― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 6 May 2005 21:53 (nineteen years ago) link
― darin (darin), Friday, 6 May 2005 21:55 (nineteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 6 May 2005 21:56 (nineteen years ago) link
Then ask yourself: is the rockism debate really that important? And arent you guys too wrapped up your own asses? No offence.
Trouble is, one of those four genres is a genre that the "anti-rockists" simply want to disappear. They feel that enough rock is already made, and that nobody should ever make any rock anymore ever.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 6 May 2005 21:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:01 (nineteen years ago) link
This comment intrigues me. I've heard it expressed from others involved in the 'scene' there (on that 'Berlin Digital' DVD) that things may have 'peaked' in some sense. Care to expand on this? What's going on in your opinion? Too much fashionability or some other negative factor (coalescing of expectations around musical creativity etcetera).
― fandango (fandango), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:02 (nineteen years ago) link
"You're only in it for the cred--I'm in it because I genuinely like music."
Also, re: rockism, Spencer is OTM about it being like logocentrism. And, like logocentrism in literary studies, music critics should recognize that everyone is "rockist" in the sense that they have normative values about music. No one is exempt. In fact by declaring yourself "anti-rockism" you are (obviously) taking an ideological position too--it's just that no one in music crit is calling each other "pop-ist" or what have you.
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:02 (nineteen years ago) link
Not only. The average Status Quo or AC/DC fan is probably a "rockist" as well.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:05 (nineteen years ago) link
― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:05 (nineteen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:07 (nineteen years ago) link
Geir, was "Love Me Do" rock or was it pop?
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:09 (nineteen years ago) link
(really enjoying all the discussion of this here...)
― Douglas (Douglas), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:10 (nineteen years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:10 (nineteen years ago) link
xpost about binaries
― Tom (Groke), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:13 (nineteen years ago) link
― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:14 (nineteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:15 (nineteen years ago) link
Right now, the rockists have been out-lefted by everyone. Now, all the anti-rockists are starting to out-left each other. This will continue until everyone is exhausted and recognizes that their own positions are all beholden to certain underlying aesthetic / political / ideological positions. At that point things will settle down and everyone will feel free to appreciate the music they like, etc.
Douglas / Tom: Sure, rockism is ingrained in language just like misogyny is arguably ingrained in language, I agree. But I *don't* think people are willing to admit that their anti-rockism positions are just as normative, capitalist, or what have you as rockist positions, which is what they are. Example: the "white guys with guitars" thread.
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:17 (nineteen years ago) link
― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:20 (nineteen years ago) link
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:20 (nineteen years ago) link
Lovelace inadvertantly otm in that this conversation would be trivial if rockisme were constrained to Rock. But per TV's Mr Noodle Vague's quite elegant elaboration in this thread, no genre is exempted. Valorizing "Straight Outta Compton" for it's unflinching portrayal of yadda yadda is patently rockist (Ice Cube = the new Dylan!). Much of the "Madonna Studies" genre of academic pop culture studies can be classified as not only radically rockist but almost charmingly naively so.
TV's Mr Noodle Vague offers a classically deconstructive approach to nonrockist discourse (this approach is sometimes described by both adherents and detractors as "sawing off the branch you're sitting on." Another approach, still Derridean but more poststructuralist than deconstructive, would consider the recording/performance/text specifically in its relation to other recordings/performances/texts, proceeding from the perspective that a performance/recording/text has no unique existence in any other context.
NB that this approach risks opening up an equally sticky conversation around the rockism inherent in discourses of resistance. oboy...
― rogermexico (rogermexico), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:21 (nineteen years ago) link
― rogermexico (rogermexico), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:26 (nineteen years ago) link
I'd call it bad pop.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:27 (nineteen years ago) link
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:27 (nineteen years ago) link
Spencer: yeah, the neatness and economy of Douglas' argument is Classic.
― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:28 (nineteen years ago) link
And I'm enough of a rockist (folkist, really) to object when people use Dylan-as-the-great-lyricist as an exemplar of rockism.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:30 (nineteen years ago) link
"Normative" does not equal "capitalist."
Geir Hongro = Ronald Thomas Clontle.
― Douglas (Douglas), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:33 (nineteen years ago) link
who still sez this and is taken seriously by anybody anywhere pleeze?
okay, maybe it is said all the time and i don't read those papers.
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:34 (nineteen years ago) link
― rogermexico (rogermexico), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:35 (nineteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:36 (nineteen years ago) link
Honestly scott, I have this argument every time somebody spots my Britney badge.
I did point out it was a straw man position, tho.
― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:36 (nineteen years ago) link
― mrjosh (mrjosh), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:39 (nineteen years ago) link
We just have to recognize that conviction about and empathy with music should be a more fluid thing that's less bound up in self-image.
Haha, too bad we can't all afford proper Lacanian analysis!
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:41 (nineteen years ago) link
HAHAHAHAHAH..except it's what.. "rock", "rot", and "pop!"
― donut debonair (donut), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:42 (nineteen years ago) link
― Douglas (Douglas), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:44 (nineteen years ago) link
Spencer Chow otm. That said, the final paragraph of the article concerns me. A lot.
One word for reading widely and maintaining awareness of other discourses and other touchstones is "responsibility." But another word for what's described in the position that we ought to "stage raids on other kinds of culture criticism: great writing about movies, about literature, about food" -- dilettantism.
That "great" may be the most troubling moment, as it ::dear god, I swore I'd never use this word again:: reinscribes another normative discourse on top of the one it seeks to erase. Replacing old touchstones with new ones solves nothing -- reliance on touchstones and criteria for greatness represents the very foundation of rockism.
xpost - which is what mrjosh is getting at a couple posts up - damn this thread is moving quickly
― rogermexico (rogermexico), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:45 (nineteen years ago) link
I don't know, I think in saying that you want things explained or that you want to explain it is totally all about meaning. See, I don't have a problem with the idea of meaning, though I do have a problem with the idea of a correct meaning. I mean, logos = truth; I think Deleuze is better understood in saying that we don't want to erect a monolithic interpretation and to understand that there should be a proliferation of interpretations, which is sorta beneficial and stimulating to everyone involved.
I agree with this; I meant I want them to explain their interaction, not some universal truth about the music.
― Lethal Dizzle (djdee2005), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:47 (nineteen years ago) link
Yeah, but I meant critic-wise. But then I remembered that I used to live in Philly and that I sometimes read Tom Moon's reviews and that he was probably guilty of this. And the last time I got seriously pissed-off by an article (other than Hornby's fuckin' nightmare in the NYT) was Moon's thing in Esquire ot GQ where he dismissed R.Kelly as someone who didn't have anything to say to anybody. Anything REAL. Anything POSITIVE. Then he went on to lionize whatever neo-soul titan was floating his boat that week. Someone suitably noble and full of grace.
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:47 (nineteen years ago) link
― Douglas (Douglas), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:49 (nineteen years ago) link
But I did call Baltimore club music the new Dylan! Wait, maybe that is rockist. Now I'm all bugaboo!
― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:52 (nineteen years ago) link
Reasons why auteurist theory falls apart.
― Guymauve (Guymauve), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:56 (nineteen years ago) link