Non-existent rock books

You know all those books about rave culture and music? You know the way they go on about how rave swept the nation and became the default music for a generation? Yet, they always seem to barely mention really mainstream rave music like you get played in the superclubs, which is surely most people's experience of the genre. So how about a music book focussing on the likes of Jeremy Healy and the stuff he plays?

Why bother? "Up and Down With The Rolling Stones". I have no need of any other rock books... don't be silly!

i agree with the jeremy healy thing. the stuff played at peach, gatecrasher etc is hugely popular, but i don't know how much is written about it, bookwise. the irony is, this stuff was always considered superior (progressive, whatever) to that uncouth street breakbeat music until the press got hold of jungle in 94. since then trance/hardhouse seems curiously absent from discourse.

if that book was written though, i don't think i would be interested enough to read it. that stuff leaves me very cold

P-FUNK! And Sly and the Family Stone. Yeah, there are those interview books but they're not particularly in-depth and don't really talk about how important the music is. Am I planning to write any of these? Er, no.

Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul, re-written from scratch by Chuck Eddy, Mike Daddino, Frank Kogan, Mark Sinker and that Kris fellow with the Branch Rickey e-mail address.

What a great question! One almost wishes such a thing had happened. How about a book along the lines of "The Secret Life Of Rock" examining the hidden mystical meaning of everything from "Sally Go 'Round The Roses" on. Or else a book proving that rock never happened, but was merely the collective dream of a billion adolescents.

'A Biographical Dictionary of Pop' - my long-awaited answer to David Thomson's quixotic hymn to the film biz.

"The Supression of British Popular Music" - a lengthy account of how all pop and rock went underground in the UK after the Communist coup of "Black November" in 1960.

"Synths of the Seventies" - an account of how "The Fourth Dimension" and "BBC Radiophonic Music" both spent five years on the charts, with brief mentions of those obscure flops "Tubular Bells" and "The Dark Side of the Moon".

"Pop Transcends, Pop Triumphs" - a look at pop's complete overthrow of older ideas of "identity" and "belonging", written by someone with the surname of Hopkins.

And much else, obviously.

Totally agree about the proposed Jeremy Beadle project. He's been so overlooked over the years. It's just snobbery.

'Long-awaited'? Oh, well - not long to wait now.

The Manic Street Preacher colouring book. A Guide To Better Love Making by Morrissey. Beard Maintenance by Peter Hook.

I have to stress, I don't actually like mainstream superclub dance music, but I would be interested in reading a book about how that scene works both musically and socially.

I like the alternative history book ideas.

Such a book would inevitably be at least as much a work of sociology as of musicology. That might not be a bad thing, however.

Vicar: no, I don't like supper-club music either. It always seems so deliberately bland - just 'tasteful', inoffensive stuff and musicianship for the sake of it, mere background to the meal.

Ah, but what *kind* of supper-club music, Reynard? Geraldo or Simply Red?

An anthology of letters to music mags. An introduction by philosophical heavy - would Derrida be too obvious? - will make some convincing case for the existence of such a thing (which the editor [me, I guess] hasn't bothered to come up with yet).

I like the idea of an anthology of music press letters. It could (deservedly) immortalise Marcello Carlin, at least.

Blood Red - Tampons, Communists and other infiltrators in the post- punk movement.

* Noise Free Chicago: a history of the noise-jazz and art-punk bands and affiliations of the 1990s, wd be mainly pix of tattoos, stories about nicknames, part-time jobs at the pinball factory, and being "big in Japan".

* The Cosmopolitan: covering Bob Wells and Texas Swing, 1925-1950. Would be about life on the road, meeting other musicians, jam sessions, tips and tricks. Last chance to get a first-hand account.

* What Happened to Jazz?

* The Effect of Governmental Elections on Popular Music: the Definitive Study

The Japanese magazine Composite has a special 'Who's Killing Music?' issue this month (including a couple of excellent interviews with Towa Tei and Ruichi Sakamoto). The chapters all have righteously angry headings which would be great scaled up into books and widened to other countries too:

* Has Music Stopped Progressing? * You Think You Are Against Conformity, But You Don't Destroy Anything! * A Furious Person's Guide to J-Pop * Resistance Is Over And We Go Dancing * Is Pop The Grim Reaper of Rock Journalism? And, last and, I think, best: * Why Do They Bring Us Tons Of Bullshit?

MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

About time the Japanese started asking these questions, innit?

Some more titles:

Girl Love Forever, Except For Her How the Grrrlstyle Revolution Went Meeeow!

