So what's "real" populism anyway?

How, Sterling? How do you know this? Did you do a poll? Do Dave Matthews fans have a different standard than the rest of the population? There's a serious cross-polination of Wilco/DMB fans, you know. I think you just have this image in your head of Wilco fans being Jim DeRo, and you aren't willing to move past that.

so one day these 95 theses on rockism need to be posted on the door of the rolling stone is what i'm saying.

(Y: empirically the music MOST of the population listens to is good for entirely other reasons than reasons why nearly anyone could find wilco good. [Ironically I used to be the lone defender of Being There in these parts which is part of why I find the hype now absurd. Summerteeth is also a very nice album.])

I think there are two types of populism. I think the type of criticism you do is academic with a populist impulse: it does the good work of reminding the insider circle that its task is to talk about music as a living whole, not just the music the insider circle has decided to pay attention to. But I think there's a further stage of populism that involves actually trying to engage with the populous. Yes, this could mean finding a way to write bang-up intelligent non-fluffy USA Today reviews that people would enjoy reading. It could also, conversely, mean handing out badly photocopied zines about Amerie and Nivea to kids on the street. I was thinking about this on the other thread: indie became the reigning form of critical discourse not only be making inroads in the academy, but because some people went straight to their audience (marginal, popular, it doesn't matter) and got them excited to read about the music that mattered to them.

Then empirically explain how. Sure, hip-hop has a different aesthetic, but are you going to fault Wilco for that? And what about country, arguably the most popular form of music of all?

(nb: I'm not asking this because I'm a fan of the band. I could care less who likes them and who doesn't)

faux-populism=is an anti-hipster hipster stance which is to say, a knee jerk reaction to the underground, nonmainstream, or whatever you want to call it (see Indie Guilt). Certainly this leads to judgement call on motivation, but we probably don't want to go there. faux populism is as evil as "hipsterism" -- hipsterism, as I define it in this context, advocating something just because it goes against the mainstream or is perceived as being "cool" by a subculture instead of measuring the value of the work itself.

Now feel free to misread everything and attack me. Ciao.

Country music is the populist music of today. It's not something you have to think about at all--you could if you wanted to and all it would do is make you angry, most likely. Most of the people here, me included, don't believe in Our Old Hometown and all that shit that country music mines for all it's worth. And most of us probably have a little problem with people who talk with southern accents, I would venture. But at the same time, modern country music is really just a hybrid of older (mainly 1970s) populist music that's gotten all mixed up with leftover images of what life used to be like...the simpler times that people once removed from the old ways, now in suburbs and feeling culturally displaced and all, want to go back to. So basically it's manufactured music derived from the Eagles or Creedence or Fleetwood Mac (the Dixie Chix do Stevie Nix) with a reassuring southern accent. OK to sing that way, not OK to talk that way. It's music that is concerned with selling, overtly, whereas Wilco is more like fake folk music with sound effects; no country-music fan is gonna like that stuff. It has Art written all over it and that's the kiss of death. I don't mind "YHF" and some of the Wilco shit, like their Woody Guthrie albums, it's all right, but it's not what I would call remotely populist. The genius of Nashville is to take what a band like Wilco does and shift it around just enought to remove all content--it's really like the Altman Nashville movie, it's there to either sell something or to further a reactionary political stance (see, I told you you didn't want to really think about it). For those of you who aren't familiar with what goes on in that city, music-wise it's the most cynical place on the planet. That's populist too, and the people buying it don't care!

