginally less obnoxious...
Charles, (wow! comments from top Venturi-ite architects!) I'm about 20 years too young to be an ex-punk, but sentimentality admitted to. Maybe I'm looking for something that isn't there, but the way that (at least in the case of grime, bassline may well be different) there aren't really any raves at all might help explain it. Or maybe it is just obnoxiousness.
(this post, incidentally, was inspired by a trip on the 188 bus in uncharacteristic sunshine actually rather enjoying what was being 'sodcasted' - an exceptional event, probably)
hang on! don't backtrack on this one so quickly..it needs teasing out.. i'll do an "unoblique" response later....the other one was clearly too oblique...
Carl
i read it and didn't think it was too oblique. a few years ago, tired and emotional and run ragged from some personal fuck ups i had a massive row with some kids on tufnel park tube platform for what i saw as their anti-social behaviour. i wasn't proud of it. but there is constant sense of middle class anxiety about these things which simultaneously assumes they have a divine right to both dictate the terms of civic behaviour and feel they are constantly under attack. it manifests itself in occasional outbursts of hatred. it reminds me too of Morissey's flirting with violent characters as he felt that they were the only ones who could actually influence life. odd. but i'm not sure the mp3 impulse is altruistic neither.
(and owen i'm glad it wasn't venturi - lite architects, that would have been very upsetting.)
ah, no.. my desire wasn't to reprimand..i'll write another less ambiguous post...
Carl
I was taking the bus home from a gig the other night, and listening to Ornette Coleman's 'Free Jazz' on my IPod. I usually feel a little threatened on buses at night, so it's good to have that defence mechanism - you don't have to meet eyes with anybody who might fuck you up. Not too long into the journey, some kids - foreign, but I couldn't tell quite where from - got on, and came up to the top deck. They were chattering away, and one of them started playing what sounded like really crude, bleepy techno - it may have been instrumental grime, or something - and I levered off one of my headphones to hear. Quite nice, oddly enough - the air of madness to the music made what would otherwise be a rather grim situation quite pleasant. Not too long after they got off, a couple of indie girls got on, went to the back of the top deck, and nattered away. I levered off one earphone to eavesdrop, then quickly put it back on - their voices and chat was so grating, vapid and dull.
The end.
Another thing - main roads in London are deafening, so those who make a fuss about the bus sodcast are explicitly tolerating the constant roar and drone of traffic, sirens, general noise and chaos, but refusing to tolerate the environmental blight of one other person playing something on a tinny speaker. A variant of the Daily Mail 'your enjoyment is stealing my enjoyment!' syndrome, I think.
Yeah, but I could imagine somebody like Ballard sitting on a bus concocting his next novel or great idea just by [i]listening[/i]. Nevertheless, the 'tiny speaker' never seems like enough to pierce that deafness -- which I think almost has been the inspiration for a lot of dubstep (out from the music...into the streets). Unfortunately, I contradicted my first point by pointing to a converging of two mediums that give way to even more fruitful contrivance.
Jennifer van Schoor, a freelance graphic designer in London, says endless roadworks have made her consistently late for work in the past few months. "Often I get off the bus and have to walk, but I resent having to do that because I've paid £90 a month for my travelcard."
A recent increase in aggression and noise pollution on buses hasn't helped. "Either I'm listening to someone talking on her mobile about how she's broken up with her boyfriend, or I've got some little pipsqueak next to me who's playing some 'doosh-de-de-doosh' music. If I say anything, who knows - maybe he's going to stab me.
Spotted here. I think the "who knows - maybe he's going to stab me" element should not be overlooked here: in a climate of exaggerated fear and mistrust, very mild social aggression like sodcasting has a definite flavour of acting up to others' perception of you as a potentially violent nuisance.
Sodcasting--love it. I dont think its hit the streets here, yet, in my experience.
"who knows - maybe he's going to stab me"
You crazy Britons are sounding more and more like New Yorkers. Stop it, you're scaring me.
Find it strange that people think this kind of behaviour is ok! While I'm all up for hearing other people's music, 'sodcasting' is not an altruistic act, broadcasting to the masses, it's simply IMHO a thoughtless (as opposed to rebellious/defiant) act.
The idea that people are explicitly tolerating the noise and roar of traffic if they appear to not like someone's sodcasting is bunk - this is like saying that eating smelly food on buses should be tolerated as car fumes etc smell. I tolerate noise from traffic because I have no choice as I'm on the bus. However, I should have the choice not to listen to someone else's music - regardless of what it is.