Squeezed By The Plums: Gavin Friday Watches All His Friends Become Famous

Nobody Likes Me and I Don't Care by Steve Sutherland

Don't Care Was Made To Care by 20 NME Freelancers

(memo to Nick: take down NME.com link from yr page, we're in a boycott situ. okay?)

Suzy: I'm all in favour of an NME boycott, but not because they don't pay their writers. Rather because they do pay them for writing like this, the first para of a recent Squarepusher review:

'The avant-garde: so pretentious, only French words will do. And that's what's wrong with experimental music today. Pompous fucks like Sonic Youth cliam the cutting edge is all about cultivating a bored expression while destroying incredibly expensive instruments. 'Amnesiac' is, yes, very clever but lacks a shred of thrill. And elsewhere The Cult Of The Trainspotter rules supreme, reducing brave new dancefloor dawns to anal textbook footnotes...'

(Whoops, sorry, Louis Pattison, just infringed your online copyright.)

If this were psychiatry instead of rock criticism, it would be a scary shrink straight from the Soviet 1950s, advocating full frontal lobotomies for everyone.

Come on, Louis, are Sonic Youth and Radiohead really cutting edge in 2001, are they so avant garde, french, clever and pretentious? Only in the NME.

Oh come on, surely you could've found a better example of NME's spineless perfidy than that Squarepusher review. I just read it, and it seems like the guy just really liked the Squarepusher CD a lot and that it made Radiohead seem dull and turgid in comparison! Hardly a rare viewpoint, or even a dumbed-down one.

Seconded.

Typical Momus sophistry. If you're so in favour of said boycott for reasons above why does yr. site link to theirs? So you can feel clever on stupid days? It's an intellectual property issue, not an intellectual issue.

If we wanted to collect and post NME clangers (and I've written a few myself; it's called learning in public) we would be here FOREVER. On a different thread.

I agree the rest of the review was fine, and made me want to rush out and buy the record. But this use of 'french', 'avant garde', 'clever' and 'pretentious' as insults is just lazy. It's based on the assumption that NME readers are so conservative they even find Radiohead and Sonic Youth a bit too daring. Squarepusher is excised carefully from all 'experimental' associations in order to receive praise. Why can't they praise someone precisely because they're being experimental, avant, etc?

PS: I've searched for this NME link on my links page, Suzy, and can't find it. Update your bookmarks, I think you've got an old page in there!

PS 2: Tarden's original question is an excellent one. Sorry for diverting people off topic. Tom has just posted a music press related question, so please continue NME-bashing up there instead.

Substitute boring for daring and you'd get closer to my reading of the piece.

Richard: NME is *not* saying the avant garde is boring. The closest they come to that is saying Sonic Youth are 'bored' (ie lack 'rock commitment' of the Richard Ashcroft type).

The constellation of adjectives they line up is very clear: French, avant garde, pretentious, clever. The point is inescapable. The avant garde is too intelligent. New dance dawns are 'reduced' to anal textbook footnotes, etc. The NME's war (and it's Q's war too) is with the cerebral cortex itself, which is why I compared them to lobotomising Soviet psychiatrists.

If I may use the British expression here, doesn't it seem like they're against clever-clever rather than intelligence or intellectualism?

'War on the cerebral cortex' would be a worthwhile project, if only anyone had the guts to go all the way with it.

I haven't even heard Squarepusher, but NME-bashing has me all over anything.

It's based on the assumption that NME readers are so conservative they even find Radiohead and Sonic Youth a bit too daring.

Well, if they continue on their downward spiral of putting people like The Strokes and Starsailor on their covers, well, yes, they have a point in assuming things like that.

French, avant garde, pretentious, clever. The point is inescapable. The avant garde is too intelligent.

There is a big difference between intelligence and cleverness and/or pretention.

I think that they chose their adjectives very carefully, because they will specifically draw someone like you, and push away someone like me. Which should be the point of a review- in our lovely post-modern world, value judgements are meaningless, and I suspect that they are inferred by you, the reader, as much as implied by the writer.

I'm interested what you think the difference between intelligence and cleverness is, Kate. That's not a snide remark, it's a genuine question.

Maybe the author of the piece finds Radiohead 'too daring' - 'daring' = 'failing in their attempts, their reach exceeding their grasp', and wants to see RESULTS rather than intention, and finds 'Amnesiac' a bit tame after listening to Morton Feldman during breakfast.

i think kate means the difference between:

a) intelligence/cleverness
b) pretension

Main Entry: pre·ten·tious
Pronunciation: pri-'ten(t)-sh&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: French prétentieux, from prétention pretension, from Medieval Latin praetention-, praetentio, from Latin praetendereDate: 1837
1 : characterized by pretension : as a : making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) b : expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature

Would this not describe ANYBODY who had such an opinion of their own worth that they decided the world needed to hear what they had to say - i.e., all artists ever?

