Did anyone see this?! (Merchants Of Cool Thread)

Get yourself a weblog you retard.

Ah, as expected, an effortless shun. Hope you feel superior enough (for today, at least).

A couple of points: 1) I don't mind marketing creations, as long as they never claim to be anything else. I've never heard Steps claim to be anything more than they are, so I can tolerate them more than Limp Bizkit/RATM. 2) www.youthintelligence.com - You'll LOVE this...

Mmm, you're right! I don't mind marketing creations either (KISS was fun-- in the '70's, I mean). It's the corporate-funded anti- establishment rebels and teen harlots that get me, I guess. Thanks for the link, I was checking it out!

FOUND IT! It was a Frontline episode called "The Merchants of Cool": http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/

If you take marketing away form mainstream music what's left? Tom would probably disagree tough ;-). What is Britney Spears? maybe a singer?? no, she's an ongoing project: a production team, a couple of cheesy videos, some ready-made "politically-correct" speeches and you have got a #1 hit. The same could be said about nu-metal and other pathetic bubblegum acts... Why should the record industry sign artists (who are likely to claim their artistic freedom which means that they can put out a commercial unappealing record) when they can create their puppets? Now the big question: why do people buy this stuff? simply put, because they like it! and they like it because beautiful music generally takes time to be appreciated while MTV stuff is immediately infectious. They like it because they aren't music fans, they don't look for music, they are subjected to what MTV and the radios give them. They like it because musical taste has to be trained but unfortunately they can't train it because the only music around is, again, Britney & Co. Some other people listen to every kind of music and still think that Britney is great. It's inconceivable for me but they've the right to do so ;-)

who cares?

come on now...you have to care...yeah

If you're a marketing tool and label yourself correctly, good for you and good luck.

If you're a marketing tool and pretend to be "rebellious youth" (like you're fooling anybody!), you're a cunt.

Funny, cause this really got us talking while waiting for drum mikes to be set up in the studio last night. Why bands like Steps and co. are totally contrived and manufactured by record companies, and that doesn't bother us, but then bands like Limp Biscuit (how the heck do they spell it anyway?) are totally contrived and manufactured, and that *does* offend us.

What we decided was that ultimately, what made it dangerous, as opposed to just stupid, is that The Kids, young and impressionable as they are, take the fake, contrived, manufactured, teenage whiteboy rage of bands like LB *FAR* more seriously than anyone ever takes the manufactured fake gayboy eroticism of things like Steps. Nobody takes Steps seriously, but people do take LB terribly seriously.

Britney Spears, however, and her ilk, are horribly dangerous, but for totally different reasons.

Anyway... I'm sounding like I'm on a PC rant, and I'm not. Really.

Whether bands 'mean it' or not is from a listener's p.o.v. totally irrelevant. If somebody had come along and made "Break Stuff" totally sincerely, that would make no difference whatsoever to a kid listening to it. It's how much the *listener* means whatever they're listening to that matters.

I guess you have a point. Hypocritical of me, cause I'm always the one screaming that the Beatles were not responsible for Charles Manson, and art is in the eye of the beholder, not the artist etc. etc.

It's a tricky line for me to walk. What is the difference, really, between the MC5 and their "Burn baby, burn" attitude and LB inspiring riots? Who am I to say one's motives are pure cause LB were a record company invention to sell rage to teenagers. The MC5 were an invention to propegate the political ideals of their manager.

But I think that's the line I, personally, draw. If you're saying something to propegate an idea for the sake of your views, political or otherwise, then I'm willing to call it art and defend it. If you're saying something to sell t-shirts to 15 year olds, then it's not art, and you are responsible for the uses of your product, under law.

Does that makes sense? It depends if you're selling art or a product. Now please don't make a hypocrite of me again and bring my love of Warhol into it. ;-)

Nobody takes Limp Bizkit (the United States must have a fantastic school system with that kind of spelling, by the way) seriously except for brainless 17 year olds and wanker music writers (both are basically the same thing really).

It's all about the labelling. I have nothing against, say, Steps. They're manufacted and they'll tell you that. They don't try to make any important statements or anything.

But Limp Bizit (did they put it in a cup of tea?) think they can try to make some sort of a statement. Yes, it fails hilarously, but how do they fuckin' dare? It'll all a marketing ploy to sell records.

It's all about honesty in the music marketplace.

