What Is The "What Is The X Of Today" Of Today? Why is this meme so bad and hated?

I wanted to start a thread asking who is today's equivalent of RDJ. It feels like for all electronic music's range, there's no one working today who matches him in terms of innovation, breadth of scope and also humour. Is it worth starting a thread?

― doglato dozzy (dog latin), Friday, February 21, 2014 12:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I want to start a thread completely DECONSTRUCTING the idea that "today" has or even needs to have the "equivalent" of previous era's artists. I'm so sick of this meme!

― Combat Bodacious Accruals (Branwell Bell), Friday, February 21, 2014 12:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hate this meme SO MUCH. Why do I hate this meme so much?

Why do people insist that every era has to have an equivalent of an artist who was canonical or groundbreaking in a previous era? Does this meme even serve a purpose? Are you as irritated by it as I am?

Yes

And not as in "Who is the Yes of today?"

the Yes of Today is No Yes of Yesterday

It's happened twice today on two separate threads and I just, y'know... why. Why do people have to do this, to make sense of current music, or to try to get into current music? Is it impossible to appreciate new without comparing it to old? (That is a genuine question, one I'm wondering myself.)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/Whatisthewhatbook.jpg/200px-Whatisthewhatbook.jpg

It's a sort of dog latin thing to say (sorry dl), I don't know that many others do it

i'm not a fan of this kind of thing but people do approach music - or their appreciation of music, maybe - in very different ways. i think a lot of it comes down to contextualization again, but obviously context and perspective are two of my hobby horses of today

it irritates me too, i don't ascribe it to much more than laziness tho (both in terms of the person doing the describing and who they're describing for - an audience that needs reference points that are often quite obvious)

The other person who said it was not even Dog Latin.

("not even Dog Latin" is beyond "not even wrong")

((Sorry, Dog Latin, you know I like you anyway, not picking on you. x))

there's a lot of use value for people to say "if you like Artist X then you will probably like Artists Y and Z" but the problem is that even with the same artist different people can get v different things from them

was it me? I had a go at it the other day somewhere online but forget if it was here or fb

there's a lot of use value for people to say "if you like Artist X then you will probably like Artists Y and Z" but the problem is that even with the same artist different people can get v different things from them

― we sold our Solsta for Rock'n'Roll (Noodle Vague), Friday, February 21, 2014 1:11 PM

This is exactly my problem with "rolling Genre X threads" and the like (and I used to have a weekly twitter competition for "My Spotify Hipster Boyfriend app" recommending totally inappropriate and off the wall "related artists" based on one's listening) - it presumes that any two people hear the same thing in a piece of music. Which they obviously and categorically do not.

x-post it was Matt DC IIRC, again, not having a go, it was just... why do otherwise reasonable people use this construction?

all grouping is at best a way to try and describe something semi-subjective i think. labels like genre only become annoying for me when people mistake them for Platonic forms

I cant find what I said but it was along the lines of there wont be a new beatles/led zep/funkadelic/nirvana/smiths etc why cant the press just discover NEW bands than "new xxx"

so basically I am in agreement with you BB (tho I will have said a new xxx at some point in my younger life I guess)

because an element of music journalism involves constructing narratives. i don't know if it's an essential element - personally i hope not, but different people, including journos, obviously think differently

i think most music fans i know have used this type of comparison at times, and a lot of the time it's actually accurate so long as you explain exactly what the lineage in question is - also when it comes to scenes there's often an actual real lineage there to draw on. but it's sooooo often lazy shorthand/positioning - the jessie ware/sade comparison that crops up all the time now, my perpetual bugbear of tori amos/kate bush. idk, as a tool it's how you use it, but something like the dog latin demand for a new equivalent of an old artist is a different, and worse, thing

as a tool it's how you use it

absolutely this. if i'm trying to tell you about a car i've just seen i wouldn't usually start from the assumption that you'd never seen a car before

it's a bad meme because it often carries unexamined assumptions about canonicity and the importance of the Romantic Artist as opposed to all the other ways to think about culture i think

It looks like Dog Latin is spelling out exactly what he is after, though:

Innovation
Breadth of scope
Humour

It's not an intangible RDJ-ness that he's missing, it's an artist who is directly comparable on those particular metrics. That doesn't seem so unreasonable.

