wecanbehappyunderground’s Neighborhood

Naturally most people scorn at the fashion industry, and may be rightly so, but probably without thinking deeply within themselves as to why they look down upon it. For me, it's because I feel that the fashion industry is very much authoritarian. Right at the top you have the magazine editors, who decide what kind of couture (clothes) will fill up the pages of the magazine. Then over the coming months, the designs filter onto the high street, usually taking the form of couture which range in prices from relatively cheap to obscenely expensive.

Now trying to understand this, and my obscure analogy with an authoritarian regime, what the fashion industry is essentially doing is telling us and coercing us into wearing the kind of clothes it's promoting and advertising. This kind of fashion isn't an art form, nor does it come anywhere close to it, and probably the only people who can be classed as artists are the coutures (fashion designers), who are also responsible, but only a few them, as it is their clothes that have decided the direction of the market over the years.

Personally, I think what we wear should essentially be a representation or a form of expression as to how we feel inside, so to make fashion less superficial and provide more meaning into the character of a person. I guess you could argue that, anything a person wears is a representation of the inner self because it's the inner self that decides what to wear in the first place. But even though a person chooses what they wear, clothes are usually chosen because either they 'look good', or because they're 'in fashion' - so everyone ends up blending in with everyone else—which is false because everyone's different.

There's nothing wrong with wearing clothes which 'look good', it's just that no-one would wear clothes just to 'look good' if it wasn't emphasized so much by the whole fashion industry and then inevitably the media industry. In essence, the fashion industry has over the years created the notion of wearing clothes to look good, and so resulting in the state we are in today, where the word beauty literally means 'how good you look' which also results in our fallibility to define beauty as conventionally aesthetically pleasing people.

The alternative; if there were no fashion shows setting the trends, and no fashion magazines telling us what to wear, then the clothes at the high street shops would be pretty generic, and so it would stimulate peoples fantastic sense of creativity to modify their own clothes for their own suitability. And so people would be genuine individuals, wearing beautiful clothes, and in the truest sense of the word, everyone would be beautiful.

As for the coutures (fashion designers), I don't think the problem of the fashion industry lies with them, because they're there the ones creating the clothes in the very first place; and to illustrate the point of the monopoly of the fashion industry, whichever designers' concepts are taken up by the high street fashion labels, the designers' who's concepts aren't taken up are in essence rejected, and so diversity is essentially inhibited.
 
 

hi! if you are an old VOX neighbor of mine, then please please pleeeeeeeeese drop in and say hi. i miss my old vox neighbors, and it's not because i don't like my new VOX neighbors, it's just that i miss my old ones.

and since you are all nice, hi! to my new VOX neighbors toooo!

i want to send my love to you all.
 
 
 
LOVE, MR.NICE.
 
 

I hope this makes you happy.

Mark Kermode's terrific interview with Werner Herzog.

Music for you. Enjoy.

She's My Man

Scissor Sisters

Land of a Thousand Words

Scissor Sisters

When you listen to a classic-rock station today, why don't they play the Velvet Underground? Why is it always Boston and Led Zeppelin? And why are the Rolling Stones so much more popular than the Velvets? OK, I understand why the Stones are more popular. But there is also a part of me that has always felt that it should have been the other way around. The Velvet Underground were way ahead of their time. And their music was weird. But it also made so much sense to me. I couldn't believe this wasn't the most popular music ever made.

Listening to those four studio albums now is like reading a good book that takes place in a distant time. When I hear The Velvet Underground and Nico or Loaded, I feel like I'm in Andy Warhol's Factory in the 1960s or hanging out at Max's Kansas City. The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him -- it was so matter-of-fact. I believed every word of "Heroin." Reed could be romantic in the way he portrayed these crazy situations, but he was also intensely real. It was poetry and journalism.

A lot of people associate the Velvets with feedback and noise. White Light/White Heat is the kind of record you have to be in the mood for. You have to be in a shitty bar, in a really shitty mood. But the Velvets created some very beautiful music, too: "Sunday Morning," with John Cale's viola; "Candy Says"; "All Tomorrow's Parties" -- I can't imagine that song without Nico singing it, although I thought Maureen Tucker had a cool voice, as well as being a really cool drummer. She had a femininity. I thought she sounded hotter than Nico.

In the beginning, the Strokes definitely drew from the vibe of the Velvets. I listened to Loaded all the time when we started the band, while I was writing my first songs. For four solid months, it was just Loaded and this Beach Boys greatest-hits record, Made in the U.S.A. A lot of our guitar tones are based on what Reed and Sterling Morrison did.

I honestly wish we could have copied them more. We didn't come close enough. But that was cool, because it became more of our own thing. Which is something else I got from the Velvets. They taught me just to be myself.

I'm finding that there seems to be some kind of a similarity between the Beat Generation and Warhol. Both were somewhat alike in the sense that they had a different 'outlook on life' compared to the norm. They bought a different enthusiasm which society couldn't and wouldn't handle. Being so much within 'society' means that true expression and the chance to develop your own take on life never takes place. 'Society' forces everyone to adhere to everybody else, to be 'normal', and then claims this as 'freedom' and tells us of 'diversity' which exists in our society. The Beat Genration and Warhol existed quite seperate from society; allowing them to develop and nurture ideas and live in 'harmony'—in the sense that they could hold their own perspectives and ideas without the ideals and niceties of life being forced onto them by 'society'. You would say that the Beat Generation existed within the framework of society—a lot of what they did was together and within the boundaries of the 'norms' set by 'society'. But when explored, you discover they didn't. They partied and socialised not primarily for partying's sake, but to share and explore ideas, and look for new experiences by being with other people. Because they were very much aware of the aforementioned things, their whole intention was different, they were very much outside of 'society'. I guess this is also true in Warhol's case. You see, I don't think that the other people within Warhol's group had the same outlook or even the same ideas as Warhol himself, and I also think that the people around Warhol probably garnered an idea about him and what he was and what he was doing, but I somehow think they didn't really know him. Warhol somehow seems that he was very much his own, and no-one really understood him, and so he played along to peoples perceptions of whatever they thought of him.
 
 

I really want to hate him, but I can't. I've seen videos of him, and interviews, and I really want to hate him, but I can't. I have a burning desire to hate him, I really do, but i can't. From what I see, I think he's marvellous. He somehow represents a lot of the 'superficiality' surrounding the modern era, but with him, this superficiality isn't really superficiality, it's some sort of deepness and depth. Yet when a lot of people emulate, idolize or even show deep admiration for him, more often than not, it's superficiality. I think the only way to (truly) understand him and his work is not to show any kind of affection and admiration for him and his work, and to view them with a sceptical eye, as to understand the 'Warhol' behind the work.
 
 

...Lou Reed is a fuckin genius!