Significant Badness

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As critics (writing or paid or unpaid or down the pub or whatever) we are often called upon to work out whether or not a track is bad. OK, that's easy enough usually, we have ears.

But we also have to sometimes work out if a track is significantly bad - if it's badness has a resonance or importance beyond the track itself. "My god the Fast Food Rockers are rubbish" vs "The Fast Food Rockers are the end of pop". Or, on the Shake Ya Tailfeather thread, SYT being 'rubbish' vs SYT as 'nadir', symptomatic of a genre's stagnation or decline.

How do you assign or assess significant badness? Can you? Working out when a record is importantly good is easier, I think - novelty or innovation, something likely to set a trend - but working out when a record's badness is important.... should you try?

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 11 August 2003 22:23 (twenty-two years ago)

tom, your "shake ya tailfeather" thread example is faulty.

― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Monday, 11 August 2003 22:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah looking over it it's Blount who brings up the n-word though I think you are still suggesting it's significantly bad in a couple of places on there.

(Reynolds singled it out a couple of weeks ago too, so use him as an example if you prefer).

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 11 August 2003 22:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to say shit
like 'nadir' and 'worst ever'
ILM cured me

now I'm paralyzed--
everything might be good!
hem and haw and hem

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Monday, 11 August 2003 22:54 (twenty-two years ago)

How do you assign or assess significant badness? Can you?

I figure if something annoys me, it's bad, but if something annoys me and I'm countered with a slew of opposite opinions, then I'll get more peeved (Andrew WK, f'r instance). But would I call it a nadir of something? I dunno, I'm sure I've used the term. Everything I really actively hate is loved by somebody, after all -- I'm more inclined to slag something off as a personal nadir for group or musician (ie, that Chrome review I link to every so often where it was Damon Edge, his bad voice, alcohol and awfulness in a heap).

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:02 (twenty-two years ago)

in the madonnna review, the comment where that guy was talking about how missy elliot was trying to teach madonna how to rap was better than the review. if something is significantly bad, it seems too easy to blame it on the singer, so for the review to be significant it should do other stuff, as tom points out...

― youn, Monday, 11 August 2003 23:16 (twenty-two years ago)

No no I'm not saying people should avoid ideas like 'nadir' or try not to ever assign significant badness - though that is definitely the temptation cos it's one destination of the whole not being 'rockist' thing. I think a lot of significant badness only comes with hindsight though - I didn't exactly love Paul Weller's comeback records in 1993 or 1994 but I had no idea of the catastrophically evil effect they would have on British rock music. And is the moment a negative trend starts worse than the moment a medium trend suddenly sounds played out? Do such 'moments' resonate with anyone but the critic (this is sort of the problem with SR's citing of tailfeather)?

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Do such 'moments' resonate with anyone but the critic

Surely the answer is yes? I mean, for all movements there are always critical takes on same as to when they 'burned out,' 'became irrelevant' etc. but the fact that in many different media we still get 'dead' forms living to this day must mean something. Maybe the trick is not to say something hits a nadir but that wherever/whatever context it comes from ceases to be defining a place and time.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:36 (twenty-two years ago)

What about that Frere-Jones article? He made them sound great, but is Led Zeppelin responsible for heavy metal? (I don't know any of their songs.) How can you predict what people will do with innovations? Something may be really catchy and good, but people may apply it unimaginatively and ruin it. I guess bad being mistaken for good usually happens with established musicians, so a social/cultural critique isn't good enough.

― youn, Monday, 11 August 2003 23:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I didn't exactly love Paul Weller's comeback records in 1993 or 1994 but I had no idea of the catastrophically evil effect they would have on British rock music

sentence of the day

― gaz (gaz), Monday, 11 August 2003 23:47 (twenty-two years ago)

But we also have to sometimes work out if a track is significantly bad - if it's badness has a resonance or importance beyond the track itself.

Surely this has a direct correlation to the record's popularity (and hence influence), then? Your Paul Weller example: I don't know how popular they were at the time, as I went straight from my Eurotechno phase to my trip-hop phase and pretty much ignored indie until I was 18, but presumably they were popular in that they inspired a lot of talentless chancers to pick up their guitars. If they'd sunk without trace, they probably wouldn't have been 'importantly' bad.

I fear that The Vines may be importantly bad.

― The Lex (The Lex), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 00:23 (twenty-two years ago)

i doubt it - a few months they've been off the radar and have been all but forgotten

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 01:52 (twenty-two years ago)

man, I thought that about smashing pumpkins in spring of 93 (I was wrong)

― nnnh oh oh nnnh nnnh oh (James Blount), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 01:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Yay for being wrong!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 02:05 (twenty-two years ago)

haha - I posted that JUST for you!

― nnnh oh oh nnnh nnnh oh (James Blount), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 02:08 (twenty-two years ago)

:-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 02:29 (twenty-two years ago)

if i have to reread the first post five times to assure myself "SYT" isn't in reference to "goodbye 20th century", that's significant badness.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 02:31 (twenty-two years ago)

significant badness

― nnnh oh oh nnnh nnnh oh (James Blount), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 02:35 (twenty-two years ago)

please tell me it's not a japanese sitcom.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 02:36 (twenty-two years ago)

smashing pumpkins = significant baldness

― dave q, Tuesday, 12 August 2003 07:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Alizee = significant bodness

― weatheringdaleson (weatheringdaleson), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 08:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not sure what the POINT of trying to prove, and inevitably failing to prove, that a genre or all genres are at a low point. I mean you read Reynolds fantastic theory that this is like 1984 or whatever and it all is well argued and about the most watertight attempt at theoretically proving what is merely an opinion you could have, but the bottom line is it's just an opinion and all the smart theories in the world aren't going to change that.

Same goes for Tailfeather, it's fine if people stick to micro theories but macro ones are quite difficult. I mean there is a long history of positive ones, like "this is the dawn of a new age for blah blah blah", but negative ones are worth far less because they've always got the writers own opinion to fall back on anyway. "See I told you that was a nadir and now 4 years later I still think I'm right", whereas mass praise of numerous artists emerging from a birth theory or whatever is not so easy to fake.

You can't quite so easily say, this album represents a new beginning or whatever and be proven right simply cos you're really into alot of the stuff that follows.

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 10:32 (twenty-two years ago)

And of course it's all opinions with writing but saying music is in the shit is hardly worth very much at all, isn't it time to stop theorising when you think this. In this case is "if you don't like it, don't write about it" valid?

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 10:34 (twenty-two years ago)

In summary I'm saying that thinking music is in a general state of disaster is a feeling too much from the gut to ever be logically thrashed out.

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 10:35 (twenty-two years ago)

"But I’ve had enough of “fighting against,” of “deconstructing,” of “surpassing,” of “putting an end to,” etc. My philosophy desires affirmation. I want to fight for; I want to know what I have for the Good and to put it to work. I refuse to be content with the “least evil.” It is very fashionable right now to be modest, not to think big. Grandeur is considered a metaphysical evil. Me, I am for grandeur, I am for heroism. I am for the affirmation of the thought and the deed."

- Alain Badiou.

― Comus. (Cozen), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 10:46 (twenty-two years ago)

"niggaz gon' fuck around and get they balloon popped"

-Wu Tang.

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

plus any critic who sez 'it's 1984' and means it as a nadir for pop music is complete fucking moron who is never to be trusted about anything

― nnnh oh oh nnnh nnnh oh (James Blount), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

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