Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on rockism

Not only. The average Status Quo or AC/DC fan is probably a "rockist" as well.

Geir, was "Love Me Do" rock or was it pop?

(really enjoying all the discussion of this here...)

xpost about binaries

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.

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...

I'd call it bad pop.

Spencer: yeah, the neatness and economy of Douglas' argument is Classic.

And I'm enough of a rockist (folkist, really) to object when people use Dylan-as-the-great-lyricist as an exemplar of rockism.

"Normative" does not equal "capitalist."

Geir Hongro = Ronald Thomas Clontle.

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.

Honestly scott, I have this argument every time somebody spots my Britney badge.

I did point out it was a straw man position, tho.

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!

HAHAHAHAHAH..except it's what.. "rock", "rot", and "pop!"

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

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.

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.

But I did call Baltimore club music the new Dylan! Wait, maybe that is rockist. Now I'm all bugaboo!

Reasons why auteurist theory falls apart.

I'd be interested in getting to more of what I was talking about upthread - the ways in which critics use rockism to control discourse, and how we can use deconstruction to map out how critics create this heirarchy that says the Beatles made the best record of the 20th Century, for example (see: Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the best albums of all time).

it made me miss my missing of the last emp pop music studies conference all the more.

i was going to write a bunch of things after reading it, but either the noodle vague person said them very eloquently already, or i got so embroiled in reading the thread i forgot what i was gonna say.

i for one have very spotty, primarily self-taught understandings of folks like derrida. i never finished my undergrad degree. but it does seem rather obvious that a lot of this sort of critical rethink regarding the "normative" nature of pop/rock is happening NOW: after 50 years of rock music, a hundred and twenty years of recorded popular music, and roughly forty years of pop/rock criticism. most art forms went through a similar thing critically in the '60s, (notably of course conceptual/ pop artists and postmodern authors), which in its own way made even the concept of pop/rock ("low" culture) criticism possible. the influence of academia on pop/rock crit. is greater today than it was in the '80s when you mostly couldn't write for the "voice" unless you limply quoted baudrillard -- and this is a good thing, but i'll get to that in a second.

i've always thought that what's held back the pop/rock discourse has been more than anything how popular/ "populist" it is. i refer not to the seymour glass approach to music writing (this power-noise-jazz trio is good at least partly because they're unpopular) versus the chuck eddy method (this hair metal band is good at least partly because they're not unpopular), but how commodity-centered and release date/ad-money-driven pop/rock writing is -- the simple/ obvious fact that music writing is an extension of the entertainment industry's need to continually sell more product.

and while i initially balked at the idea of contemporary music studies entering academia, it appears that much of what's being done there is at least a bit fueled by the sort of focused, intense, and marketplace-free FANDOM one used to only find in 'zines, which tended to be written --not so well-- by malcontents living in their mothers' basements. (i don't feel the need to enumerate what's good about 'zines since i've done them, slowly and irregularly, for 22 years myself. and yeah, we all know blogs have replaced 'zines, for the most part.)

i can't wait to read tim ellison's thesis on psychedelic rock or whatever the hell it's on. he's always been one of my favorite writers and it's awesome/ only right and natural that he can get a degree based on this work.

Bernie Gendron's book, From Montmarte to the Mudd Club, is pretty good on this count and really gets at the history of these kinds of debates as they've played out in relation to the avant-garde and popular music over the course of the twentieth century.

hah. lo siento.

hah. lo siento.

Lethal, this is why those Deleuzian comments seem out of place. This is about taste and gatekeeping, about hierarchies of value, so the obvious go-to man is Bourdieu. If you're going to throw theory around, that is.

Bernie Gendron's book, From Montmarte to the Mudd Club, is pretty good on this count and really gets at the history of these kinds of debates as they've played out in relation to the avant-garde and popular music over the course of the twentieth century.

I don't mean to "throw theory around," I just picked that quote up from the debate on dissensus! and I think those deleuze quotes definitely relete to this discussion in a very real way.