latching on to the accessible extremes of "difficult" music

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I wanna go back to something I touched upon in the "parse this Xgau sentence" thread (which I've been rereading). No one really commented on this statement, so I'll throw it back out there for discussion.

"I'm reading some of Xgau's Random A-Lists and it seems that he's fond of finding the populist element in high art (rather than the other way around). I'm not 100 percent sure how I feel about this -- it's great that he can see beauty and songform in otherwise difficult music, but he still discards the less beautiful and songformy extremes, which are often (though not always) the point of those works. It's like enjoying a hip-hop song simply because it has a rock sample in it and then saying 'well, I still hate rap, but this is okay. Except for the rapping.'"

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 28 April 2003 04:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I've never noticed that about xgau. Can you provide examples?

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 04:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Jody, intereesting how your last two sentences seem to anticipate, perhaps even invoke, the Geir. Yet still, I blame HStencil.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 28 April 2003 04:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I will eventually provide examples (I'm going to bed soon).

But this thread doesn't just have to be about Christgau. Talk about your own approach to avant-garde music, if you like.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 28 April 2003 04:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think it's necessarily an accusation, in a sense. I mean, I can definitely think of times when I've heard something "challenging" and been like "Fuck that, I wanna hear T. Rex instead" or whatever, and this is music I'm totally into, and don't just have a passing interest in. I think it's somehow a strange, but normal tendency to connect what one hears in the "avant" to the more vernacular. I couldn't explain why that is, tho.

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 04:28 (twenty-two years ago)

its often nice to have something to hang your hat on before jumping into the maelstrom. if you only use that hook and nothing else i'd say you're missing out. but i do that sometimes, sure.

― gaz (gaz), Monday, 28 April 2003 04:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I would approach difficult music on its own terms. A Faust record is musical as well as experimental in its reach for new ground or new sounds.Something like Throbbing Gristle or MMM is just attempting to reach an extreme. One is listened to in pleasure or for enjoyment the other as experience (or test of patience). Focusing on the elements you recognize or can appreciate opens the door to the record and validates it as music

― SplendidMullet (iamamonkey), Monday, 28 April 2003 04:38 (twenty-two years ago)

hmm I had a thought from the old mfkn xgau thread that I think has some connection here. Where does the no-bullshit, hold-anything-arty/pretentious-at-arm's-length 'tude come from? He's been at the game for a LONG time, from the mid 60s, when writing a serious word abt pop at all was a kind of subversive act. So my theory is that his writing and thinking abt pop still run, in a way, along these defensive kind of lines; a lot of the time I feel like he's writing to someone who's saying 'but surely this is just a stupid waste of time anyway?' Then you get things like his Streets review that tick off one negative after another, as if they have to be answered for and made okay, or the squares and the snobs will get antsy. So anything really far out REALLY has to be regularized.

It's like liberals constantly repeating how bad communism was.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 28 April 2003 04:59 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm torn between admiring christgau for (usually) admitting his limitations--his disinterest in the classic tradition, etc.--and finding it a little frustrating that he seems somehow proud of same.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:03 (twenty-two years ago)

ahhh

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe it's a function of being a record critic, having deadlines, etc. You do need something to hang your hat on, an "in" to any album, which will always be based on your past experience. So your appreciation of any truly challenging album will initially be based on the parts you can immediately relate to, not the parts you can't. And then a week later, your review is due, and it's a bit shallow. But you still have a lifetime to go deeper into the album if you so choose.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I think it's cuz he's a nutter.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Man, getting sucked in to an Xgau thread. Ew.

But I had to say something cos Kenan's thing about so little time etc. doesn't apply to Xgau at all who makes a big deal that he only reviews records when he's good and ready -- and if he does change his mind about a record he changes the capsule review when the consumer guides are put into boox.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:12 (twenty-two years ago)

i shudder to think what horace mann's "ahhh" signifies.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I think it's cuz he's a nutter.

I wasn't even talking about xgau specifically. In fact, I think that applies very little to him -- if he's still clinging to the poppy parts of records after all these years, then that's just his thing. I was thinking more about the way I approach reviewing difficult records -- which is, I don't unless I'm getting paid, and otherwise only years later.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Sometimes, Christgau, ah, he doesn't actually say anything. I mean says less than anything. Reading him subtracts from my sum knowledge of the inner trappings of the cosmos.
His capsules are sub-opinions, marinated in olive oil.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:18 (twenty-two years ago)

But Horace, so as not to turn this into a pure xgau thread and lose everybody, why dontcha tell us what you do differently.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:19 (twenty-two years ago)

horace: well they're record reviews, they're not supposed to rend the world in twain.

x-post

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Christgau: Loose rivets on a sinking ship. Treacherous windshield wipers that I forgot to pick up while I was a the hardware store last week. Not as good as Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. B-

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:25 (twenty-two years ago)

He's not like that at all!

