What can music-crit learn from Architecture-crit?

:)

m.

seriously, just because post-modernism is here, does that mean modernism is really gone?

can't we find something like modernism in some of the satriani guitar god worship? or the continued candle light vigil some hallow over classical? or "indie" holy grails?

?
m.

Bastard.

OK, fine.

In Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Venturi defines two sorts of archetypes of modernist architecture: "The Duck" and "The Decorated Shed." Now the Duck is a building that's shaped like a duck. Maybe it sells ducks, hence the shape of the building. If you saw a building shaped liek a donut wouldn't you think maybe they sell donuts there?

Anyway, the Deorated Shed is a boring regular old building but you hang a big sign on it and presto it's decorated. So it could say onthe sign "WE SELL DONUTS" but you'd have to read Engliish to know that donuts are what the building was all about. The Duck just is what it is, in a Platonic kind of way, whereas the decorated shed asks that it be read more transparently, almost Aristotelian-ily. So it's a little more demanding or something. So maybe in your music crit-talk mumbo-jumbo writing thingy you could use these concepts to distinguish between where, say, a music takes the form of a specific other kind of music and it really is like that kind of music like where Beck does that special Latin kind of stuff I think and where a music merely gestures to it in a superficial way, like by using a theramin and saying Wow we are wacky, that's nutty using a theramin. Or kind of like how you could read some architecture theory books and seeif they influence your music writing, or you could just cream the words "Venturi" "Duck" and "Decorated Shed" out of my post and use them in your music writing.

Happy?

I think this is a great way to think about things, except for one slight caveat. In architectural thought, the uses of buildings and spaces are much more "public," and much more strongly linked to one another, than albums are in a musical context. Architectural thought has to be broader, possibly, more conceptual and trend-based, because people are developing ideas of how buildings and spaces can exist in a collective "city" whose citizens all share it equally. They're slightly more likely to be overarching visions of how things as a whole can function.

Whereas with music we don't have to share a city; albums don't necessarily need to stand in relation to one another at all, and in fact can exist in totally different conceptual realms. We live in cities of our own makings, picking albums ("buildings," "spaces") at random, often enjoying them completely separately from one another, often in complete opposition to one another.

That's that difficult part to get around. The tool you seem to be describing is a great and useful one, but I feel like there will be certain instances in which it breaks down a little bit. Because music -- even very popular, "social," public music -- also has a private element to it, which is to say that each of us can individually redesign the landscape of music in our personal worlds.

So that's the one difference -- but yeah, I think you have a great point here.

I mean obviously there's no direct analogy, and that's the real trick of this question is to make the link then knock down all the ways it DOESN'T hold u p and draw the implications from there.

Another puzzler -- precisely because architecture crits and producers are so the same thing, it has a very perscriptive character. I tend to really oppose perscriptivism in music-crit.

So: should architecture crit be less perscriptive -- what would be lost, what would be gained? is it even possible? (i.e. people design buildings in theoretical frameworks while musicians produce in much more practical/intuitive ones)

Should music crit be MORE perscriptive -- what would be lost, what would be gained? Is it even possible? (i.e. same as above; musicians have a probably healthy impulse to dismiss critics too, as far as I know.)

Should/could music critics and musicians find greater overlap? What are the ways it could happen (YLT/Pet Shop Boys vs. Jay-Z in the source)? Is it already happening more in rap than rock, and why? What would the results be? (nb this is possibly a rephrasing of Kogan's question about bringing Tina and Trina's voices into 'zines)

Is per scripti ve crit more prone to the "social space" approach, or do they both appear in architecture-crit because of an independant third case? (reprhased this = "if we bring teena and trina in, will this result in teena telling trina what to do?")

[nb. t hese are all also possibly thread topics for future exploration over the next n years] =

i could see maybe where some rock is very informal and anti-intellectual and roots-oriented...

but what about the holiest of holies? blues chords? gearhead snobbery? thick formulaic drafts of melody? scales? the guitar store motorfinger! prog's sacred vow?!? metal and rock meets the classics and it MOST CERTAINLY meets a standard and form.

isn't that why punk was such a slap in the face? it's got to be the anti-christ of something....

shit... go to nashville and befriend several studio musicians and you'll see uniformity at work. it's sickening.
m.

Modernism, as an art movement, an architectural movement, and an ethos, was a reaction against classicism, essentially a way of saying "Tear down the past! Break all the rules! Now here's how you must break the rules..." Get rid of the old aesthetic, but have something concrete (often literally) to put in its place. Postmodernism was a way of saying "Tear down the past! Break all the rules! AND LEAVE NOTHING BEHIND!" No guru, no method, no teacher.

Going by this thumbnail sketch, modernism does not equal rockism, and pop certainly does not equal postmodernism. I would argue that rock is one step behind where we think it is. When we think we're hearing postmodernism, what we're really hearing is modernism, and when we think we're hearing modernism, what we're really hearing is classicism. Blues chords and Elvis -- that's not just classic rock, it's classical rock. I can't think of too much rock, or music in any form (save, perhaps, for 4'33") that truly strives to negate as an end in itself. Ween, maybe.

Punk hated rock ha ha and disco ho ho and loved reggae har har, so it built itself a cathedral. Every time it realizes that, someone smashes a window; but no one would dream of burning it down. Hip-hop was going to, but it ended up stealing some ideas and building itself a nice little gated community with a really nice security guard named Street Cred.

