What Is Rockism ?

I dont know about Robin, but I picked up the word from early 80s NME discourse, or rather from reading *about* early 80s NME discourse - it was used a lot by people writing about post-punk and the New Pop.

Other despicably rockist acts included using the words "album", "track" and "group" - better were "LP", "cut", and, oh, this last one I forget.

someone was rockist if they only listened to hard rock music: AC/DC, Black Crowes, Judas Priest/ Gun/ Tesla/ Guns N Roses/Little Angels/ King Swamp/The Almighty/ Def Leppard etc

and their favoutite music night - was "rock nite" - with long hair/leather jacket/ Guns N Roses patches/ jack daniels/ headbanging/ skinny black jeans - ie all the rock cliches - I am not going there it is to rockist

I used to refer in a derogatory manner to someone in University in the late 80s for being to rockist, i.e they use to read only Raw magazine and their music tastes were too rockist.

While I listened to a wider variety of music Talk Talk/Spacemen 3/ Cocteau Twins/ Yello/Colourbox/ The Fall/ Happy Mondays/ My Bloody Valentine/ arkane/ Front 242/ Husker Du/ Mary Margaret O'Hara/ Kate Bush/Detroit techno/ Wire/ Lowlife/That Petrol Emotion/ Throwing Muses/ Sonic Youth/Phillip Boa & the Voodoo Club/ The Young Gods/ The Chameleons/ Blue Nile/ Voivod/ Sisters of Mercy/ Skinny Puppy/New Order/Killing Joke etc

If I were to take the term literally and think "music that males with children listen to", I would think dad-rock would be Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd, Sting and Chris DeBurgh (at least around here). But I don't get the feeling that that's what you're referring to.

is Reef, Paul Weller, Cast, Oasis, Shed 7, Kula Shaker, Ocean Colour Scene - all retrogressive music - that took their influences from the sixities and early 70s - hence the old reference - of dad - i.e dadrock.

Dadrock - focuses on dull conformity of their retro influences, it refuses experimentation and new ideas.

Dadrock, was what brit pop morphed into from 1996 onwards.

Ocean Colour Scene - have often been labelled dadrock. For their ghastly plodding music. A truly disgusting horrible vile dadrock outfit, and the english equivalent of the bland Hootie & the Blowfish, Matchbox 20. Music so horrible- just hearing their music can induce vomitry.

Dadrock values are little englander, warm beer, laddish behaviour, loaded magazine, music conformity, waving the union jack while abroad looking for fights, conservatism, thinking Chris Evans is with it etc

in 2000 dadrock is on the slide - with only Toploader emerging, and they were utter shite.

Artists as diverse as Killing Joke, Six by Seven, Mogwai, Rico and Asian Dub Foundation - have been very critical of dadrock and the narrow cultural & musical agenda they promote.

DJ Martian - djmartian.blogspot.com the dadrock/britpop hater since 1994

Also, when the rockism debate started in the early 80s, who was getting praised by the anti-rockist side ? I'm hoping Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, but guessing Spandau Ballet and the Human League (who were all right one song at a time on the radio, I guess).

And yes, as I understand it everyone you mentioned would have been anti-rockist. It was a term that let in chancers like Spandau Ballet, probably, though for three albums the Human League were at worst interesting and at best brilliant.

You can sneer at it, but it always seemed to me that the term rockist was pretty useful to describe a kind of person (mostly a kind of journalist) who saw their fundamental roots in rock music - white, male, serious, guitar-based - and other musics as an entertaining diversion. I remember thinking Jamming! - for example - was depressingly rockist because I wanted to see them write about reggae and funk alongside the Jasmine Minks. But Jamming! was much happier writing about Billy Bragg and the Alarm. And the Redskins, for that s- o-u-l flavour. Oh yes. I mean, I enjoyed Jamming! but considered it distinctly rockist.

Now I understand that I should expect niche-marketed narrowmindedness. I have learned that it is unreasonable to expect publications to contain a genuine babble of competing voices and tastes.

'Rockist!' was an insult used, it seems to me, to imply that the recipient had seen punk and post-punk as a shot in the arm for rock music, rather than pick up on the various threads of much more interesting music which seemed available at the time. To fall back into a Great Rock Heritage in the shape of, say, the Bunnymen, or U2, or even Magazine (who I love) still seems lazy and tasteless to me. Even though I no longer see either of those terms as valid. Hm.

There's still a great article on the hip hop wars to be written, by the way.

