-The Allston Beat-

I have the pleasure to announce that Boston's premier hip, free newspaper, the Dig, has decided to carry an article I wrote about the Allston-Brighton neighborhood and its cultural decline since the 90s. The editors edited it a bit and took out my rantings against the realty companies in the area as well as my own descrption of the ska scene that Allston was famous for in the 90s. Below I have reproduced the original article in all its unedited glory. Below that is a link to the article as it appears in the Dig.

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When I was a boy growing up in the metroBoston area, the lure of the city and its many happening neighborhoods attracted some interest. Harvard Square was a well known hang out for out of town youth who wanted to get away from the drabness of the suburbs and see something, anything out of the ordinary. The freaks and pit rats attracted many but there were also alot of great used records stores to browse. While Revolution Books is both a brilliant throw back, decent bookstore and a nod to the People’s Republic of Cambridge. But by far the neighborhood to held the most sway with metro youth was Allston. During the mid 90s there was a thriving ska and punk scene there. Of the many bands that came out what was known as the Allston Beat(1), the Allstonians epitomized the homegrown energy that scene produced.

Given that I now reside in Allston, I’ve listened to a few songs by The Allstonians and compared them with contemporary, post-ska Allston. In the appropriately titled ‘Allston Beat’, singer Nigel tells the story of a student coed who is distracted by the parties in Allston. “Came to school to study hard/ Now she's distracted by the parties down in her backyard/ She never wanted to, but now she's moved right in/ And now she knows exactly what's been happening” Note the strange emphasis on moving in. He then goes on to describe a typical Allstonian: “His brain is shaved, Doc Martin kickers on his feet/ He couldn't live anywhere else in town/ Without a dirty look or nasty word from someone trying to put him down.” While I can’t speak for Allston ten years ago, this certainly isn’t the case now. Most of the residents are students from primarily BU and BC, so if we want to get into fashion terms we have alot of white hats, jock types, more Gap than Doc Marten. An iPod is an accessory for both sexes. Generally, the Allston students typify the new yindie or yupster trend. Young and hip, but professional, too square for the tattoos and tight pants of the scenesters, too uptight for the relaxed fit and of the B-Boys and bedside DJs. Though Re:Generation, a throw back to the scene of the 90s, attracts punkers with its shows and cheap and varied selection of records, they are not a common sight.


In ‘Brighton Memories’, Nigel muses “Brighton memories never change from year to year/ So I'll never have to look to find a home.” Again, a reference to the ubiquity of housing. What gives? Allston has mainly two things, alot of cheap housing for students and various immigrant communities and places that sell cheap housing to the previously mentioned groups. Cruise the craigslist.com job listings in Allston and one will get the impression that real estate is the only job in town. Anybody who has ever lived in Allston can attest to the fact that they are constantly bombarded with realtors wanting to show your place to wide eyed college kids impressed by all the stories they’ve heard about the notorious neighborhood. But what is so great about Allston? The punk and ska scene that attracted so many of us in our youth has been dead for years. Where are “all the things you can do and all the freaks you can meet” that the Allstonians sang about? Okay, so the ninja cup guy and the King are still keeping it real for all us on Harvard ave. but is that it? A host of greasy spoons is good for the munchies, but come on! The lights may be on all night in All-Bright but no one’s home. If you are a student who is ready for that big step of calling themselves upwardly mobile(cringe) or just like mozzarella sticks a little too much then by all means move there. But if you want to live in a cool neighborhood stick with Mission Hill.

(1) which musically was a cross between the 2Tone bands of England in the early 80s and the newer third wave of ska which was Popier though there was the occasional band which would infuse ska with hardcore punk which always showed the most originality. While the 2Tone scene across the pond was often about racial unity and antifascism, the third wave scene of which the Allston phenomenon belonged, was much more apolitical and demographically white. The third wave was also more mainstream and easily susceptible to being corporatized. Though despite pop bands like No Doubt and Catch 22 maintaining some chart presence alot of the bands that the local scenes produced stayed truer to the roots of rocksteady and bluebeat.



http://tinyurl.com/n3m8z

-Postmodern Primitive/Primitive Postmodern-

2/10/6 - 2/18/6

Opening: Monday 2/13/05 7pm-9pm

Godine Family Gallery

MassArt



A collection of paintings, collages, wood assemblages,

and drawings that seek to show the similarities

between the

art of pre-modern 'primitive' cultures and

contemporary pop and low cultural elements such as

cartoons and outsider art.



The inverse of this, Primitive Postmodern, refers to

art of the contemporary era that reflects the shallow,

material values of Western, modernist culture but

through a primitive aesthetic. These include

readymades and wood assemblage.