Limp Bizkit's spelling skills are no worse than Slade's, buddy. And, take my word on this, you don't wanna know what their name (LB's, that is) refers to.

So you're saying that the creative intention is irrelevant? Not when you're talking about our (we the "discerning" listeners) perceptions of the band or artist's integrity and "respectability" it hella is NOT!

Is that self explanatory, or should I continue? :)

Creative intention is as relevant as the listener wants to make it, because it can't be known anyway (see for example the confused critical response to Lou's Metal Machine Music, almost all of which tries to make sense of the contradictory things Reed has said about the record rather than the record itself).

You believe that Limp Bizkit is dishonest. The hypothetical 15 year old believes that LB is honest. Only Fred Durst knows for sure, and even he might be kidding himself, which makes it a bit of a silly thing to judge a record on, in my opinion.

I think there's a lot of Santa Claus stuff in listening to music: it's very easy to assume everything is a 'marketing ploy' but letting it spoil the records is being too clever for your own good. Again, in my opinion.

If you have some kind of personal index of musicianly integrity and you use it to guide you in your 'discerning' listening, then good for you. In my experience I've found two things: i) people who care about it tend to like a constricted range of stuff. ii) people who care about it tend to use a musician's alleged lack of integrity as a blanket dismissal clause, which strikes me as a cheap and lazy way of getting out of actually criticising the stuff you don't like.

To expand (I think) on Tom's point, the interesting thing is that "artistic vision" and popular taste can coincide, overlap, or mutually influence one another in all sorts of ways. Is Durst as dumb as he acts? Well, Morrison was as dumb as he acted, but that wasn't a bad thing. Is Durst smarter than he acts? Then, isn't an elegant solution to the problem of selling records as aesthetically fascinating as an approach to any other problem? What about neither? Durst likes selling, he likes getting responses, he works to get these responses, he finds his artistic intentions satisfied by this? And then... if a phenom doesn't "just happen" but is created by a marketing company -- why'd they choose this phenom to create over any other? In other words, if the marketing companies control what people like, why do they tell people to like what you consider "crap" (or do you only consider it "crap" because they tell you to like it?)? And anyway, if marketing companies are so good at controlling what people like, why are you exempt from this control? This line of questioning, obviously, leads nowhere. Also, note that any particular segment of taste distinguishes within itself, and that folks are adept at creating individuality on the basis of whatever material they have to work with. In fact, the need for individual distinction seems to be a key factor in most cultural production *and* in most approaches to culture. Leading to the point, which I'm sure Tom wants no responsibility for, that artistic appreciation is not an end in itself, but an aspect of a process of individual self-definition and self-creation, so that we can seek the intentional unity in the creation of the work, the intentional unity (perhaps not conscious) in the perception of the work, but this leaves us with an anti-normative problem of defineing two subjectivities and situating them in a social context. Which is why, for me, the task is to appreciate things on "their own" terms (however many terms there are, which is almost the same as however many viewers there are) and to explore how the actual structure of componants of a work can mean the things it is seen as meaning, and how a set of componants in a situated social context can have an internal tendency towards assuming certaing forms of meaning. Yeah. Something like that.

Fear of "selling out", in both performers and audiences, is doing more damage to music than all boy bands and Limp Bizkits put together.

i saw the episode of 'frontline' in question last night and found it to be very humorous and entertaining, but also misleading and sensationalized. the overwrought narration suggested that violent and over-sexualized youth culture was some sort of new invention of corporate advertising that somehow put those traits into kids' heads. um, sure, whatever.

on the main topic of 'feeling' and 'honesty' in music, let's be honest here, this is POP MUSIC. you want catchy hooks and overblown melodrama and the pre- packagedness of the whole thing comes with that. you're not hearing 'kind of blue' on pop radio for god's sake, because it's NOT POP MUSIC, even if it does provide a fulfilling and meaningful experience at home alone under close supervision, but i doubt you play it at parties. and that's what pop music is. of course, some people don't have 'kind of blue' and those are the ones who choose to be emotionally affected by mainstream pop, and it's their fucking choice.

