Okay, so 'rockism' as relative mass-market American critical term went overground last year, while its fake binary opposite 'popism' seems to be bubbling around. There's a larger conceptual point I'd like to see people talk about some more, though, which should help in preventing the said fake binary from grabbing further root -- though arguably perhaps all I conceive of is a false tripartite conception.
I've noticed and muttered elsewhere that the exact dynamic goes something like this -- there are, in fact, two separate extremes being regarded as suspicious and worthy of criticism or more, though only one of those extremes actually is, or so it often -- not always, but often -- seems. That one is what we're all familiar with, 'rockism' as philosophy of sacrosanct musty worthiness. As stereotype, it implies a limiting or -- at an extreme -- incorrect method of listening to music (or by extension enjoying anything one wishes to), and the embrace of anything one wants to enjoy, ie the rejection of the 'guilty pleasure' concept for pleasure straight up as one wants to appreciate it, is the answer. Choice over canon, in the end.
But what of the other extreme? If there was a real binary at play, I'd argue 'popism' would be getting as much dumping on as 'rockism' was. A possible stereotypical conception of it would be to say that it too is limiting or incorrect, concentrating solely on the now to the exclusion of everything else, accepting a continuum defined only by commercial success or general knowledge, ignoring anything not readily available to you as much as a McDonalds or a 7-11 might be.
What's patently obvious to me and doubtless to most commentators involved in this is that this anti-popism stance is actually axiomatic, in otherwards it hasn't been defined and trashed so specifically precisely because no-anti-rockist -- as self-defined in current discourse, as involved with the terminology and scope of the debate in a conscious way -- actually *thinks* that way. The implication, sometimes quiet and sometimes not, is that behind all attacks on rockism is a viewpoint that comes across something like this (and if it seems overly negative, recall that the whole position of talking about rockism in any form is, for almost all intents and purposes, to identify and reject):
"I hate the Rolling Stone/classic rock/No Depression/indie monasticism/undie rap/whatever view of looking at the musical world. It's limiting and not accurate about how I envision and enjoy music. But I hate the mainstream view too. Radio and TV coverage is ever more restricted and even with the Internet and mp3s most attention and focus is as locked into a 'commercial success only' way as it ever was. Millions of bands and sounds and songs and the only ones most people ever want to care or talk about are those that are most well known. That is *also* limiting and not accurate about how I envision and enjoy music -- there's plenty that is old, obscure, underground, never-going-to-be-famous, etc. which I dearly love."
Now this is both freeing -- it hits the exact range one would want, in otherwards that the world is yours -- and rhetorically interesting. If I may draw a crude and hardly universal comparison, the evolution of this point of view could be the equivalent of realizing you hated the popular trendoids in high school who seemed like empty-headed morons who accepted what was given to them, but that the folks in college and beyond you found yourself gravitating towards who shared a lot of your appreciation for what you liked in obscurer things were in the end obsessive cranks who threw out the baby with the bathwater, articulating limitations as to what was 'appropriate' for enjoyment that were just as obnoxious as the ones that the trendoids inherited from the society at large.
Crude, as I said (as for me, I got along with everyone in high school and most of my college friends weren't cranks!). But it's a partially explicit and a partially implicit articulation of a particular aesthetic *and* a particular elitism. That may seem a strong charge, because anti-rockism is seen to be anti-elitist to a large extent, that there's a dead hand in charge of the discourse and the discussion around music which is so limiting as to be hellish, and which needs dynamiting. But at the same time it also means looking at around at a world where one pats oneself on the back for not being like 'most people' -- however one conceives said mass -- and stopping at square one, that there is so much more out there that a mainstream -- whether through taste, bias, or many other factors -- doesn't know, and is content to generally ignore or mock.
A core impulse, of course, acknowledges that individual taste *is* just that -- telling people "No, Jandek is clearly superior to Britney, as you can see by this track" (and you can switch the names with the same results) means nothing if the person still disagrees with you. And of course our own tastes in one field don't necessarily mean a similar approach in all of them -- if the position I'm outlining applies to all of us here, do we have the same mindset (or rejection of extremes) for books, for films, for contemporary art, etc.? Do we have comparative equivalents in terms of depths of knowledge and critical debate for all forms of media we encounter?
But perhaps an even more key question for a critic, a writer, in print, on the web, in discussion, whatever, might be this -- if this third way I've outlined makes sense, then does that mean that there's an implicit acceptance -- possibly even a resignation -- about how music is shared with the world as a whole, and therefore that means that one's possible audience *in talking about music* is locked into that setup? That the third way is limited to being communicated only in specific fora even in an Internet age, something neither People nor Pitchfork, neither MTV nor extreme college (or Internet) radio? Yes, of course we have so many wonderful blogs, we have the Village Voice under Chuck Eddy -- his own work itself being a paradigmatic example of how the third way exists, Freaky Trigger, here of course, Entertainment Weekly has been approvingly cited, the examples are endless, but are we not in ways perhaps locked into a specific feedback loop -- at least for now? Are we moving forward and coalescing or are we setting our bounds of comfort?
Tom Ewing once spoke eloquently about a 'beachcomber' metaphor for the modern net-equipped musical enthusiast, wandering the shores and seeing what was around randomly because there was so much to see and not enough time to see it all. To extend the metaphor -- but also to create an intentional simplicity, a 'fake binary' like I describe above, for the sake of argument -- what if we were the beachcombers and noticed that there were a slew of people on the beach who all preferred to only look in one area again and again, eyes to the ground and obsessively recombing the sands, while another slew of people, the vast amount perhaps, all came to the beach only to watch the sunset and nothing else? The obsessive beachcombers never moved from their spot, never noticed anything else around them unless it fit what they were looking for, never looked up to enjoy what might be termed the 'obvious,' while the sunset-gawkers never bothered to take the time to see what other pleasures might be found on the beach, only came for the 'big fix.'