The earliest I was aware of it was the NME every year proclaimed a "New Smiths" I dont recall Kerrang doing a similar thing.

It looks like Dog Latin is spelling out exactly what he is after, though:

Innovation
Breadth of scope
Humour

It's not an intangible RDJ-ness that he's missing, it's an artist who is directly comparable on those particular metrics. That doesn't seem so unreasonable.

― Ramnaresh Samhain (ShariVari), Friday, February 21, 2014 1:22 PM

This is *exactly* what I'm objecting to, though.

Like, I don't have a problem with direct comparisons along the line of "X sounds to me like Y" which are sometimes the only way to make sense of a piece of music. (Unless you try to tell me Interpol sound like Joy Division, because, really, fuck right off with that.)

Dog Latin is looking for someone who occupies the same kind of *paradigm* as Aphex Twin or whatever. And partially, it's like... some artists *are* just one-offs. Because they occupy a unique spot in a unique moment in history that no one will be able to occupy again. Not because no one *sound* like them, or be as "innovative" as them (whatever "innovative" means) but because that moment in history can never happen again.

I think it's a myth that what makes people like Aphex Twin (or Madonna or Michael Jackson or whoever) paradigmic is that no one has ever done that thing before. (Even though in some cases, it's true, they were the first, and in others, they really weren't, they were just a populariser of whatever was going on at the time.) But it is true that it's a path that will not function in the same way if someone tries to follow it again.

I dunno. I'm not expressing myself well. You can never step into the same river twice, it's true. But there *is* only one person who gets to climb a mountain for the first time? I think?

I'd assume that any artist meeting Dog Latin's metrics would, by definition, need to be completely different from Aphex Twin. I'm not necessarily supporting the theory but i think the idea of wanting a new full-spectrum-dominance game changer, or whatever, is potentially different to wanting a new version of a favourite act.

But if you want a new full-spectrum-dominance game changer, why would you qualify that by adding "the new RDJ" because that inherently constrains the meaning to, "someone following the RDJ plan" rather than "a completely new and unexpected game-changer (which means not following any archetype, even one as original as RDJ)"

feel like "who is the x of today" can at least have some of the more useful or interesting questions somewhere in the background - eg is x even possible today? what conditions have changed? Where does earlier scene/artist come from, can it be mapped to now?

It seems a better tool than 'x are the new y' , which rubs out those questions, tends towards – lex otm – lazy shorthand & over-focus on the artist.

wrote that before you posted that longer post BB - it seems otm to me - I suppose I just think that kind of discussion will spring more from this question - but I think I'm feeling generous towards the construction because I've been thinking 'is a (model-one) Roxy possible today?'' via both image bands and the roxy poll.

I'm possibly not the best person to ask (an initial scan of the thread left me wondering whether Robert Downey Jr had a sideline as a IDM artist) but i'd assume it's because DL thinks he was the last person (although perhaps not the only person) to meet the criteria in the genre. xp

"Is this model even possible today" is a different question from "Who is the X of today?"

Like, I do think that the former question is perfectly valid, and ripe for debate, but the latter is absurd.

Dislike this also, I don'tlike comparing anything to anything, does disservice to both - just prefer to take each record on its own terms, if I like it. And completely forget about it if I dont

i want all the new acts to be "new versions" of my favorite old acts! bring on "the new"

• duran duran
• joy division
• rem
• the smiths
• the cure
• siouxsie and the banshees
• the cure
• jesus & mary chain
• sisters of mercy
• smithereens
• bauhaus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c_TBpG1Q2M

^^^here, all that and with a fingerbanging guitar solo to boot

interpol was the new joy division, by the way.

CHRIST somebody please suggest ban me if I mention that band again.

*hangs self* wait it's been done *stabs self in neck*

Dear BRANE: STOP. That's enough now.

imo this has the smell of a marketing technique created to keep boomers interested in new music:
i.e. "Springsteen is the Dylan of the 70s. You're not going to miss out on the new Dylan are you?"

But sometimes it's hard not to notice that, for example, Bobby Brown is just amping like Michael and so on.

I kinda get that, but y'know... why are they still doing it even now? (Then again, who has been described lately as the "Springsteen of today"?)

the Hold Steady?

arcade fire, lol

LOL indeed.