if i want to be moved by ella fitzgerald or aaliyah, i have the right to, and no preconceived notion of corporate ownership or creation is going to destroy that. this stuff is for pop, and mainstream pop is more 'pop' than any pop has ever been, moreso than british invasion pop and moreso than indiepop and moreso than whatever else is being championed as 'true pop'. it's taken rap and dance and rock and soul and r&b influences and parlayed them into (mostly) hook-filled masterpieces, and is now being attacked by a pathetic dying white-male music press screaming that their precious rock is dying.

when i watch BET (yeah, here's that 'black music' slant again. i do apologize, but mtv doesn't show hardly any music anymore, and when it does, it's not the stuff i want to see, as a rule. BET shows videos for five hours a day. most), i'm amazed by almost everything i see, and the great this is, so are a HUGE AUDIENCE of fans. i bet your (and i speak to those that have taken the opposing viewpoint) record collection could hardly do that. as if there's some wealth of music that's being sheltered from these kids. keep trying to get the fuckin' flaming lips album out to the masses, huh? jesus christ. i'm hardly the pop aficionado of half the people here (i had to STEAL the romeo must die soundtrack, for god's sake) but even i can see what an incredible wealth of amazing music there is nowadays, and how almost none of it is coming from the bullshit sources the self-obsessed 5% of critical mass say it is. open your eyes.

(a very special postscript: just because the beatles didn't put their record execs (whoever they were, please don't respond and tell me, you god-damned beatles fans) in their cd-booklet doesn't mean he didn't play as big a part in their career as jimmy iovine does in limp bizkit's dubious career. come on, they're RECORD EXECUTIVES. this is no different than from any time, only they're more tuned into what 'the kids' want than in the past. music revolutions weren't supported by record companies in the past (well, less so, at least) because marketing research wasn't as advanced as it is today, but that doesn't make the music less relevant.)

Ethan - I basically agree with what you're saying with a couple of reservations:

1. the dying-white-male orthodoxy supposedly screaming blue murder over the domination of r&b/hip hop sounds is something of a straw man. The Village Voice poll gets votes from several hundred critics, and if you look at the results in the singles poll, there are _2_ guitar bands in the top 20 (U2 and Coldplay).

2. Why not have BOTH Aaliyah and the Flaming Lips on the radio, preferably back-to-back ? Everyone who gives a shit about music would benefit from it, even those who don't like either artist, 'cause they'd know that sooner or later they'd hear some other kick-ass thing they didn't know before. Such a station would probably be a huge failure financially, but if we're talking strictly about the music, it doesn't have to be an either-or thing between R&B/teen-pop and guitar-rock.

ok ok ok i'm IN the group that all this is marketed to i'm 16 female and supposedly reballious and yes i have to admit that at one time before i knew better and was exposed to better and non marketed (well marketed but not marketed through eMpTyV i mena everyone has to market so people will know who they are,.. but you know what i mean) i LIKED limp bizkit, tho it was before "they hit it big" with Faith i liked 3 doller bill yalls and i LIKED Korn's Life Is Peachy and self titled and i will admit to liking Follow the leader i still do like it actually. i dunno i just find it sad that so many kids my age or younger/older would fall for such a scheme and now that i've dragged myself out of it i try to expose others to better music,... Jeez i mean all Limp bizits lyrics are about is whining about ex'z and trent reznor anyway.

Look, I only think they're wankers who need their gentials cut off with some blunt and rusty. I have no facts to back that up for I am only a hateful bastard.

patrick:

1) i don't have time to look at the village voice poll right now, but i'm guessing it's full of rock-typed 'safe' rap/r&b artists like outkast and madonna and whatever. the thing is that everything on there is fairly popular, and the current popular rock is nu metal and warmed-over stone temple pilots shit, and critics TOTALLY FUCKING HATE both of those. does that mean that the current critical consensus is that the two best rock bands in the world are u2 and coldplay? no, it's only current critical consensus of stuff that sold in the top 40 last year. most critics still think rock is the best music ever made.

2) the cultural zeitgeist doesn't have room for aaliyah and flaming lips on the SAME radio station. the flaming lips are playing music in essentially a baroque style (with added cute electronic gimmicks), and today's kids aren't having any of that (except fans of warmed-over stone temple pilots rock). when 'she don't use jelly' was a hit, they were in tune with the alt-rock culture and were rewarded with that. now they're stale weird-voiced dinosaurs. hey, remember when they were on 'beverly hills 90210'. how's that for a sellout?

