matt friedberger encapsulates why i dont like his music

anyways lets focus on FF's self-fulfilling prophecy that rock music isn;'t music

-- everything (everything196...), August 27th, 2006.

yeah, homeboy needs to stop al the violene at his shows or else sooner o later he'll be playing pitbull fights.

its not that i dont admire matts ambition but its jnust diametrically opposed to how i think about music

either we debate whether rock is more suited to conveying lyrical messages, as mr friedberger professes, whether its role as music qua music is now somehow over, and how the FF do or do not fit into this framework, or we turn this into a noise board styled picture thread

the hell do these two things mean? feels like gibberish.

Matt Friedberger: There's nothing less post-punk than a wah-wah pedal. Maybe...

Splendid: Synthesizer? Because you guys use that, too?

Matt Friedberger: But a lot of people use the synthesizer. Those PiL records had synthesizer. Metal Box did. And Devo, of course. I don't think I was influenced by them, but maybe I was. I saw a band called Brainiac a lot living in the Midwest. They had this sort of Touch and Go Devoism and a synthesizer. They were definitely a Nation of Ulysses wannabe band. But they had a synthesizer.

anyway, the claim of the first part is: "rock music is actually a sufficiently antiquated form that any attempt to make music that 'just rocks' is basically pastiche." this is entirely correct.

yeah, i was gonna say! he uses it a lot!

This strikes me as just another "rock is dead" statement. I don't buy it.

This strikes me as just another "rock is dead" statement. I don't buy it.

I think it's accurate, sort of obvious, and not equivalent to saying "rock is dead," which strikes me as meaningless. He doesn't seem to be saying that it's not possible to make music that takes rock to a new place, but rather that "any attempt to make music that 'just rocks' is basically pastiche." This is true, and it's what bar bands influenced by Led Zeppelin don't understand.

This strikes me as just another "rock is dead" statement. I don't buy it.

I think it's accurate, sort of obvious, and not equivalent to saying "rock is dead," which strikes me as meaningless. He doesn't seem to be saying that it's not possible to make music that takes rock to a new place, but rather that "any attempt to make music that 'just rocks' is basically pastiche." This is true, and it's what bar bands influenced by Led Zeppelin and AC/DC don't understand.

It is not equivalent to the statement that rock is dead, but it comes from a similar place.

Well, I don't know what you mean by rock music, but you still seem to be missing the point. He's saying that you can't "just rock" without being pastiche. That makes a lot of sense to me. You can make new and interesting music that will fall under the umbrella of "rock music," but you have to do more than "just rock."

People still write "classical" music, but writing the way Mozart did is obviously pastiche because it's not the 18th century anymore.

I know what pastiche means. Sounding like Chuck Berry or Led Zeppelin or AC/DC or Black Sabbath (or Mozart) in 2006 is pretty much the definition of pastiche. That seems to be what he was getting at when he said "music that 'just rocks.'" I know a lot of people whose philosophy is exactly that. In a sense, it's a shame; if they had been born earlier, they could've done the same thing and it would've been cool and cutting edge. But there's a difference between trying to synthesize the sounds of those bands and basically regurgitating them, which is what they end up doing.

also "I saw a band called Brainiac a lot living in the Midwest...They were definitely a Nation of Ulysses wannabe band. But they had a synthesizer." = UH

Ok, then you're just... making shit up and derailing the conversation? Nowhere did I imply that bar bands trying to steal moves from Led Zep and AC/DC = Led Zep and AC/DC. And whether or not those bands are good at copying Led Zep and AC/DC is completely irrelevant to the point in question, which is that it's basically impossible to "just rock," to rock for the sake of rocking, in 2006 without being pastiche.

*****

MF: Winter Women, its sound, it's a miracle how bad it sounds! In the particular way they sound bad, it's really a miracle, the recording. I worked hard and Bill Skibbe, the engineer, worked hard to make them sound like that.

Pitchfork: So you're proud of how bad they sound?

MF: By a "bad" sound, I mean an unmusical sound, because rock music is not about musical things. Rock music is very old now, so it's not even about good rock music sounds any more, obviously. Some people will be amused by those choices and some people won't have any use for them-- even people who would agree with that as a general statement.
****

I think he's saying "rock music now sounds too much like actual music, which I think it should not, so I am trying to make something that sounds less like music, because that would be more in the spirit of rock music."

You can make new and interesting music that will fall under the umbrella of "rock music," but you have to do more than "just rock"...it's basically impossible to "just rock," to rock for the sake of rocking, in 2006 without being pastiche.

These things still are not true, however.

"You can make new and interesting music that will fall under the umbrella of "rock music," but you have to do more than "just rock"

...is too easily read as indie muso advocacy, IMO. Which is to say that "indie rock" could stand remembering that "rock" is in its nature a bit more.

But postmodernism doesn't necessarily result in pastiche. This local band from where I live in San Diego, the Power Chords - see if you think they're "pastiche."

http://www.myspace.com/thepowerchords

Very stylized, but I don't know as that I'd call it pastiche. And they're just about power popping. Which is close to being "just about rocking." I'd like to see a band who wanted to be like Brownsville Station and were able to similarly pull it off without feeling like a pastiche.

Tim, I feel like you're playing fast and loose with definitions. "Rock music" as a contemporary genre does not mean the same thing as "rock music" did in past decades. Just because we use the same word doesn't mean we're talking about the same sound. This seems to me to be both good and expected; we want genres to advance, we want bands to build on what's come before rather than just repeating it.