Kinda wondering though if this construction is an age-based thing, a way of showing off "I can remember when X was the paradigm" as much as an inability to accept the new.

who is the hold-steady of tomorrow?

I like when Kanye insist people recognize he's the new Steve Jobs even though he's not a tech CEO and clearly fills a different cultural niche. I think this is probably the best way to undermine this meme.

Off the wall comparisons (which point out the inherent stupidity and impossibility of the meme) like that really just make me like Kanye a little bit more.

Where are the Snowdens of Yesteryear?

Kurupt blew up this meme when he called himself "the black Idi Amin"

It sounds just as absurd to say "Mozart was the Aphex Twin of the 18th Century" as it does to say "Aphex Twin was the Mozart of Techno" or whatever.

x-post I have mixed feelings about the constructions "the black X" or indeed "the female X" because they throw up questions about what qualities get weighted in our society. (Though "the black Idi Amin" is a bit... well, LOL.)

Totally. People say Kanye makes himself look stupid by frantically demanding legitimization from our most corporate and least imaginative cultural gatekeepers but he actually just makes our society look even stupider than it did before. Just the whole paradox of worshipping so-called trailblazers in a way that creates an atmosphere hostility toward the actually new.

Sorry xp

What does "further ahead" even mean? Because are we talking about strict linear time, which I think is the only real sense in which "ahead" or "behind" actually works.

What does "further ahead" even mean, in terms of music or art? It's dependent on this weird idea of "progress" which is just... that doesn't *exist*?

Have you seen it all already? Have you walked on every beach, worn every hat and eaten every flavor of ice cream?

Perhaps the days of ice cream are coming to a close?

man i really want some cherrylicious ice cream about now

I've worn hats and eaten ice cream but few are the days when I've been able to do both at the same time while at the beach. Sometimes I wonder if we've seen the last of those days

<3 U, cog

i don't, i'm gonna have to get outside clothes on and trudge over to Tesco and hope they've got ice cream in

Gone are the days of dictionary.com

It used to be you could pick up a dictionary and discover a new word almost every day, nowadays it's starting to feel like all the words have been done, catalogued and even alphabetized. The magic has started to fade

Time to learn a new language.

All the cool kids are getting into Kernewek.

Who is the Aphex Twin of Esperanto?

What does "further ahead" even mean, in terms of music or art? It's dependent on this weird idea of "progress" which is just... that doesn't *exist*?

things do develop - the growth of polyphony and counterpoint, for example. you kind of can't miss it. new ideas come along and get incorporated; music that incorporates these ideas early on can be said to be "ahead" of other music in the sense that it's abreast of current developments. the same in literature etc. idk maybe you're listening to a lot of recent Gregorian chant though

Pretty sure the band where the drummer was the most popular member was Bonham

could say the same with keith moon

trenchmouth

lotta metal bands with drummers who're if not the center of attention a big part of the appeal - Tomas Haake, Pete Sandoval, lots of others

lol lars

could say the same with keith moon

― ۩, Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:45 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not really--i'm talking about the band Bonham, named after a drummer famous for being the son of a famous drummer

haha

i was about to mention Zappa!!

Yeah, he's not all that either

things do develop - the growth of polyphony and counterpoint, for example. you kind of can't miss it. new ideas come along and get incorporated; music that incorporates these ideas early on can be said to be "ahead" of other music in the sense that it's abreast of current developments. the same in literature etc. idk maybe you're listening to a lot of recent Gregorian chant though

― joe perry has been dead for years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, February 22, 2014 2:23 PM

I don't know that I agree. In fact, with your last sentence, I pretty much know that I disagree.

Technology may develop, and possibly even improve.

But this idea of "progress" in art? Especially when combined with this idea that development and more complexity = progress? No.

Because if Aphex Twin showed us anything, it's that abstraction and moving towards the more simplified and less complex ... can also be a kind of progression? I don't know if it's just an artefact of the order that his things were released in, but from a distance it sure looks like he moved from 8 million notes per minute complexity in things like Digeridoo to doing "5 notes and a filter sweep" in Rhubarb.

I can only speak for myself as an artist, but art is never a linear progression for me. It often goes round in circles, it backtracks, it improves, it atrophies, it follows dead ends and blind alleys and makes odd leaps that make no logical sense in terms of a progression. I think this idea of "progress" in art or music is something that is projected externally the same way people project narratives into things, because we need to do that to make some kind of sense. It doesn't mean it's there.

