What does it mean for a piece of music to "rock"?

as in, "chooglin' on down to new orleans"

blah blah family resemblances blah blah

You see, rock is a feeling that no one can understand really unless you're deep into the vibe of rock.

HOUSE is a feeling

rock is, you know, whatever

dudes this should put an end to this discussion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hcMYW6b3Ss

lol geeta

LOVE is a feeling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRsNtNlXNLs

trying to get people to understand and appreciate music.

don't have any beef w/xhuxk myself but I don't think ^^ is the motivation or net effect of 99% of rock criticism

No one man owns rock because rock music is a universal language, spoken and understood by all.
You see, rock is a feeling that no one can understand really unless you're deep into the vibe of rock.

― blapplebees (crüt), Friday, August 5, 2011 11:16 AM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark

are you serious? i mean, this actually seemed to be eddy's position, which seems an untenable one for a guy who (allegedly) makes a living trying to get people to understand and appreciate music. (it's also a sadly anti-intellectual position IMO.)

It's not his position at all! Eddy has never believed in universal languages or platonic ideals. These sound like Jack Black quotes from School of Rock.

This is a minor point, but an important one for me: Eddy was the first critic I read who emboldened me not to give a damn what an artist's printed lyrics literally said; what mattered was what I thought I heard.

amateurist demands some proof of objectivity from a purely subjective exercise- so not gonna happen

alfred would you read a book that way

LOVE is a feeling

no no, house is a feeling and love is the message!

you guys need to go back to disco school

rock is, you know, whatever

the uncontrollable desire to jack your body?

oh look xhuxk does address "rock" in the comments:

Since I mentioned Carducci, I should maybe add that, if some irritating troll somewhere asked me repeatedly to define what I mean when I say music “rocks,” I’d probably consider some definition like “to propel with forward motion, often though not necessarily at high velocity and volume, using a swinging, blues-derived rhythmic base, generally in a small-unit format.” But I probably wouldn’t tell that to the troll. (And of course somebody might further ask me to define words like “forward motion,” “swinging”, and “velocity,” which I may well not all be using in an absolutely technically and musicologically correct sense, and it could go on forever from there, and I’m a busy guy, so….)

alfred would you read a book that way

not if it sang to me

point taken but...

not to give a damn what an artist's printed lyrics literally said; what mattered was what I thought I heard.

no offense but this aspect of the xhuxk approach seems blindly egotistical; not listening that way but taking the next step and present your perceptions as authoritative criticism

Eddy was the first critic I read who emboldened me not to give a damn what an artist's printed lyrics literally said; what mattered was what I thought I heard.

Hence your pervy interp of Cut Copy's "So Haunted"?

Eddy was the first critic I read who emboldened me not to give a damn what an artist's printed lyrics literally said; what mattered was what I thought I heard.

Not precisely, but Marcus has made more or less the same point: "If the artist made a record intending to convince all right-thinking people to send money to the I.R.A., but the record is in Swedish and nobody can know that, it's sort of pointless to discuss the guy's intentions. What you really have to discuss is what is it like to hear a record in Swedish, and does it have a good beat?"

greil marcus should try writing in swedish

Hence your pervy interp of Cut Copy's "So Haunted"?

you know it! (I wasn't alone though)

no offense but this aspect of the xhuxk approach seems blindly egotistical; not listening that way but taking the next step and present your perceptions as authoritative criticism

Is any criticism authoritative?

I disagree with about 80% of xhuxk's perceptions, by the way, and love his prose and (most of his) arguments, which, I guess, is a variation on the who-cares-what-the-lyrics-really-say argument.

xpost

no, and hence my whole argument crumbles like a day-old doughnut. funny how middle age has made me so literal-minded

Since I mentioned Carducci, I should maybe add that, if some irritating troll somewhere asked me repeatedly to define what I mean when I say music “rocks,” I’d probably consider some definition like “to propel with forward motion, often though not necessarily at high velocity and volume, using a swinging, blues-derived rhythmic base, generally in a small-unit format.” But I probably wouldn’t tell that to the troll. (And of course somebody might further ask me to define words like “forward motion,” “swinging”, and “velocity,” which I may well not all be using in an absolutely technically and musicologically correct sense, and it could go on forever from there, and I’m a busy guy, so….)