It's like the alt-country thing. Even by the time Gram Parsons, the father of all that shit, recorded, what he was really into was somewhat archaic, since the whole first FBB album is basically Buck Owens smoking a joint. Now it's all about hipsters going back to the roots of American music--that idiot term roots music--and congratulating themselves for it. Meanwhile the real audience for what used to be country music is either dead or moved to the suburbs, they're having none of Ralph Stanley or George Jones, believe me. So it's just the same old folkie shit, just like in the '60s. Try playing Iris Dement or John Prine or old-time bluegrass to your typical modern Nashville-music fan--that's everything they'd like to forget, and who can blame them? Just like blues--black people are just now getting over feeling ashamed of that very disreputable music, and so you have guys like James Blood Ulmer, Corey Harris and Alvin Youngblood Hart playing it. It's like me--my roots are in the south, but I sure as hell have nothing in common with those people living in Eastern Ky. or Eastern Tenn.--I don't want to hear some archaic mountain music, but I appreciate it, because I'm not a true populist. Paradox there for you.

Nabisco you seem willfully unable to differentiate between the role of criticism and the role of art, as I've tried to explain how i view the two six ways from sunday on the other thread. (P&J stats for those who don't know)

I don't attack wilco for making their music, just the crit-establishment for focusing on it. Similarly it would be absurd (tho flattering to myself and especially many other more regular writers) if the lit-crit establishment suddenly decided that the voice music reviews section was going to be the center of their criticial universe.

that idiot term roots music

Not as idiot as one might think. It implies a host of genres that were largely in place (or imagined to be) before the effects of mass production began tolling in. Of course as regards bluegrass, etc. this is woefully misguided but the idea of roots music is not a bad one, just its application.

Carry on...

"people who like wilco have entirely different standards than most of the population"

Wilco fans aren't nearly as elitist as you think they are!!!

Yeah. My bro likes Wilco (at least he told me he liked YHF - got it for him for xmas), and he's about as plebe as they come - for a patrician brain surgeon livin' in NW Portland and bein' married and owning a lot of Pottery Barn-type furniture type. Oh, never mind.

Except maybe Xgau.

And anyway that as I've explained elsewhere was a joke about literacy & a serious comment about the different ways in which people approach different genres. Like if I said "why don't you write about POETRY people actually like -- i.e. hallmark cards" to a buncha lit critics it would be stupid.

You insist on making bizzare MORAL equations between all forms of cultural production ever, while my populist rallying cry isn't there for the sake of populism per se, but because of a larger issue of the correct way to approach a particular cultural medium.

(y: okay imagine it this way -- some ice skaters have a jerky fastpaced to rockmusic set of routines and some are all grace and glamor and classical music -- even though they all skate on ice and try to make nice jumps people can like one or the other)

"Look: I want the plebes to storm the barricades of the middlebrow bland-crit, and I would take the Billboard top 10 over the P&J top 10 any day. . . . If there weren't a HUGE fucking gulf between criticland and realworldland then it wouldn't be such a great thing to be a "nonconformist." . . . I'm throwing my lot with the plebs right now."

That is a quote from one Sterling Clover, who you may have heard of. I am not telling poets to write Hallmark Cards. I am telling you that before you cast yourself as the end-all cred-having champion of the common listener you might want to think about how you could actually write something the common listener might be interested in. Period. That's where this started in the first place: not with me railing against any kind of writing, but with my point out the weirdness of congratulating yourself as people's-champion against a bland rock-crit hegemony and then ... writing hegemonic rock-crit the people wouldn't read.

Similarly poets can write whatever they want, but if they call themselves the people's poets, raging against a moribund backdrop of academic's verse, they'd better hope their poems back it up. Christ, on the other thread you just made fun of the idea that highbrow book reviews would cover mass-market paperback bestsellers: how is that any different from you writing about Ja Rule?

Look nabisco the problem with this thread is that you desperately want to make it personal but can't. In other words, if you think I write "hegemonic rock-crit that people wouldn't read" you need to prove it better than saying that I mention Gramsci. And anyway "hegemonic" is totally misused here -- if it really WAS, then people would ALL read it, or at least agree with its precepts even if they didn't read it.

All I'm going to say about this is that my girlfriend isn't big into music like me and she understands what I write mostly (and sometimes really likes it, stylewise) even if she doesn't always *care* -- she probably would if I wrote about more things she likes.

