Ned Raggett on rockism

Surely (logically) the word Ned's searching for here is "artist"?

But then....

Also, I'm sure we all come across more than enough examples in our every day life or people who quite clearly couldn't give a shit - or have long since lost interest and ceased to give a shit - about actually trying to do the job they're being paid for properly, but just keep doing it because it pays the bills. Why should we expect music critics to be any different?

Let’s say the other person has extremely broad-minded tastes, actively seeks out all kinds of music, isn’t limited to perceptions of what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t – and in almost all other ways turns out to be a totally horrible person, just plain unpleasant...
I think I know just who you are talking about here, Ned.

(x-post)

I like the painting parallel a lot. I was actually thinking along the same lines the other day, but w/r/t poetry, and in a slightly different way.... I'm a grad student in English, and there's a similar rockism-esque divide among the graduate students in my program. Some of us are poetry 'rockists'--we like lyric poetry, and we need to feel _personality_ above all else; others of us are in a different camp, not as interested in lyric, more interested in experimental and abstract writing, as thrilled by 'automatic' poems (John Cage, or the Apostrophe Engine, say) as by lyric poems. It got me thinking that "rockism" is just a really crummy term. This is an issue in a lot of media, not just in popular music, and the word rockism inevitably makes things meaner, narrower, a little more stupid and reactionary.

In the literary context, all of us are extremely knowledgeable about literature--it's not that some of us simply care less about what we read or are close-minded. It's that there is a very real, very complex set of ideas at the heart of the divide that has to do with the purpose and capabilities of art.... On its own level I think the same is true about the rockism debate, which cuts to the root of why people listen to music. So, even as I understand the way in which rockism in its dumbest form--frat-boy rockism, I suppose, expressed at any age--drives people up the wall, I end up wishing that anti-rockists would go easy on the contempt, which ends up directed not at frat-boys but at other people who, in fact, really care about music.

Uhhh no, I think Ned's saying rockism is something worth discussing but that it isn't a character flaw. That good people are rockist too. As far as I can tell he's trying to head off unneccessary defensiveness when it comes to rockism.

But that's precisely what Ned did NOT do. He used his experiences with visual art too.

I tend to be canonist in everything EXCEPT music. I mean, there's no way I'll accept that Bukowski is as good a writer than either Proust or Genet. Then again, this rock/literature analogy probably doesn't wash because I can't think of anyone in rock to whom you can reasonably compare to Proust or Genet.

They don't actually need to (i.e. they've reached a position and a stage in their personal development where they don't need to bother to "keep up" in order to keep themselves on the gravy train) I completely agree; but isn't it (or, at least, shouldn't it be) part of the role of a music writer both to inform and (to some extent) to provoke and challenge their readers?

How are they going to stimulate their audience's interest in any new music if they can't even stimulate their own?

Alternatively; if the readers of any given publicatio really aren't going to be interested in any new music under any circumstances; why bother going to all the trouble and expense of giving them new reviews? Why not just re-print some of the reviews that came out the first time 'round for some of the albums that have just been re-released, and leave it at that?

Alfred, re: literature - I'd say I'm anti-rockist in literature too; if i dont like a book that is canonized, i will express why I dont, read about people who do, try to get an understanding of the text, maybe just throw it out. The difference is that I'm working directly with the texts that history has decided are worth remembering - at least when it comes to the "literary canon." I don't have access to the thousands of books lost to the sands of time, simply because they were the disco-equivelent of the literary world. (if we're talking about recent literature, its a different issue of course). But pop music - I can sift through the stuff that is maligned by critics as readily as I can look through the sales bin.

I hate to break this to you....

I agree it's a rubbish word usually tho cos it makes people think of 'rock'.

(x-post)

Well for some people Dylan is new.

*exit pursued by the demented circus clown from "These Hands"*

Can we just call it "-ism" and broadly apply it to every artistic context?

That's an extremely good point Tom - and I must admit that; although obviously I recognise that there's established body of critical work relating to art and literature; and would insist that there's a comparable one growing in respect of "popular music"; my immediate reaction was to scoff at the notion of serious critical appraisal of comics or videogames.

On reflection I do realise that I'm wrong: just like "popular music", comics and videogames may have originally dismissed as ephemeral and disposable but they have been with us a long time now and are almost certainly here to stay and inevitably therefore must give rise to a related body of critical appraisal - in exactly the same way as "popular music"....