In the middle ground, say, are those in the third way, enjoying the sunsets and the 'obvious' attractions of the beach, while looking about us for what is also a joy to see right under our very feet, going up and down the beach, revisiting old spots, discovering new ones we've never tried before -- seeing sunsets from different angles, perhaps -- and while we never fully agree on anything, we're open to the possibilities. And those in the other two groups seem terribly happy doing what they're doing, after all. But have we reached a point where those in the middle ground have accepted -- maybe despaired -- of ever truly reaching across to the other two groups to show them what possibilities variety could offer them? Have we tried and tried and ultimately failed and resigned ourselves to talking among ourselves, hoping and knowing that there will be a little bit of attrition over time from either bunch to ours, that maybe someone will ask us a question and be curious, will have noticed a sign we've put up or an observation post we've constructed, but that most others will, for the most part, see us only in terms of negative difference from them -- that the sunset-gawkers wonder why in the hell we waste any time looking down and spending more time that's necessary at the beach while the obsessive beachcombers think any time not spent in doing exactly what they're doing is not simply a waste of time and stupid but completely insulting?
A rambling extension of a metaphor, perhaps. But I'm trying, however half-heartedly or clumsily, to note that on the one hand there's zilch wrong with this vision of the third way as retreating from the wars a bit, with finding its own area, and yet at the same time it's...it's that it could be more.
I'll end by quoting something that came to mind as writing this, an old post by Taylor Parkes two years back -- specifically in a British context and specifically about what he called 'people's seeming hostility to the idea of writing for a mainstream publication':
I'm old fashioned in this respect, perhaps. But I think of it like the deregulation of TV, and the million special-interest channels safe from unprepared eyes, or the way half-decent progs are shifted to BBC4 so terrestrial Beeb can fit in more DIY shows. I think this is a stone-cold Bad Thing, because I didn't grow up in an "intellectual" family, or surrounded by "intellectual" people, and I didn't go to university - I got my grounding in culture/politics/writing by picking up on interesting things in the mainstream... BBC2/Ch4, reading the Guardian, reading the old music press even. These were the seeds, I went on to water them. It's not that I don't think people are interested in "leftfield" ideas or art, it's that I don't necessarily believe they're interested in (or capable of) looking too far to find them, when they don't really know what it is they're missing.
Taylor's, I think, very understandable nostalgia on this point -- for a time when most of us would think, "Jeez, and that's all you/we had" (depending on one's age) -- addresses I think the realization that we find ourselves in a changed landscape. That it will eventually change further is the nature, surely, of history, and who knows where it will go.
But with Taylor's caveat in mind -- that it is not merely the ability to talk about something but to talk about it in a way that aims for everyone, and not merely to tell folks about 'leftfield' ideas but to show how the 'center' idea can still have a relevance and point of discussion to those on the 'leftfield,' but that it is almost a *responsibility* to do so and to go beyond the bounds of what we've had and done and found ourselves in -- has the creation/sublimation/establishing of boundary points for this third way I've described given us room to breathe or means that we have essentially opted out?
I am not looking for agreement or confirmation and would happily like to see this whole argument destroyed if there's a better way of looking it at. So in whatever way you'd like to address or elucidate or counterargue against this post, have at it.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:17 (twenty years ago)
― John (jdahlem), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:24 (twenty years ago)
― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:27 (twenty years ago)
― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:33 (twenty years ago)
― Xii (Xii), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:35 (twenty years ago)
― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:36 (twenty years ago)
As I say I haven't been following this stuff, but I'm under the impression that in simple terms (I'm afraid I don't understand some of the words used above):
Rockism: is reading The Sun and letting it tell you that Bat out of Hell is the greatest record ever made. Is that roughly along the right lines? I don't see anything in particular wrong with this. A lot of my musical education came from The Rock Handbook, which came out some time in the mid '80s. None of this will surprise Tim Hopkins. I enjoyed it though, but it is/was certainly a book full of received wisdom. Surely this gives people at least some place to start?
I wholeheartedly agree with Taylor Parkes' take on what's happened to the television, for the same, and additional reasons. No more will kids come into school going "did you see what the sexpistols/stone roses/you name it..." did on the telly last night, because they won't have seen it; it'll have been on some freaky cable channel that only one person at best was watching, which will also lessen the impact of whatever exciting pop thing happens to have gone on. Still, things change and we'll just have to look for fun elsewhere.
I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment.
― KeithW (kmw), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:42 (twenty years ago)
― sub-urbane, Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:45 (twenty years ago)
We all inhabit Knut Hamsum' The Hunger world. Adhere to our principles so the sane people can have a giggle.
Dude, I just love music.
What are you doing here then?
That said, I never *believe* in rockism/popism. It's something I don't want to be confronted with, prefer to jump from one to the next realizing there's no way a binary can explain it. Maybe because I tend to think it doesn't exist in my world. Huh? Whatever, I have Gangsta (Playgroup remix) in repeat.
― stevie nixed (stevie nixed), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:45 (twenty years ago)
But I hate the mainstream view too
Do people sayt this, Ned? I suppose they do, I just don't see it - certainly it's not an essential part of anti-rockism. I like the mainstream, more unified music culture. I'd rather chat about music with chart-reared teenagers than indie kids, for example. But again, it's not an either or, I suppose.
― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:53 (twenty years ago)
Nominating this as the ILX motto. Seconds?
― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)
― W i l l (common_person), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:57 (twenty years ago)
Months before the Sugar Cubes' first album debuted in the United States, a heavy buzz began to circulate about the group's lead singer, Björk. It was weird enough that the group hailed from Iceland, but Björk's eerie yelps, shrieks, girlish whispers and leather-lunged vocal acrobatics transported the band into another head space entirely. The word invariably used to describe Björk's synapse-bending vocals was feral. Songs such as "Motorcrash" and "Delicious Demon" were supercharged tours de force.
In concert, however, two things became abundantly clear about the Sugar Cubes: First, Björk could deliver the goods; second, the Sugar Cubes' stage act seemed dangerously close to bad performance art. On two subsequent albums, the Cubes abandoned their blunt rock attack for a trendy Euro-dance sound. Björk's vocals were lost amid the electronic clatter. People wondered if it wasn't time for Björk to light out on her own.
