Article Response: Trust Me....

NB yes this is nothing to do with the Strokes. More Strokes special tomorrow!

Articles like this are a tremendous advantage of internet over print media. I can't see something this thoughtful and disturbing making its way into any major press. Props.

At the same point, I'm at a bit of a loss to all but the most basic context, as I suspect that this type of story relies heavily on the things which never crossed the great atlantic divide.

Speaking of which, Gloria Trevi (a king[maker] type in Mexico) has been under similar charges for some time. The twist on this -- she's known for leftie anti-gov politics too!

(rolling ash = rolling crash btw, tho i quite like as is: entropy is our fwend)

Gloria Trevi (who = rowr as far as I'm concerned, BTW) pah! some alleged "leftie" her, she carried a large banner ad for bu5h/ch3n3y on her website during thee last US election.

Jess has just pointed out, as Sterling does above, that an introductory context-paragraph might be needed here for non-UK readers. I'll try and put one in when I update again tomorrow.

I found the article to be virtually unreadable. Yet another writer confusing convolution with depth.

Really? I thought - context issues and curious "ash" typo aside - it was crystal clear.

OK re-reading "crystal clear" is an exaggeration - it leaves you to join the dots yourself a bit but I think that's a good thing. Would what I take to be the central idea - that if the pop industry and media wasn't set up so as to think of itself as automatically a con job, a game of hype and product, King would have found it much harder to get away with his abuse for so long - have been better if more starkly presented? I'm not sure it would - I like it more as a hint, I think.

Cool concept. It's like an internet bootleg mix right? Anti-pop, anti-"irony," too--how fashionably unfashionable ;) (Over in the US, however, the current model of authentic idealism is not the 60s, but the 40s)

Those mixes usually work because they're based on the clash of very well-known opposites tho. Outside of the UK, noone knows Jonathan King or Hearsay.

But what is the dominance of Yankee culture based on anyway, other than control of global trade, intellectual and otherwise? (So I'm being simplistic. I'm also not entirely wrong.)

Let 'em figure it out I say. Explanatory context just doesn't fit in something like that anyway.

k-rad: doesn't take much to be anti-gov in mexico, she of the one party for 70 years.

if the pop industry and the media wasn't set up so as to think of itself as automatically a con job, a game of hype and product, King would have found it so much harder to get away with his abuse for so long...

No, Tom, I don't think this is the central point, or the point at all. In any event, it's not true. The industry doesn't consider itself a con job, it believes that the product - music - has value: moral and artistic and political value, not just entertainment value. King, if he's as cynical as Mark says - I'd never heard of King until today, so I don't know - is the aberration, and that's why he got away with it for so long (whatever "it" is). People believed in the promise; that's why they couldn't/wouldn't comprehend the abuse (whatever it was).

So, Mark's central point? That Kym is right and King is wrong. It's that simple. We're all going to the moon. The music makes promises, and people buy the promises with the product, and when Kym insists that the promises are real and that the promises be kept, she's got an audience to support her.

A good deal of which Mark didn't say in his piece, and this is a flaw, not that he failed to say who/what King was but who/what Kym was. Because even if you've heard Kym and Hear'say, you don't know how Mark heard them, what he makes of them; and it really is Mark's job to put this into words, how he hears them. Otherwise, there's no way to know, and the only reason I have any idea is that Mark sent me his Pazz & Jop comments, where he lays it out better (comments you should consider printing, by the way, given that, since they had nothing to do with the P&J consensus, Christgau didn't excerpt any of them).

Mark's target is the industry watchers (= "the wised-up crowing world"), not the industry; but I've got a question for him, only knowing the Hear'say discourse through Mark: Maybe some of the cynics are just that: lazy cynics. But maybe some aren't, and might not these people be pissed at Kym herself for having demanded too little in the first place, and her audience for having accepted what they were given? (Of course, this doesn't mean they're right, but some may be trying to retain their idealism, not their wised-up cynical stance.)

