"Standing the test of time": Tom's Poptimist Column #11

No defense mounting here! But more thoughts in a sec on that point, but first:

The thing that stands out for me the most is the final part, actually, because it opens up a huge can of worms over the idea of what being 'wrong' is all about! Which would make it a great lead in for an essay on the subject in #12.

Using That Marsh Rant is a good anchor for the piece -- it's an undermining and reversal of the patronizing tone of Marsh in the end, it seems to me, to the point where Tom can use a feather-light touch of patronization back on Marsh's ill-tempered 'I/you' rant (and this is not negatively meant; in fact that's a brilliantly effective way to counteract the vitriol while still engaging everything about it!).

As for 'standing etc.' -- a quick google on my part indicates that while I've used it, I've used it in terms of specific retrospection, looking back on reissues, greatest hits or just old albums, and in all those cases extremely sparingly and often with qualifiers. I'd argue there's a place for that use -- heck, reissues themselves usually means somebody cares somewhere, enough to justify the economic outlay, though this is likely to go more by the wayside in the eternally reissued moment of right now via mp3/rar -- as opposed to an initial 'this'll last forever!' reaction to something newly released or getting a lot of attention. So to turn a point of Tom's around a bit, it can be a simple appeal to yesterday to justify today's opinions.

One not very profound thought on this is that in Marsh's heyday, acquiring music cost (most) people money. So buying a record that you enjoy now, but are not likely to enjoy down the road, seems like a worse use of resources than buying a record you're likely to continue to enjoy a while. Nowadays I think this argument is less convincing, because of the widespread low-cost available of music. But critical tropes can last long past the time when they were convincing.

Euler OTM. I have vivid memories of counting the number of songs on used CDs as a kid, but had never connected that activity to incipient rockism.

That's a whole other split that I always find myself wanting to shorthand into reviews, because I feel like you can often hear that mindset in the way people put records together. When I was a kid and had $10 to spend on one tape, I wasn't so inclined to get something with a really specific sound, useful for a really specific mood; I'd want the sort of solid pop-band album that cuts across different styles and tempos, where every song wants to be tight and listenable, so I could put it in my Walkman and listen to it repeatedly for weeks. Different modes of listening make that not nearly as important now, but whenever I come across a record that still has or shoots for that quality, it seems like a notable thing (and kind of a generous one) to get across -- I just with there were a slightly less cliched review shorthand for it!

i have heard people argue that you shouldn't make any critical assessments of things as they happen and should wait some period of time -- 5, 10, 20 years -- for the verdict of history. which is a total misunderstanding of how history works. the point dave marsh was missing is that part of what determines how well something "lasts" is how much excitement it generates in the present. people who wait around for or appeal to "history" are really just accepting the accumulated enthusiasm or disdain that starts to accrete as soon as the first person hears the first song. so if you love m.i.a. or panda bear, the things you say or write about them now have an effect on how they end up being seen at some indeterminate point in the future.

and also of course the judgment of history is never actually rendered, because there's no endpoint, so people go in and out of fashion, are repudiated or rediscovered (often in tandem with current trends that seem somehow derivative of or influenced by things that happened earlier), and the canon is constantly being reshuffled. it's an interesting process, but it's all ONE process, starting with the pre-release pitchfork review and continuing on through the critical dialogue of decades to come. justifying a current like or dislike on the speculative basis of some future like or dislike at a random point in that dialogue is just basically meaningless.

(in a probably drunken argument about this sort of thing with a friend, i remember spluttering, "you can't be a historian of the future! you have to be a historian of NOW!")

http://www.bmi.com/images/musicworld/h/hall_and_oates_1_500.jpg

this is actually a good example of the problem with the phrase. a lot of people i know (not necessarily music geeks) would see this image and say "lol, 80s dorks" but H&O get tons of love here, so it just comes down to a question of audience

I tell myself,
"Hey! Only fools rush in"
Only time will tell
If we stand the test of time
All I know
You've got to run to win and
I'll damned if i'll get caught up on the line. Hey!

No, I can't recall anything at all
Oh baby, this blows 'em all away

I was waiting for someone to quote that.

song sort of works as a metaphor for critical infatuation, those moments of trying to figure out whether something you like is REALLY good. why can't THIS be love, panda bear?