She did, and Debut is the utterly disappointing result. Rather than sticking to rock & roll, Debut is painfully eclectic. On "Come to Me" and "Venus as a Boy" Björk adds not just a string section but an entire orchestra from India. It's more intrusive than galvanizing. Likewise, on the jazz standard "Like Someone in Love," Björk is accompanied by a harp – not the kind Little Walter played. Only on the opening track, "Human Behavior," do we get a glimmer of what the fuss was all about.
Producer Nellee Hooper (Sinead O'Connor, Soul II Soul) has sabotaged a ferociously iconoclastic talent with a phalanx of cheap electronic gimmickry. Björk's singular skills cry out for genuine band chemistry, and instead she gets Hooper's Euro art-school schlock – and we do, too. (RS 664)
TOM GRAVES
― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Sunday, 9 January 2005 21:59 (twenty years ago)
hmmm, i figure a lot of 16 year olds watched newsnight for the first time a few weeks back on account of Pete Doherty's appearance. still i agree to an extent that the continued fragmentation and compartmentalisation of television has a 'negative' effect...but more in that it takes something away from viewers rather than providing them with 'too much choice' (also bad but more because of our own limitations). the problem if you don't have digital TV is that you want to watch TV, and you want to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm or whatever at 11am on a Sunday morning but you have to watch Vernon Jaye or John Stapleton asking people what their favourite hymn is...no choice really, other than to get up and actually do something more healthy and constructive - but who the hell wants that after a night on the lash? there's a similar problem with the way music is presented by traditional mainstream channels now and there has been for a while. the antidote appears to be the internet i.e. huge uncontrollable infoverse owned by no-one and with far too many permutations to allow true dominance by any particular force - when i can access it via the TV and dictate my own schedule of entertainment (music, TV etc.) that's perfection - tho perhaps that aspect of mass participation in entertainment programming with the subsequent discussion the next day with peers may suffer (tho communities such as ILM gain from that as many of us are looking out for the same things and that's why we're here and why we're using slsk and reading the same blogs etc.)
― Stevem On X (blueski), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)
I think the 'in my world' is the key part. We've done a fantastic job in creating our own world, mostly if not entirely via a Net-based form of communication. Has the result been an inadvertantly self-imposed restriction of ideas getting out to a wider audience, though?
I think part of the problem with a binary is the assumption that anyone fits 100% into either category i.e rockist or popist - I suppose the name has something to do with that
Thus my calling it a 'fake binary' at the start, essentially I am trying to point out the limits of the conception in order to try and make my own argument a bit clearer, and the 'third way' -- another clumsy term, perhaps -- more distinct.
Do people sayt this, Ned? I suppose they do
They might not say it, but they often do think it -- again, axiomatically perhaps, and never necessarily consistently on all fronts. But it's not that the idea is that 'the mainstream' sucks, it's the idea that the 'mainstream' would like to have you think -- explicitly perhaps but more often implicitly -- theirs is the *only* way or the only way worth considering -- much as a non-mainstream way could/would insist theirs is the only real way about it.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)
― KeithW (kmw), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:04 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:05 (twenty years ago)
hmmm, i figure a lot of 16 year olds watched newsnight for the first time a few weeks back on account of Pete Doherty's appearance.
It's quite possibly a question for another thread. I wonder how many households do still watch largely BBC1/2/ITV, or are they all just watching Kirsty's home videos and America's most trigger-happy cops on a cable channel all night long.
― KeithW (kmw), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:16 (twenty years ago)
keith -- many of the args are in the archives. this thread covers lots and lots of it i think (though I'd have to read it again sometime):
Sasha Frere-Jones I Kiss You
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:20 (twenty years ago)
Listening to this album is like being married to Britney Spears -- it's beautiful, it's magical, it's disorienting, and it's over in an hour. (ROB SHEFFIELD)
― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:21 (twenty years ago)
― KeithW (kmw), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)
At the same time, what can seem like a mono-cultural entity on the outside is not necessarily the same on the inside (ILM being a good example here!), and I wonder if any condemnations of such entities are ever made from a vantage point that is not ultimately inside such an entity anyway. When we condemn one channel we believe we are condemning its lack of difference; perhaps we really condemn its failure to reflect the specific difference that is internal to our own channel. Of course we are practically incapable of identifying the difference internal to the other channel while remaining outside of it.
This is part of the point you're making of course Ned, and I respect its validity. I think I've made some sketchy outlines previously as to how I believe an anti-rockist position (and I'm choosing not to use scare quotes only here only because it seems a bit OTT) can seek to mitigate this but I think it's a problem that requires a lot more than simply adopting a position to solve.
I'm also suspicious of the sentiments that are appealed to in nostalgic reminiscences like Parkes' above. It's not that they're wrong or unsympathetic, but that they appeal to our ultimate suspicion of how other people organise our enjoyment: concern that people's enjoyment is no longer efficiently organised by scarcity implies a level of insecurity towards other people's enjoyment generally: either we don't like the choices they make, or, (gasp) we fear that maybe they enjoy themselves more than we enjoy ourselves! I cannot accept that the answer to this inability to communicate between channels is simply to return to some concept of a universal middlebrow that we can all understand and relate to, which is ultimately an insistence on regulating enjoyment
(I do think the impulse to have some sort of shared cultural content persists - this is a partial motivation for phenomena such as the success of The Da Vinci Code I think - but this-as-it-really-exists is rarely the same as what is meant by such reminiscences)
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:27 (twenty years ago)
I tend to think the inquisitive minds who would have got their start "in culture/politics/writing by picking up on interesting things in the mainstream... BBC2/Ch4, reading the Guardian, reading the old music press" are the ones now wondering Hmm, what's this old ilx.p3r.net/freakytrigger.co.uk/[address of whatever mp3 blog] that keeps coming up when I google my favorite artists? Someone willing to invest the time/thought necessary to grapple with the various isms is probably going to find their own way to places to do that out of some internal imperative. For me a lot of musical discovery has been a matter of, well, serendipity (because I didn't grow up in an "intellectual" family, or surrounded by "intellectual" people) acted on by curiosity: it was out there and I got a glimpse of something compelling and (why? because of who I am?) I pursued it. And it's still out there now, just in different ways, and people who want to find it will.
