[afterthefact]

This video is like 10 minutes long, so watch it if you feel like it. But this guy goes on forever about ressurecting (sp?) avant garde. Then, the lead singer of the band Live sings a song. Yeah, exactly. Because there is nothing more avant garde than singing songs that either are or sound like they are from 1995. Good job guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd3pQsxjLQw

Originally Posted by notes on YouTube

One of the goals of the Integral Vision is to resurrect the concept of the avant garde. The term is synonymous with "vanguard," technically defined as a small troop of highly skilled soldiers who explore the territory ahead of an advancing army, plotting a course for the army to follow. In a similar way, today's avant garde serves to open pathways for us all to grow into newly emergent artistic, cultural, and intellectual possibilities—the most current embodiment of the Kosmic impulse to constantly go beyond what went before, adding brilliance and revelation to the deadening forms of the previous moment.

While generally applying to anyone on the cutting edge of conscious evolution, throughout history it has often been the artists who have pushed that edge forward the most profoundly. This may be because, as Ken has often pointed out, artists have a certain freedom of experimentation which people in most other vocations simply do not have. Of course, for exactly this reason avant garde art has often been the product of some less-than-balanced souls—but if the leading edge is now integral, then we can begin to look to artists whose consciousness is integrally informed to offer us glimpses of a more sane and more inclusive future, and help unearth the radical potentials that await us there.

Ed Kowalczyk, lead singer of the band Live, is one such artist trying to bring an explicitly integral awareness to rock and roll, and here he offers a very intimate performance of his hit song, Overcome.

[Rob Instigator]

I have always hated LIVE so much. something about their smugness gets to me.

[✌➬]

I only liked that one song that made them famous, something crashes.

[afterthefact]

They were always so-so to me. But the part that bugs me is the direct correlation made between them and avant garde. I mean, if they had said they were a great rock band, I would just think to myself "eh, not quite" and move on. But to say a band like Live "serves to open pathways for us all to grow into newly emergent artistic, cultural, and intellectual possibilities—the most current embodiment of the Kosmic impulse to constantly go beyond what went before, adding brilliance and revelation to the deadening forms of the previous moment"? I don't think so.

[This Is Not Here]

Cunts.

[atsonicpark]

that one song by them is awesome. "LET ME RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE"

thanks for this.

[atsonicpark]

This has to be the funniest thing I've ever seen on youtube. Just the idea of it.

Watching these 3 bald idiots pretending to understand avant-garde and then hearing a somewhat alternative Dave Matthews Band or John Mayer bullshit song. Hahaha.

The replies are all funny too, ranging from "BJORK IS AVANT GARDE" to "Live is so good."

[MellySingsDoom]

I'm not even going to attempt to watch this complete waste of life. Jesus wept.

[Glice]

I have two responses to this. If you can't be bothered to read the first, please head straight to the second.

1) Their argument doesn't seem to appeal to the now-antiquated notion of the avant-garde so much as a neo-Jungian 'mass consciousness' which seeks to destabalise the hegemony of postmodernism's dissolution of grand narratives. I would contend that this is more of a classical approach, common from the englightenment through to about the era that Nietzsche/ Wagner inhabit. The postmodern criticism would be to say that that's a grand narrative, and obviously the two positions are incommensurable.

It seems that theirs is a re-enactment of the conditions immediately prior to modernism, but robbed of the notions of 'artistic merit' and the qualias re-constituted as 'depth', 'integrity', 'humanity', 'spirituality', 'soul' and 'authenticity'. Unsurprisingly, this sounds an awful lot like leftist-Christianity. The argument is surprisingly cogent - especially as it's taking place under the rebus 'avant-garde', which seems to suggest a rhetoric of changing qualias within whichever field. It's one of those arguments which master pricks will always construct - one which elides the conditions under which any criticism can take place; this is precisely the motion which Hegel begins (although doubtless inherited from the Stoics [etc] before him), whereby you can't find any space within the context of the argument to undermine the argument. So you look to its qualias - 'depth', 'integrity' and the like. Ultimately, then, it's a speculative subjectivity bolstered by mass-consciousness. However, these premises could easily include pretty much anything within the realm of art, even the postmodernism they seek to undermine (I'm pretty confident Marguerite Duras has 'depth' and 'integrity'). So ultimately, a load of cock.

2) What a load of cock.

[atsonicpark]

Wow, Glice.

Wow.

[greedrex]

Originally Posted by Glice

I have two responses to this. If you can't be bothered to read the first, please head straight to the second.

1) Their argument doesn't seem to appeal to the now-antiquated notion of the avant-garde so much as a neo-Jungian 'mass consciousness' which seeks to destabalise the hegemony of postmodernism's dissolution of grand narratives. I would contend that this is more of a classical approach, common from the englightenment through to about the era that Nietzsche/ Wagner inhabit. The postmodern criticism would be to say that that's a grand narrative, and obviously the two positions are incommensurable.

It seems that theirs is a re-enactment of the conditions immediately prior to modernism, but robbed of the notions of 'artistic merit' and the qualias re-constituted as 'depth', 'integrity', 'humanity', 'spirituality', 'soul' and 'authenticity'. Unsurprisingly, this sounds an awful lot like leftist-Christianity. The argument is surprisingly cogent - especially as it's taking place under the rebus 'avant-garde', which seems to suggest a rhetoric of changing qualias within whichever field. It's one of those arguments which master pricks will always construct - one which elides the conditions under which any criticism can take place; this is precisely the motion which Hegel begins (although doubtless inherited from the Stoics [etc] before him), whereby you can't find any space within the context of the argument to undermine the argument. So you look to its qualias - 'depth', 'integrity' and the like. Ultimately, then, it's a speculative subjectivity bolstered by mass-consciousness. However, these premises could easily include pretty much anything within the realm of art, even the postmodernism they seek to undermine (I'm pretty confident Marguerite Duras has 'depth' and 'integrity'). So ultimately, a load of cock.

2) What a load of cock.

What you say actually makes sense. Well done.

[Glice]

What I say always makes sense dear. Why wouldn't it? I'm amazing.

[Everyneurotic]

this is laughable.

i saw live...errr...live once, they were fun.

[noisereductions]

Glice... you done good.

[atsonicpark]

what is that song called?

"LET ME RIIIIIIIIISE. LET ME RISE. IT WAS AN EVENING I SHARED WITH THE SUN TO FIND OUT WHERE WE BELONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Oh, uh.. Lakini's Juice.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I have always hated LIVE so much. something about their smugness gets to me.

I'm right there with you on that. He (Ed Kolwalczyk) and his Neal Peart-esque "poetic truth of high school journal keepers" (way to go Lee, ha) lyrics can screw off. I remember cringing the whole time when being dragged to a concert of theirs because this Brazilian girl was all into them from the radio and MTV. I actually like J. Krishnamurti who served as the source for some lyrical ideas, but what dude did with his lyrics, phrasing and presentation is ridiculously cheesy.

Glad to see good musical appreciation won out over ideology, because I figured Rob might dig them because of their early atheist anthem, "Operation Spirit." The guy and his bandmates have always churned out hackneyed schmaltz; they quite simply have no critical capacity to work out good songs because they obviously think they shit bricks of gold.

[Dead-Air]

One thing going for Live, they're not Creed. Other than that, I'm stumped.

[DeadDiscoDildo]