But we've had this discussion recently, as well, I think.

I would define progress as creating something new rather than falling back on generic tropes. You get plenty of bands who still play "rock n roll" music, but at some point in time that stopped being a progressive style. It plateaud. Bands who play and are heavily inspired by rock n roll today would be seen to be looking back or playing roughly the same music as people did in the mid to late 1950s. But I dunno there might be someone who revives old style rock n roll but ends up doing something with it that no one's really thought of before.

I don't think of that as "progression" I just think of that as exploration. You can have a pleasant walk in a familiar landscape; you can have an exciting walk in a new landscape that becomes familiar to you later. That doesn't mean one landscape is more "advanced" than the other.

dinner is more advanced than breakfast, often using potatoes which early risers would just have been amazed by, but often when supper comes isn't it just a case of its all been done before

politics matter much more than sound.
apologetix don't sound anything like weird al, but it makes sense to call them the "weird al of contemporary christian music" because they share a sensibility (except their songs are about jesus instead of food)

no-one before aphex twin had ever in the history of mankind thought about putting a "let's have a breakdance party" drumbeat over the top of brian eno's "apollo" (1983) while simultaneously milking needlessly hyperbolic reactions and sycophantic journalists and teaming up with BBC's fred harris of "you and your micro" renown to make accompanying short films based around the core premise of "krull" and b-sides with tit jokes.
this with not quite yet digested satie/glass/ riley/ cluster / TD / YMO & plasticky preset "sound" of SAW2 was the only thing that made the hafler trio sound bearable in 1994.
awesome
fwiw i think RDJ has been responsible for some genius moments, i just think none of them are on SAW2.
RDJ=MIKEOLDFIELD3000

re: "who/what is the x] of today?"

these sorts of constructions have never bothered me much. they can become paradigmatic traps if uncritically accepted, but personally speaking, i like to try on different narrative lenses, even if only for purposes of evaluation. afaic, asking about today's aphex twin provides a useful point of entry into a larger interrogation of "aphex twin" as an archetype.

that's to say that i don't see much value in the aggressive rejection of questions that seem suspect or don't fit our immediate needs. more interesting, imo, to redirect such inquiries into themselves, to question the unstated assumptions on which they seem to rest (which is what this thread is doing, imo: responding in a sensible and worthwhile fashion to dl's question).

also, i don't think we have to either accept or reject the idea of artistic "progress". sometimes it's useful and even accurate, while at other times its limiting, even fallacious. techniques and technologies build upon themselves over time, and this includes composition techniques. ideas evolve through dialogue. this isn't necessarily to privilege the more recent, but simply to understand part of what's involved in change.

And in case it isn't obvious, the narrative of musical progress does not imply a straight line from simplicity to complexity. Minimalism and abstraction are a part of that narrative rather than a refutation of it.

Yes. As long as a signficiant amount of new ideas and permutations are taking place, I'd call that progression. It's not a measurable thing of course but there's a difference between, say, Miles Davis and Winton Marsalis; Kurt Cobain and Chad Kroeger; Elvis Presley and Shakin Stevens. So asking who the new RDJ is, is more abstract than all of that. You wouldn't want someone to come back and make a carbon copy of Ventolin; that would be anathema to the whole idea of an RDJ analogue. Of course you might have people who prefer Muse and Coldplay over post-2001 Radiohead but it would be a grand claim to say that these bands were progressing/innovating harder than RHead on Kid A.

But are Aphex Twin records more advanced than Elvis records

and if so which ones?

richard d james, advancing harder since 1971

Aphex Twin and Elvis Presley aren't easily comparaed, and besides it's not really a matter of 'more' or 'less' advanced. It's not a measurable binary. But, for instance, on the St Vincent thread I think it was Matt DC who said 'Prince she is not', saying that she lacked certain traits in whatever department Prince occupies. Since the comparison is being made, it's also reasonable to suggest that St Vincent DOES have the potential to fill a Prince-like hole; not to occupy it exactly, but to tick certain archetypal boxes that could make her comparable.

DC saying that St Vincent was failing to "be the new Prince" was the other RRRRRRRRAGE inducing comment that made me start this thread, TBH.

hah!

