Being a record of the ruminations, ramblings and obsessions of a Hound of the noblest breed (or so His Lordship claims, anyway). The focus being on dark music and culture, style, spirituality and - naturally – Basset Hounds.
Welcome to the chronicles of Lord Bassington-Bassington, coming to you from Little Storping in the Swuff – a quaint place located somewhere between England’s Lake District and the outskirts of the Norwegian capital.
This is intended as a log of His explorations of music, books, films and so on. I, your humble chronicler, is merely His Lordship’s secretary.
For more information on Lord Bassington-Bassington, please confer this blog’s opening post. Contacts can be directed to neofolk@zog.no.
For Lord Bassington-Bassington, there will only be one Sherlock Holmes: Jeremy Brett. And no, it's not just because our friends at Orchestra Noir paid homage to him, though we here at Bassington Manor have to admit that this did play a part in our decision to purchase a DVD box of Jeremy Brett's collected works as Mr. Holmes.
As a result of this, His Lordship has so far refused to see the Sherlock Holmes film currently making the rounds in the cinemas. An American as Sherlock Holmes? No, thank you.
Which brings us to this little snippet, which illustrates why silent movies are so superb. For when small-talk is eliminated, only the truly relevant questions remain.
If one is going to choose a wildly inappropriate actor who likes to undress to portray Mr. Holmes, why not just as well go for Arnold Schwartzenegger? Or a Russian?
It turns out somebody already had that last idea. And as the film below shows, however evil the Soviet Union was, it could make a better Sherlock Holmes than the current capitalist movie industry (thanks to The World's Coolest Librarian for the tip).
Perhaps His Lordship has to moderate his passionate anti-communism?
(Lord Bassington-Bassington would like to remind his readers that the online magazine Knokkelklang (Jingle Bones) is still fresh. He would also like to re-use a short text he wrote for that eminent publication, and some pictures he found of the town he grew up. Et voila: Blog post!)
In time, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) has come to be regarded as the most important horror writer of the 20th century. The destitute writer has become a huge industry, the unknown has been hailed by Metallica and Michel Houellebecq. In short, he has become one of the cornerstones of modern popular culture.
Lovecraft is best known for his stories of cosmic horror, but for a long time, he wanted to be a poet – some of his earliest attempts stem from the age of seven.
Luckily for us, his readers, he largely gave it up. For, as anyone who has tried to delve into his poetic production quickly realizes, he was never a very interesting poet. At his worst, as in his “On the Creation of Niggers” he was among the most awful poets in history.
This doesn’t mean that Lovecraft’s poetry is without merits. Sometimes, it’s quite decent. But its main value is that it helps us understand his fiction better. Lovecraft’s very poetic prose, and especially his uncanny ability to conjure atmospheres at the drop of an adjective – this is surely a legacy from his attempts at poetry.
This cycle of sonnets (a short excerpt below), “The Fungi from Yuggoth”, is the most relevant for understanding Lovecraft’s horror stories. Not only does “The Fungi from Yuggoth” show his poetic abilities at their best, it also contains clues to his later fiction. The ”Fungi” of the title, for example, are identical with the Mi-go which later appear in “The Whispererer in Darkness”, one of Lovecraft’s best stories.
“The Fungi from Yuggoth” was composed between December 27, 1929 and January 4, 1930, and parts of the poetic cycle were published in a variety of journals over the next five years. They were not published as a collection until 1943, well after Lovecraft’s death.
Lord Bassington-Bassington
XXX. Background
I never can be tied to raw, new things, For I first saw the light in an old town, Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down To a quaint harbour rich with visionings. Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes, And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes - These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.
Such treasures, left from times of cautious leaven, Cannot but loose the hold of flimsier wraiths That flit with shifting ways and muddled faiths Across the changeless walls of earth and heaven. They cut the moment's thongs and leave me free To stand alone before eternity.
Tonight will be the last Heretical Cellar ever. But after seven years and close to 50 nights it's time to call it quits, and move on.
That doesn't mean the old Cellar won't be missed. This is a melancholy moment.
Rest in peace, you old club. You gave us much pleasure. And judging by the tremendous number of people who showed up, you gave our guests some pleasure, too. Perhaps you'll be resurrected some day.
And as a way to mark the occasion, here are some of Lord Bassington-Bassington's favourite posters from those years. All design by Baetylos.
(UPDATE: Our good friend The Dodologist has expanded on this theme a bit further).