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

That was a piss-poor xgau, if I may say so.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:28 (twenty-two years ago)

(yeah, I mean he doesn't WRITE like that at all; if he is a treacherous wiper it's beyond my ken)

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I was hoping this thread would be less about Xgau and more about this as a tendency in most of us, or as observed in general.

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 05:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, plz. What stence said.

it's great that he can see beauty and songform in otherwise difficult music, but he still discards the less beautiful and songformy extremes, which are often (though not always) the point of those works.

This is a pretty interesting question of pure aesthetics vs. avant-thinkiness, sez me. And I don't know how to reconcile it. Obviously, I'm a pop whore -- I think we all are. I think you have to be to claim that you love music. Where do we put the experimental in our scale of vlaues?

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:38 (twenty-two years ago)

values, that is.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I would answer this at length, but I'm using this thread as a distraction from something else.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I would answer this at length, but I'm using this thread as a distraction from something else I'm writing.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Ooh! Double post magic! Everybody do the double post dance.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Monday, 28 April 2003 05:45 (twenty-two years ago)

''Obviously, I'm a pop whore -- I think we all are''

I think you're wrong there!

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 28 April 2003 07:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I will turn away from any disussion of Christgau as, unlike many folx on this here board, I know nothing about the man, except that he once pissed off Sonic Youth. Don't read him, never have- not out of any conscious decision, just pure ignorance.

I think that the central premise of this thread is an interesting one. To use Kenan's terminology, I guess I am definitely a (reformed?) pop whore, but I find myself drawn to ever more "difficult" music in my golden years. However, I do this purely for it's "otherness". I enjoy the sense of disconnectedness, the floundering for popular/accessible elements. The success is in the failure to latch onto the familiar. I see "weird" pop music (SY, Flaming Lips, "Windowlicker", even) as a jumping off point, a gateway drug for the avant-garde, as in "I liked those weird noises, what would that sound like if you took out the hook and the melody?".

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Monday, 28 April 2003 08:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I wouldn't say a lot of the music I listen to, which is thought of as difficult is that.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 28 April 2003 08:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Julio, do you mean that you don't think the music you listen to is "difficult", or that you don't think it relates to "weird pop music with the accessible bits taken out"?

― Nordicskillz (Nordicskillz), Monday, 28 April 2003 09:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think a lot of the music i listen to as ''difficult''.

the thing is a lot of it will not translate to 'classic recordings' but its the same with rock music (can bands capture that live sound onto record).

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 28 April 2003 09:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Plus his tolerance for extremes is probably even more limited than everyone imagines, eg "Ramones 'Leave Home' is heavier than need be" - WTF???

― dave q, Monday, 28 April 2003 09:10 (twenty-two years ago)

What is avante garde though?

After reading Marcello's White Stripes piece I picked up Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator), which Marcello posited as "possibly the most avante garde album of the century thus far". I've since read Marcello's GW piece proper and I think I get what he means; method/mode of production (in the Marx sense as well as the Leckie sense [but not economic]), what you do with the things/tools at hand, structure + melody + history + intention + emotion.

But the GW album isn't difficult as I would have expected of something labelled avante garde; it's not something put together of noise and dissonance or texture or odd rhythms or whatever.

So what is avante garde? Intention? Emotion? Sound? Texture? Flaunting structure? Unusual melodies/harmonies?

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Monday, 28 April 2003 11:46 (twenty-two years ago)

"Avant-garde is French for 'bullshit'" (John Lennon)

This from the man responsible for "Revolution 9" and "Two Virgins"!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Monday, 28 April 2003 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah but this is also the man who married Yoko Ono.

― hstencil, Monday, 28 April 2003 12:06 (twenty-two years ago)

what's Japanese for 'bullshit'?

― dave q, Monday, 28 April 2003 12:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Yoko Ono, dave q, obv.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Monday, 28 April 2003 12:31 (twenty-two years ago)

False Dilemma Alert: Pop vs. Experimental

― buttch (Oops), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:19 (twenty-two years ago)

But pop and experimental are the only two genres that actually exist!

― Adam A. (Keiko), Monday, 28 April 2003 13:24 (twenty-two years ago)

music works in(as) different spaces. when i'm bouncing around my loungeroom with the kids or at work or out dancing i need certain attributes. those attributes can be useless in a live setting, or under headphones, or when i'm legless in a friends loungeroom.
i don't know what space christgau reviews for. i don't think theres a "pure" listening space.

― gaz (gaz), Monday, 28 April 2003 22:02 (twenty-two years ago)

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