Last few sentences nail it.

what if you only stand the test of time in cleveland or china and are always remembered THERE and nowhere else? does that mean that you stand the test of a time zone? it's all kind of parochial. when maria lived in holland she couldn't believe that nobody there had heard of james taylor. here, his best songs are "classics" that will last for generations, blah, blah,blah. er, to some people anyway. to boomers or whoever. but they run things so they have the final say for now. you just have to wait until pitchfork readers run ALL the ad agencies. and then james taylor will cease to exist.
i always think people are talking about themselves when they say something is so great that it will last forever. they really just want their memory to last forever. their memory of how great that song was and how great they felt and how great they were. they want THAT to last forever and to say that that won't last forever means that they will die and this makes people sad.

I like the column, but what about the possibility that Marsh meant that Smiths vs Lionel Richie remark facetitiously? I know he's not a chap known for a sense of humor, but something about the tone of that phrase (and how he discussed, say, Donna Summer and Newcleus) suggests he was giving a huge wink.

I dunno, hate to swim against the tide of Dave Marsh: Whipping Boy #11, but talk about standing the test of time, if Tom is still haunted by a 24-year-old Dave Marsh quote, it says something for the Marsh quote. Music has duration more than it has "space," whatever that means. Listening to a piece of music means giving up a percentage of your life to it. It's kind of natural to associate music and time. Give Marsh a little credit. His use of the phrase "sad cafe ballads" might mean that he has evaluated "sad cafe ballads" and found them lacking. By categorizing Smiths songs that way, he's placing them in the context of songs he's heard in the past. He's saying, hey, I'm Dave Marsh, and I've heard a lot of music. Among the types of music I've heard are sad cafe ballads, and they're not worth moping about. So quit being a sad sack and start listening to some Lionel Richie and you'll thank me for it in the morning.

Actually I have no idea what Dave Marsh might have been trying to say. There's not much context in that one-liner.

and we haven't answered the essential question: "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" vs "Penny Lover."

Marsh wasn't kidding at all. He really hated the Smiths. He also wrote an amazing piece on Lionel Richie in this one Rock Yearbook I have.

Thus Sang Freud: Ewing explicitly refers to The Heart of Rock & Soul book as a classic in the last couple grafs. Even if he completely disagrees with Marsh on most points, and I'm guessing he does, I can't see him hanging an entire essay on that one line as anything but testament to Marsh--even if it's primarily testament to Marsh's ability to get Ewing going.

x-post: If Tom remembers the quote it would surely say more about Marsh standing the test of time than it does about The Smiths or Lionel Richie.

Marsh can make a good argument about why you should listen to Lionel rather than the Smiths but "meet me at the end of the millenium" isn't really one of them. I suspect it's a throwaway line, but one Marsh beleves. Sometimes you can have your tongue in cheek and be perfectly honest at the same time.

"Music has duration more than it has "space," whatever that means. Listening to a piece of music means giving up a percentage of your life to it. It's kind of natural to associate music and time."

Sure, but why does that necessitate an objective test? Why can't "time" refer to something more complex and individual? The example I always think of is The Avalanches' Since I Left You, which I listened to so much in 2000/early 2001 that I cannot listen to it now (although I don't have the same problem with the Gimix mix, curiously, given the massive overlap). Arguably the album has therefore failed such a test, although it might suddenly be performing well in 5 years time. But who cares? The mileage I got in the period after the album came out was more than enough to guarantee that I got an excessive "return" on my "investment" - I just chose to spend up big at the time. Why is this one year of intense value worth less than the much smaller dividends paid by those albums I listen to four or five times every year? Why is my memory of that intense enjoyment meaningless?

The emphasis on consistent longevity strikes me as weirdly parsimonious and protestant - it works better for practical household items like boots and dishwashers where, once you've made your initial investment, you don't want to have to think about it, you just want it to function (the "memory" of how my dishwasher used to work so well provides me with scant comfort once it breaks).

In fact I'd venture that one of the implications of the "we'll still be listening to this in twenty years time..." is "...so we don't have to think about it any further, it's already proved itself to us." As if thinking about music was only part of some elaborate time-based qualification round (a rather complicated twenty year warranty that makes you feel more comfortable buying that dishwasher album).

A subjectivist attempt to "save" this line of thought - it's about the longterm maximization of personal enjoyment - ends up undermining the value of all sorts of transient cultural activities: going to art exhibitions, films, concerts, sporting events etc.

These activities retain validity under the "objectivist" version: even if most people would only see the actual Mona Lisa once if it all, the ongoing overall interest in visiting the painting justifies its continuing historical relevance.

But of course this is just triumphant sociological positivism dressed up as argument - and indeed, anyone who agreed with the objectivist argument and had also been to the Louvre and seen the ridiculous circus act that goes on around the Mona Lisa would almost certainly want to distinguish the immortality of their favourite album from the "Most Photographed Barn in America" style antics at the gallery.