Politics is a boring and complicated subject, and Lord Bassington-Bassington prefers to avoid boredom and complication. But these Chronicles write a bit about neofolk, one of Lord Bassington-Bassingtons favorite musical genres, and in neofolk political disclaimers are increasingly necessary these days.
This sad situation has come about because two groups of people are trying to portray the neofolk scene as some sort of fascist conspiracy. Yes, it's ridiculous, but still worth taking seriously, and Lord Bassington-Bassington feels the need to share some thoughts with the readers of these Chronicles.
Forms of music that are outside the mainstream tend to attract people that are outside the mainstream. Therefore neofolk, like musical subcultures such as hardcore punk, black metal and power electronics/industrial, has an overrepresentation of people from various unusual backgrounds – be they radical rightists, radical leftists, members of new religious movements or sexual minorities. Go to a neofolk performance, and there’s bound to be a far higher percentage of homosexuals, Satanists, traditionalist Catholics, communists and neo-fascists than at your typical U2 concert.
This is fine. In fact, it's more than fine. For this strange mix of eccentric and extreme personalities is not only an integral part of what makes neofolk interesting, but also a big part of what makes life itself interesting. Lord Bassington-Bassington hasn’t the slightest interest in limiting himself to associating with people he agrees with on every subject under the sun. Heck, he can’t even agree with himself half the time!
What is not fine is that certain people want to use neofolk to promote their own political agenda. And as mentioned above, two groups in particular are starting to cause problems for people who just want to enjoy some music.
The first group is composed right-wing extremists, the political heirs of Roderick Spode.
(Roderick Spode, amateur dictator and P.G. Wodehouse character)
These extremists see that some elements within neofolk are sympathetic to some of their ideas – and yes, there are a few neofolk bands and fans like that. So, desperate for anything to latch onto, they claim that neofolk as a whole is sympathetic to their ideas. The word "exaggeration" doesn't even begin to cover it.
This situation is particularily bad here in Scandinavia, where certain tin-pot politicians have explicitly (and, strangely, publicly) made clear their intention to infiltrate various underground music genres, including neofolk, and use them as an arena to make their politics more palatable to the public. This is called “metapolitics”, and is essentially a way to spread your political ideals without being explicitly political.
So if you are an artist, record company or similar who operates in the underground, and someone from Scandinavia offers you a concert, a record deal, distribution deal, review, interview or something similar, chances are that you might find yourself part of some “metapolitical” campaign. To make matters worse, these people have proved that they have a very – let’s be diplomatic and call it “alternative” – approach to concepts such as copyrights, moral responsibility and simply telling the truth.
(While not a big fan of T-shirts, Lord Bassington-Bassington nevertheless thinks this one is very appropriate).
This “metapolitical” strategy will fail. Not only will it fail, it will create (and has already created) the opposite effect of what it is trying to achieve. Instead of spreading the extremist ideas, the "metapoliticians" will create a backlash. Examples are anti-racist statements from leading bands, extremists being banned from concerts, and political statements like the one you are reading right now.
But sadly, the “metapoliticians” will still be able to cause problems for normal neofolk lovers. Especially because they work in tandem with the second group, which is composed of scholars or anti-fascist watchdog groups who overemphasize the fascist elements within neofolk to make themselves seem interesting, insightful and important.
One such scholar is Ukranian political science student Anton Shekhovtsov, who has had a few otherwise excellent people take his shoddy work seriously. There is a long tradition of anti-fascists and scholars who do good jobs of monitoring and understanding right-wing extremist parties, but go haywire when they try to understand musical subcultures. But Shekhovtsov is a particularily bad example.
Shekhovtsov’s approach seems to be to use modern definitions of fascism, especially as put forth by the eminent fascism expert Roger Griffin, on neofolk.
Griffin’s understanding of fascism is summed up as follows:
Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.
The strength of Griffin’s thinking is that it is flexible enough to allows you to see that fascism sometimes mutates, and when brown shirts or bomber jackets don’t cut it anymore fascists will think of new ways to sell their ideas. This is why fascists spend so much time and energy coming up with new things to call their ideology.
The weakness of Griffin’s thinking is that it can take you to where Anton Shekhovtsov is: A place where people who don’t say fascist things, don’t do fascist things, aren’t members of fascist groups, or indeed have anything to do with fascism, can still be labeled fascists if you don’t like them. And if you, like Lord Bassington-Bassington see problems with slapping heavy labels like "fascist" on young people (a label which can have serious consequences for peoples' lives), then you probably won’t be reassured by Shekhovtsov’s approach to ethics in research. “There are no ethical issues involved,” as he commented when Lord Bassington-Bassington tried to argue with him.
