(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
A militant rap trio from San Francisco that billed itself as a White Marxist
Public Enemy,
Consolidated (Philip Steir, plus two ex-Until December members, Adam Sherburne and Mark Pistel, who had been active since the early 80s and even had a hit, Wait Until December) positioned themselves on the front lines. Their collages of funk, hip hop, and industrial samples form revolutionary billboards whose underlying theme is an attack on bourgeois culture, using technology as a weapon.
As is always the case with such projects, it all depends on how well the collective can make their sonic montage exciting; and from the very first album, The Myth Of Rock (Nettwerk, 1990), Consolidated reveal that they have less imagination and drive than Public Enemy. The most visible element is Pistels political sampling, which is about as engaging as watching a news broadcast while occasionally flipping channels. The program is nevertheless Brechtian, involving relentless assaults on American fascism, anti-abortionists, fundamentalists, supremacists, meat-eaters, big capital, male chauvinists, and the music industry.
Rarely (perhaps Strike) does the spectacle succeed in being truly powerful, instilling anger or fear; at best (Product and Fight The Fascists) Consolidated set up catchy danceable harmonies, and on some tracks (the gospel-jazz fanfare of Message To The People, the sarcastic transformations of White American Male) the trio shows that they can also arrange with a certain originality. The rest (This Is A Collective, America Number One, Consolidated) fizzles out (or ignites, depending on taste) into more or less banal techno.
The follow-up, Friendly Fascism (Nettwerk, 1991), continues in the same vein, with the famous Typical Male and the pedantic Unity Of Oppression (whose video nonetheless became a cult object).
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Ever provocative and energetic, Sherburne and his crew turned
Play More Music (Nettwerk, 1992) into a traumatic experience
Tool And Die and Praxis rhyme and bounce dragging along
revolutionary mottos and scathing indictments.
a booming, Hendrixian, hard-rock riff of We Came Here For Music
Behind all the eloquence and the fervor, there is an undercurrent of
tribal, frightened ritualism that surfaces in Guerrillas In The Mist and
peaks with He, not far from Fleetwood Mac's Tusk.
Even though what wins the day is
the mellow soul-rock of
A Day On The Green (Sly Stone and Santana)
and the feminist rap of You Suck.
Unfortunately, the music stops every other song, whether for a live exchange
with the audience or for agit-prop reportage.
When it clicks, it's an all-out assault that takes no prisoners. When it
doesn't, it's the closest sound to a yawn.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Adam Sherburne was also Childman (Nettwerk, 1993), announced by the usual radical tirade, Refuse To Be A Man, but mostly diluted by a guitar-driven sound oscillating between
Lenny Kravitz
and
Jimi Hendrix
(3 Reasons) and watered down with traces of white soul (Without You, Earthmother). Pretentious and dogmatic in a way Stalin would have liked, this album is as musical as a rhythm-and-blues record produced by Stalin would have been.
With Business Of Punishment (London, 1994), Consolidated finally free themselves from the constraints of hip hop, finding a niche between European body music (Born Of A Woman) and Red Hot Chili Peppers-style funk-rock (Cutting, Recuperation). Worthy Victim is the first true song of their career. The heartfelt Today Is My Birthday, dedicated to AIDS, even reveals a hint of genuine emotion.
Adam Sherburne continued moving away from dance music with Dropped (Sol 3, 1997). Under the banner of stale hardcore, Sherburne attacks the subject of domestic violence, but rarely with the dramatic intensity of earlier works (Recovered Memory, Why Doesn't He Stop).
Once again borrowing an African-American form of expression to turn it into a political vehicle for white intellectuals, the trio repeats one of the most overused patterns in twentieth-century popular music. At the same time, they renew the indelible tradition of nineteenth-century preachers. Consequently, their work becomes yet another cultural phenomenon of white bourgeois masculinity (the very culture they claim to oppose), fueled by a drive for subversive paternalism and ultimately self-glorification.
Trapped between the Public Enemy-style rap (which seeks to convey anger) and Disposable Heroes-style rap (which seeks to reflect on anger), Consolidateds rhetorical and dogmatic rap must survive in a very narrow space. In the end, it sounds like listening to Country Joe stripped of both genius and humor.
With Consolidated, the revolution doesnt end in a bloodbathit ends in a yawn.
Dropped (Roadrunner, 1997) and
Tikkun (Clearspot, 1999)
pale compared with the early works. Their agit-prop rap has aged and lost most
of its power. Sherburne is obsessed with Jimi Hendrix' mellower ballads
(Impermanence).
The band occasionally serves dance music (Sex Work),
but mostly this is third-rate soul-rock.
Consolidated resurfaced with We're Already There (2021).
