The Anti-Rockist Protests Too Much

I actually don't think the article says very much, except for an odd preoccupation with sexual preference, and some rather impolite attacks on another journalist, it is mostly unremarkable.

"You can argue that the shape-shifting feminist hip hop of Christina Aguilera is every bit as radical as the punk rock of the 1970s (and it is), but then you haven't challenged any of the old rockist questions (starting with: Who's more radical?)...The challenge now is to acknowledge that music videos and reality shows and glamorous [magazine photo] layouts can be as interesting--and as influential--as an old-fashioned album."

Note the sly use of '80s academic lingo in this piece.

The word 'radical' is 80s academic lingo?

http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1228/article12227.asp

http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1212/article11916.asp

http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1200/article11709.asp

http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1174/article11297.asp

Oh the irony.

Of course the actual substance of the article is totally clueless and missing the point (I like how he just assumes that Robert "I heart the Backstreet Boys!" Christgau and Greil Marcus are on HIS side, too), but hey, if we're gonna have rockist fogeys around, I'm quite cool with having them be poncey mentalists; beats the triteness of the other Kelefa Hatin' article.

Like Warhol snickering up his sleeve at the fatuous über-butch of Jackson Pollock's black T-shirt = Look at what I've heard of!
like a Vichy girl who can't believe how fast her heart is beating as she kisses a Luftwaffe colonel = Look at what I know!
Renata Adler's notorious 1980 attack on Pauline Kael's When the Lights Go Down--a McCarthyite waving of an empty sheet of paper = Look at more stuff I know!
go rent a copy of Kenneth Anger's landmark film Scorpio Rising, in which girl-group doo-wop and novelty toss-offs are given a spectral, alchemic power = Look at what I've probably written an article about!

Still:

"Instead, a record review becomes an occasion for a meditation on the semiotics of the sacred monster, a yeshiva-like passing of the fingers over the dense Star Text."

Don't you hate it when that happens?

Haha, I had the same thought.
I liked him better then.

Erm, I have Nick Cave's murder ballads in my 'Bubblegum Ditties' folder...

Is that what it is? Shape-shifting feminist hip hop? Funny, all I hear is needlessly melismatic pop FECES!

Am I the only one bored to tears by the never-ending rockism debate?

I'm sorry, Hurting, I don't think I understand what this means; surely he's not a straw-man, he's a real man - a very bad defender of rockism, but that's not our fault, is it?

I haven't read the original article (there's no link to it from the piece, from what I can tell) so its hard to say how many of its points are valid. Most of what this article says relates to the thoughts of somebody else. It isn't really valid to offer thoughts on it without reading the piece which promopted it.

Correction: November 14, 2004, Sunday

An article on Oct. 31 about rockism -- favoritism toward traditional rock 'n' roll over producer-driven genres like disco, rhythm-and-blues and hip-hop -- misstated the Web address for the Internet forum I Love Music, where rockism is often debated. It is www.ilxor.com, not ilovemusic.com

Do people debate rockism here, then??

And, yes, I guess I am a "rockist", even though I am with the "popists" in a lot of subjects, such as guitar vs. synths, live vs. studio and, well, plainly, whether something has to "rock" to be good.

And that's pertinent why? Oh, wait--

"Sanneh is like a Vichy girl who can't believe how fast her heart is beating as she kisses a Luftwaffe colonel--right here in the café, in front of everyone!"

Because women are silly, unreliable creatures. Duh. Sometimes I forget, tee hee, cuz I'm, like, just a girl. (PS Historically it's dudes who swoon for fascists--check out the gender breakdown for the election sometime.)

Wilder to Sanneh: "Don't be a rockcritical girlieman."

Gross.

must check that sometime

thing is, i feel that the 'baggage' is an important part of enjoying pop (read: rock, rap, any artistic expression), which is why, i guess, i would be considered guilty of 'rockism'. i'd argue there are differing levels of 'truth' within the 'marketing' of any 'band' (like, if part of the appeal of a record is just how shitty it sounds because of the circumstances of the recording, then that's, i guess, a Rockist thing - but it's also the 'truth' of the recording session, vs., say, Milli Vanilli - 'girl you know its true' is a hilarious near-lampoon of the surface-emptiness of 80s pop that i actually really enjoy, as both a tune and as an example of its ilk (and just *how ludicrously* it embodies the pros and cons of that era), but wouldn't it be considered exactly the sort of 'anti-rockist' pop this feature so ineptly rails against?), but the surrounding noise is as much a facet of 'pop' (as music, as culture, as artform) as the music, to me.

that said, i still wholeheartedly agree when you write:

I actually don't think the article says very much, except for an odd preoccupation with sexual preference, and some rather impolite attacks on another journalist, it is mostly unremarkable.