― tarden, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Soviet state lost its war on the cerebral cortex — trojan horse? Elton John! Hurrah!! — and obviously so will the NME. War of the longue durée, Momus: nerd & geeks = homo superior

There is a big difference between intelligence and cleverness and/or pretention

Gareth, I don't think she did. Or at least you couldn't get that from the sentence. The 'and/or' wouldn't make any sense. Kate?

Also from now on can we spell it "praetentious", to demonstrate where our allegience lies...?

'Soviet state lost its war on the cerebral cortex' - did they? From here, it looks like the entire former communist bloc is suffering from institutionalization. Or maybe it's just the vodka. Hi there Dmitri!

yeh maybe. wasn't paying attention properly.

OK, we all know that I am the most inarticulate person on earth, I bend words to mean what I *mean* rather than what they say, and am incapable of expressing my thoughts in a way that are properly understood by other people, and this is why I don't listen to lyrics, etc. etc. etc.

Although Gareth has got it right in terms of dictionary definitions, this is what I was implying...

Intelligence is the measure of raw ability - to gather information, process information, interpret information, and draw conclusions and make predictions from that information etc. etc. Intelligence is generally a good thing, and to be encouraged.

Cleverness, the way that I see it, is a *learned* application of that intelligence. Cleverness is the diametric opposite of "common sense" or of "street smarts". For me, cleverness has a connotation of "too clever by half" or cleverness for the sake of showing off how intelligent you are, rather than using it for any useful purpose. Although it's not bad or harmful in itself, and can even be fun under some circumstances, it's not exactly productive.

Pretension, on the other hand... to me, this is the intellectual equivalent of name-dropping. It is using education and cleverness to produce the effect of intelligence one may or may not have. It has this Weblen-esque undertone to it, whereby the aquisition of culture and education is another form of conspicuous consumption.

I hope I have made myself clearer, though I fear I have made myself even more obscure.

'Intelligence without formal education' - this implies enough self- education to feed oneself, but don't most 'self-educated' people you know go off on the most ridiculous tangents, lacking any sort of intellectual discipline?
An example of what I have in mind - the Wu-Tang Clan and all their Illuminati horseshit - very entertaining as part of a closed-system alternate world, but it's a bit disturbing to see the amount of fans who swallow their conspiracy-based viewpoint as the definitive model of geopolitics. ESPECIALLY white,. middle-class fans. (Hold on, is that a redundancy?)

Ignore that, that was supposed to go on the other thread.

I think Kate has just spelled out very admirably the logic behind my point, in Ned's 'Why is no-one talking about the Momus interview?' thread, that people who find Momus interviews intolerable would also find Godard interviews intolerable.

England divides pretty clearly between dandies like Bowie and Eno who boasted of founding 'a whole new school of pretension' and the Q / NME grumblers, who always claim to have 'common sense' on their side and think 'the learned application of intelligence' is a distasteful form of showing off. These people, for cultural-historical reasons (national sibling rivalry) hate France and the french language, and cock snooks at the French whenever they can, ie opening Squarepusher reviews with the completely irrelevant, pointlessly hostile observation 'The avant garde, so pretentious only french words will do...' It tends only to be the English: Scots and Irish don't carry the same baggage, which leaves us free to be delightfully pretentious.

Kate has also made me realise why most of my relationships with English girls were such a disaster. There would always come a moment when they'd say 'Do you have to keep going on about Bertold Brecht all the time? We're on holiday, for Christ's sake!'

The irony of course is that journalistically speaking it was the NME which kicked open the doors to French thought in popcrit in the first place.

Hmm, I've heard of BERTOLT Brecht...

Bertolt was his re-spelling from his poncy later days. Close friends like me got to call him Bertold, the original, more earthy, Germanic spelling. Do you know he wrote 'Mac The Knife' about me?

...which I have never seen you use in communication once. Maybe you're only friends when it's convenient, which wouldn't surprise me in the least. Little boys shouldn't play with knives, you know!

Back To Topic: "The Diva In My Life" -- a collection of essays exploring female role model musicians and the process of socialization, with an emphasis on the gay community and how "camp" is transformed into earnest appreciation. Also, "Pop and the Rock neurotic" dealing with the evolution of taste of the boomer generation.