It's exactly the same with classical music. We use the same broad term for Mozart and Stravinsky, but they sound wildly different. If Stravinsky had done things just like Mozart, it would've been pastiche.

Again, it seems like an obvious point: if you're not even trying to bring something new to the table, it's not worthwhile. You can't be Led Zeppelin in 2006 because Led Zeppelin was already Led Zeppelin. I feel like you're bringing extra baggage into the discussion with some kind of defensiveness about the use of the term "rock" and whether it's alive or dead or on vacation. I don't really care, and I think the terminology is seriously impeding discussion; I just don't want to hear bands thinking they can get by on being loud and playing blues-rock solos because that was interesting and fresh 30 years ago.

uhh no. hes saying that rock's function now is not musical, not a matter of arranging melody, harmony, and timbre into something artistic; rather it functions as a means of delivering a story, it is subservient to lyrical and other extra-musical associations such as making you feel like you're fifteen listening to a shitty transistor radio = presumably what he is going for (cf : "I wanted the Winter Women record to come out in the summer, so I wanted AM radio songs. They're supposed to sound-- especially the first half of the record-- like you're playing them in a car with the windows down. Like "Up the River”-- that’s supposed to sound like it’s coming out of one radio speaker. It sounds very muffled. We tried very hard to make it sound like you can't even hear the song very well.

Winter Women, its sound, it's a miracle how bad it sounds! In the particular way they sound bad, it's really a miracle, the recording. I worked hard and Bill Skibbe, the engineer, worked hard to make them sound like that.")

so obviously this is a idealist versus postmodernist argument: do we make music naively (as maybe mr friedberger would say) striving to evoke some sort of ideal 'beauty' or do we make it to reflect and reference the arbitrary associations (eg listening to am car radio in the summer) that we humans thrive on? i think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, and why i dont like ff is because i feel like he feels that by emphasizing the latter he can completely ignore the former, which makes my stomach churn

additional notes: rock obv /= zeppelin/berry bluesboogie with loud drums, and brainiac>NOU

Yeah, that's not all rock is anymore, but taken in context that seemed to be what he was talking about; saying that rock has been around long enough so that anyone who wants to "just rock" is basically a pastiche artist.

But he still said 'By a "bad" sound, I mean an unmusical sound, because rock music is not about musical things' and I don't really see a correlation between "bad sound" and "subservient to the lyrics."

We use the same broad term for Mozart and Stravinsky, but they sound wildly different. If Stravinsky had done things just like Mozart, it would've been pastiche. Again, it seems like an obvious point: if you're not even trying to bring something new to the table, it's not worthwhile.

Stravinsky spent much of his career as a neo-classicist, of course! But then, that IS "bringing something new to the table" in the same way that postmodern use of stylistic readymades brings something new to the table.

I feel like you're bringing extra baggage into the discussion with some kind of defensiveness about the use of the term "rock" and whether it's alive or dead or on vacation. I don't really care, and I think the terminology is seriously impeding discussion

Discussion of what topic? It is relevant to the discussion of: "Why does the Fiery Furnaces not wants to rock?"

PF: What do you regret most in your life?
MF: I guess raping and murdering all those Jew fag babies.

And I wouldn't argue that; but there's a big difference between that statement and the statement that "rock music" now means the same thing that it did 30 or 40 years ago.

Stravinsky spent much of his career as a neo-classicist, of course!

And similarly, neo-classicism was about more than simply regurgitating the work of classical composers.

It is relevant to the discussion of: "Why does the Fiery Furnaces not wants to rock?"

This seems to be the crux of it: he didn't say bands shouldn't rock! He said bands shouldn't just rock. In the 50s no one had rocked before, and so the mere act of rocking was fresh, rebellious, exciting, etc. Now it isn't, and so bands that just want to rock are too late. It's like the way no one else can write 4'33" because John Cage already did. Some things, once they've been done, or once they've been brought to a certain level, have to be taken in new directions in order to remain relevant. I'm not saying that rock hasn't gone in new directions; it has, but some bands seem too content to ignore that and to "just rock" because people in bars like that shit. But I think it's boring.

No one said that. (I don't think anyway! I didn't!)

he didn't say bands shouldn't rock! He said bands shouldn't just rock.

He did? Maybe I didn't read that part. In that case, he was being too didactic. And I think you are too. You may think a lot of bar bands are boring but that doesn't mean that everything has to be going in new directions all the time. That is a very modernist view of things.

I said something similar when I brought it up.

I said something similar when I brought it up

He did? Maybe I didn't read that part.

Wtf mate! The quote has been repeated in this thread umpteen times. I even put it in bold (twice). You seem like a smart guy, but please don't drag me into an argument if you're not going to read the quote we're arguing about.

Aaaanyway, I still agree with what I took Tom West's paraphrase to mean. But I've lost all will to discuss it any more. I don't think everyone needs to be doing totally new things all the time, I just think that musicians should set their sights higher than just being another rock band.

anyways ... too tired to think about aritculating the reason friedbergers peculiar style of music strikes such a negative chord for me that its almost mathemtically precisely opposed to my tastes ... to his credit i feel he has fleshed out his own very particular niche, which counts for something i must concede

-- Eppy, August 29th, 2006.

Reading comprehension - he specifically said the syntax was Bushian. No other way to interpret "also can anyone else hear GWB delivering the latter half of that quote i just (again) referenced?" Note, he is talking about delivery. Way to be an asshat, yet again.