I am deeply concerned however that I may now be labelled as a "comicist" and a "gamist".

Fair and valid point Doc - but are these journalists actively engaged in introducing Dylan to young people whose previous musical horizons were bounded by Robbie Williams, Kylie, Eminem and that Crazy fuckin' Frog (which would be a very fine thing indeed) or are they just preaching to the converted masses of other hidebound reactionary old farts?

exit pursued by the demented circus clown from "These Hands"

Outside I'm laughing, but inside I'm really wearing a frown.

I love you.

can't this be said about any type of critique? A lot of critics will scoff at people they think are rockists when they themselves have pre-conceived notions of music before listening (The Belle and Sebastian thread and its accompanying comments about twee-ness are a good example)...approaching music from a musician's standpoint rather than a critical standpoint, I find myself more interested in the creative process than the pleasure principle or cultural and social standards...rather than analyize music within a concrete set of criteria, I'm concerned with the extemely vague and undefinable relm of artistic complexity..and therefore I usually find a deeper love in music that would be deemed here as abstract or experimental, and currently find a lot of weakness in current mainstream pop....does this make me "rockist"? By certain definitions it does, but its not as if I treat pop music with a bias (there is plently of pop music I love from the 60s,70s, 80s and 90s), and I approach everything open-minded, just don't happen to find much modern pop music that doesn't feel lacking...so the "rockist" term is definetely thrown around too loosely, and not accurate in many arguments involving people that are passionate about music...its a "strawman" that is used as an easy means of argument, but accomplishes nothing

(I can't italicize.)

Is anyone willing/able to engage me in some sort of visual art parallel? Post-modernism vs. Modernism (latter=rockist)? High art vs. low art? Authenticity based upon "emotions" vs. pure visual aesthetics? What is the most appropriate path of comparison? Very, very curious.

(Or just point me to readings. Or not.)

It's easy. All you need is one of these "" at the beginning; and one of these "" at the end.

ILM reveals it's uncompromisingly intellectual and analytical approach to the world of art.

Except you have to use small "i"'s rather than capitals, right?

This is not as helpful as the link to MC ESCHER ON AN ALBUM COVER! (I was briefly excited, Stewart O.)

(x-post)

xx-post

I do sometimes have that effect - and it's almost invariably short-lived,

& = &
&lt; = <
&gt; = >

So, when you want to write out an HTML example for someone, remember to use the HTML literals for the angle-brackets, otherwise the browser will think they are HTML elements and try to process them. Also you need the ampersand HTML literal when writing out HTML literals, otherwise you'll just end up with the symbols that the literals represent.

Some of this has been very entertainingly covered by Momus, in full attack mode, on the PJ Harvey "Uh Huh Her" thread...

Massive x-post: I certainly didn't imply Ned was being myopic or "music-exclusive" - in fact, it was his mention of painting that got me to post that.

Why would I want to turn into http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/music/maiden/eddie.jpg ?

(x-post)

would i be wrong in thinking that the general consensus is that canons are bad? because i cant help but think that they are an incredibly admirable thing, in a way. of course the idea of a canon is religous, but just because the idea is orginally religous doesnt mean one has to be dogmatic about it. can't the rockist canon be a good idea, or good starting point, in order to create some sort of sound critical approach?

Hence, -ism.

because if "we" would think "we" were better people "we" would be rockists? i think this discussion is so frustratingly meta as the term rockist is never really defined well. i interpret ned's article as the death knell to the rockism argument. which would be very fine with me.

I went to this all night indian concert in NYC, it was amazing. The sitarist was pretty cool.

Anyways, check out Vilayat Khan, notably his Vistaar cd which contains Rag Rageshri. Nikhil Banerjee is also a good one to check out.

For sarod, Ali Akbar Khan, Aashish Khan and Amjad Ali Khan are all good.

And for vocal, check out Tripti Mukherjee. So amazing.

Oh yeah I went to the library the other day and found a ravi shankar improvisations LP (which also contained Rageshri) for 15 cents.

No, simply that tilting at the rockist windmill doesn't automatically earn you the title of 'good person' -- something which I had hoped the previous paragraphs had made clear.

xpost -- er, wrong thread?