Thanks for the re-focus, Sterling. How about:

Kingdom Of Twee: Regressive Influences and Idealized Childhood in post- C86 recording artists. In context of why Gen X doesn't want to grow up, etc.

I was once approached to do a treatment for a book about...Britpop. Eurgh I know, but if you leave out Oasis (and someone should, on the pavement, a la white dog turd) you'd get some kind of weird Bloomsbury set update with closet rich kids in musical chairs sex/drugs combinations with *some* incidentally great music and a few interesting casualties. I'd have called it Cruel Britannia.

Also, let's assume for the sake of our own amusement that our subjects would consent to being comprehensively interviewed, including stuff their managers might not like, for the sake of historical accuracy...

May I just say, off topic again (je te demande pardon), that I've just bought the new Squarepusher and that it is:
* Avant garde
* Pretentious
* French, very French
* Actually, even more German (Stockhausen)
* Pompous
* Silly
* Intellectual
* Clever
* Stupid
* Cutting edge
* Dated (That drum n bass sound is sooo 1997, darling!)
* Old school
* Art school
* Wonderful for all the above reasons, not despite them

I need caffeine... and then I am going to respond to Momus's (What is the possessive of Momus? Momi? I can't remember my high school Latin...) baits.

Given my background, it is the supremest irony that I have been given the side of "base common sense against the intellect" in this debate. What I strive for eternally is balance, I believe that you can and must go as far as you like in any one direction, so long as you go equally as far in the opposite direction. This goes for the common sense/intellectual frippery dichotomy, as well.

Speaking of down to earth and common sense, the plumber is here. Will get back to this topic...

I didn't mean to bait you, I was irritated by Suzy rushing in to defend you on the question of whether finding my interview intolerable (which you have every right to do) would also make you dislike Godard references in my postcard from Thailand.

In my experience there's no contradiction between a person being highly educated (your adjective Weblen-esque, for instance, goes right over my head) and that same person espousing the anti-French, anti-pretension, anti-theory stance. It is in the British intellectual tradition to be pragmatic, empiricist, skeptical of big ideas. The irony is that that is, in itself, also a big idea -- one which seeks to pass itself off as natural common sense.

By the way, I've decided the Squarepusher record is just too dated and that the future of my record purchasing lies in the direction of Scratch Pet Land, who are brothers from Belgium. They spend less time trying to be 'hard', 'mental' and wicked and more time actually inventing fresh new sounds. This may be related to what we're discussing, at least if the NME are right about Squarepusher being a bull doggish bulwark against the avant garde.

Are the British EVER going to get over their rivalry with the French, and vice-versa? It's SO boring to all of us ex-colonials out here. Come on, countries, group hug!

'You know, this is a pretty good time to be alive. We're at least a generation past a major war, and (hopefully) a few more generations away from global apocalypse. Tasty mass-produced food products are cheap and plentiful. Computers almost work, sometimes. And electronic musicians are beginning to look to other forms of music for sources of sound and inspiration, resulting in some pretty goddamned excellent stuff.'

Pitchfork, US, Matt Le May

'The avant-garde: so pretentious, only French words will do. And that's what's wrong with experimental music today. Pompous fucks like Sonic Youth claim the cutting edge is all about cultivating a bored expression while destroying incredibly expensive instruments. 'Amnesiac' is, yes, very clever but lacks a shred of thrill. And elsewhere The Cult Of The Trainspotter rules supreme, reducing brave new dancefloor dawns to anal textbook footnotes.'

NME, UK, Louis Pattison

These two paragraphs are openings to reviews of the same Squarepusher record. They might present us with an interesting choice of tones, should we really have to rewrite the entire rock bibliography after an Alexandrian conflagration. One tone sounds like Dr Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide: unguarded, optimistic, full of can-do spirit, gee- golly-goshism, and hope for the world. The other is more of a Scrooge or Grinch: intolerant, poisonous, reactionary, brittle, petty, resentful, rude and insulting. I prefer the American style, but I admit it can be fawning and vapid. And though I deplore the petty spite of the Brutish style (see also Julie Burchill and Barbara Ellen), I admit it can be brilliantly fresh and funny in the right hands (eg Morrissey).

Gawd, Louis Pattinson's probably never been remarked upon this much in his whole life.

I hate reductive Euro/art/'pretentious'-bashers as much as Nick does; I'm sure Kate finds them irritating as well, albeit in her own way. I'm sick to the back teeth of fogeyish, dismissive tone in critical analysis, it's boring and reductive and usually written to impress five young geriatrics of the writer's acquaintance. Hence no risk in their scribbling, hence no opportunity to play, experiment, have fun. When you ask any of them to say directly why something is pretentious, they do struggle. Bet when any of same are 40-something, they won't be as fresh as Nick and his ideas can be.