Perhaps they'd draw up a table of "real" and "false" examples of ongoing relevance, with people who take their photograph in front of a famous painting falling into the latter category (alongside, perhaps, people who simply buy albums that are currently popular because of their popularity).

But already they're moving away from a simple belief in history as arbiter. Already they're saying history is an arbiter when they say so, when it backs up their arguments for the right reasons. Already they're impliedly admitting that what makes any album important is not its objective social longevity but the subjectively-perceived qualities of the music they probably identified in the first few weeks of listening.

I'm not suggesting Marsh was kidding, or didn't mean what he wrote; it's the tone of his sentence that belies his seriousness.

I'd almost see your point, Alfred, but Marsh is too straight a shooter for me to interpret it any other way.

"As for 'standing etc.' -- a quick google on my part indicates that while I've used it, I've used it in terms of specific retrospection, looking back on reissues, greatest hits or just old albums, and in all those cases extremely sparingly and often with qualifiers. I'd argue there's a place for that use -- heck, reissues themselves usually means somebody cares somewhere, enough to justify the economic outlay, though this is likely to go more by the wayside in the eternally reissued moment of right now via mp3/rar -- as opposed to an initial 'this'll last forever!' reaction to something newly released or getting a lot of attention. So to turn a point of Tom's around a bit, it can be a simple appeal to yesterday to justify today's opinions."

Yes I'd agree with this Ned. But it seems to be more of a simple musicological argument with a lot less heat in it. In fact the explosion of reissues over the last ten years itself handily disproves the future-tilted claim, as the breadth of stuff that's been reissued far and away exceeds any one critic's taxonomy of what will and won't be relevant in the future. Even Marillion got lavish 2-disc reissues for all their albums (80s and 90s). The "long tail" argument is relevant here: if music fan culture is so fragmented, with people getting "off the bus" at every stop, the more interesting question from an objectivist point of view is less "what will be remembered" and more "what actually successful music won't be remembered, and why?" Once we accept that a lot of music we personally dislike still possesses a lot of longevity (at least for enough listeners to justify reissues), this becomes less an issue of quality and more one of how patterns of taste and memory work over time.

A big factor here surely being the ongoing public profile of the artist. I recommended Eleanor Academia's "Adventure" from 1987 to a friend recently, assuming it was an obscure (commercial flop) piece of synth-pop/R&B that had a bigger profile now (through fashionable obscurantism) than at the time of its release. Turns out it went to no. 1 in the US! Except I have never been exposed to this tune in any context except hip obscurantist revivalism - the market for it now is entirely different to its market then, clearly. What are the conditions that allow this to happen?

as a sidenote: when did Marsh become pegged as a fuddydudd? The Heart of Rock & Soul has plenty of oh-shit unexpected selections. I mentioned Newcleus and Donna Summer, but also "Don't Dream It's Over" and his championing of Madonna.

Yeah, of course he's not kidding -- and it's not at all unreasonable that he'd think that, at the time: presuming that Richie will be preserved in the popular sentimental realm of songs that get played at weddings 25 years down the road, and that the Smiths were connected with passing style, with the vogue of a particular elite. (If he were talking about a different Richie single, in fact, he wouldn't sound nearly as much like he'd turned out wrong.)

The funny part is that looking at them in the "test of space" way might have led to a different call on the "test of time" part: the Richie might serve a kind of eternal purpose, but it's a purpose that's re-served every season by new songs; unless you're one of the people who needed it that particular season, there's not as much reason to keep the Richie around. Whereas the Smiths serve a purpose that's similarly eternal, only in a form that's not frequently replicated in quite the same way (and a form that creates the kinds of attachments people go out of their way to try and pass on, over time).

This is obviously one of the ways that the "test of time" can trend toward rockism, right: I think there's an assumption in there that things like conventions and great singing voices and technical skill can always be replicated, will always be educated into replacements down the line -- whereas test-of-time music will be more sui generis, something you keep around because you can't get it elsewhere. In that sense, the "test of time" is code for something else, something about scarcity and ease of replacement (which doesn't actually wind up mapping onto timelessness in anything like a direct way).

I recommended Eleanor Academia's "Adventure" from 1987 to a friend recently, assuming it was an obscure (commercial flop) piece of synth-pop/R&B that had a bigger profile now (through fashionable obscurantism) than at the time of its release. Turns out it went to no. 1 in the US!

