second-person of the year

Who is Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2006?

You are, my fellow peers of the “new internet,” majordomos of a realm where user-created content is king and proportionality and restraint have gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

I understand where Time is coming from with this selection, even though it seems like the beleaguered Old Media establishment is trying to kiss the ass of the new wave. (On a related note, I can’t tell you how bizarre it was to see a quote from my James Brown tribute used in the print edition of yesterday’s Boston Globe.)

Neanderthal: “Mr. Cro-Magnon, I just want to let you know I have always respected the direction you’ve taken the species.”

Cro-Magnon: “LOL! PWNED! u r teh suxxor!”

Yes, the amount of user-created content has mushroomed in the past couple of years, but the noise-to-signal ratio is staggering. For every item of real value, there are countless examples of trollery, half-assed ranting, and other forms of ugliness. There is a difference between being entitled to one’s opinion and being entitled, period, and that point seems to elude the comprehension of far too many people online. One starts to get the impression that the lunatics (i.e. that one guy who writes long rambling letters about fluoridation and Vatican II to the local paper) have taken over the asylum. Just read the comments section of any given YouTube video, and you’ll get the point. (Nods to Kevin for the link.)

It is very difficult to gauge revolutions in progress. That’s why I prefer to stay one step behind the curve where “Big Things” are concerned. They always start off with a horde of wildcatters staking their claims under the wide open sky, and end with a handful of powerful concerns controlling the field. MySpace was bought up by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 2005, and Google acquired YouTube in earlier this year. Neither company is likely to piss away their investors' money running a non-profit public service.

The above musings were just an excuse to post today’s featured tracks, three songs sharing the same title, recorded by three female/female-fronted postpunk groups between 1979 and 1980.

Delta 5 – You (from a 1980 single, collected on Singles & Sessions: 1979-81, 2006) – A little relationship advice from Uncle Andrew: It’s always best to keep petty spats localized. If it’s about how you don’t unroll your socks before putting them in the hamper, don’t bring up how you hate the way your partner chews his or her food as a defense. Otherwise you could trigger something like the lyrics to this song, and that is not a place you want to be. Trust me.

Au Pairs – You (from a 1979 single, collected on Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology, 2006) – I wrote about the Au Pairs at length a while back. This track comes from their first single and has a rawer, punkier sound than their more ambitious later material.

Kleenex – You (Happy Side) (from a 1979 single, collected on Liliput/Kleenex, 1993) – From Switzerland, home of the Cabaret Voltaire (no, not the guys behind “Sensoria,” but rather the early 20th century Dadaist hotspot), comes this little gem. I especially love the way they squeal-shout “YOU” at the end of every other line.

One of the difficulties in writing about postpunk stuff is that is atypical song structures don’t lend themselves to standard terminology that well. One could take the Greil Marcus route, and do a free association piece linking the song to an obscure medieval sect of Cathar heretics and a 1930’s circle of Ugandan poets, or just fall back on the tried and true “sounds like Joy Division/Gang of Four”. Kleenex (later “Liliput”, after Kimberly-Clark put its corporate foot down) sounds nothing like either band.