Like Tom, I also find it supremely ironic that the high standard high- culture grabs that attracted so many of us to the NME and inspired many of us to attempt our own writing about/making of music is now, seemingly verboten, part of the 'money talks, bullshit walks' attitude of a particular sort of pseudo-meritocrat. Is it my imagination, or have incidences of bashing hi-lo culture melds actually increased in the Enema over the past few years? Boooo, they're scared of us. Good!

The sadist in me would suggest 'Clockwork Orange'-style 'therapy' of whacking these silly people into an isolation tank, pinning their eyelids back, and subjecting them to an immersion programme of 1960's/ '70s Dean Jones live-action Disney flicks* until they're begging for mercy.

Were I a commissioning editor at the publishing house of my dreams (and believe me, this is no small probability) I'd happily green-light anyone heading toward the pluralistic and international rather than the prejudiced, monolithic and, yes, parochial.

*excepting Freaky Friday, of course.

It's not just a contrast in literary style, of course. Imagine these two critics as parents. Matt is basically permissive, encouraging his kids to clamber about from genre to genre, happy to see them coming up with new mud pie recipes. Louis, on the other hand, bristles with prohibitions. 'Don't speak in French, you'll grow up a pompous fuck'. 'Stop smashing that instrument, it cost money you know!' And, when the sprog brings home A grade homework: 'Yes, that's all very well, but remember, no-one likes a clever dick. Watch you don't turn into an anal trainspotter and get the shit kicked out of you at school, dear. Why don't we get you a subscription to the NME, eh? That way you'll learn not to make these dangerous 'attitude mistakes' in future. You'll thank me for it one day.'

Aaaagh! *considers the thought of avg. NME spod, like, finding/breeding with consenting partner* You're absolutely right!

pinefox: just to clarify the Radiohead - Talking Heads connection, RH *did* cite "Remain in Light" as a central influence while they were birthing Kid A.

Oh crap, my first post to the wrong thread. I should be forced to eat one of Matt le May's kids' mud pies. What I did want to say is that Momus's vision of NME parenting is utterly hilarious.

Considering all of the above, is it too Panglossian of me to say that the book which needs to be written is even now majestically forming itself on "I Love Music"? That is, from these many threads is there being woven some glorious new coat of many colors? Which is to say, the future of music criticism should perhaps be more of a dialogue like this than a monologue.

(Momus and Suzy, you make a delightful vaudevillian duo-- please consider a tour of the Continent!)

XYZ is, ahem, "on the money" here.

I hope, in the long term, these threads are published as a compendium of what smart people were talking about in the early 21st Century. It would be fun to look back on, anyway.

Nick, I was actually looking at a 1984 Burchill singles column earlier, and while I basically loathe everything about her character (apart from the streak which motivated her to write that Guardian column in defence of socialism and the public services recently), there *are* some fine, casual destructions of certain people's reputations in there (which I like, though only in small doses, and only when just observant rather than actively anti-intellectual). My favourite, of the "Moonlight Shadow" warbler: "Maggie Reilly: a name like a Singing Nun, a voice like a Singing Nun - keep your rosary beads crossed that a vow of silence is imminent."

Now if only Louis Pattison could slice a scathe through everything Travis or Stereophonics stand for with such an effective line ...

I love "Moonlight Shadow"

i) i haven't heard a lot of squarepusher but i'm curious what the similarities with stockhausen are. i'm guessing that we're talking either droney stimmung-style stockhausen or electroacoustic stockhausen.

ii) there is nothing expensive about sonic youth's instruments. maybe the ludwig phase ii but that's it.

[Quickly, before this thread drops off into the 'folders']

i) i haven't heard a lot of squarepusher but i'm curious what the similarities with stockhausen are. i'm guessing that we're talking either droney stimmung-style stockhausen or electroacoustic stockhausen.

Some of it sounds to me like bits of 'Kontakte'.

ii) there is nothing expensive about sonic youth's instruments. maybe the ludwig phase ii but that's it.

Didn't someone steal them all last year? The band were crushed. It's not so much that the effects pedals etc were expensive, more that their quirks (only half working, etc) went a long way to defining the Yoof sound.

My friend Sarah Michaels, ahem, worked on all the broken pedals they got to replace the stolen gear, and now they've got a whole new batch of half-working equipment. Sarah did her best tho, bless her. Can provide info if any NYC musicians need work done on ancient analog pedals.