Really? Billboard number 1? I have no memory of a song by that name at all!

when did Marsh become pegged as a fuddydudd?

I have seen the future of inescapable canonization...

Actually, the most interesting parts of the Test of Time really are secretly matters of the Test of Space: a lot of how long things "last" is really a question of (a) whether it's the kind of thing the present will bother forcing on the future, and (b) how successfully they'll be able to do it -- what are you willing to push on people ten years younger than you, and what are they chances they'll go for it?

(I.e., this has a lot to do with that lottery effect that Carl Wilson spends a little time on in his 33 1/3 -- the future will mostly be making Test of Time judgments on the things we bother carrying along and submitting to it, so who knows what the future would think of the stuff we push out of competition in the here and now?) (Answer = the reissue industry, that's who.)

"Really? Billboard number 1? I have no memory of a song by that name at all!"

In the US and Germany apparently. It's a great song! DJ Naughty included it on his One Night in Berlin mix a few years back.

Eleanor now makes "evolvian soul rock" and pimps out as a motivational speaker to high-level executives.

"Yeah, of course he's not kidding -- and it's not at all unreasonable that he'd think that, at the time: presuming that Richie will be preserved in the popular sentimental realm of songs that get played at weddings 25 years down the road, and that the Smiths were connected with passing style, with the vogue of a particular elite."

This is connected to Tom's (good and not obvious) point in the article that once a sound is being dismissed as a "fad" it has gone beyond that level and necessarily has greater longevity than the critic dismissing it assumes.

Perhaps echoing Nabisco's comments, what strikes me as a potential common thread amongst stuff that is forgotten is the lack of a supportive context like a genre or mode of listening or artist-career-history that can boost up the particular song on a wave of revivalism (in the "rising tide (of a particular genre's revival) lifts all ships" sense).

Thinking about a quintessential "one hit wonder" - something like Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffanies" - the question about its capacity for longevity might be subject to a second question: "to what extent can this song be seen as something bigger than itself?"

In this case it won't be the career of the artist. If a Deep Blue Something revival is possible, it might be because people at some stage people are able to tie their one big record in with the big songs by the Bodeans and, I dunno, the Gin Blossoms, and other such stuff. If this seems unlikely, it's because such a process seems tenuous at best.

Whereas a revival at some stage of even the most transient dance sub-genres has the aura of near-inevitability if only because the songs being revived are articulated within a sub-genre. So handbag house and Ibiza trance-pop revivals become a question of when rather than if.

Why I raise the (arguably disconnected) issue of revivalism here is that, as far as I can tell, once something has been revived, if never quite sinks back to the same level of dismissal or indifference that may have characterised people's attitudes to it before. It's as if this process itself is another form of the "qualification round" I mentioned above. Cycles of revivalism constitute another form of the "big tail" phenonenon: while the 80s only entered a strong revivalist era about 8 years ago, this didn't coincide with people ceasing to revive the 60s and 70s. Rather, we now see all of these eras (and parts of the early 90s) being revived simultaneously, albeit in shifting and mutating articulations.

The eternal present. Which I don't really mind -- does anyone, I wonder? (Serious question!)

ya gotta remember, when marsh wrote that he was living in a world where things DID go away.

I like that this thread on Jennifer Paige's "Crush" was just revived.

In posing the question, Dom provides an example of what I'm getting at with my Deep Blue Something thing:

"Can we talk about "Crush" by Jennifer Paige

Because I don't think we discuss it enough.
It's kind of tempting to see this as the plainer, less popular sister of "Can't Fight The Moonlight" (despite preceeding it by two years), but... I don't know. The vocals marked the last time in popular music anyone attempted to try and sound older than they actually were (you know how when "NU-GARAGE" happened all the indie bands that had turned up in the past six months suddenly got wiped off the radar? Britney/Xtina/Mandy Moore had the same impact on pop). "

In pop, I think a lot of songs that are vulnerable to being forgotten are those whose attractions are drawn from an era whose time is ending. Another example of this process (albeit a much less interesting or enjoyable song) is Debelah Morgan's "Dance With Me" (or was it "Dance For Me"?), whose popularity seemed based on its mid-to-late 90s R&B conservatism at a time when the listening public were still getting their heads around millenial post-Timbaland R&B specifically and R&B/hip hop crossover generally.

Whereas Mary Mary's "Shackles" lives on by articulating this same impulse within something bigger than itself (modern R&B meets gospel) - it serves an ongoing purpose, particularly in a post-Idol world.