― W i l l (common_person), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)
I cannot accept that the answer to this inability to communicate between channels is simply to return to some concept of a universal middlebrow that we can all understand and relate to, which is ultimately an insistence on regulating enjoyment
'Regulating' seems a troublesome word in this respect, though, or at least an interestingly loaded one -- while, say, it would be wrong to note that the world of shared cultural content doesn't change in response to and reaction from newer things that occur (we're hardly all still dancing to ragtime, say), at the same time the unstated insistence from that world might be summed up as such:
"This is what matters. Social approval is here."
A regulation by implication. Hey, I'm thirty-three years old and I still get people my age, older, *younger* than me asking 'how I can listen to all that weird stuff -- WHY do you listen to it?' -- not every freakin' second, obviously, but the nature of my job means I come into contact with people across a distinct age group, at the least, and sometimes the question is straightforward and sometimes it's indirect. I'm hardly losing sleep over it but it's an interesting phenomenon.
At the same time, of course, others would say, "How can you listen to that pop crap?" -- and back we go again.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:38 (twenty years ago)
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:51 (twenty years ago)
words of the year!
― Mourly Vold, Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:56 (twenty years ago)
I guess I never thought of pre-cable UK TV as being a "universal middlebrow"; something for everyone I suppose, but not by making everything appeal to the average member of the population. I appreciate we're all from different parts of the world...
I know what you mean though, in that clearly someone's in control of what goes out. I don't know that in practise more choice actually remedies this. To my eyes, it doesn't appear to; I've hardly watched TV in about ten years because there's nothing I want to watch. I did watch more when I was younger. For example, in 1990 on UK TV, there was Rapido, Snub, some program with Craig Ferguson (forgotten its name), The Chart Show, Big World Cafe all showing what was quite leftfield music; Snub is the single greatest music program that's ever been broadcast. This was when we had four channels; nowadays, I've over a hundred and the closest I can come to something similar is MTV2, which I find painfully bad.
― KeithW (kmw), Sunday, 9 January 2005 22:59 (twenty years ago)
I wonder, though. I mean, we could get into the whole question of socialization and limits in one's head in a big way, argue for a hundred years and still settle nothing. Also, if the whole idea is that the Net opens up to all as one chooses to use it -- as opposed to the ability to use it in the first place -- and if the heavenly jukebox exists, as it does in various ways, then the physical limitation is an ever decreasing factor. As you say:
a dizzying expansion of cultural channels from which to choose
To be sure. I think the interesting corollary, however, is that perhaps it renders the mainstream, in whatever putative sense, as much of a potential subculture as all the rest -- one channel, in the end, among many, and therefore of less potential import. But this is more a private reflection on my part.
Clear Channel's latest tweak in LA terms at least is 'Indie Radio,' their mainstream and heavily advertised commercial station that gets in folks like Steve Jones and Henry Rollins to play whatever the hell they want. But clearly there are preset limits *there* as well, in terms of general expectation at the least.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:06 (twenty years ago)
I agree with this, and it's why I'm always underwhelmed by most apocalyptic anti-charts arguments - it's easier to ignore the mainstream than ever, despite increases in advertising. I know the response to this is "well, why bother listening to the music in the charts at all?"... but I think that specific interest in the charts as an entity is a mostly UK phenomenon, and it's one which (again) entails a certain nostalgia for an imagined lost consensus; as far as I'm concerned, well, liking music that happens to be in the charts is not the same as liking music because it is in the charts.
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:15 (twenty years ago)
That actually is an interesting argument. Certainly I think you're generally right on a UK vs. US level -- or least would have been for a good part of my listening youth and afterwards. Recent years, I'm not sure about America -- I think the idea of getting a number one album on week of release as a standard is strong and has been especially so since SoundScan provided a clearer if not perfect picture of things, though we're not talking about albums but singles here (or are we talking about both?) A slightly parallel situation in US terms might be the crushing emphasis on number one box office debuts (though the ever stronger case is being made that what ultimately matters is the DVD sale).
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:21 (twenty years ago)
Now here is a motto. :-)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:22 (twenty years ago)
Obviously this is not a negative reflection on them or their capacity to enjoy art - most people I know like that may only own 15 CDs or whatever, but love them just as much as I love my hundreds of CDs.
― The Lex (The Lex), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:24 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:28 (twenty years ago)
― The Lex (The Lex), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:32 (twenty years ago)
― tremendoid (tremendoid), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:44 (twenty years ago)
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 9 January 2005 23:45 (twenty years ago)
― deej., Monday, 10 January 2005 00:04 (twenty years ago)
― deej., Monday, 10 January 2005 00:06 (twenty years ago)
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 10 January 2005 00:46 (twenty years ago)
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 10 January 2005 01:27 (twenty years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 10 January 2005 02:49 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 10 January 2005 02:57 (twenty years ago)
The use of the words rock and pop in these discussions get us into all sorts of semantic trouble. It's like trying to discuss Warhol's soup can paintings and ending up in an argument about people who eat Campbell's soup vs. "elitist" food snobs.
BTW I like the points Gypsy makes re: politics.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 10 January 2005 03:37 (twenty years ago)
What I mean, is to take Ned's beachcomber analogy, there's nothing to say that the people combing a small region in great detail will find any less quality music, or get less enjoyment out of their search, than those who cast their net wider, but shallower. It's exactly the same debate as the reynolds-prompted purists vs dilettantes issue i.e. a non-debate.
What is significant, however, is what it means to the identity of the individuals concerned that they approach music in this away. As pointed out above, the ones who do anything other than watch the sunset are people who define themselves as having a great interest in music.
For a long time music has been a key step in the formation of adolescent identity with teenagers using music as a way of forming a group identity on their way to gaining an individual one. For those who continue to shape their identity through music beyond adolescence, their relationship to music necessarily grows more complex, therefore we can start inventing all these terms like rockist etc. But none of it really has anything to do with music - it's far more to do with identity and outlook.
To place this in broader social context - identity used to be defined far more rigidly by geography and occupation. Individuals had far less freedom to "define themselves" but would be hemmed in by their accent or parenthood or just the place they lived in (cf TP). Now this dynamic still exists, but to a far lesser extent. And what tools like the internet and mobile phones allow is the building of a community that is a community of intellectual proximity, not physical proximity. cf ILM which is proof that the rockists, the popists, the people who pore over one patch of sand and those that roam the whole beach are perfectly capable of creating a community that transcends all those boundaries.
