Gross and Conspicuous Error No. 4

Burn, Ramsden, Thompson

Lyrics

Ramsden: Reductionist empiricist Without specificity or a Bruce Boice's junior executive Tough wunderkind Version of Juddian specificity Establishes particularity but mystifies it So too denies particularity and totality Thus it plays into the hands of cultural mandarins Rationally self-interested reductionist empiricists Like artists Have minor detail adjustment free will Insofar as they remain self-interested, alone And without the class — for itself — struggle Capitalist cognition must be denied For the dialectical form of particular in totality Deadly and monotic Fragmented minds transfixed By the law of contradiction P or not P You or me, not you and me can be struggled against By first seeing mind's self as a social institution And historical process component of historical reality Again, assurance is based on Not the G&CE of aggrandizing and individuating self But on developing significant organizational forms

Chronology

• Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors
  • Mel Ramsden - vocals
  • Mayo Thompson - guitar
  • Jesse Chamberlain - drums
  • Ian Burn - whistling
• The instrumental music at the end later became the song "Born to Win" on Kangaroo?

Interpretations

• "Juddian specificity" refers to Donald Judd's 1965 essay "Specific Objects"
• Bruce Boice wrote an article in Artforum about Art & Language in 1973. Members of Art & Language have criticized his interpretations of the group's goals and methods