Tim, which US chart was Eleanor Academia atop at some point? Because it wasn't the pop chart.

i would have to remember "shackles" to forget it. is that a real song or did you make it up?

who can forget the summer of academia-mania.

sly fox should probably be used as an example for everything from now on. or sam fox.

OK, her website is lying. She's not even in Billboard's archive.

Yeah, I was going to say, that name was giving me major cognitive dissonance.

Eleanor also wrote and produced her smash hit, Adventurefor Columbia Records, reaching No.#1 on the Billboard Charts in the U.S. and Germany. Now a cult favorite, Re-mixed produced versions of Adventureare played throughout the world.

sly fox should probably be used as an example for everything from now on.

Oh for Ned's eternal present in which this song blasted at all hours...

aha--I'm wrong. It did in fact go to No. 1 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1988. (It was credited to Eleanor, no surname.)

Yep, you can't pass something along to the future without a bag to put it in. Things properly packaged to stand a test of time, as of 2008: (a) big pop singles that enter into the eternity of radios and PA systems, (b) specific albums or artist back catalogs, (c) singles that can be compiled as some kind of coherent style or moment. I.e., it's kinda impossible to make an album that's half timeless.

There's kind of a distinction here, though, between stylistic timelessness and lottery-effect timelessness; everything that people will say makes a 60s soul chestnut "timeless" is just as true of some 60s soul song that never went anywhere. So there are two edges to it: is it the kind of music that's "timeless," or has it just had some sort of success or effect or role in the world (Test of Space!) that will make it so?

Okay I've only skimmed this thread but my initial thoughts are:

- I think Matos has probably got Tom's approach wrong - I suspect Tom had been looking to write something about 'standing the test of time' as subject to rally against for some time and plucked the Marsh quote as a convenient starting point.

- Is it possible Tom is shadowboxing a bit here? I know he's writing for a predominantly US indie audience (which might be shaping his argument) but in UK pop listening the 'this won't stand the test of time' argument seems like an outdated one to rail against. I can't remember the last time ANYONE used this line seriously wrt British pop, largely because revivalism of the least credible aspects of British pop is pretty much British music's modus operandi now. And even among the most indie of listeners it's widely accepted that 70s chart disco has lasted as well if not better than the rock music of its time.

"is it the kind of music that's "timeless,"

yes. in marsh's case, anyway.

or the kind of song.

revivalism of the least credible aspects of British pop is pretty much British music's modus operandi

This is true of the hardest core of U.S. indie audiences too, though (which is sometimes a good thing, sometimes not): one of the easiest ways to break out of the pack in any music-saturated hipster milieu is to go about recuperating whatever influence seems most unlikely (and therefore most idiosyncratically yours). It's almost a weird micro scale of fragmentation and specialization -- if every guy in your neighborhood has a band, you have a vested interest in figuring out which style only you go for, and self-consciously developing that background. (Plus it allows you to seem interesting when people come over to your apartment and look through your records.)

I think Matos has probably got Tom's approach wrong - I suspect Tom had been looking to write something about 'standing the test of time' as subject to rally against for some time and plucked the Marsh quote as a convenient starting point.

where have I said otherwise?

I always find it odd that the sound of 60s soul would be called "timeless". Doesn't this crit shorthand actually mean: "it sounds just like the 60s, and the 60s don't go out of fashion"?

I shouldn't have put it past Eleanor to lie to me.

"And even among the most indie of listeners it's widely accepted that 70s chart disco has lasted as well if not better than the rock music of its time."

BUT I think this argument only ever fully loses its force in retrospect. A lot of people who will acknowledge this point w/r/t 70s disco don't anticipate the same thing might some day apply to late 90s disco-pop vis a vis late 90s guitar rock. The way that this is achieved is to retrospectively introduce the "test of time" arguments in ways it might not have been at the time of the music's initial release - e.g. "Moroder and Larry Levan and Niles Rogers were geniuses whose music was always going to stand the test of time even if many people back then were too blind to see it. Luckily "we" know better now." Pipecock's approach to the history of dance music is an extreme form of this.

Also the "predominantly US indie audience" is an issue here. I've gotten a lot of e-mails from Pitchfork readers citing the "test of time" argument every time I write about pop (Justin, Girls Aloud etc.). I suspect Tom might have gotten some of these too.

Also I think the point of the article is less "Pitchfork rock versus UK pop" and more the extent to which the notion is used to say that stuff you like is better or worse than other stuff you like. Tom's M.I.A. versus Panda Bear argument makes sense here, though the elephant in the room (which he half acknowledges) is LCD Soundsystem, and the way in which a lot of even well-written reviews of "All My Friends" etc. work the fashion/immortality angle frantically - in sum, "we still liked James Murphy when his music was just fleetingly fashionable, but we like him even more now that he is writing songs for eternity."