Is rockism the liking of rock or the preference for it? Should we distinguish between anti-rockism and pop separatism? ;)

A lot of the anti-rockism mentality seems to imply that the only way someone can possibly dislike, say, Destiny's Child, is by filtering their music through an outdated set of rock-dude values - I say it's entirely possible to listen to both DC and Television with the same open ears, come away prefering Television by miles, without being a ideologically-rigid pop-hating wet-blanket.

I'd kinda like to quote the original Pete Wylie interview in which the term arose, but you know what — I lent my copy of NME that week to Matt Black of Coldcut (then Matt Cohn of the Jazz Insects), because it contained a review of the first A Certain Ratio LP — and he THREW IT AWAY instead of returning it!! When I complained — noting that Ian Penman had written said review — Matt replied: "Mark, you ARE Ian Penman."

So can I be Everett True yet?

The origins of the term don’t matter too much. For me rockist means an approach – current irredeemable rockers include U2, Primal Scream, Manic Street Preachers, Pearl Jam. If you can air guitar to it, it’s rock. Whether you care for redemption is a separate issue.

Best definition of rock. Ever. :)

Who says ILM debates never get anywhere?

Surely this would mean that Smiths and Belle & Sebastian fans = rockists, and Rolling Stones fans = non-rockists ?

Stones = MOST INAUTHENTIC ROCK GROUP OF ALL TIME BAR NONE, and that's what's GRATE abt em of course. Rockists SAY they like em, but when you go deeper, it's all talk.

(Patrick, is that you moved and back and settled in? Or are you another anti-anti- rockist Patrick joined forces with the first?)

Did I get that right?

Albums over songs. "Feeling" over, uh, other stuff. Individual performance and "real" performance over the "fake" (think synths and drum machines). A focus on lyrics. Narrative. "Development".

says Josh.

AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT!

As a side point, I don't think that the world is rockist at all. It only turns into a rockist review when a reviewer who's only used to reviewing rock tries to review somethign else - not equipped with the tools maybe? If you're used to talking about how an album flows from song to song (which is often, for me, an element in the enjoyment of music) how do you cope if there's only 1 track? Or 12 indistinguisble tracks? How do you give a drum machine a mark out of ten for the drumming?

P.S. I'd like to append all of this by saying that I really don't knwo what I'm talking about. Thank you.

Privileging of received wisdom over new discourse
Privileging of credibility / authenticity
Privileging of numbers and categorisation / lists

Mythology making the arbitrary appear necessary / essential

Making the cultural appear natural by making it appear to be invisible

The pursuit of objectivity

xp Terribly written piece, desperately straining for a “critique” and misrepresenting basic plot points to do it.

Until utopia is achieved and everyone makes an effort to enjoy that obscure and much-maligned art we call pop music while its devotees do absolutely nothing to meaningfully engage with other subgenres even as they clamour for more inclusivity, the need for endearingly didactic allegories will continue unabated.

Part of the story is that Pop snuffed out musical diversity in the past, but you’d have to watch the movie to know that.

Care to tell us more? (Not trolling, for real.)

Never mind, I just read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.

xp Terribly written piece, desperately straining for a “critique” and misrepresenting basic plot points to do it.

― morrisp

truly, Trolls World Tour demands more thoughtful and incisive social commentary than this piece delivers

It doesn’t, but if someone’s going for that they should do it better.

Caramanica did a piece on this for NYT, of course

Now that there's an entire Trolls movie about rockism and poptimism maybe we can finally be done ever using those words or concepts again

+1 to that

people are writing about poptimism and rockism, in this economy??????

Aimee Mann:

By 1990, everything on the radio was starting to be Whitney Houston, Taylor Dayne, Tina Turner—it was very pop. Then Michael Penn comes out with this Beatles-esque, melodic song, but still with a little bit of a big snare drum sound. I was like, “Finally, somebody broke through with an actual song.”

A poptimist would have married Taylor Dayne.

The 1975’s Brits nomination proves great pop isn’t always drowned out by mindless gym music

lol amazing

While making the album, The 1975 sought to capture the pure essence of their band – to simply “play it and record it,” as Healy told the New York Times last year. “Any kid can make a bedroom thing that sounds crazy,” he said. “What you can’t do is have been in a band for 20 years and be great players and go into a room and have that freedom.” The resulting album makes you feel as if you were in the room with the band as they recorded it.

Wow irl Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics guys in a room

If you're not listening to the 1975, you're probably at the gym

Have they really been together for 20 years?

Sounds like rockism is her weapon of choice for generation warfare. At the same time wishing for music that unites everyone by soundtracking our lives like Elton John.

Sounds like rockism is her weapon of choice for generation warfare. At the same time wishing for music that unites everyone by soundtracking our lives like Elton John.