And this goes hand in hand with the greater availability of music through various channels - there's very little point in defining your identity through obscure indie bands if anyone can access the msuic through soulseek.
So, I think just as the days of the big youth culture "movement" are dead, so is the idea of critical juggernauts like "rockism". It's going to end up much more like classical music where people just defend what they like without a grand theory to surround it (spoken with no knowledge whatsoever of classical music criticism, just a hunch).
― Jacob (Jacob), Monday, 10 January 2005 04:53 (twenty years ago)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521379776/qid=1105331096/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-4566410-6312007
which is much more concerned with exploring and explicating the social functions of classical music, period. At the time, that engagement with the so-called classical as the only sort of music worth discussing in lofty philosophical terms sort of aggravated me (and therefore why I probably didn't do so well in the class, as it was led by a very seriously classically-trained cellist) (tho a nice guy, don't get me wrong - a lot of my foibles and mistakes in the class were due to being a sophomore at the time: smoking too much pot and goofing off too much) (and my final paper on Meltzer's Aesthetics of Rock was an unfortunate joke). But this maybe where, as a rock fan (among other musics, obv.), I bristle at the term rockism: the kind of preoccupation with music as a conduit for only a certain set of social functions, the idea that music must "mean something" or stay true to a certain limited set of rules, is not and never has been limited to rock. And we all acknowledge this - ie. aforementioned techno fans with "rockist" bents - and yet we still use this term. So on a certain level that's annoying.
But going back to my main thought, it was that all sorts of music play all sorts of different, diverse and disparate social functions. They can't not be that way, in a sense. To take one example, let's think about how the vast number of musical styles in the world that are associated with and/or part of a religious experience. Even before you get to specifics like instrumentation, programmatics, rhythm, the actual stuff of music, it's far to say that, for example, the religious music of an indigenous tribe of relatively isolated people in, say, Papua New Guinea, developed through rituals over hundreds of years is obviously going to have a different function than the religious music of a less isolated group (pick any one group that you like - say African-American religious music over the past 400 years, for one example), even if at the core we're discussing two similar types of function (ie. religious). So not to get all relativist or anything, but to me (and I can only really speak for me here, obv.), the social function stuff isn't really that important as the musical stuff. It's interesting, sure, to contrast, but I think sometimes there's a real tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater ie. we get stuck talking solely about social function and nothing else.
Which is not to say that social function(s) can or should be removed from a discussion of or an aspect of music in any way. Clearly, that's my point: music is the realm of the social, perhaps in a way that performs differently from any other human art form. But social structures being what they are, of course in any discussion of human activity we're destined to get a l'il knee-jerk. Perhaps even more so, given that it's music we're discussing, which as part of its overall social function across pretty much all human cultures is one of identification.
So, for instance, it was really interesting to me yesterday to read the taking sides thread about the arcade fire and the fiery furnaces (two bands that I have not knowingly heard a note by, nor have made any attempt to seek out) because Matt Perpetua brought up this very knee-jerk response to what he deems "emo" music "about feewings." I found this a very peculiar criticism because although I suspect I too have little time for predominantly American indie rock bands circa now who employ a sort of performative "emotionalism" where the entire music rests on how believable the listener can find such "emotionalism" (a funny conceit - or lack of conceit, maybe - if there ever was one, given the entire idea of performance in western culture), I have even less time for people who are going to argue one sort of social function over the other. To put it simply, I like to dance, I like to be contemplative, I like to lose my mind, I like to spend time figuring things out, I like to get wasted, I like to stay sober, I like all sorts of different experiences in my life - even the bad ones. I can't imagine wanting to listen solely to a kind of music that is strictly "joy"-based (however nebulous that might be - certainly a lot of religious music is "joycore" in a much different way than anything championed on Mr. Perpetua's blog) (btw I'm not trying to beat up on him, just using him as an example, I could probably use myself as an example as well) any more than I'd want to listen solely to sad, weepy shit! So, to criticize a music solely on its social function - ie. what I perceive the arcade fire to be about (without the benefit of knowing, obv., since I haven't heard the damn album) - is almost kinda pointless. It is no different from the rockist strawman who sez "all dance music is garbage, it expresses nothing other than its own selfish hedonism" (shades of Alan Keyes?). Obviously such notions are ridiculous. Sadly, because of our social conditioning, it's really easy to fall into this way of thinking. I'm sure I do it all the time.
Now to just comment on a few things from upthread:
As stereotype, it implies a limiting or -- at an extreme -- incorrect method of listening to music (or by extension enjoying anything one wishes to), and the embrace of anything one wants to enjoy, ie the rejection of the 'guilty pleasure' concept for pleasure straight up as one wants to appreciate it, is the answer.
yeah, this is sort of what I'm getting at, Ned. Music (and even more significantly, music theory/thinking at this point post-Cage) is so obviously about the act of listening - at least on the larger scale since not every person with ears plays music, but they certainly listen. Which again is not to be relativist, but to say that listening holds, in a sense, the most priviledged action possible in any sort of music.
I'm suggesting that there's more to the reason we use the word "rock" in "rock"ist than just that lots of rockists happen to like rock; rockism is a modernist value system that rose with a dialogue around rock music.
See I'm not sure I agree with this. I think this modernist value system, as you call it, is actually pre-modern, more Western European classical, and has very little to do with rock music at all, other than the fact that some rock music fans have adopted it as a way of thinking. And given that said fans are, afterall, a part of the Western European classical way of thinking (ie. eras don't end overnight, they linger, despite what Kuhn tells us), it's not that surprising. But call it like it is, please, and blame Beethoven or somebody.
It's more pop in the sense of pop-art: irony, kitsch, surface, and the merging of high and low. When lingering rockists try to invoke this strawman of the kneejerk, mainstream "popist" I think they are totally missing the point. The rules of modernism have been so completely absorbed into our culture that mainstream taste is synonymous with rockism.