One important thing to note is that such an argument isn't even per se wrong, but I find it interesting how it's so insidiously interwoven into music crit language that it's inadvertantly implied much more than deliberately wheeled out.

Po-mo.

Everything is pointless, and that's not just nihilism either, just that his work is worth no more objectively than mine or Tom's or an ape with a crayon's.

Yes. So what? Rad is still rad.

Also, the long, impossible nothing Roxy posted might be the most simultaneously boring and WTF thing I've ever seen on ILX. Peoples brain is differnt.

Yes. So what? Rad is still rad.

So I don't see why anyone would be annoyed at Tom for saying their work was pointless.

Why, then, do critics talk about anything other than their feelings, or the factual?

(Including Tom?)

Why not!

Er, because it's all pointless bullshit (which it is anyway, but especially so if there is no such thing as good art)?

We all gotta have something to do before we die, and not everyone watches TV.

Just cos there's no scientific way of proving things are good doesn't mean you can't enjoy them, or shouldn't try.

I figured anyone writing about music had this attitude. The very profession seems to demand it.

Yeah, and it's great if that something is writing, but why does that have to be championing things as great/dismissing them as bad when this is a system you don't believe even exists?

xpost Exactly, that's why I said write that you like it, or write about the facts, not write as if you do believe there is an objective value system in music, which is what most critics still seem to do.

I'm not trying to act like a bitch up in this piece or anything, this is just something I've been wrasslin' with lately.

I read roxy's comments with some concern, as I'd been scrolling down this thread to make similar points, but reading how RoxyM puts them out I'm not so sure..

Right, back to basics

Tom says (amongst other things) that a critic who claims that he knows the future and using that claim as an authority to support his opinion is flawed.

Roxy says (amongst other things) that longevity isn't a worthwhile value anyway...

I wanted to say that longevity wasn't a worthwhile prediction, because longevity isn't actually a good quality filter anyway. It isn't an inevitable process that only the greats last.

But more than that I wanted to suggested that it was actually a bad sign of something if there is a timelessness. That I actually like music that sounds out of time, because it can evoke that other time (and that includes Bobby Vee.. ).

Doesn't it sound a bit bland to not evoke time and place? Sure in ten years time its going to sound like its, well, ten years old. That's fine surely?

Occasionally things don't age well (but that usually means you find it harder to overlook faults, not that there were no faults). Occasionally things deliberately try to evoke a different time than when it was made, (e.g The Cramps) but that's OK too.

I think I like things that haven't stood the test of time, because whatever quality it is that the test of time is testing, its not one I'm keen on, things that haven't stood the test of time should be searched for.. Lesley Gore's teen-drama are hopelessly naive and innocent... good. Orpheus and their cod orchestral psych, sounds almost laughable square and ungroovy.... great! Scars, missing the post-punk revival yet again - still one of the best things from the ealy 80s...

People want to objectivize their taste for a number of reasons. They might be saying to people "you ought to listen to this, and here's why", or they might be saying "it's okay (for me, or you the reader) to like this because it subscribes to the canonical rules" or they might be saying "my taste is better than yours and I can prove it with algebra". I suppose those are all perfectly worthwhile rhetorical approaches but they don't suit me and I find that they don't tell me anything I value about music, subjectively speaking.

Sandy's point is good, but what makes it more interesting is that we don't actually hear the 60s or the 80s, we hear something that evokes an idea for us, mediated through our minds, of what we think they might've been like. Or more probably, what we think right now about what they were like.

enrique what is the point of you?

-- Tracer Hand, Monday, January 28, 2008 6:33 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

ask your mum

This kind of thinking is deeply programmed into us, and not only in a musical/art context. Religious folks imagine that their faith will last through the ages; political true believers that the essential rightness of their program guarantees its eventual victory.

-- contenderizer, Monday, January 28, 2008 5:48 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

my point is to refute stupid horseshit like this^^^

Sandy, I didn't write that piece above and it doesn't nec. reflect my opinions, but I agree with a lot of what he wrote there.

Doesn't it sound a bit bland to not evoke time and place?

Not to me. I think a lot of interesting music is interesting to me when it makes me marvel/wonder about the time it emerged from.

Exactly, that's why I said write that you like it, or write about the facts, not write as if you do believe there is an objective value system in music, which is what most critics still seem to do.