1. It sounds like what you're saying is that to get with the program, one has to discard any taste for a)guitar-rock and b)r&b and hip hop that's a little too "safe" or top 40-friendly. My sentimental favorites are all a bunch of stale old dad-rock dinosaurs who would make Simon Reynolds barf his lunch, and that hasn't stopped me from being thrilled by "Shake Ya Ass" and "Country Grammar". You don't need a religious conversion.

2.But you gotta wonder WHO makes the cultural zeitgeist in the first place. Musically, I think radio is bigger than any other factor, MTV included. Radio programmers, every last one of 'em, are a bunch music- hating weasels too scared to do anything but maintain the status quo, and it would be interesting to see what would happen if one of 'em tried to broaden ever-so-slightly the range of their programming. I don't care if it's the Flaming Lips or whoever else who would benefit from it. BTW, I'm too old (i.e. over 15) to care who's a sellout and who isn't.

Just out of curiosity, how does the fact that you're not much of a pop guy mean that you *had* to steal the Romeo Must Die soundtrack ?

Aw, man, 90210 they did AGAINST their management's wishes, knowing full well it would ruin their credibility. They WANTED to do it for FUN. Scream sell-out all you want, but the fact that you even bring up "She Don't Use Jelly" (one of their worst songs ever) would make me wonder on what grounds you would accuse. There is nothing commercial about Soft Bulletin, really, which is why it isn't even TRYING to be marketed (yet, they remain on WB, which proves a sort of grassroots phenomenon that doesn't require slick marketing. In fact, WB gives Flaming Lips more leeway than most bands when creating their records, because they actually LIKE the band. Why else would they produce "Zaireeka!"? No way in hell that would be a hit!).

The way you judge seems to be similar to this VH-1 BTM I saw on Peter Framton. Everybody saw him as a "pretty boy" after a Rolling Stone cover and, despite the fact that his music didn't change, but, in fact, reached it's height of creativity, people started screaming "Sellout!"

funny.

patrick:

1) i'm not saying you have to discard guitar rock and 'safe' (white) r&b and rap to appreciate current pop, but you have to accept that it's not what IS current pop. no one's stopping you from listening to the flaming lips or whatever, but don't get mad when they aren't on mtv and your little brother doesn't like them. they represent something from a time period YOU relate to, not current teenagers.

2) what are you saying here? current pop radio needs to broaden the range of music on it? you obviously haven't heard current pop radio, which plays a non-stop schizophrenic mix of boy bands, metal, gangsta rap, r&b, the current weird form of dance-country, techno-pop, punk, and alt-rock. if beck were to plagarise all of these genres onto some album, indie dorks would eat it up, but right now they're too busy whining about the radio because the pixies don't get played like when they were in college. fuck them.

oh, and 'romeo must die soundtrack' was a mixup (i had just listened to it when i wrote that, actually). i was TRYING to say 'the nutty professor two soundtrack', which was too commercial and 'jiggy' to fit into my musical tastes last summer, until i found it and stole it and now i love it (and more tracks than i said in my article: the eve track is fantastic, the dmx one is mostly great, etc.)

"What current teenagers listen to" isn't a uniform, immutable cast-in-stone monolith. Think of alt-rock's popularity in 1994 vs 2001. Not that top 40 radio caters exclusively (or even mostly) to teenagers - I'm guessing females in their 20's are a bigger factor, which is why you'll hear a hell of a lot more Celine Dion than Korn. And, though boy bands, metal, country and gangsta rap are all very popular genres, they speak to different audiences right now, and there is no way on earth that you'll hear them all on the same station. I wish that was possible - that's the way it was 35 years ago, you could hear The Seeds, Frank Sinatra, Dyke & The Blazers and Johnny Cash in the same place, and nobody would complain that it was against the laws of nature or something. It's partly subsequent commercial machinations that led to today's highly segregated audiences. The only genres that have true access to top 40 radio in North America today are schlock pop, dance-pop, hip hop, R&B, and soft guitar-rock. There's a lot of sounds, *commercially accessible* sounds (I'm not bitchin' that Kid A isn't a morning drive staple here) which have no access to radio whatsoever. I can't help thinking that things could be better.

Basically your initial point, Ethan, was that music snobs who ignore/dismiss all that's currently popular are missing a lot of great stuff. I AGREE WITH YOU. But top-40 people who are cheerfully oblivious to anything that's not on that one radio station - they're missing out on the fun too.