I don't know if I agree with this, either. There seem to be a fair amount of people who rail against rockism (to a certain degree I'd count the big game-busting Sunday NY Times article in this camp) that aren't about your definition of pop in terms of pop-art but in terms of populism. And let's not pretend that Andy Warhol, to take the most famous example, was a populist.
In closing, I see where a more pop-oriented stance is about politics and populism, as posited upthread, but I do think there are certain contradictions in that stance that are not talked about; elephants in the chat room, so to speak. And I don't point them out to say "nyah nyah look at you ya big hypocrite" but to say instead "these contradictions are here, they might be something interesting to play with." Pop music is, for want of getting all Godspeed on y'all, part and parcel of the military-industrial complex of the so-called "industrialized" world, and it would be facile to say that it's all about "giving the people what they want." Clearly it's more complicated than that.
― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 10 January 2005 05:12 (twenty years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 10 January 2005 05:17 (twenty years ago)
― captain between, Monday, 10 January 2005 05:35 (twenty years ago)
In what ways do you think rock music upholds classical values? Doesn't rockist thinking value novelty, innovation, revolution and upsetting the status quo? Doesn't rock music privilege primal, instinctual self-expression over beauty, formalism and tradition?
There seem to be a fair amount of people who rail against rockism (to a certain degree I'd count the big game-busting Sunday NY Times article in this camp) that aren't about your definition of pop in terms of pop-art but in terms of populism. And let's not pretend that Andy Warhol, to take the most famous example, was a populist.
I think you're misreading the NY Times article and mistaking the territory for the map so to speak. For example, using Aguilera as an illustration of a point is not necessarily a simple populist pose. You argue that Warhol was no populist and yet I can't help but feel that it's the mere appearance of the name Aguilera in the Times article (equivalent to the appearance of Marilyn in a Warhol painting) that leads you to read the argument as a populist stance.
Pop music is, for want of getting all Godspeed on y'all, part and parcel of the military-industrial complex of the so-called "industrialized" world, and it would be facile to say that it's all about "giving the people what they want." Clearly it's more complicated than that.
Of course it's complicated which is the whole point of the anti-rockist critique. It's the rockist view which is naively black-and-white. Who is a bigger part of the military-industrial complex: a corporate tool like Christina Aguilera or leftist street fighters like the Clash (signed to a major corporate record label)? Personally I'm a silly Clash fan and can't bother to give a second thought to Aguilera. But I have to be honest with myself and realize that my point of view is not more ideologically pure or politically progressive because I place one above the other (an argument I might have made in the past).
Coming to terms with this doesn't mean that I'm suddenly a knee-jerk pop(ul)ist and I simply flip my judgements of those two artists (Xtina good, Clash bad). It just means that I can reject critical prejudices, recognize how they might influence my own tastes and open myself up to new music that I had previously ignored. As a music fan I welcome this change of position because contrary to the idea stated upthread, I believe that there is TOO MUCH time to fill with music and not enough great music left waiting to be discovered.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 10 January 2005 07:58 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 10 January 2005 13:41 (twenty years ago)
Rock music in and of itself does not uphold classical values.
Doesn't rockist thinking value novelty, innovation, revolution and upsetting the status quo?
No, if it did we wouldn't have this huge ongoing debate about it. Because the anti-rockists certainly couch their side under the "novelty, innovation, revolution and upsetting the status quo" side, with the rockist way of thinking being the status quo. At least, that's how I read it.
Doesn't rock music privilege primal, instinctual self-expression over beauty, formalism and tradition?
Yeah, generally. That's why rockism is a bad term because it's so at odds with what rock music actually is, vis-a-vis musically. Socially, though, is perhaps a different story.
You argue that Warhol was no populist and yet I can't help but feel that it's the mere appearance of the name Aguilera in the Times article (equivalent to the appearance of Marilyn in a Warhol painting) that leads you to read the argument as a populist stance.
Actually I was bringing up populism because it was brought up earlier in the thread as a different justification for what for lack of a better term we'll call popist (or maybe anti-rockist?) thinking than actual pop-art strategies, which certainly were not populist, at least in my reading. Warhol was probably the last major populist artist in the popular definition of the word, but aside from occasional subject matter (he did more than screen Elvis, Marilyn and soup cans - he also screened gay sex, electric chairs, disasters; and "produced" the Velvet Underground, after all) there was nothing inherently populist about his work at all. He wasn't Norman Rockwell (which of course isn't an indictment of either Warhol or Rockwell, just saying there's a difference).
Yeah I agree with this. The problem is there's too much simplification on both sides of the debate, whether "rockist" or "popist/anti-rockist." So I think either new terms need to be invented, or maybe the debate's pointless at this point, I dunno.
― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 10 January 2005 16:47 (twenty years ago)
― deej., Monday, 10 January 2005 16:52 (twenty years ago)
― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 10 January 2005 16:55 (twenty years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 10 January 2005 16:57 (twenty years ago)
In rock criticism, "rockism" refers to the fetishization of the real over the fake. This binarism manifests itself in discourse in a myriad of ways: authentic vs. inauthentic, acoustic vs. digital, rooty vs. rootless, intuitive vs. intellectual, American vs. European, rural vs. urban, black vs. white, Stones vs. Beatles, sincerity vs. irony, rock vs. pop, rap vs. R&B, working class vs. bourgeoisie, tradition vs. innovation, the canon vs. the ephemeral, the singles vs. the album, the essential vs. the contingent, etc.
― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:02 (twenty years ago)
x-post
Why not just call "rockism" old-fashioned "binarism" and be done with it? (Even though in 90% of cases where "binarism" is invoked it's simply shorthand for "I'm not really just what's going on here, am not really curious enough to explore it any further than that, and will instead resort to this half-baked semiotic construct in lieu of doing more serious heavy lifting.")
― rasheed wallace (rasheed wallace), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:08 (twenty years ago)
― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:10 (twenty years ago)
There are philosophical differences of people in the 6 Music demographic 25 to 44 age group that can be split into two opposing systems:
The EstablishmentsThose that have a narrow fixed view of music i.e they are content to stick to what they know i.e Word/ Mojo/ Uncut /Q magazine approach - big names, familar favourite artists, the same classic albums, famous songs, a conservative approach to seeking out unfamiliar sounds. These people tend to favour traditional structured rock music.