Kogan: i disagree, but probably because I'm reading what I want into mark's article (i wonder if he will, dave q style, absent himself from the furor and fallout, just observing and learning...). The way I see it, we are all complicit, & jk isn't cynical at all but as much as anybody is dead certain he did no wrong. We bought the collective delusion & it all came with the territory. Nobody saw much wrong, or real for that matter & when Kym takes a stand we don't care either, so who rilly is the symptom and who the cause?

Oh, and good to see you back, by the way!

Sorry Frank - yes you're right - the point I got out of it is that King couldn't have flourished if people didn't want to believe that the manufactured pop industry is corrupt (in an emotional as much as an economic sense). I wasn't suggesting that King's abuse would not have been tolerated if people didn't believe that but that King would not have been a celebrity and thus not in a position to abuse - his celebrity was based on "look how I can outwit and fool pop every time with my novelty hits" I suppose.

I've said to Mark S somewhere on here that if the Hear'Say comments weren't run on the VV then I'd very happily print them - perhaps as an amalgamation with this piece..?

My first reading was that Jonathan King had been sexually abusing someone from Hear'Say ;o)

I have to say, I find it hard to take the idea that the music industry believes it has moral and artistic value seriously (musicans, maybe). It's about shifting product, surely (no moral stance implied there). Any moral and artistic values are nice but secondary to that goal.

Anyway, I disagree about the distinction between the music industry and what people want to believe about it. I read the crux of the piece to be the metaphorical equivalence between Jonathan King and the music industry: 'abusing' naive young girls (or was it boys?)/musicians (like what's her name from Hear'Say). "The open presentation, in other words, of the industry as a ruthless enjoyment- dispensing machine" is not merely King's insight, but the industry in general's (hence the existence of Pop Idol).

Industry-watchers (certain music critics? proponents of flat pomo irony? elements of audience who appreciate Pop Idol as flat pomo irony) are the enablers. Thus, at the end, the watching crowing world is equivalent to the interviewee mentioned at the beginning of the piece, putting Hear'Say girls outburst ("it was just a shameless publicity stunt") down to "the hurt and humiliation of promises broken, the resentful fury that brews of trampled dreams"

Sterling, I don't know if I am back, since any "little look" at ILM immediately turns into 5 hours, and I need to restrain myself. But anyway, what is the delusion that we're buying into? That King's music is good? (Maybe it is; I haven't heard it.) That anyone cares whether King's music is good? (They should.) Or that it doesn't matter whether King's music is good? (But it does.) And I'm not sure whether it's relevant that King derived his power from people buying his records. So did Rick James and Gloria Trevi, but that didn't make their music bogus. I guess I'm missing too many pieces of the argument, don't know enough about King. I was gathering that King had made promises to the people he abused, that he offered them stardom or something, and that Mark thinks that King thinks these people were suckers for taking them up on his offer, but that Mark doesn't think that these people were suckers. But then wouldn't that make the people like Mark complicit, not the cynics, because it's the people like Mark who think that stardom is worth it?

I think that, rather than adding an explanatory paragraph, a couple of well-placed news report hyperlinks would let the piece have its formalist cake and eat its context too.

Like this, t his and this.

And I could well be talking out of my overly-intellectualized ass, but....

What people are buying into is the delusion that they are not being deluded. Demystification is part of the product, but as an end in it itself; this produces "cynical reason," or amoral knowingness.

What the piece is rooting for is not really stardom--aka celebrity-- but rather the punk-type idealism that says "anyone can be a star!" in the Sly Stone sense, so to speak. Which is what demystification was supposed to produce.