well, i'm glad he's put it on the record! he never deigned to explain this when i asked!

fyi it's not "purely subjective" -- one can choose to have a hermetic personal definition but surely for the idea of "rocking" to have any social currency there needs to be some kind of (perhaps unspoken) intersubjective agreement about what it refers to!

although what aspects of musical form seem to replicate the physical concept of "forward motion" is itself an interesting question! obviously music "moves" in the sense that sound waves travel through space, but clearly no music--even styx--actually "moves" in the sense of being propelled forward in any literal sense. i'm sure some music theorists have tackled this topic at length, so maybe i should be looking in the library rather than posting to ILM.

it's telling BTW that chuck considers it "trolling" to ask what he means when he says something "rocks." that seems like the kind of basic, deceptively simple (actually quite complicated) question that rock critics should be asking themselves more often!

i mean rock criticism is so rife with received wisdom, imprecise impressionistic description, etc. that asking what we mean when we use terms like "rock," "dark," "light," "heavy," etc. etc. to refer to music seems like a very productive exercise, even though i understand some people here will always think it's literal-minded or pedantic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_language_philosophy IIRC

clearly no music--even styx--actually "moves" in the sense of being propelled forward in any literal sense

anticipating objections: obviously brass bands/marching bands often "move forward" literally, but that can't really be said to be a (literally speaking, non-metaphoric) inherent quality of the music.

the whole lyrics debate is one big false dichotomy, no? sometimes you care what the person is saying, sometimes you don't. some people care, others don't. what's the big deal?

i still am not sure what this thread's about

i mean i feel like i get a lot more out of e.g. mahler's kindertotenlieder if i know what the singer is singing and how the music interacts with the words. but i wouldn't care if someone else just enjoyed the music. although i'd get annoyed if (like some folks on ILM who will remain nameless) they decided to make it their "project" to tell me that the words don't matter.

i still am not sure what this thread's about
― Neanderthal, Friday, August 5, 2011 5:41 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark

it's about what it means when people say something rocks.

These sound like Jack Black quotes from School of Rock.

incidentally I was just quoting the house music monologue and replacing "house" with "rock"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NSn5RfxoXs

imo music that "rocks" tends to a) sound like someone broke a sweat playing it or b) like you'll break a sweat if you move to it in the way that it inspires you to, but not necessarily dancing.

i judge how much music "rocks" by counting how many people I challenged to a fight while the song was playing

Don't know if there are any musicological studies on the question, but honestly, I'm not sure that it merits it. Tend to think that Chuck's off-the-cuff definition is actually pretty adequate. (Wouldn't include an emphasis on swinging, though. Rock can swing but doesn't have to.)

it may not mean a thing but can still rock

Well, like "School Days" swings but "Johnny B. Goode" does not.

dude, amateurist, if you can't figure this shit out in 8 years maybe its time to get another aggravating hobby.

what do you mean? are you satisfied with the definition chuck gave? i'm not.

every time i criticize or mock chuck eddy i get more vitriol than if i had just made the same points w/o mentioning eddy, so obviously a lot of folks here have got his back. which is fine.

in other words i grant the chuck eddy-baiting part is aggravating if you don't share my antipathy to his writing but if the other questions about music are "aggravating," well i dunno sorry. i guess we think about music differently. i still think you are awesome.

also dude scott i'm guessing you have some concerns and interests that you had 8 yrs ago no? even if baiting chuck eddy and wondering what a definition of "rocking" might look like aren't among them.

Well, why is the definition unsatisfying?

it doesn't rock

i already explained why. it begs the question of what "forward motion" might mean in musical terms!

Chuck's words were "to propel with forward motion." "To propel" is, I think, key. And, again, I don't find this, as at least part of the definition, to be vague or inadequate.

This is like asking what makes pizza " delicious"

lol i cant believe amt is still carrying this beef around with him. i remember the great what-is-rock wars of 03 - heres the thing, if you're so interested in chuck's definition of it, just read his shit for a while and it becomes easy to anticipate what he will find to be 'rockin' after a while

tbh i can count on one hand the number of rock critics who i think dont deserve to be thrown on a giant barge and floated out to the middle of the arctic ocean where they'll have to kill and skin each other to create mounds of blubber they can survive off of, and chuck's one of them

TamTam will u marry me?

rock is its own reward