Alternately, if you don't wanna go through MY articles you need to provide at least SOME example of this "hegemonic rock-crit that people wouldn't read" (i assume i'm not alone in this affliction) and explain WHY people wouldn't read it.

Similarly poets can write whatever they want, but if they call themselves the people's poets, raging against a moribund
backdrop of academic's verse, they'd better hope their poems back it up.

Again you confuse criticism and the art itself.

Christ, on the other thread you just made fun of
the idea that highbrow book reviews would cover mass-market paperback bestsellers: how is that any different from you
writing about Ja Rule?

What I was making fun of is the idea that people would STICK UP FOR THEM in the same way, not just cover them. (see the other thread for a full exposition and continuation of the thoughts here)

Okay I semi-vow not to post on this again until some new variation on this issue arises.

--E! Online

Anyway. I'm sure that I've missed some crucial details in this thicket of debate, so spell it out for me: Sterling please tell me you're not saying anyone's starved for media coverage of hip hop and R&B or Nashville country or what have you. PLEASE.

CLEAR CHANNEL splits the crits from the masses

something sterling said, which is in italics above caught my attention... i think it's a matter of marketing and distribution that critics have become out of touch with the population.

the population doesn't know what's it's missing. now don't read too much into that statement. i'm not saying that what's popular with the masses is necessarily bad. there's some gold in them thar hills. but i think most critics are music geeks to a degree and we (i'm a music geek so i'll join you critic types) have a larger radar than your average joe and janet listening to the radio at work or in the car or whatever. the biz isn't willing to take as many chances. we've all read article after article on the subject. money is what matters. formulas, much like the colonel's original recipe and classic coke, are guarded and invested in. boy bands. shock rock bands. hot teenage girls. g thang. bumpin r&b. good hooks and good looks. that's all that's on the radio.

what is catching the critic's eyes are the authentic corners of the neighborhood. they want to eat at that sushi joint down the way that's tiny, but it's the best in town right now.

if you're not in the CLEAR Channel market and you're not already famous, good luck catching the eye of the public at large.

i think you CAN be a real populist critic and love the masses' top 10. shit, i crave mcdonalds on occasion. beef sprayed fries and all!

why there is such a difference between favorites of the masses and favorites of the music geeks is merely a marketing situation. look to the UK. smaller island. bbc actually has people like john peel who are broadcasting much smaller, unestablished artists. smaller groups get bigger at a faster rate there. the average street person should have a better idea about something a little different because it's actually on the radio. i'm sure the UK's not perfect, but better than here in the US... it's downright sad.

oh well, i'm supposed to be working,
m.

Sterling, to use the language accepted heartily by the plebes, you is a wanksta and you need to stop frontin'.

the biggest wilco fan I know is my little sister who's also the biggest dave matthews fan I know.

actually, no, i can't cite another medium coz they're all different as I've been saying over and over. Generally there's plenty to be learned by each from each I think tho & really my best model is the french auterists who not only rescued some things considered to be genre pap, but also eventually turned this into recognized critical wisdom -- both in AND OUT of film-crit circles.

i hear ya man. perhaps it's the fine line. maybe i was wrong to suggest that critics could be so populist. perhaps they need to be both populist and elitist. they need to be everywhere! omnipresent!

m.

Unfortunately for magazines and critics the web seems to do a better job of this than anything I can pick up at the newsstand. Between mass media and the new releases mailings from Forced Exposure and AB-CD I hear about nearly everything in enough detail that rags like Spin are a waste of my time.

(shakey mo and someone else make a very specific concrete point abt the kind of rubbish weak guitar sound DB uses, but this can hardly ground the general kneejerk extremism of the resistance)

I think N*ts*h's point about bearing the standard of a group that wouldn't have you as a member is far more salient than it's given credit for being. Fortunately, the world isn't (solely) divided into MENSA members and sans-culottes...

but its presence doesn't undermine sterling's general point, i don't think — it just further dissolves my rep for being able to read carefully: i sort of assume o-nate wd (at least in that instance) be an example of what sterling is in favour of