There's an emphasis on authenticity, but the element that must be authentic may vary. Most often it's whether performances are real or highly choreographed, if the music was written by the performing artist, or the presence of some sort of stamp of approval from a certifiable rock institution.

There's a cautionary element that holds to tradition over innovation. This is conservatism nearly by definition. The canon is what's established, and anything new must prove that it's either in the same vein as that canon, or be allowed in after a lengthy period. If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, it gets in early.

The bizarre part of rockism is that it's not rock per se, but the established range of acceptability that began with rock. If something's been proven to coexist well with the canon, or has even worked within it, then it's allowed in. There's a lot of rap that has that sort of pedigree that's going to be allowed in, especially anything with a "structure."

but what is rockism exactly? all i gather from your article is that it is a bad thing. and then there is this sentence i don't quite understand:

As Wolk and others have noted, though, what lurks at the heart of the term is fear and loathing, of trying to identify something that is what many—not necessarily all—people perceive as the death knell for artistic appreciation, the idea that something somewhere has blinkers, is stopped, is trapped.

is being a rockist just being prejudiced, being narrow-minded, having a very limited perspective? aren't we all rockists in a way as we come from somewhere? isn't anti-rockism the ideal we are striving for but never attain? isn't this a philosophical debate about truth (which as a concept sounds very rockist to these ears)? about having the broadest perspective on music? questions over questions.

I've been thinking about the pros of rockism: Anti-rockism has the weakness of egoism because you feel you're able to judge things in their immediacy and that the short-term view is just as important as the long-term one. Rockism requires more skepticism as you to step back and evaluate in terms of existing art and there are more barriers to entry.

You'd be rockist if you constructed a value system based on your prejudices, as in, acoustic guitar= 'natural,' 'good'; laptop = 'artificial,' 'cold,' 'bad'

so mark hollis is a rockist then. interestingly he has gone the opposite way. from synth-pop to acoustic "neo-classical" music.

The racism issue cuts both ways. Rockism often has a racist edge, in that we rockists tend to denigrate (deliberate word) music produced by cultures or subcultures that do not share our rockist values. This is the "hip hop is so boring and repetitive" cliche, and the "that's just manufactured product" cliche. But among the rockist values that I apply, respect for and engagement with ethnic music traditions, especially (but not exclusively) African / African-American traditions, loom large. It is incoherent to like The Rolling Stones and Talking Heads and not to pay attention to blues, reggae, R&B, disco, gospel, soul, jazz, soucous, or any other African-derived music to come down the pike; THEY always listened closely to that stuff and responded to it, sometimes reverently and more often not.

My children, who are not rockist, feel nothing of the moral compulsion I feel to listen to and to understand African-American music. They like it or they don't (mostly they don't), but they attach no significance to its separate cultural and political status. I, of course, run the risk of engaging in a romance of otherness; they run the risk of simply disregarding it because it's not them.

This seems 100% backwards to me wrt each composer's devotion to the rules of counterpoint and voice-leading.

For me, Bach = theory, technique, Progress, technology; Brahms/Mahler = taking folk music and passing it through a lens of Art to make Volk Music, literary component, personal vision, soul, power, a certain subversiveness, consciousness of modernity, Benjaminian appropriation of the past = rock.

I've talked about why I don't like long-termism on another thread (in short, it's a delegation of critical responsibility onto an imagined future consensus) - but to specifically focus on this charge of "egoism" for a second: for me anti-rockism is partly about recognising that there is no unchanging diachronic space from which a piece of music's worth can be judged ultimately and permanently. The immediate reaction is not more reliable than the long-term reaction, but nor can the inverse be said either.

i think that it's a great book and got a lot out of it, but i just don't think that it's points or insights are in anyway anticipating the postmodern turn in historiography, which actually was less about how we could "know" history than about history being constructed in ways much more reliant on language and discourse. (the "postmodern" turn of the other sort was more a hayden white type thing which carr wld also have recoiled from. as i recall, he's even cautious [and rightly so] about the overgrowth into both stastistically overdense and culturally overtrivial social history)

Your conclusion is extrememly well taken, a word to the wise about the ease of slipping into self-congratulation and reverse snobbery.

Rock and roll seeks to do something that earlier popular music has always denied – to establish and confirm, to heighten and deepen, to create and re-create the present moment.