Okay, I don't want to be a dick or anything, but this kind of rigidity bothers me. Let's say we all accept that there is no really REALLY real objective value system by which things might be measured - it all boils down to likes and dislikes. Okay, but once we've accepted this premise, why not just relax and accept that the language of absolutes might have rhetorical value? When we choose our words, we're not just trying to document clearly defined realities. We're also trying to communicate subtle, sometimes all but incommunicable states and senses. We do this even in casual conversation.

So, I just don't see the point in getting hung up on what's intellectually/linguistically acceptable. When someone says something absurdly sweeping about THE TRULY TRUTH, why not just take it as a strongly-worded statement of taste, and go from there?

because "This kind of thinking is deeply programmed into us, and not only in a musical/art context. Religious folks imagine that their faith will last through the ages; political true believers that the essential rightness of their program guarantees its eventual victory."

Let's say you're talking to a friend, and you say, "It's not just that I don't like Bush - I think he's evil. Like objectively evil. Like I think he might actually be the devil."

And your friend goes, "What do you mean, 'objectively evil'? Dude, that's so stupid. Objective truth and evil are 18th century fantasies. You just mean that you REALLY don't like Bush."

And you go, "Fucking duh, Einstein."

Well, 'cause convos with pals aren't hailed as anything other than what they are? Or called "criticism"?

Most criticism isn't that important. I don't mean that as a dismissal of the value of critics, but when we're talking about which albums we like, especially when we're doing it in a "rate the new product" sense, the world doesn't hang in the balance. It's okay to overstate. It's okay to frame opinions as truths, for the sake of style.

you've completely reversed what you were saying two weeks ago.

i agree though, that it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans. tom didn't seem to name names in his piece and i'm not sure where the beef is located. i have seen reviews written in a polemical 'this is great RIGHT NOW and so what if it's shit tomorrow because pop is EPHEMERAL BY NATURE and it's GREAT' steez, and it's equally grating.

Okay, but once we've accepted this premise, why not just relax and accept that the language of absolutes might have rhetorical value?

But how/why?

It's not really a linguistic problem to me. Criticism (not just "writing about music", but actual criticism) in a world where nothing has a point or any discernable value really seems completely confused to me.

Also, "not all of us watch TV" is like a total o_O, especially as so many people on this board take criticism SO seriously.

xpost Ok, I think we might actually agree, here. I just think it's just kind of a hackoff to act like if someone makes music, they might as well be shooting around in the dark, but criticism is A++++ "the canon matters"-world.

That one guy: What I was saying two weeks ago is that Tom's piece is OTM. I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot from it. And I was also speculating about why this kind of thinking persists when it's so obviously bogus.

But I never suggested that there isn't any value in the language of certainty. I believe there is, and I haven't changed what I'm saying at all. Different people, after all, find different stuff grating. A lot of my favorite music critics (Bangs, Carducci) are total, ridiculous absolutists.

I'm not sure I understand your objection, roxy. Clarify?

Just that speaking in critical absolutes that one doesn't believe in seems confused to me. I understand your point about the convo with friends/"Bush is actually the Devil = I don't like Bush"-type of language having value, but this isn't how most critics seem to write. All the polls, straight-faced absolutist reviews, etc. seem to point at some belief in objective value in what is being written about.

Is Tom's argument actually not a popular one amongst critics? Or is it just ILXors that are on its nuts? (FWIW, I liked the article, especially the last paragraph, and am not even sure what I think about objectivity as it relates to music).

I guess I don't feel the confusion you describe, Roxy. It's easy for me to say that certain things are "great" or "necessary", "wrong" or "evil" when language accurately reflects my feelings, hyperbolic as it may be. I don't feel the need to couch things in just-my-opinion-ma'am terms, 'cuz I assume that anyone with half a brain will take that as a given.

^^ "...when that language accurately reflects..."

I don't feel that need either (not a critic, though), and constant "this is just an opinion" caveats are/would be bothersome, but there's gotta be some middle ground, especially with all the hagiographing of critics peeps do in these parts.

not a critic, though

Me neither. Just a fan.

"i agree though, that it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans. tom didn't seem to name names in his piece and i'm not sure where the beef is located. i have seen reviews written in a polemical 'this is great RIGHT NOW and so what if it's shit tomorrow because pop is EPHEMERAL BY NATURE and it's GREAT' steez, and it's equally grating."