Thus it could be read more as a parable about the evolution of the culture industry and its audience than as a literal analysis of Jonathan King and Hear'Say.

k-blimeyo!!

suddenly i see the attractions of the dave q option... (soon to be a book by robert ludlum)

true interpretation = anyone who doesn't wuv hear'say as much as mark s does is a paedophile

ok i'll also bash the vv hear'say piece into shape also: yes frank liked it but i think the end as stands is rushed and unclear (and hey i couldn't bear something i publish to be unclear)

The King link doesn't really say much about what King is supposed to have done - Mark's piece actually says more. I'm guessing Casting Couch with King refusing to come through on his end of the deal, no payoff. But anyway, I understand the parallel that Mark is making between (1) King saying, in effect, "it's all a scam, what'd they expect anyway?" (but it's not all a scam), and (2) the wags and cynics saying, "it's all a publicity stunt, what'd Kym expect anyway?" (but it's not all a stunt). But I don't understand the point that Mark's making about King's musical journey: "What King came to twig between then and his next hits (and first known abuse) was that the deliberate abolition of exactly that '60s popcult idealism - the open presentation, in other words, of the industry as a ruthless enjoyment-dispensing machine that only the superior have the gumption to grasp and run and use and not be used by - would present, and be accepted, as a refreshing, robust, unsappy vision of the mass-culture combine unmasked." Are you saying that this is how the music King made (and produced) was taken and used by the people who listened to it and bought it? This seems like a pallid reason to play a record. "What are you dancing to?" "The open presentation of the industry as a ruthless enjoyment-dispensing machine." "Wow! Smokin'! Get into the groove."

The main thing I'm missing, though, the context that we need more of, isn't really the King story or even the Kym story, it's the Mark Sinker story. Here, I've journeyed to this strange land where the word Kym is an invocation, has magic power, and I need to know more about this land, Sinker Land, how life is lived, the rituals and customs and stories, the praise songs and the putdowns and the jokes and the gossip, and the universe that is called forth or altered by this magic word Kym.

If I were Mark's editor, this is the "context" I would ask for, the context that he owes the reader.

I woulda liked more detail on contemporary cynical reason, also (for the cynical reason that I read Sloterdijk's 'Critique of Cynical Reason' book a few years ago, when Savage and Penman were bigging it up, but none of it stuck in my noggin).

edna welthorpe mrs i nevah read sloterdijk despite savage bending my ear month on month abt it ("despite" heh). i read the phrase in an academic marxoid "text" (sigh) on buffy and it connected to something much more brilliant that sterling said abt commodity fetishism, i think in reply to gage-o (forget which thread) (ie SC made me understand the concept of CF for the first time)

Frank: yes yes I'll just scribble that all up and give it you Monday, after I translate Moby-Dick into Welsh... (ie the prob here = not will but time; remember, i have actually finished and delivered like a mere eight pieces in two years, and ALL OF THEM (except the two to FT) HAVE BEEN CUT, some quite unhelpfully... the fragment has become my metier (he said poncily)

"I wanna destroy passersby" does not equal "anyone can be a star." Nor for that matter does "It gives everyone a chance. Anyone out there trying to fake it - anyone who doesn't deserve it, they're quaking in their boots." Nor does "it was a shameless publicity stunt." But, on the other hand, the significance isn't self-evident of "anyone who doesn't deserve it, they're quaking in their boots" or of "it was a shameless publicity stunt."

474 pages, in English, on the subject of "Kym in Sinker Land" would be well worth reading (728 if you count notes, contemporary reviews, bibliography, appended essays on comic vision and technique and on the parallels between Kym and The Blithedale Romance etc.). But actually, several sentences or a paragraph on the import of "doesn't deserve it" and "shameless publicity stunt" would help us to find our way in the Land of Mark.

I don't understand what you say in your language "poncily." Does it refer itself as conqueror and governor of Puerto Rico (e.g., "I will get this to you by Monday just after I have finished conquering and governing Puerto Rico and settling the question of statehood vs. territory vs. independence once and for all")?

By the way, if I were an editor in a commercial publication and I encouraged/permitted Mark to write a piece for it about Kym in Sinker Land, I would be fired for aiding and abetting "personal journalism." But that's a different issue.

taking sides: see spot run vs see spot FLY!!

"poncily" (in this case) means uses french words when english wd do

heh i have just remembered my sister's crit of a passage in my book:
R: "ok i don't follow the argument here"
M [after the usual faffing/dodging/joking etc]: "blah blah blah"
R: "but where does it say that? [specific extended defn and logical connection] isn't stated anywhere on this page!? or anywhere else come to that?! how are we supposed to guess that bit?!"
M [looks carefully, then, grinning but also serious]: "I kind of felt it was all contained in/implied by that colon"
R [beats brother over head with manuscript]

btw if someone can think of a way to pay Frank K to be my editor ALL THE TIME that would help me and assuage if not slake his flattering yet demanding readerly lusts

this is not a diss of Tom, since basically I forced his hand because i wanted to rush this piece through, sinceJ.King prog was broadcast on Monday night...

Oh, this is not a dis of Tom at all (my Momma taught me better than that). Tom's doing fine. I wish someone would pay him. I think it's great to toss ideas forth and then allow the multitudes to help us finish them, it probably produces better ideas, and there's a freedom and risk here that you don't get in the world of fully-formed pieces.

Would Sterling be willing to give us a link to his CF thoughts (or repeat them here)?

Speaking of commodities, I love Ben's phrase "the delusion that they're not deluded," but I don't know if I buy it (heh heh, he said "buy"), since I still don't what the core delusion is supposed to be. To get condensed, cryptic, fragmentary myself, I think that "commodity" and "exchange" are mundane words and don't necessarily point anywhere interesting. I simply don't buy, much less swallow, the Marxian dogma - and dogma it is, since I don't see how to derive it or justify it - that "exchange" and "use" are opposites (any more than "house" and "home" are necessarily opposites) or are mutually exclusive, so therefore I don't buy that when something is a commodity it automatically, by definition, becomes "something it is not," and so I don't think that the word "commodity" amounts to any kind of critique or demystification at all, since something's being a commodity doesn't preclude it's doing something else as well. So when particular business or social arrangements do produce bad results, these results have to be explained in reference to the particular arrangements, rather than just with the argument, "well, someone's selling something."

I don't know if any pomo ironists actually exist (if they do, I doubt that they know any better than Alanis Morissette what the word "irony" means), but I don't think they make up a big part of the audience for pop music - not big enough to keep King in cupcakes - and I doubt that their ideas are "post" anything. To say that "everything is exchange" or that "everything is superstructure" is just to buy into the false dichotomies - use-vs.-exchange, base- vs.-superstructure - that you're pretending to overthrow in the first place. And if I were to follow my own advice I'd explain what I've just written, but this post is long enough as it is.

I still don't know what the core delusion is supposed to be. Something's being a commodity doesn't preclude its (not it's) doing something else as well. (And I used to get paid to be a proofreader. Jeez!)

Kogan -- comments are on the Alicia Keys thread here, which was very interesting anyway and touched on a whole wide range of issues.

I'm not going to try and debate Marxism, since any understanding I have of it is garnered fourth or fifth hand through sub-Frankfurt School cult studs texts etc. I probably never should have read Frederic Jameson. But, at the risk of further confusing things...

What I meant by pomo ironists (don't get hung up on the pomo word) was basically the "everything in quotes"-type irony that has become dominant in the last decade. Pastiche-of-genres irony. Pop Idol irony. Blank irony. The kind of irony which Graydon Carter of Vanity recently, fatuously, declared dead. Irony that is really about nothing more than an excuse to adopt an attitude while pretending that in some sense you don't really believe it (though the margin of distance has grown almost infinitesimal.) Irony that reveals nothing but its own machination.

(To my mind, this isn't really irony at all. Once upon a time, irony was much more radical, because it exposed hypocrisy, or pointed at truth, whether political or poetic, indirectly. It had a point, essentially.)

Anyway, I agree with Frank when he says: "I don't think that the word 'commodity' amounts to any kind of critique or demystification at all, since something's being a commodity doesn't preclude it's doing something else as well."