Judy Garland has sung “Over The Rainbow” some thousands of times; there’s a man who keeps count. The tally is published in the newspapers occasionally, like the Gross National product, which is really what it is: Judy Garland’s GNP. You measure her progress that way. The same kind of mentality that demands this tune from Judy Garland, the same kind of mentality that makes her want to sing it, made a Santa Monica grandmother watch The Sound of Music over seven hundred times, once a day at five o’clock. Listening to a rock song over and over, seeing A Hard Day’s Night a dozen times isn’t the same – with that you participate when you must, stay away when you desire. The mind is free to remake the experience, but it isn’t a prisoner. You don’t demand the same songs from Bob Dylan every time he gives a concert – you understand that he’s a human being, a changing person, and you try to translate his newness into your own.

What exactly do you mean Ned?

How can I say this without restating the conclusion of my essay? Let me put this in extreme terms to illustrate a point, perhaps -- given eight million other things, from the nature of friendship and love to geopolitical issues to concerns about the future to politeness and promptness in your job, worrying about engaging with specifically rockist mindsets is really, really low on the totem pole for me. As Dan has noted above, it's not the specific *musical* incarnation of this attitude that bugs so much as it is the attitude and its potentially corrosive effects on a variety of levels and in a variety of contexts -- and as such the musical context is potentially, as you say, symptomatic, but not deterministic.

ifile://localhost/Users/superuser/Desktop/capt.nyet18706011510

Actually, Chris Stigliano of Black to Comm fanzine has referred to his own writings as "rockism" for a long time and meant this in a positive way, i.e., that his magazine is REALLY about rock music. It genuinely values certain rock ideals whereas other "rock scribes" (as he calls them) have less devotion to these ideals.

Spencer, I think you're (unintentionally) trying to place my thought here as part of some kind of crusade -- to use your words, to formulate a 'strategy' against something potentially 'sinister.' (As opposed to Sinister, who I would never crusade against, scary soundtrack though it has.) But I think this is a path as conceived I would prefer to avoid, and in fact I've been trying to point out how flat out uneasy I am with the inclusion of axioms of a wider morality here. Rockism, for you, is a core wedge issue that provides a way in for larger ideas, which is a perfectly admirable approach. For myself, I think there is something much more important in discussing and acting upon conclusions drawing on those ideas in ways that have something more concrete -- and yes, bluntly put, more important and more overreaching, more of immediate importance on ourselves and our society -- than our personal biases regarding music. You are talking to Mr. Radical Subjectivist here, remember.

The suggestions that Douglas Wolk makes in his piece are far clearly strategies than anything I could or would want to come up with, and even then I am potentially leery of making mountains out of molehills. I apologize in advance for the extreme simplification I am about to make but two threads in particular this week on ILX -- the Ying Yang Twins continuation here on ILM, the 'sex with people you're not attracted to' thread on ILE -- show to me on the one hand why intertwining issues of (to be terribly reductionist) art and philosophy is such a fraught field and on the other where the potential danger of taking a wedge issue to the nth degree can lead a discussion.

*thinks for a bit* Last month seventy of my fellow citizens died in Iraq. Seven hundred more Iraqis, at least, died as well. The political decisions, mindsets, philosophical conclusions, cold calculations, all that went into why we are here in this historical moment -- as well as the related issues and problems and concerns here at home (or more accurately on the home front) -- will always be of vastly greater importance than debating rockism with someone who thinks rock was born with the Beatles and died with U2.

I am not explaining everything well to my satisfaction. But I offer up this post to give you an idea as to what I am trying to struggle to say.

My apologies, Ken, but the tone wasn't clear. (Also I had forgotten about that particular quality of Spencer's.)

I would caution you though against using the term "wedge issue" for what I'm talking about as it's pretty loaded with dubious political connotations.

