High Meadow vs. River/Ocean

Okkervil River's Will Sheff

I think this Don Henley vs. Okkervil River and Frank Ocean brouhaha might be a good discussion.

Don Henley is all protagonist, all individuation, all tragic hero, all rules and rationality, imposing these Apollonian concepts on the fathomless swamp from which inspiration arises.

Okkervil River and Frank Ocean are all union, all chorus, all lawlessness and inspiration in their clearly Dionysian interpretation of music's origin and destiny.

Both want to deny the right of the other.

Without River/Ocean, Henley dries up.  Without Henley, well...

This generation of artists is much more comfortable with never being a "star" in the sense that flourished in mid- to late-20th century.

In some ways, they win because they know what Henley represents and they don't want any part of it.

Frank Ocean

One of Henley's arguments is "Would you want someone doing that to your work?" And I honestly think that River/Ocean's answer to that question is "We don't care."

They might go on to say, "I am part of this formless flow of music and I would rather have access to it, wherever it flows, than to divert it into my own narrow channels, into my walled villa, and use it to irrigate some classical garden with well trimmed rows and marble statues" (okay, it's pretty unlikely they would say something like that--especially in unison).

Do we need this lawless period to drag these ossified baby boomer protagonists back into the mire whence they came? I thought our generation was the one who finally got out from under that shadow. But this generation are the ones who are finally doing the really dirty, bloody work, ushering in an era of "anarchy and collapse" (McLuhan) so that the culture can renew itself and new genius emerge.

Henley (second from right) was an outlaw once too

The baby boomers had such a powerful dose of the Dionysian...it's so ironic that they are engaged in these kinds of battles. River/Ocean may be wrong, but it's true that they are part of the more primordial, foundational reality in music. And Henley isn't wrong. In his words, though, you hear a kind of measured language not spoken by people who are still tapped into the dark, formless, chthonic source of music. Can't take him to court about that, but can you speak that way and still write songs? When did their last big song come out? 2004?

River/Ocean's? Probably yesterday.

I guess the upshot of all this is how it all relates to our own concerns about copyright. Now, I would have a much bigger problem with someone stealing our stuff if it were some kind of monster corporation (I will always love you, King Ad-Rock), not River/Ocean. So, I'm not saying there isn't a "standing up to the man" component of this impulse that could better harmonize with the artistic impulse. But this trend that Henley is trying to beat back may, in fact, be the Zeitgeist.

And, as Hegel claims, "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit."