Pulk-Pull*

At 8:15pm on August 29, 1952 the Benefit Artists Welfare Fund gathered in the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York to hear the pianist David Tudor perform John Cage’s latest composition. They heard nothing, a nothing entitled 4’33”. Inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s three-paneled White Painting of 1951, the handwritten score indicated a silence of three movements. According to the original performance program, the first movement was 30 seconds, the second was 2 minutes and 23 seconds and the last was 1 minute and 40 seconds. Music without music: is it still music? Are music videos without music still music videos?

In 1993, media critic Jody Berland asserted a fundamental fact of music videos, that “the 3-minute musical single” was the video’s unalterable foundation, “its one unconditional ingredient. A single can exist (technically, at least) without the video, but the reverse is not the case. As if in evidence of this, music videos, almost without exception, do not make so much as a single incision in the sound or structure of the song. However bizarre or disruptive videos appear, they never challenge or emancipate themselves from their musical foundation, without which their charismatic indulgences would never reach our eyes” (25).

Only eight years old, Berland’s words are aging rapidly. Concurrent with the 5 June 2001 commercial release of Amnesiac, Radiohead released 16 Quicktime animated video shorts (see message 41 below) called “antivideos” in their previous incarnation. As if in direct response to Berland, the antivideos do exactly what videos cannot: make radical incisions and changes to the sound and structure of the songs they promote. In fact, of the most recent 16, only 3 have musical excerpts, and those are, oddly enough, from Kid A. The other 13, supposedly produced for Amnesiac, have no sound at all.

Berland, Jody. “Sound, Image and Social Space: Music Video and Media Reconstruction.” Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader. Ed. Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin and Lawrence Grossberg. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. 25-43.

View the antivideos released with Amnesiac: http://josephtate.com/radiohead/amnesiacmovies/. These movies were originally available at the updated radiohead.com.

Radiohead’s second album was entitled The Bends. The “bends” is another name for Caisson disease or decompression sickness. According to the OED, the word “caisson” originally meant a chest for the transportation of explosives or ammunition, but around 1753 the word came to mean a large water-tight case or chest used in laying foundations of bridges in deep water.

With the disease, nitrogen gas bubbles form in the body as the result of rapid transition from a high to a low pressure environment. When the bubbles form in a victim’s joints, he or she is said to have the “bends” because they are unable to straighten their limbs. Other problems caused by the disease include paralysis, convulsions, difficulties with muscle coordination and sensory abnormalities, numbness, nausea, speech defects, and personality changes.

Historically, the disease is relatively new. Beginning in the early 1800s, caissons were sunk to a lake or river bottom and pressurized with air to create a watertight compartment for workers excavating bridge foundations. By the mid-1800s doctors observed that the duration of exposure to the caisson’s increased air pressure and the worker’s speed of ascent correlated with development of joint pains.

More generally, one could argue that the disease results from the conflict of human biological limitations and technological innovation.

Song 3 from Amnesiac is entitled “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors.” The word “pulk” has three definitions according to the OED: (1) A small pool, especially of standing water; a small pond or water-pit; a shallow well or tank; a puddle, a plash; a small lake or “broad”. (2) A chest of drawers; a bureau. (3) A regiment of Cossacks.

Given the song’s lyrics, definition 2 seems most applicable.

The opening lyrics of “You and Whose Army,” track 4 on Amnesiac, read:

Come on, come on
You think you drive me crazy
Come on, come on
You and whose army?
You and your cronies
Come on, come on
Holy Roman empire
Come on if you think
Come on if you think
You can take us on
You can take us on

The Holy Roman Empire is likely a sarcastic description of the addressee’s poorly arrayed forces (metaphorical or otherwise) that will fail to match those of the song’s speaker. Sarcastic because from c. 1550 to 1806 the HRE was little more than a loose federation of German princes and was never a unified military power.

Kevin Dettmar has these wise words to say about Radiohead.

Find some of my greenplastic.com news contributions here.

A line from “Life in a Glass House,” the last track on the new Amnesiac: “Once again, packed like frozen food and battery hens.” America has a Frozen Food Institute and Britain has a Frozen Food Federation.

Battery hens lead horrifying, horrifying lives:
Battery Hens Campaign.
United Poultry Concerns, Battery Hens.
Statutory Instrument 1987 No. 2020: The Welfare of Battery Hens Regulations 1987.

The minotaur icon (see Message 30 below) haunting the new Capitol Records website is vaguely similar to the Merrill Lynch line-drawn bull. The bull-head, then, of the Amnesiac minotaur, like the ML bull, may connect with the phrase bull-market. Again, the OED is instructive:

bull, n.1 Add: [IV.] [11.] bull market Stock Exchange, a market characterized by the rising price of stock, etc. 1891 Century Mag. Jan. 426 No office of its size in the Street made so much money for its customers in a *bull market. 1931 F. L. ALLEN Only Yesterday xii. 301 No aspect of the campaign was more interesting than the extent to which it reflected the obsession of the American people with bull-market prosperity. 1986 What Investment July 15/3 If historical precedent is followed, the present bull market will end by the next general election.

The ML logo was interestingly problematic in Japan: “The combination and clash of the two cultures is working both ways in terms of adapting to the nuances of Japanese culture. The companyís global logo, which features a bull on a grid, was initially perceived by some in the Japanese public to be that of a butcher shop showing barbecue on a grill.”

A crying minotaur: a sluggish market? One that would need to go hunting for bears. Bear markets. Tra la la la.