I take this point but I think that it precisely and openly ignores the very specificity of aspects of rockism which make it interesting. Obviously, beyond the fact that it is an authenticity game, there is very little which is consistent across all rockist ideas (hardly surprising - do we expect consistency from liberalism? conservatism? etc.), but even so i think these at times inconsistent strategies of enjoyment and non-enjoyment deserve to be given a relatively close reading:

We're not dealing with an exclusively top-down relationship between the general idea (authenticity) and the specific manifestation of it (rockism a, rockism b, rockism c) where the latter will always be finally determined by the former. These specific examples of rockism will always mould, shape and transform our understanding of authenticity itself. Attempting to collapse rockism into authenticism or auteurism or whatever is like the meta-critical equivalent of genrephobism: why talk about techstep when you can talk about drum and bass generally? Why talk about drum & bass when you can talk about dance music generally? Why talk about dance music when you can talk about music generally? Why talk about music when you can talk about existence generally? And so on.

Rocki isthmus. (I hope this works.)

Rock isthmus. (I hope this works.)

"Rockism adopts a lot of the program of the Romantic movement of the early 19th century:
a) belief in the artist as passionate, isolated genius-rebel at war with society, who, in the words of Jack Black’s character in “School of Rock,” is an avatar of “stickin’ it to the Man”;
b) fetishization of oppressed people, which plays out in a fascination with rural folklore during the Romantic era and blue-collar imagery in the Rock era (the first self-conscious, European collections of folk songs and folk tales happened during the Romantic era);
c) and faith that mainstream society is Philistine. (“Philistine” as an epithet meaning “crass, materialistic, and immune to aesthetic values” dates from the Romantic era; the etymology alludes to the Gigantism of Goliath, with the artist cast as “little David.”)"

What can I say? Impressive! That's my Ned!

I think it's easier to define rockism as a sort of conservatism.
-- Jonathan Z.

for me anti-rockism is partly about recognising that there is no unchanging diachronic space from which a piece of music's worth can be judged ultimately and permanently.
--Tim Finney

the initial impulse of 'rockism' I think was to find a way to turn pop into art and the central qn of 'anti-rockism' is "was this actually a good move?"
Tom

Also I liked Tom's "it's a rubbish word usually tho cos it makes people think of 'rock'." That nails what's wrong with Douglas Wolk's take.

Spencer Chow was extremely OTM when he said: "rockism is not only a symptom of but also an enforcement mechanism for an at best stultifying and at worst sinister cultural status quo, and... it should be called out and taken apart at every opportunity - but as per Ned's example - in the nicest way possible."

Of course, Ned's example is "nice", but it's by no stretch of the imagination calling anything out or taking anything apart. An in a time in which "the culture wars" are very real and win or lose elections, it might even be considered a sort of appeasement.

Don't let's be beastly to the rockists
When our victory is ultimately won,
It was just those nasty rock fans who persuaded them to fight
And their Beatles and Dylan are far worse than their bite
Let's be meek to them-
And turn the other cheek to them
And try to bring out their latent sense of fun.
Let's give them full air parity
And treat the rats with charity,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

We must be just
And win their love and trust
And in addition we must
Be wise
And ask the conquered genres to join our hands to aid them.
That would be a wonderful surprise.
For many years-
They've been in floods of tears
Because the poor little dears
Have been so wronged and only longed
To rock the world,
To mock the girls
And beat
Our ears to blazes.
This is the moment when we ought to sing their praises.

Don't let's be beastly to the rockists
When we've definitely got them on the run
Let us treat them very kindly as we would a valued friend
We might send them out some records as a form of lease and lend,
Let's be sweet to them
And day by day repeat to them
That saying you're being "4 real" simply isn't done.
Let's join them at their rock shows
Let's stagedive on the third row
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

Don't let's be beastly to the rockists
When the age of iPod plenty has begun.
We must send them long grey leather coats and everything they need
For musical investigations into Zeppelin and Creed
Let's employ with them a sort of 'strength through joy' with them,
They're better than us at honest manly fun.
Let's let them feel they're swell again and mock us all to hell again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

Don't let's be beastly to the rockists
For you can't deprive a gangster of his gun
Though they've been a little naughty saying that rap and disco sucks
I don't suppose those genres really minded very much
Let's be free with them and share the B.B.C. with them.
We mustn't prevent them basking in the sun.
Let's soften their defeat again - and let them make CDs again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

(After Noel Coward's "Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans", 1943)

Are you saying that rockism critiques certain alternative (ideological AND methodological) approaches to music, while simultaneously presenting itself as unideological - in the process presenting itself as anti-ideology? I think this is right but then it's largely true of anti-rockism as well. (also "critique" seems pretty generous!)

