rockist

http://designforum.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=876278

It contains one of the best and clearest definitions of the term:

* Rock music should be bass, drums, guitars.
* It's about artists and songs, not about production.
* A good artist 'keeps it real'.
* Some artists are more 'real' than others.
* Good songs are timeless.
* At some point in the past they “got music right”.
* Music has value to the extent that it's one person emoting sincerely.
* Although the real is very important, the real is today absent.

Note how some of these propositions may seem more reasonable than others; but all of them must be present (he appears to suggest) for it to be full-fledged 'rockism'. Maybe if you believe one or two of the propositions you have rockist tendencies, but that's not so clear. No wonder there is so much confusion, as rockism seems to imply a constellation of related beliefs that are not quite the same, and cannot quite be inferred from each other.

This is my definition:

Rockism is the belief that traditional rock music of the 60's and 70's is better than any other kind of music, because it is personal and authentic. It should be imitated.

That definition has problems too, but it's nice and simple. It also captures the paradox at the heart of the rockist stance: one must be personally inauthentic to be historically authentic.

They wanted to be professors at university.

It can't be! You see, this is the rub. This is why rockists are so annoying to non-rockists.

Everyone is so bored with this topic that it's become interesting as an exercise in applied tedium. I wish I were a Professor of Applied Tedium. There would definitely be a Chair - or maybe a Bed.

When the sun shines let foolish junglists make sport.

There is also at least one other one on ILM, over a year old.

Everyone is so bored with this topic
There are so many of these damned rockist threads right now, it's like spaghetti code. I think it's good for Nick C to sharpen his ideas for as article, but for everybody else it's like that urge to pipe in at the work meeting just to be counted in, rather than keeping your mouth shut and shaving off five minutes of the tedium. Is anybody here really a rockist except the House Rockist- Geir?

Just because time changes doesn't mean that a good song cannot work.

The society in which Handel and Bach composed their pieces were a completely different one from today society. Yet, their music lives on and lots of people still enjoy it. A prime example of timelessness.

What is this quintessence of dust?

and it's still in wide circulation today, as the ILM search function would make clear. another prime example of timelessness!

Captains log, Stardate 5432 Wave. Spock, McCoy and I have been trapped by the Prime Directive on a strange planet populated by mop-topped, Beatle-bewigged-and-booted Rickenbacker (and Gretsch) guitar players.

later...

Spock: Captain, my tricorder reading tells me that this dust is the remains of a very rare rock, similar in makeup to those stones over that the indigenous population worship as gods.

later...

Uhura: Captain: I have been listening in on some of their primitive broadcasts in an ancient format known as AOR. Don't you see, they're not talking about the stones in the ground, they're talking about the Stones on Steel Wheels.

Kirk: The Beatles and The Stones, they had them both. Wouldn't it be something to watch it happen, all over again? Warp factor six, Mr. Sulu.

* Rock music should be bass, drums, guitars.

This I clearly disagree with. Love lots of synth based music, particularly from the early 80s, but also some of today's electro revival stuff.

* It's about artists and songs, not about production.

It's about songs, not artists nor production.

* A good artist 'keeps it real'.

Bullshit. Define "real". Rock'n'roll isn't any more "real" than more slickly produced melodic pop.

* Some artists are more 'real' than others.

Again, define "real".

* Good songs are timeless.

This is one hundred per cent true though, as proved by the big classical composers of the 18th and 19th century.

* At some point in the past they “got music right”.

They did, but it is possible to do again.

* Music has value to the extent that it's one person emoting sincerely.

Bullshit.

* Although the real is very important, the real is today absent

What is the real anyway? There is a lot of great music today, although it may not be found in the singles hitlists as often as it used to before the mid 80s.

Hmmm.. 300 years is not timelessness. What's the fundamental difference between 3 years and 300 years. All things must pass, buster.

Two orders of magnitude.

Emergence of a Rockist World from Causal Quantum Gravity
Authors: C. Barrow(1 and 3), G. Smith (2), G. Hongro (3) (1) New Music Institute, Copenhagen, (2) Q University, Krakow, (3) Uncut Institute, Utrecht)
Comments: 11 pages, 3 figures; some short clarifying comments added; final version to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
Report-no: SPIN-2004/05, ITP-UU-04/11
Journal-ref: Rockist.Rev.Lett. 93 (2004) 131301

Causal Dynamical Triangulations in four dimensions provide a background-independent definition of the sum over geometries in nonperturbative quantum gravity, with a positive cosmological constant. We present evidence that a macroscopic rockist world emerges from this theory dynamically.

All your slapbass are belong to Les

Outstanding! My Ig Noble will be donated for the molestation of passed-out groupies.

This is a reason why I'm not entirely miffed at myself for missing the deadline this year.

First "rock" talent show I became interested in during junior high, a combo performing "Java" won. The next year, I flattened 'em with a combo and power chord approach to miked acoustic guitar and transmogrification of "Smile A Little Smile For Me." The alternate number was America's "Sandman" played as proto-metal through a fuzztone. Or maybe that was the following year.

You paperists realize ...

Needs more salt, maybe that should be struck, for satire.