If its just teenagers I can kind of tolerate it, but I've seen people in their late 20s doing this - seriously get a life!
Music played off mobile phones sounds incredibly naff. In my experience the kids who play always seem to insist upon those really irritating urban grooves that feature munchkins on the vocals. Is this just a West Midlands thing? Do fans of a particular genre of music have a propensity toward exposing us to their taste?
Yes they do, or at least where I live; rap is almost exclusively the music that people play loud and 'obtrusively' on buses, which also happens to be played mostly by poorer teenagers, usually aboriginal.
As for our reluctance to hear music, or even talk to other people on the bus, I get the feeling sometimes that cars have conditioned, especially amongst the middle class, and white, users of buses I sense that ALL transportation must be comfortable, hermetic and inoculated from other people; listening to headphones just adds another level of resemblance to the supreme private act of car driving.
Reading this article, I could not help but think of another aspect of using a proxy to cummunicate with other people in public: the pet dog. It is the only animal that generally is seen in public, and its presence, if you like dogs, becomes an instant way of communicating some human bond (what? You love dogs too, total stranger?) A stretch perhaps, but this happens to me so often: a friendly dog out for a walk is almost certainly the only way two strangers might even talk at all, even if using the dog as a vessel (I realise this is also the classic 'pick up chicks with a dog' thing...but I feel it applies on a much wider scale).
let's face it public transport in this country after 25 years of privatisation etc… is a depressing experience at best, not too mention with the ending of the conductor now a reasonably dangerous place to be in as the tension in this city mounts…
…after a long day at work and a depressing journey by bus to look 'forward' to kids that get on and do this are a pain in the arse, nothing more nothing less…nothing to do with being middle class moaner, the same kids do it at college, kids brought up in this world of the self aren't interested in other people, when I've asked them to turn it down (because they were playing homophobic dancehall tracks) you get "It's my personal space I'll do what I want!" which says it all, Hobbes would be proud…
The second thing is unlike the ghetto blaster the music sound shit anyway good knows why you'd want to listen to it in the first place on those systems… especially as they can't cope with the bass that's on most of the tracks the kids wanna broadcast.
People, a bit of aptitude with the dialectic might come in useful, as would reading the original bleeding post - I already wrote that the music sounds tinny and shit, already said it was frequently just straight-up anti-social, etc etc etc...
Oh, and anonymous one-line ILM cuntishness will be deleted.
To me, most of them are show offs marking their territory with any means available. And, to take it one step further I'm also terribly ticked by all those instrument carrying Manu Chao wannabes in boat/train rides or camping sites.
One summer while making the excruciatingly long and slow boat trip in Greece I overheard two guys taking their guitars out of their cases:
- Ok, let's start.
- No, not here man, there's too many ppl, let's go in the front deck, we'll be on our own.
Boy did I get blown away. That was the one and only time I ever had the privilege to have my silence respected in public transport.
Public music happens when I perform in a public place and people come to hear me. If I inject myself in a crowd and use that tinny headphone, I'm merely annoying them.
And something else: myspace/facebook/blogs etc are themselves part of a public space that is unseen but has strong influence on the actual lives of people (especially those that live in same area and microcommunicate every day saying hi and how are you via posts). I rather see the posting of songs/videos on a profile as a more sincere expression of how I m feeling these days and how this song talks about it than any cellphone broadcasting some stranger's music to his annoyed co-passengers.
Finally, does "music that is listened outside, in groups" seem the "right" kind of music to you? Could it possibly be that this is yet another anachronism and some nostalgia 'bout dem good ole times" ? Could it be that music and the way it is enjoyed is following the changes in lifestyle and society and will never go back to how it was? For the record (pun not intended) I don't mind at all as every year I get many good albums in various genres and I have the options to listen to them on the PC, on my GSM, in my car, live in concert, at home, or watch them on DVD or mpg.
hey, you have my sincere apologies for any experiences involving being subjected to manu chao.
however, i think technology/the good ole days is a red herring here - listening to music off your mpeg or on the pc is not essentially that different from the 19th century piano in the drawing room in terms of how it is consumed. meanwhile, someone playing music publicly off a mobile is doing something every bit as traditional with technologically advanced means. I don't think either you or they are being advanced or reactionary in your mode of listening. i like listening to music with people, and i like dancing to music with people, frequently in groups; i also like listening to it on my own. advanced technology is able to facilitate both.
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