Contemporary culture bases itself on the idea of

acceptability and legitimation which, by default,

defines itself against a created Otherness. It is the

intention of the artists to high light this Otherness

in the many mediums in which we find it exists in

current society. For without this Otherness, the

image of legitimate culture lacks definiton.


featuring the work of:
Conor Morey-Barrett
Jesse Neumann
&
Ean Frick

-A Letter of Criticism-

F Laros wrote:

Is 'Ean Frick' the work of one person...or several? And do you all share the shame political proclivities? One minute your a reformed commie or sorts and not really 'into national anarchy at all', and now your simply regurgitate their stuff and the latest eco-fascist/Intergralist garbage one find at anus.com. Haha, is fascism really where burnout leftoids go to die, or have you just moved on to the next thing for is radical cache?

A Response:

Dear F Laros,

First off, I am pleased to see that you are aware of the Ean Frick persona. Ean Frick is a identity that can be used by anyone for artistic, literary, "activist" or whatever else purpose they may want to. But in regard to the political opinions you refer to, this is one Ean Frick.

The fact that you seem to follow my opinions, or what you perceive to be my opinions, also interests me as your reasons for such are unknown at this time. Nevertheless, I feel your simplistic characterization of my thoughts needs some clarification.

When I was younger I was a Trotskyist, during this time I was member of the International Socialist Organization. After a little over a year with this organization, I grew tired of work disguised as social activism as well as the continual ideological surrender of the radical fringe to the liberals, Democrats(both social and Party related), and 'progressives' on the Left. During this time I was also somewhat involved with organizations such as Solidarity and the World Socialist Party(the old utopians not the Trots). After tiring of the leftist 'classics' like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, I got into ultralefts such as Pannekoek, Bordiga and Castoriadis as well as other thinkers from Sartre to Toni Negri to J. F. Lyotard and Guy Debord. I came to seek work as a bigger threat to humanity than not getting paid enough or being socially accepted by the liberal capitalist state. May '68 had always interested me since my ISO days and I began to think that 'All Power to the Imagination' was a better place to start than 'Workers of the World Unite.'

With Marxism in my past, I began to see anarchism as a more open ideology, by this I am not talking about the petty dogmatism of, what I would term, Leftarchism which merely replaces such revolutionary gods as Marx and Lenin with Bakunin or Kropotkin. Granted Bakunin, Kropotkin, and especially Proudhon are all fine figures, but I began to see anarchism as a way of exploring metaphysics and life, a kind of libertarian methodology and ontology. At this point, I guess I should mention I was very much into Hakim Bey/PLW as well as people like Stewart Home and Bob Black. Culture now seemed like something which people resonated with and shared bonds over more than the fact that they shared the same crappy jobs. Gramsci understood this when he stated that revolutionaries should work to build a counter-hegemonic culture that is socialist and anti-capitalist. Also, ever since I was a Marxist I had been a strong supporter of the rights of people to national/ethnic/regional self-determination. Despite my interest in left communism, which was mainly centered around their stanch calls for autogestion as well as their strict critiques of capitalism which were far more in depth than any Leninists, I always disagreed with their opposition to national self-determination, though it should be added that certain Italian thinkers, like Gramsci, of this persuasion supported it. I didn't see why, for example, Blacks in America should have to read the works of a German or a Russian which were born of a uniquely European experience to liberate themselves when they had their own unique revolutionary history. I also felt that the critique that it was solely class instead of race discrimination that oppressed people was a bit reductionist. People each have their own culture which is often based on ethnicity, as long as they are liberating themselves from the yokes of international capitalism and living autonomous and free lifestyles I don't see why the way they got there to be so important. Here I found methodology rather than ideology to be a more important factor in securing a libertarian socialist now. In other words, the how is more important than the why. Marxism and, by extension, Leftarchism stem their effectiveness off the basis that very large numbers of people in the world, a majority I guess, would adhere to their ideas. That this is utterly unrealistic doesn't seem to dawn on many intelligent people who are involved in such debates and struggles. American Indians lived in 'primitive' communist societies far before Marx or Bakunin entered the scene. This leads me to explain my interest in National Anarchism.