[When I refer to Mojo/ Uncut I am refering to the core artists that are constantly on the front covers]
Vs
The ExperimentalistsThose that take an experimental view of music i.e People that are looking for new sounds, new contexts, want to be challenged by music, like their music esoteric/ experimental/ extreme/ engaging / evocative etc.
― DJ Martian (djmartian), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:11 (twenty years ago)
Not if the justification for approval in both cases is "because they're real, man" or something like that. But here I am arguing against rockism being a specious term when I'm not really sure that's a tenable position. hstencil is right that new, more specific terms are probably the only way to move on. Perhaps the key ism is neologism.
― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:44 (twenty years ago)
― rasheed wallace (rasheed wallace), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:57 (twenty years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Saturday, 22 January 2005 08:22 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 22 January 2005 08:29 (twenty years ago)
Because the anti-rockists certainly couch their side under the "novelty, innovation, revolution and upsetting the status quo" side, with the rockist way of thinking being the status quo. At least, that's how I read it.
Novelty & innovation = "Band X sucks because they sound just like bands Y & Z. Band Z did it first and is therefore the only one worthy to enter the canon."
Revolution & anti-status quo = "Band X is important because they changed everything. When everyone was doing Y, they came along and blew everyone's mind by doing Z. Therefore all of those groups doing Y before band X came around are totally irrelevant."
Do anti-rockists claim that house music is great because each new track that comes out is so innovative? No, it's the beat, the sounds, the way it fucks with your head and makes you move your body. The rockist would say "all of that techno, disco stuff sounds the same" which is beside the point.
The only status quo that the anti-rockist is concerned with attacking is that of the rockist critical establishment. Musically an anti-rockist is not concerned with innovation or originality which are thouroughly modernist (definately not classical) ideals.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Saturday, 22 January 2005 09:03 (twenty years ago)
― hstencil (hstencil), Saturday, 22 January 2005 09:13 (twenty years ago)
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Saturday, 22 January 2005 09:23 (twenty years ago)
The way around this is simply to concentrate on discussing the music we think is good and interesting without getting sucked into the idea of defending it. I've got so tired of trying to explain to people the logical fallacies in their rockist assumptions that I can't be arsed to argue any more. You either come to understand the flaws in your thinking or you don't. The best tactic seems to be to continue the conversation with people who understand. As far as critical discourse is concerned I reckon any strategy that avoids ideals of underlying value is fair game. The Cahiers du Cinema model seems an obvious template to me - focussing on formal and contextual aspects of music without worrying about canons and history. I thought some time ago about a critical practice that would involve the specifics of where and how music is received, accepting that hearing a tune in a shop or a movie or a club is a different process that actually affects the way we respond, avoiding concrete judgements about the value of an artist or a song in an abstract setting, concentrating on process and reception and dumping all the Platonic crap that we still too easily fall into.
― noodle vague (noodle vague), Saturday, 22 January 2005 13:40 (twenty years ago)
...listening holds, in a sense, the most priviledged action possible in any sort of music.
but maybe I'm a neo-Rockist? I dunno.
― hstencil (hstencil), Saturday, 22 January 2005 17:57 (twenty years ago)
― noodle vague (noodle vague), Saturday, 22 January 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)
This seems like the most important point in the thread to me. The people involved in this debate (on this board and elsewhere) seem helpless to avoid using the term 'rockism' — despite its inappropriateness — in the discourse; but this phrase can only confuse those who are just getting interested, or are approaching the debate from other musical avenues (pop v. classical, jazz v. pop, jazz v. rock, electronic v. acoustic, etc.). This will only lead to infinite cases of semantic confusion.
That is, just as there is nothing exclusively romantic about romanticism, or exclusively modern about modernism, the connotations of 'modern' and 'romantic' confuse and color that debate. The more we allow the term 'rockism' to take hold, the more confusing this debate will get. The debate exists on many axes: authentic v. fake, sunset watcher v. beachcomber, revolutionary v. traditionalist, emotional v. intellectual, etc.
Each of those axes seems binary, but allows for plenty of shades of gray. Just as Democrats often decry Greens for being "too liberal", "too utopian", the same is true of any of these false binaries.
― polyphonic (polyphonic), Saturday, 22 January 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)
― noodle vague (noodle vague), Saturday, 22 January 2005 20:53 (twenty years ago)
Why not make a new meaning that is at least marginally appropriate?
― polyphonic (polyphonic), Saturday, 22 January 2005 20:54 (twenty years ago)
― polyphonic (polyphonic), Saturday, 22 January 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)
― noodle vague (noodle vague), Saturday, 22 January 2005 20:56 (twenty years ago)
― polyphonic (polyphonic), Saturday, 22 January 2005 21:03 (twenty years ago)
― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Saturday, 22 January 2005 21:38 (twenty years ago)
― Masked Gazza, Saturday, 22 January 2005 22:05 (twenty years ago)
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-ca-pop27-2008jul27,0,10460.story
― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 23:01 (sixteen years ago)
Steinski "an obscure hip-hop-based sound artist."
I'd be surprised if anyone under 40 is buying that compilation.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Thursday, 31 July 2008 10:04 (sixteen years ago)
Pop music critics embrace the mainstream The job used to require ego and a disdain of the establishment. Ego remains but many now embrace the mainstream. Is it good? They all have opinions. By Ann Powers Times Pop Music Critic
July 27, 2008
SHAMELESSNESS IS not a problem for pop critics. Quite the opposite: It's a daily practice. Invented by rebel newspaper staffers (most notably, Ralph J. Gleason at the San Francisco Chronicle) who stayed out late and never came into the office, codified by freaks and attitudinal New Journalists, the pursuit of passionate thought about pop music rose up as a challenge to taste hierarchies, and has remained a pugilistic, exhibitionist business throughout pop's own evolution.
Here's my friend Robert Christgau, one of the genre's founding troublemakers, on the subject, from a paper he gave at the 2006 Experience Music Project Pop Conference in Seattle (an annual music writers gathering organized by my husband, Eric Weisbard). The theme that year was, in fact, guilty pleasures. "Rock criticism was conceived as a reproach to the idea of guilty pleasure," Christgau wrote. "In fact, 'reproach' and 'conceive' are putting it too politely. 'Reproach' makes it sound as if we had the upper hand, so make it 'attack.' It was a kick in the pants, a fart in the face, a full fungu."