And although this may very well have nothing to do with Mark's intentions when writing the piece, I think you could say that "the watching crowing" world believes that something's being a commodity does preclude it's doing something else as well--whereas Kym, in her role as the essence of pop ;o), doesn't.

(Somebody should do a thread titled "what is pop?" since it seems to be a semi-mystical quality round here.)

I'm not sure what the core delusion is supposed to be either. But, at least the way I originally (over-)read the piece, it has something to do with not understanding the magic invocation of the word Kym, whose "hungry, naive idealism" I connected (perhaps erroneously) with the "of the times idealism" of King's first hit, and its 60s idea of pop as "now we’re all free to be freaks, equal and lovely in our shared estrangement."

ie, watching crowing world cynically, "ironically" embraces production-process-as-end-in-itself (and is thus deluded by the belief that it is not deluded); Kym stands for some kind of personal autonomy enabled by, erm, revelation and democratization of production process.

This seems to me to be about a distinction based on particular arrangements, not the argument that well, someone's selling something, which is Fabian bollocks that I definitely don't subscribe to. What is Pop Idol about? Is it about giving people the opportunity to use their latent talents? Or is it about proving that they are merely a tool of the moguls and managers? Kym believes the former; Jonathan King the latter.

Sorry Mark...

ben, this is exactly the response i wrote it to elicit

at a time of my choosing — in consultation with the french, naturally — i shall award a bronze, silver and gold medal in the event which has come to be known as "SinXoR's Brane: WTF"

Next question: Was King's music any good?

It seems to me that a good rock critic in the late '60s-early '70s could like the Ohio Express and Alice Cooper for being refreshingly crass in comparison to the hippy-dippy bullshit of the time, and also, not incidentally, for making good music by returning to pop forms (in comparison to progressive rock formlessness). And this same critic could like the Stooges for making moral, aesthetic, and intellectual demands on the audience. And, though I don't know King's music I do notice Mark's adjective "robust," and so I could imagine liking King's music for its robust crassness (future King signees 10cc, when they were the Hotlegs, hit big with "Neanderthal Man," a paradigm of robust crassness) and nonetheless also admiring Kym Marsh for being offended by the transformation of a benefit gig into a publicity stunt - and I can nonetheless admire other publicity stunts that don't pretend to piety or beneficence. So this is why I don't follow Mark when he seems to link "a refreshing, robust, unsappy vision of the mass- culture combine unmasked" to the crowing "wised-up world"; I don't see the former attitude presupposing the latter world.

Also, while I often get mightily irritated by the p-word "ironists" that Ben talks about, at their worst they're merely precious, posturing, pretentious pseudointellectuals (and some are not nearly that bad), and they're fundamentally appreciators, not sneerers, and so I don't connect them to the crowing wised-up world, either.

So, who populates the crowing wised-up world? Journalists, basically. Commentators. Not all of them, but some of them, not all of them bad people but too willing to adopt a snide tone of voice that says "We know better, we are not fooled." And they will project onto an event whatever reading allows them to maintain their tone of voice, since maintaining the "knowing" stance is more important than gaining understanding of the world. Actually, I have nothing against the tone of voice when properly applied, since I myself like not to be fooled, and I think that much in the world deserves a good sneer. What I hate is when journalism chooses to maintain the sneer at the expense of opening itself up to experience.

I expect that the sneerers' musical taste would be neither King nor Hear'Say, nor the p-word pastiche, but whatever middlebrow quality product happens to appeal to them, be it Sleater-Kinney or Lucinda Williams or Tom Waits or Bruce Springsteen or Leftfield or the Wu- Tang Clan.

Those people who maintain that television, for example, controls the minds of everyone when in fact EVERYONE thinks television tries to control their mind.

probably the best article respone ever.

i promise i promise i promise i will finish and deliver the other half of this: which answers all questions raised (well, it will do when i think of the answers)