In such a climate, where both fascists and scholars (however shoddy) of fascism seem to consider anyone involved with neofolk as a potential fascist, it’s important to make clear where one stands. So this is where the Lord Bassington-Bassington Chronicles stand: Lord Bassington-Bassington is a caninist, and his political views tend to be very moderate. As they say in skinhead circles, he is "neither red nor racist". Human racism, he thinks, is kind of silly, as the true master race is white, black and brown.
But, as he doesn’t think he has the monopoly on what people should think, he also supports freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. In short: Democracy. Not because democracy is so great. But, as it says in one declaration Lord Bassington-Bassington supports:
He does agree than no one has invented a better political system than democracy – but still doesn’t like it.
Because Lord Bassington-Bassington sees democracy as the lesser of many evils, he rejects all anti-democratic and totalitarian systems. He is therefore an anti-fascist, an anti-communist and firmly against all mixture between religion and state, be it a state church or an Islamist theocracy. One of his main hobby-horses is freedom of religion, which of course includes the right to freedom from religion.
Furthermore, despite being old-fashioned and grumpy Lord Bassington-Bassington supports things like gay rights (as long as homosexuals follow certain traditional norms). Actually, despite thinking fur-less, tail-less half-apes are slightly silly, Lord Bassington-Bassington still thinks they are entitled to human rights (this also applies to women).
And as for being enlisted into any sort of extremist political or "metapolitical" project, Lord Bassington-Bassington prefers to take his cue from that most eminent of bipeds, Mr. Reginald Jeeves.
Otto Rahn (1904-1939) was a rare soul. Dedicating his life to finding the secret of the Holy Grail and searching for it in the caves underneath the ruined Cathar Castle of Montségur in Southern France, Rahn travelled and wrote extensively, trying to unravel what he saw as hidden messages in various strands of European folklore and myth.
Anyone familiar with Rahn's books, and of a skeptical disposition, will quickly realize that Rahn's etymological and anthropological speculations might be a bit off-target, to put it politely. However, that does not diminish from the value of Rahn's books. For they are wonderful. Rahn was one of those people who is able to make his readers see the world in an entirely new, entirely poetic, way. His exploration of Europe's hidden soul was also an exploration of his own.
And like some other poetic souls he was seduced by the utopian promises of National Socialism, only to have his soul - and life - crushed by it.
Lucifer came from the German forest into my room. I cannot see him, but I feel his presence. It can be only Lucifer who lifts the piece of temple frieze from my desk. Columns grow under it and the other rubble conforms to it as a roof. Apollo’s Delphi stands suddenly in virginal beauty before me, and, through the sacred darkness of the olive trees and laurel bushes, I gaze at the sentence: “Know yourself!” It can be only Lucifer who picked out that inconspicuous stone from the rubble of Montségur Castle. It was a piece left from a stone bench railing. I see the bench clearly. Laurel bushes cast shade upon it. A man sits there, blond and noble. He wears a black tunic. A cap, like a beret, covers his head. The man, a Cathar, looks at me and speaks: “Greetings to you, Lucibel, to whom injustice occurred!”
The story of Rahn's unhappy Grail quest has been turned into an excellent documentary film by Richard Stanley (most known for films such as Hardware and some spectacular music videos for Fields of the Nephilim.) If you have a single romantic bone in your body, Lord Bassington-Bassington recommends that you see it. The introduction is below.
Regular readers of this blog will know that there has been a virtual conspiracy to cover up the immense influence the Basset hound has had on the history of culture. Pieces of art have been carefully doctored to remove the Basset hound; one needs only to look at literature, where seminal stories such as Arthur Conan Doyle's suspenseful Hound of the Bassetvilles, Clark Ashton Smith’s Basset Hounds of Tindalos and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Basset Hounds Are have suffered from de-Bassification.
The same fate befell the classic fairy tale about the Three Little Basset Pups, which was turned – by anti-Basset fairy tale gatherers – into a story about, of all things, pigs.
So thank heaven we had the cartoon genius of Tex Avery. He saw the heinous injustice that had been committed, and proceeded to right the wrong. Not only that, he cast Droopy, Basset hero extraordinaire, in the lead role.
(Droopy, cartoon hero)
So please enjoy one of the world’s most famous fairy tales, the way it should be told.