The article is mind-bogglingly bad.

The strawman lives!

(xposts)

The Courtney Love piece was when I decided I could subject myself to his writing no more.

how could wilder include this quote in his article, and expect people to disagree with it? this kelefa quote is the best distillation of and resolution to the debate for me. i know that doesnt guarantee that everyone else feels that way, but it just seems so REASONABLE...

No doubt Sanneh wanted to raise hackles and cause many of his fellow--no other word for it, Kelefa!--rock critics to scream in pain.

Uh, how 'bout "music critics"?

The gym, the phone, the boys--just leave it to those Timbaland nimrods to do...whatever.

Does he even know who Timbaland is?

"Sanneh is a mall-ratty kitsch queen in love with what the cute, popular kids are liking."

In otherwards, besides other things, high school and/or its immediate social milieu. A few times on the boards here I've noticed a slightly reflexive feeling about trying to get over attitudes about music that often seem to have been specifically formed there, and the social context they were formed in -- trying to be different and to stand out and find your own voice, to resist a horrible situation you find yourself in, to retreat to the comfort of a subculture, etc. etc. It's interesting (and to my mind a bit weird but I suppose I was lucky -- I was top 40/MTV strictly throughout high school, and when I did the 'classic rock phase' in senior year it wasn't strange or out of place either, and only really started 'getting into music' again in the sense of active buying of albums right in the last final months; meanwhile, I had friends throughout every social group in what was a very small school).

Now getting back to this article, I'd see this as perhaps almost too classic an example of someone who aligned with certain music(s) almost as much of a reaction against something else rather simply proactively liking it, and can't let go. A bit of a pitiable state -- and yet sometimes I wonder much of what goes on here in terms of 'at least we're not like THIS guy' in response is because we are trying to see ourselves as superior to both the indie snot AND the 'popular kids' as stereotyped. The subtext to Sanneh's article that I realize is all the more interesting now in retrospect is this sense of superiority. Is the secret follow-on phrase for many of us saying "It's great to enjoy all this wonderful music in the charts and all around, without boundaries in our head..." in fact "...and it's even greater for us to think that because we're the ones who take the time to listen to all the other stuff as well."?

Let's accept Sanneh's you-would-think-outmoded Binary Opposition: straight white guys in this corner, Others in that one. What he's saying--though he lacks the sand to come out and say it in so many words--is that the "rock establishment" that enshrines the Lone Wolf is, by dint of its Lone Wolf worship, racist, sexist, and homophobic. Okay...accepting that thesis, you'd expect that next Sanneh is going to come out in defense of subversive, openly politicized, rigorously critical queer artists and/or artists of color. A ringing endorsement of Stephin Merritt and Me'Shell NdegéOcello will now follow--right? Hardly. Instead, it's time for a late-night trip to Wal-Mart, for a jumbo bag of Skittles and all the CDs your poor arms can carry!

"Accepting that thesis, you'd expect ..." is a brilliant dodge. Take something he didn't say, then prescribe what he should've said to follow up the thing he didn't say! Jesus, why bother reading in the first place!

Ned, I think you nailed it here. It seems to me that you spend your teenage years forming your musical identity, your early twenties solidifying that identity, and then your mid-to-late twenties either recovering from or expanding upon your original palette. Having just hit thirty, I'm officially in I-like-what-I-like mode, which means that thinkpieces like Sanneh's make me want to gouge my eyes out to in order to avoid ever having to read such drivel again.

Eep!

For "Sanneh" read "Wilder". The Wilder piece is the drivel I'm referring to. Sorry.

"In the context of Smile's animatronic haunted house, Brian's use of the then-exotic theremin seems more apt than ever. Foregrounded here, as it was not on the single, the instrument sounds so much like a human scream that one can barely finish the song".

not.

Not that I want to subject such dross to "close readings", but . . . the Courtney Love article makes apparent/explicit the sadism and hatred of female musicians that's already implicit in the Britney piece. If I were a CSI profiler I would intone "There's a desire to punish or kill these bad girls that looms large in his imaginary world".

Marks off for declaring outmoded what was never accepted in the US.

For attacking a left wing analysis from the left, by trying to portray it as right wing.

For attacking your opponent for using blatant binaries, while using blatant binaries yourself.

For homophobia.

For mentioning the nazis -- Godwin's Law! Whistle blown!

All released music artists use the music biz. When critic A attempts to smear critic B with accusations that his arguments are an apology for the music biz, critic A's argument must necessarily fail, because any bands critic A wishes to defend also use the music biz, and his championing of them is therefore equally guity of collusion with the music biz.