But does that mean then, that you shouldn't compare any two artists to each other?

Doesnt that comment imply that St Vincent is trying to be like Prince - therefore a specific aim?

(I have never heard St Vincent so no real idea)

or imply that he thinks St Vincent is trying to follow Prince in some way

But does that mean then, that you shouldn't compare any two artists to each other?

You should do whatever feels right! I might compare a record to another record occasionally if it seems similar in some way, but it doesnt occur to me to do with artists so much though maybe actually if they had a very signature style where the records all sounded interchangeable

I'm not sure I ever think of artists in terms of "the X of today" and I always find it off-putting as a descriptor - examining similarities with what's gone before is certainly worthwhile but trying to identify a modern-day equivalent of anyone seems like a quest that's bound to fail. What is interesting to me is thinking about why there couldn't ever be another X, looking at the differences between the world X existed in and the world of today.

I think I'd need Matt to expand on the St. Vincent/Prince comment - I took it to mean that he thought she wasn't as good a songwriter/arranger but I'm not sure why he made that particular comparison (I've not heard the track in question though).

yeah, I can understand the discomfort with the idea that even specific artists have specific sounds that can be compared to (though, to be fair, I think that DC was trying to compare St Vincent's auteur-like qualities, or lack thereof, to Prince, which is kinda crazy-talk on many levels).

It's odd to me, the way that someone can say e.g. "Band X sound like New Order" and we will both have an idea in our head of "What New Order Sounds Like" - but those ideas may be very different, if they're thinking "Movement era New Order" and I'm thinking "Technique era New Order" - but we probably will still agree that there is a ~quintessential New Order sound~ to which other bands' records may be compared.

I mean, the original Dog Latin comment seemed to be implying not *sound* but more career progression. And bands are often archetypical enough to follow certain career paths, but this won't necessarily reflect in their sound.

Like, I think I said this upthread (I can no longer remember what I've said where, to be honest) but I have been trying and failing for three weeks now to hear *any* Joy Division in Interpol (yeah, them again.) But then I read one of Alfred's quips about Our Love To Admire being their "Seven and the Ragged Tiger" (he implied this as a diss, but this is a pretty guaranteed way to get my to love a record) - and suddenly BOOM! - here is the career trajectory that makes way more sense to me, and "Interpol were the new Duran Duran" was a much, much more valid statement to me than "Interpol were the new Joy Division", right down to their charismatic coke-addict bass-player-who-wanted-to-be-the-frontman quitting halfway through a comeback album.

But that's more about Band X ~occupying the same cultural space~ as Band Y, rather than Band X ~sounding like~ Band Y.

Cultural Space - that's the term I've been grasping at all this time, BB, the words just didn't come to me as succinctly. So if I ask 'Who is the Aphex Twin of 2014' you can imply I mean: 'Who occupies this cultural space?'.

Yes, but for the eight billionth time, some cultural spaces are unique to a particular culture's time and place. Some niches or cultural spaces may never *occur* again, so it's impossible for someone to occupy that space again.

Duran Duran were not innovators; they were popularisers. So it is possible for another band to occupy that position in another time and place.

"Does this cultural space even still exist" is a much better question than "who is currently occupying Band X's cultural space."

Yeah, Aphex Twin's cultural space circa 1992 to 2001 doesn't exist anymore. Nothing even remotely like it, I suspect.

YEah it's an extension of the question I suppose.

I think it can be a fun (though ultimately pointless) parlor game to look for parallels between artists from very different eras and/or genres. You could make the case, for instance, that Hank Williams and Rakim were both figures who came along awhile into a genre's existence and set an artistic and formal standard that many (though not all) subsequent artists in the genres aspired to for decades to come. Or you could argue that that's incorrect. But to say "Rakim was the Hank Williams of the late 80s" or "Rakim is no Hank Williams" obviously would be ridiculous.

Yeah, it's tough because "drawing parallels between unrelated artists" is one of my favourite things. But it's the difference between a stretched metaphor and a straight up correlation, I guess.

got my ice cream at last

Was it cherrylicious ice cream, or was it the Cherrylicious Ice Cream Of Today?

Are we talking about fusion in this thread now?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Brand_X_Morrocan_Roll.jpg

Because it's lazy and ultimately meaningless.