That's it! The only ism I want to come out of your mouths is jism. Overacademic Bullshit Must Die.

(jess, thank you for omitting that comma)

I seriously don't even know why people bother writing about rock in his wake. Kogan's stuff (like that Disco Tex essay) comes pretty close, tho.

oh shit, did i just use "theory" again!? sorry.

Criticism is public service, but it's not office work. Its ultimate purpose is to communicate to others about music and the culture surrounding it, but not dryly or obviously. It's journalism, but it's meta-journalism. It is aware of itself. It exists to inform and elucidate, but also to entertain. Whether it's bullshit or not is purely subjective, and whether it's academic or not depends on the kind of writer you are, and the audience you want to reach. Taking an academic approach to writing about music is not the same thing as being an academic -- music, after all, is not an academic exercise in and of itself, or at least it shouldn't be. Sounds are not ideas, they are sounds. Music writers are exactly the kinds of organic intellectuals that Sterling mentioned (I really like that concept, BTW). They work from a base of that which is un-intellectual and attempt to put it in broader context, which is an intellectual activity. This activity contains an inner conflict, but a mild one, to my thinking. If Walt Whitman can intellectualize a blade of grass, why can't I intellectualize a guitar?

I understand all this very clearly, and I accept it, and I don't think it an act of stubbornness to refuse to discuss it further. There are layers here, and contradictions, but no more than in my own personality. The true measure of an intellectual is the ability to deal with contradictions.

I didn't say that. A useful intellectual is able to get down in the pit of contradiction with everybody else.

I mean there is just reams and reams of writing about music around, and it's staggering how bad most of it is, how uncool, unsexy most of it is. Meltzer was able to wed theory and his his own whacked concepts to rock music in his writing, in a way that seemed wholly inside, of the music. And he did all this at the beginning! WHen there was no codified "rock criticism", when there were no banal "literary critism" majors running around American campuses. So much of the writing around seems so pointless, so lacking in imagination, I don't even think the writers know why they do it. And we're fucking swimming in it! It's everywhere!

But just as words aren't substitutes for ideas, dropping the names of famous theorists is no substitute for using their ideas in interesting ways. I like Sterling's writing a lot, but that Ja Rule clip was just silly name-dropping; I mean it has nothing to do with any sort of Gramscian concept of hegemony at all, it was just gratuitous. But at the same time, at this point Sterling or any other writer shouldn't have to gloss Gramsci's ideas in the course of invoking him. He's, uh, a pretty well-established theorist. The Genovese reference, however, probably should have been prefaced by something like "In his important text Wages of Whiteness, the African-AMerican historian," (or whatever, was it WoW? I read him like 10 years ago but I hardly think that's the type of name that can just be gracefully dropped without explication)

oh and Diamond -- it *totally* had to do with Gramsci -- the point being that the "universal" h8 of Ja and his popularity go hand in hand -- the consentual relations to his music cloaked as disdain for his "sellout" persona were the key to the article.

But if you think people thinking about, talking about, trying to understand the music they listen to is a *good* think -- and I can't imagine you don't -- then it seems pretty obv. that bringing all tools possible to bear in this is also a good thing.

I mean you're the one making the absurd assumption that not using big words = not thinking and talking and trying to understand.

proof: the entire history of all music ever

(i forgot its actual title)

But I'll also admit that a good portion of my love for popular music has to do with a fascination and excitement about its history, and the fact that its history is constantly being written and re-written. And so listening to that Sugar song made me simultaneously think "Wow, that riff is classic! I really want to dance now!" and also "Does this mean Sugar is underrated? If so, how come? Did they suffer from not being Husker Du? Is a singer's second band always considered inferior to their first band? etc. etc." I don't think that everyone is as captivated by that aspect of music as I am, and if you're not, then perhaps criticism doesn't seem as interesting.

All the best things in life are useless.

all of this wasting of time with "ideas" when we could be doing louie louie covers in our garage!

You cannot be serious
/Johnny Mac

go listen to all music ever and see if you still think the same thing.