The correct cop-out to this is, "but my artist uses the music biz subversively (because he is an artist) whereas your product is simply manipulated by The Man (because she is a girl)."

Just wanted to pre-empt anybody trying to use that seriously.

I think that some people have a really weird notion of what subversion is. Subversion is most certainly not putting out rock records on an indie label and selling them to 200,000 white guys with goatees and the girls who love them.

"After the break, White Guys With Goatees And The Girls Who Love Them".

Brit is clearly positioning herself in line as next Straight Diva for the Queer Guy. The breathy, junk-in-the-trunk "Showdown" will clearly light up West Hollywood and the West Village; and moments of "Breathe on Me" and "Touch of My Hand" access that queer-o-centric, cool-to-cold club sound of "Vogue"-era Madonna, but with a poignant difference. Britney is too thick, too slow, too homecoming queen to get over in Boys' Town. Her nemesis Christina has more legit diva feathers.

This is part of an attack on Britney, but note how Wilder seems to make Britney's gay friendliness a weakness, then quickly elides the point by making it seem like he's saying she's just not good enough at being gay friendly.

I'm wondering whether his homophobia might not be homosexual homophobia, because it's so out of the closet. They only kill their own, you know.

I think that some people have a really weird notion of what subversion is. Subversion is most certainly not putting out rock records on an indie label and selling them to 200,000 white guys with goatees and the girls who love them.

this reminds me, because I've been listening to a lot of Scritti Politti lately that something like Cupid Et Psyche seems to be in some sense to be a good example anti-rockist subversive-ness. and of course green gartside learned to embrace pop after reading derrida!

But these days, "anti-rockists" are generally championing hip-hop/R&B, and you know, other than dancehall (which is also a kind of rap based genre) is there anything possibly more homophopic and sexist than hip-hop at its most macho?

here's that creaky cultural-studies opposition of the naked and the damned on this side (the anguished, boozy, stripped-bare straight white guy) and the masked, periwigged, and artificial on this side (the Queer, the Other, that-which-must-hide-in-pretend)

The words 'stripped-bare white guy' say it all really. If Kelefa were really gay, Wilder seems to say, he'd be into butch, not femme. Rock, not disco.

But yeah, this is still hilarious.

Ever hear those stories about child-prodigy fire-n-brimstone preachers who turn into acid casualties with butt-length hair before they hit 20? It's sort of like that.

i'm excited for an Art Spiegelman musical! (has this been performed elsewhere already?)

as far as the piece, i didn't like it much.

i do remember being a bit angry at the brian wilson review which i thought was just totally wrongheaded....i did not for the life of me get what he was talking about....

I don't think it immunizes him at all! But as Momus has noted, the sexual politics of the piece are now shown to be more complex than I (and others?) had originally assumed.

Matthew Wilder is a Los Angeles-based writer and a frequent contributor to City Pages. He will direct Antigone in Dallas this spring and is writing a screenplay on terrorism for director Oliver Stone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

willie....beaman got all the girlies....steamin'

Maybe more complex but not necessarily more relevant or revealing about anti-rockism.

Is it rockist to let Wilder's CV grant a degree of immunity to criticism for this piece?

The Magnetic Fields are openly politicized? WTF?

I could name a dozen or so sentences of similar quality.

This one, for example, makes Sanneh's piece sound pretty damn appetizing: The days of isolated, tormented, anti-commercial white male geniuses are done and done. The days of rampantly commercial, craftless, contentless, corporate-driven pop, especially as practiced by artless teenage girls, are here. Why is this a good thing? Because these bopsy post-tweens don't come with the self-serious old fartiness of the Springsteens and Costellos of this world (and, by implication, the Hilburns, the Christgaus, the Marcuses).

Anyway, the article seems affectionate enough in the end, even if it never comprehends Sanneh's real argument at all.

Anyway, whatever he is, it's pretty clear that Wilder's approach as a whole is anything but rockist.

The style of it is awful. I mean, I suppose its not too far from some Villiage Voice type stuff and so maybe it's because I don't like his opinions that the style of it rubs me the wrong way, but it feels like he's trying to too hard to impress me with analogies designed to be just obscure enough/out of reach (as alluded to upthread). Thats sort of why the 13 year old him's letter to the editor is so telling (wtf is that real?).

Now this is a beautiful tale. (As for Coxon, I fart in his general direction.)

a record review becomes an occasion for a meditation on the semiotics of the sacred monster, a yeshiva-like passing of the fingers over the dense Star Text.