My favorite buildings are all falling down. My favorite musical/architectural styles are the ones built out of the cast-off detritus of the others. The stones which the builders rejected have become my cornerstones.

my take on modernism (not that i want this thread to keep discussing that when there are more interesting issues at hand) is in the sense of the general belief in most realms of culture t hat there could be a structured formal approach to understanding and developing it, that there was a critical project underway to bring what had previously been mystical realms outside the scope of science and under sway of intuiton out of hoary historica l baggage and sleek and shiny into the new world.

(postmodernism simply = abandonment of that belief in one of *many* ways. i.e. post wwi modernism = "yay the world is safe from war but oh what a terrible world we have wrought, let us confront it and tra nsform ourselves so that our dark desires may never lead to bloodshed again". post wwii postmodernsim = "oh shit, so much for that, and furthermore the bomb = we're all going to die aaagggghhh!!!" but then beyond that there's plenty else going on i n various fields which intersects and plays off stuff then gets completely reinterpreted when it makes its way to the states and soforth resulting in a world where people say "deconstruct" instead of "critically examine" and everyone talks about "irony" and "meta" too much but really isn't that different except maybe more jaded)[

(i should know better than to talk about modernism without asking for trouble))

Perhaps I do, but not with any intended offense. For the record, I like punk and the whole presumed DIY aesthetic surrounding it.

But back to the subject: the big hole I see in my little theory is that it applies the literary definition of postmodern to what was a discussion about architecture. The idea of postmodern architecture may have been to some extent to create "negative space," but it was not to negate. In literature, it is possible to say exactly nothing, in as many words as are required. In a building, it's a foregone colclusion that you will say something, and the same goes for music.

postmodern architecture.
http://www.photovault.com/Link/Cities/Lake/Chicago/CLCVolume01/CLCV01P06_13.jpg

postmodern literature.
http://www.jessamyn.com/barth/colby.html

post-modernism is that every little individual. there is no absolute truth, including this sentence, somehow, mystically. there is no highway, there is only ground and a buttload of directions to walk, not walk, etc etc. multiplicity.

so when i look at rock, i can see both modernism and post-modernism.

i can see buttheads who work at a guitar store and know all the blues scales possible on a guitar. they are well versed in the cannon of songs such "stairway to heaven" and "crazy train". it's a very one-way, holy temple of satriani, sort of thing. hessian artistotle aristrocracy.

i can also see what originally was punk before it succumbed to the structure and see that as rock too. the beginner takes all. the bang and the hip shake and the pierced body part. it feels individual. until you're being different, just like everyone else.

so perhaps i'm using words like modernism and post-modernism where i shouldn't.

traits of modernism being traits of stale cock rock... so i equate the two.

bah,
m.

Naw, I was too drunk.

Why exactly did Blount call me to thread way up there?

I think I agree with what Neuodynm and msp have been saying but unfortunately I know little to squat about music criticism.

Something like that.

In a lot of ways, I feel like this is what Sterling was railing against on those other threads; the notion that critics are, in effect, jilted city planners who scale and gentrify and classicize some zone 4 territory according to their own tastes, all the while doing their best to avoid those *towering* and *interesting* buildings just off camera that have already been built and are being lived in...

I suppose the duck is more modern but in the sense of Modernism with a capital "M" because Modernism is a style that depicts a myth of functionalism. (Perhaps like electronica). It is a "myth" or symbolic functionalism because the Gropius and Le Corbusier buildings are not that comfotable and have some construction problems. If you consider signifying to be a function then I suppose a building shaped like a duck is marginally functional and marginally more "Modern" thatn the shed but it is a very different function that it purportedly serves than that of the angular simple lines of Gropius. A duck is not easy to build.

But--the original question about architecture critics. I heard architect and critic Robert Campbell speak last night. He spoke about his peers, over time, moving from what he called "rad to trad," and the underlying dialogue about what all these buildings are for. His own conclusion, reached after 40 years in the game, was that architecture is not art, but "the making of places." It wasn't a mindblowing revelation, but it certainly parallels the pretty decoration vs. get-the-job-done argument that runs through many music discussions, esp. if one of the arguers loves pop. But not popism.

If architecture is a way to concretize utopian ideals of form/function and music is a sort of manifestation of utopian otherness, I think there could be a lot of shared ideas between the two criticisms. I haven't read enough arch-crit to compare actual samples though...

A friend of mine recently decided to study art history instead of arch history because he was so sick of arch-crit and the way it tended to obfuscate and undermine the actual function of architecture. I don't think this problem could happen with music because the function of music is to be music!

Michael Jackson - Invincible, $30 million
http://www.architectureweek.com/2003/0115/news_1-1.html

I really think the only way to compare the two would be in terms of language and concepts which would probably do both fields a disservice.

I like Libeskind!

Liebeskind may be OK but the idea of living ten blocks from this disgustingness he's proposed for Ground Zero makes me even more sad for my city.

I have to wonder what the musical analog to Koolhaas' Prada store is...Scritti Politti "Cupid and Psyche"?

Also what about the effects of architecture (a la housing projects) on the music the residents make?

This is why I brought up sociological issues earlier in this thread. Music as real estate.