I don't tend to like pieces like this because usually the writer forgets to explain why the particular piece of ephemeral pop they're writing about is any better than any other piece of ephemeral pop. Liking something because it won't last is as meaningless and empty a position as liking something because it will last.

Also it's just not true: while it's important to realise "the test of time" is meaningless the funny thing about pop is that it actually does hang around.

I thought that this was the point of Tom's article (as against the piece roxy posted): it's wrong to simply reverse the binary opposition and say that short-termism is best. The point is that we never really know what we mean when we use short-termism and long-termism as critical barometers, and we always mean something else anyway.

What the critic usually means when praising ephemeral pop is: "I won't be listening to this tomorrow because I will have a different assignment." It's a pre-emptive manoeuvre to silence or evade future questioning of their statements. The point is "my opinion is ephemeral" rather than "this song is ephemeral."

doing formalist criticism is hard because it takes a good ear and some talent for description. doing personal criticism is hard because it takes some bravery to expose yourself and a lot of generosity and intelligence not to come off like a self-involved loser.

the 'test of time' phrase seems like a half-assed and passive aggressive way of doing both, it's like a code for "this sounds sort of like other things that have survived oblivion" and also "lots of other people are probably falling in love with it forever right this second!"

it's not really a social argument (as opposed to formal or personal) cos it's not as if critics who go on abt the 'test of time', as tom says, are promise to track the survival of a particular song, 7-up style, collating that data into the future.

GFFOTM

you might as well say "3 million people bought this album" as invoke "the test of time".

to be fair i don't see the 'test of time' argument out there too often, but tom does live in the UK so maybe it's much more common "round his end." the column does read more like a cheerful last nail in the coffin rather than opening up a big new controversy, but that's fine!

all this stuff abt nihilism and absolute values doesn't make sense to me either; criticism should a) open things up, get into the music in some sense -- any sense! -- and get people listening, and b) be enjoyable to read in its own right. some standard of correctness or the impossibility of such is both beside the point and a way bigger uh metaphysical issue than writing about music.

oh ffs I only mentioned that because the piece Roxy linked to ended with as a critic, "Thanks, Tom, for suggesting that my work is pointless."

ok!

:)

criticism should a) open things up, get into the music in some sense -- any sense! -- and get people listening

I agree with you, but this isn't really critique as much as it is education, or something else (PR?!), surely?

some critics on this very site might as well be PR reps for all the digging they do into music that isn't already getting radio/blog/tv play.

(lol)

well i guess i read 'open things up' and 'critique' as the same thing: what is this thing? what is it doing? why? who cares?

Music criticism often slides over into cheerleading, and I think that's fine. If it were all dryly objective and even-handed, it wouldn't be half so much fun.

Sure, cheerleading is good. If it's genuine and all.

But sometimes what you want to "open up" or get people listening to is a perceived shortfalling in the music - where it needs to be better, where it tries to achieve x and fails, or where it temporarily appears to achieve x but on closer listen doesn't get there, or actually does something different which is not as good.

GFF makes a good point about the way that the "test of time" mixes personal, formalist and social aspects without taking responsibility for follow-through on any of these. Again, I think one of the points of Tom's piece was more to demonstrate the incapacity and unwillingness of critics to think through a lot of their critical assumptions - not just this one - and the silly criticism that might result if they tried to.

It's typical of the arrogant naivete that characterises a lot of music writing by people who want to talk about soul, longevity, artistry - on the one hand positing some sort of ontological depth to the music (and impliedly accusing most listeners of being blind to this - the "test of time" wouldn't be a useful critical tactic if it didn't entail the failure (and therefore critical invalidity) of most current listeners) and on the other assuming that for them, the critic, the core of this ontological depth is readily empirically available. Ironically, this positing of "essence" is usually a strategic move to avoid having to be particularly articulate w/r/t "appearance" - that is, what can actually be heard in the music that might be considered evidence of its posited evidence. When cornered,people will often then turn on appearance and say it's bunk: "you may think this sounds as timeless as {insert my favourite music here} but actually it can't be because {insert fact and conjecture about the artists that has little bearing on the music being discussed}.

The nub is: listening to and talking about music is all about appearance, insofar as that all music criticism which presents itself under that banner is ultimately about sensuous enjoyment of listening to (certain pieces of) music.

At least until there is a music criticism which openly claims that listening to the music being discussed is absolutely irrelevant ("don't bother listening to this because what it sounds like doesn't matter - but you should buy it anyway because it's a great record nonetheless!").

Hey, you figured me out!

Creating Stacks of Empty CD Cases as Interior Design Solutions: A Presentation

That I would read.