I'm a rockist man

Burning out his fuse up here alone

I'm a rockist man

the opossite of thinking pop music with dubious quality (taylor swift, beyonce, the weekend, drake...) is relevant: the opposite of rockism... and both wrong

i miss the days when all new posters like this were considered to be a sock

sockism

lol

it's more fun if you call them shit instead of not relevant - you'd be half wrong but have some courage in your own subjectivity

what's the rockism of appeals-to-relevance? it's a real thing and you can do it for or against rock or pop or whatever

It’s a far cry from previous decades, when artists like Elton John, Kate Bush and Phil Collins – who made music about grown-up concerns, which could be enjoyed by teens alike – soundtracked our lives. (It’s no surprise that this is the current state of pop in a country whose music industry is, according to the charts, propped up by a holy trinity of po-faced men: Ed Sheeran, George Ezra and Lewis Capaldi.)

I like Phil Collins but also it's very funny to use Phil Collins as an example here (and surely Phil is at least as po-faced as Sheeran, Ezra and Capaldi?)

I want someone to write a take on rockism that explains how Phil Collins and Steely Dan were the two uncoolest things imaginable to rockist gen x-ers but are both loved by rockist millenials. I have no idea what zoomers think of them, if anything

the early definitions on this thread are interesting in how diverse they are. what I'm getting is that rockism is a lot like fascism in how syncretic and incoherent it is and how many different guises can wear. someone could write a thing on ur-rockism like umberto eco did for fascism

"We wanted go back to the sound of just four guys in a gym."

i prefer 'whinerism'

Why don't we ask Freddie deBoer

runner up: crypto-poptimists & crypto-rockists

Kelefa Sanneh, Robert Christgau, and Douglas Wolk are the sages quoted in this. 2024 rockism style. the battle never ends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c7Boc2CPMg

Intergenerational!

i will never watch one of that person's videos, not sure if that makes me pro or anti rockism

idk this person + they just said, "it's almost like the more critical your opinion is, the more valid it is" and i like that they're calling this out, especially in re:"flops." he isn't making this point outright, but my conclusion to be drawn from his points is that "rockism" is kind of anti-appreciation, unless a very strict set of arbitrary and ill-defined rules are in place. i like that being called out.

otherwise, good video. brings up relevant new examples to support the old anti-rockism tropes.

it sucks people can’t write stuff down instead of requiring people to stare at their face while they talk at them

that guy is okay. i actually enjoy his genre videos. he does good quick histories of things and he brings up examples that you wouldn't expect him to bring up. he makes good connections. he's more of a metal/punk person.

He was less cringe inducing than most Talking to the camera guys

it sucks people can’t write stuff down instead of requiring people to stare at their face while they talk at them

― brimstead, Tuesday, 21 May 2024 17:59 (forty-two minutes ago) link

taking an online course right now and the prof loves making videos and barely types anything up, there are times where i have to scroll through a 17-minute video to discover a class policy that would take me 10 seconds at most to find on a legit syllabus

unrelated to rockism i suppose but i also wish people wrote things down instead of making videos

We’re entering the post-literate society

Writism

Writing is the rockism of human comm

One guy in a room with a typewriter

So where's the thread for complaining abt video (audio to tbh) as preferred mode of communication? Ours is undoubtedly a civilisation in decline

Images of text too... What is the fucking deal? I get meme templates, at least I know where they originated, but wtf is up with images of small chunks of horribly formatted text?

hot medium/cool medium iirc

i just heard about civilization in decline on a vid by plato, why do new school kids need to have one name all the time

we do have this fwiw

Music Criticism in Video Form

ah yeah forgot about that one.

hey scott, thx again for posting this video. i don't love our friend overall, but there's a sentiment he's getting at here that really stuck with me...

re:being extra critical or having a set of arbitrary and ill-defined rules that things have to adhere to in order for the rockist to give it a fair listen... that's so real ime. some people don't even know much about technical aspects of music, but will still have these staunch rules of engagement before a band/artist even gets taken seriously.

(honestly, how do you not have the ability to distinguish between major/minor tonality and yet still want me to take your opinion on "songwriting" seriously? not saying everyone has to be a scholar, but at least don't be ignorant. strawman here maybe, but c'mon)

it seems like some of those folks are listening to music for the sole purpose of taking it down critically. why even bother, do they even enjoy music to begin with? it's sad/annoying/scary when it's not even traditional "rock" fans who do it and start applying those rockist attitudes to non-white, non-establishment music.

that video really illuminated this with a lot of impact.