When I first discovered it I was greatly interested by the seemingly contradictory idea of combining anarchist with nationalist, specifically european nationalist, ideas. The anarchists and the Left were calling it fascism, saying that the far right was trying to recruit from the left by making themselves out to be anarchists. For one, if anyone has dealt with the contemporary Left they would soon see that it is a bit presumptuous of them to assume that anyone, even the far right, would want anything to do with a group of social inepts who have very little power to change the current situation. It seemed like their critics in the Left and anarchist circles were merely writing out of an ingrained rightphobia, though not without warrant, is not the kind of unfounded bias one wants to read if one wants to actually find out about something. Thus I decided to do my own research and see exactly what these National Anarchists were all about. My conclusion on them is as follows. But first I must state some ‘truths’ about our world: reality isn’t an objective thing, each person sees it in their own manner which is reflective of many different cultural signs, thus people’s ideas are hardly ‘wrong’ but merely based off a different subjective experience than their detractor. Despite this relativism, there are certain things that span subjective experience and affect many different people, this is consensus reality. The power structures of political systems being a good example of this. If we take the most reactionary aspects of national anarchism, basically white separatism, which is based off of many ignorant racist ideas, we still see that it is of no harm to other races since it anti-authoritarian, it doesn’t seek to impose any will over others but merely wants to be left alone and autonomous. Here we can see that while it may not be ideologically anarchist, it is certainly such methodologically. So rather than the far right trying to recruit anarchists and the far left, it seems as if certain anarchist and far left ideas have influenced the far right. I also don’t see why people of similar political persuasions shouldn't ally themselves in this time of severe political crisis. The far left and anarchists would have much more in common with many true conservatives(i.e. paleo, populist, nationalist) who are opposed to imperialism, Zionism, global capitalism and consumer culture than many liberals in the movement whose globalism and wishy washy humanism are at the very philosophical root to capitalism. If these conservatives happen to be anti-authoritarian and don’t wish to impose their beliefs on anyone else, I don’t see why such an alliance hasn’t happened already. This goes into the theory that there is no objective reality but merely many subjectivities interpreting consensus reality. Modernist ideologies are based on the idea that someone will interpret reality in a certain manner. As I have mentioned previously this is not only unrealistic but authoritarian. People are different, that is what defines us, not similarities. People are always going to see things differently, I wouldn’t want it any other way. The question is how do we live with such differences, the answer is pluralism, anarcho-pluralism. This is where National Anarchy comes into play. They are certainly anarchists in the sense that the system they want to live under is a Proudhon derived federalism, they are anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian, where they differ is not in the anarchism but in the social leftism that the contemporary anarchist movement has adopted. While their ideas on other ethnic groups may make us cringe, their desire to be left alone and not impose anything on anyone else shows that they are cut from a different cloth than most ‘white’ nationalists. If anything this is ‘white’ nationalism declawed. Many National Anarchists , such as Troy Southgate, actually recognize the ridiculousness of ‘white power‘ and are very hostile towards it. These National Anarchists seek to revive a pagan, European culture, and who says they don’t have the right to do so? Judeo-Christianty, modernity and American cultural imperialism has certainly decimated many organic cultures, Europe being one of them. Therefore my verdict on the National Anarchists is they are merely a form of the new anarcho-pluralism that is emerging from all sectors of the globe, those who want to retain their culture, whatever it may be(i.e. ethnic, sexual, artistic, ecetera.) through an anarchist framework. If anything, this is a victory for libertarian methodology and ontology.

-The Fuck is Frick?-

Ean Frick is a multiple identity, a nom de plume that anyone is welcome to use for activist and artistic endeavour. Other multiple identities in use include Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot, Michael K and Luther Blissett. These multiple names were first developed and popularized in artistic subcultures of the 1970s to 1990 like Mail Art, Neoism and post-situationist discourse, with the pseudonym Rrose Sélavy jointly used by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp and the surrealist poet Robert Desnos forming a historical pretext.

Okay, now that the introduction and defintion is out of the way lets get down to the meat and potatoes. The Ean Frick project was started by a Massachusetts College of Art student a few years ago with hopes that others would soon join in and produce essays, prose, collage and other works all under the umbrella of this mass indentity. However, do to a lack of the Frick namesake and its purpose getting 'out there', the written works have all been produced by one Frick(the O.G. Frick) while some actions have been carried out in association with other part time Fricks who also ally with related metaesthetic groups such as the Boner Party, Fantomas Brigade, and the Color Action Front. It is the intention of this blog to further the publicity of Ean Frick so that others will sign in, get silly and help end serious culture. The only thing that Ean Frick stands for is All Power to the Imagination, the revolt of subjectivities, whose related methodolgy is one of anarcho-pluralism, which is why (a) Ean Frick has worked along side the National Anarchists and the Nouvelle Droite. This blog will feature the latest outpourings of Ean Frick. If anybody 'out there' wants to submit work please email me at Autonomania@yahoo.ca

Previous works by Ean Frick can be found here:

http://www.rosenoire.org/

http://ean-frick.livejournal.com/

http://www.illegalvoices.org/knowledge/writings_on_anarchism/iso_the_leninist_mary_kay.html