I'm not entirely certain what a "full fungu" is (well, sound it out), but I'm sure I've been on the other end of many, not only from my music scribe colleagues, but from readers, musicians, industry types and anyone else who takes a whack at the determinedly amateur pastime.
Insults, rejections of others' authority, bratty assertions of superior knowledge and even threats of physical violence are the stuff of which pop criticism is made. (One of the great rock-critical works is " James Taylor Marked for Death," by Lester Bangs.) The best also offers loving appreciation and profound insights about how music creates and collides with our everyday realities. Yet like the music it celebrates, made for dancing and kissing and, yes, getting out your aggressions, pop criticism needs that edge of self-aggrandizement to really sing.
It gained its footing, as Christgau noted in his talk, as a slap at the establishment, at publications such as the hippie homestead Rolling Stone and the rawker outpost Creem. Contrarians such as the great Ellen Willis used it to sneak the counterculture into staid rags like the New Yorker. But as classic rock and soul transformed into the language of the baby-boomer establishment, pop criticism had to get bratty again -- and again.
Punks came around and spat at their Woodstock-worshiping elders; they evolved into indie rockers, a new establishment. Hip-hop produced a separate critical stream complete with its own brand of purists. This 1980s generation has lately been taken down by younger "poptimists," who argue that lovers of underground rock are elitists for not embracing the more multicultural mainstream. If you want a summation of this kerfuffle, check out Jody Rosen's 2006 Slate magazine piece "The Perils of Poptimism," then read Carl Wilson's wonderful small book on Celine Dion, "Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste."
New sub-groups emerge
AS ANYONE who's read my voluminous writings on " American Idol" knows, I'm happy the tide has turned toward poptimism. Not only does it widen the field for us music-obsessed chin-scratchers, it has allowed for important new discussions about race, class and gender, those old staple subjects of music writing.
But poptimism has also taken the habitual tussling among music writers to a whole new level. Old canons are ripped down and new ones slapped up on a daily basis. In this process, amassing guilty pleasures is the new standard of hipness. Fascinating new subgroups have emerged, such as disco snobs and hair-metal purists. At the 2006 Pop Conference, for example, subjects lovingly considered included the Monkees, Leonard Nimoy and cartoon band Jem & the Holograms -- and that was all on one panel!
This atmosphere of openness is mostly fantastic, but characteristically, pop critics have found a way to turn it confrontational. Prefer Ray LaMontagne to Toby Keith? You're an NPR-listening square! Irritated by T-Pain? You're a Luddite! Sick of Fergie? You're sexist! And just as many critics take the opposite stance, with equal righteous vigor.
In the past, our debates were sort of like sumo-style tummy bashes -- a young Turk would stand up to the old guard and good-naturedly push his opponent out of the ring. Now, it's more like the scrum in rugby. Everybody pushes against everybody else, and we move forward in a huge blob of vehement opinion and mutual judgment.
The sports metaphor is deliberate. For all of its anti-authoritarianism, pop criticism remains, for most, a carefully scored game, rooted in hierarchical structures like best-of lists and star ratings. Its devotees may have followed the route of shamelessness into wide-open vistas, but they still feel compelled to push their own particular pleasures, guilty or otherwise, as the best. Some would say that's the duty of a critic. Others might suggest it's kind of macho. I think it's amusing, the way the process has created a new form of reproach -- shame on those who aren't shameless enough.
Meanwhile, in the corners and getting stronger every day is a new generation whose tastes might be veering back toward esoteric side streams. The three highest-scored new releases on the reviews aggregator Metacritic.com are by Steinski, Harvey Milk and Fleet Foxes: an obscure hip-hop-based sound artist, a heavy experimental rock band, and a pastoral folk-rock group known for highly intricate harmonies. Not exactly Jessica Simpson, but the kids love 'em. Who knows what their generation's guilty pleasures will be?
― m coleman, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:26 (sixteen years ago)
Perhaps you might like to comment on the article instead of pointlessly reproducing it.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:28 (sixteen years ago)
-- xhuxk, Thursday, 31 July 2008 00:01 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Link
-- Dingbod Kesterson, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:04 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link
-- m coleman, Thursday, 31 July 2008 12:26 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
-- Dingbod Kesterson, Thursday, 31 July 2008 12:28 (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Link
― The stickman from the hilarious "xkcd" comics, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:29 (sixteen years ago)
i'd like somebody to explain this article to me!
― m coleman, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:30 (sixteen years ago)
I fell into a coma after "my friend Robert Christgau."
― Dingbod Kesterson, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:32 (sixteen years ago)
I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment. I suspect I don't really understand what's being discussed, but I have very little else to do right now and felt like making some sort of comment.
― onimo, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:32 (sixteen years ago)
this might have something to do with it
― m coleman, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:36 (sixteen years ago)
ILX summed up
― The stickman from the hilarious "xkcd" comics, Thursday, 31 July 2008 11:38 (sixteen years ago)
race, class and gender, those old staple subjects of music writing.
aka boilerplate
― m coleman, Thursday, 31 July 2008 12:42 (sixteen years ago)
I thought it was part of a "guilty pleasures" batch of essays put in place of the usual set of Calendar II music & entertainment pieces on Sunday. The Times retitled them "shameless pleasures" -- "guilty" apparently being rendered obsolete, according to the first piece explaining the reason for the theme. Happily, it implied no one need feel guilty about their pleasures ever again. It's all good!
In terms of firings, the big names at the Times haven't been touched although a number of notable prize-winners and highly regarded reporters have taken buyouts and lit out for greener pastures. One of my friends opted for a buyout in May.
The size of the weekday paper has been cut down quite a bit from a year ago. Sports is considerably lighter. Entertainment reporting seems to have grown a bit.
― Gorge, Thursday, 31 July 2008 22:09 (sixteen years ago)
LA Times Book Review RIP
― m coleman, Friday, 1 August 2008 00:12 (sixteen years ago)