I guess you could argue that like conservatism - but also like a lot of different political, cultural or religious positions - rockism presents certain status-quos-under-threat as ahistorical natural phenomena or moral imperatives or both ("live musicianship" is mabe roughly analogous to the concept of "the family"), rather than as a historical development that is useful for [x], [y] and [z] reasons.

I wonder if anti-rockism does this too or does something similar. Is there a sacred cow for anti-rockism? There definitely is for the popist position which it's tempting to conflate anti-rockism with (the celebration and centrality of the single etc.).

But I'd distinguish between two forms of popism here:
1) the popism which is rockist about pop - this is a genuine heartfelt passionate belief that pop and its associated aesthetic approaches are simply better or (uh oh) more authentic than rock.
2) popism as a strategic "identity politics" for the anti-rockist resistance - whereby an alliance with popist values becomes useful as a way of breaking out of rockist tradition - but the value of these values lies more in the fact that by dint of their difference they seem to make the case for critical diversity and open-mindedness.

Were popism ever to become the "new rockism" outside the limited confines of ILX, then the value of the second position would obviously be undermined. And certainly within the confines of ILX there's certainly less and less to be gained from making a point of espousing popist values in this manner (the seasonal influx of rockists notwithstanding).

I wouldn't automatically put myself in the second category either - to some extent I am rockist about pop, although as with being rockist about rock there are actually correct and meaningful insights that can still be derived from this position. One way of framing the problem with traditional rockism is that it's not a matter of it being right or wrong, but a question of whether the rockist position can afford us many new insights, or whether it has in fact been exhausted of its critical and creative acumen.

Any system of thought that denies its ideologicalness is self-deluding, but Popism's work won't be done until Rockism stops being the logical base for the majority of critical thinking, and I think that's still far from the case. And pace Ned, but I do think that aesthetic thinking is rooted in beliefs outside of aesthetics, which is what makes this stuff still worth arguing about.

1. i dont see rockism as "conservatism" per se

2. Anti-rockism is more like refusing to agree to the terms of debate. Removing oneself from any binary. It is simply a critique of methodology, and I dont really see it as critiquing any sort of ideology as much as the idea of ideology in general.

1. i dont see rockism as "conservatism" per se

2. Anti-rockism more like refusing to agree to the terms of debate. Removing oneself from any binary. It is simply a critique of methodology, and I dont really see it as critiquing any sort of ideology as much as the idea of ideology in general.

anyway, Erick's follow-up on rockism is here: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1679

I think its pretty great, although i'm not sure that i agree with his description of the MIA debate.

Ned, someone calls yr article last week "meta gobbledygook" in the comments section!

http://img14.imgspot.com/u/05/158/12/Rocky.jpg

still not sure if that is what anti-rockism is about. the most striking about this discussion really is that it is a kind of ghost debate. everyone interprets rockism his way. which is quite rockist in a way. if rockism is about subjectivity, reference points and bias.

Anti-Rockism is a strategy that changes as quickly as the music it's applied to. It can contradict itself, affirm opposite statements and general be slippery and annoying and provocative because it is not in opposition to Rockism, it's inside it, around it, an expression of it as much as a refutation. You don't undermine a value by opposing it with a binary, you change it through mutation and impersonation. We don't oppose Rockism; we decompose it.

I of course meant:
...There is certainly a leap of faith when it comes to telescoping something like rockism debates into something "Important." However, I firmly believe that things like [ENGAGING] rockism are the "act locally" strategies which eventually broaden people's perceptions of themselves and others and lead to real change...

can you post a link to that popthread on dissensus, sterling? i can't find it. yours is an interesting take on the subject. maybe music can change the world (dylan in the 60s?) but that's not what i would ask from it. but i am pretty sure music can change myself, my perspective. i have to gather my thoughts to post something more coherent here.

wha?

exactly.

-- nothingleft (loca...), June 8th, 2005.

But I do feel that it is worthwhile bringing attention to the idea, but clearly it isnt limited to music, or even art in general.

Dude, Tim addressed this upthread.

But, (and I think Ned touched on this) who is the audience that such an article is going to reach? Do you think 'lay people' are going to read an article like that and suddently seek out Fado? Or throw away their Hendrix albums?

and my 'exactly' means I disagree, now doesnt it?

http://philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=10011