LOVE is a feeling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRsNtNlXNLs
― chief content officer (m coleman), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:17 (twelve years ago) link
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
― chief content officer (m coleman), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:22 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:25 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
amateurist demands some proof of objectivity from a purely subjective exercise- so not gonna happen
― chief content officer (m coleman), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:28 (twelve years ago) link
alfred would you read a book that way
― chief content officer (m coleman), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:29 (twelve years ago) link
no no, house is a feeling and love is the message!
you guys need to go back to disco school
― geeta, Friday, 5 August 2011 19:30 (twelve years ago) link
rock is, you know, whatever
the uncontrollable desire to jack your body?
― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
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….)
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
not if it sang to me
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:32 (twelve years ago) link
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
― chief content officer (m coleman), Friday, 5 August 2011 19:35 (twelve years ago) link
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"?
― jaymc, Friday, 5 August 2011 19:46 (twelve years ago) link
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?"
― clemenza, Friday, 5 August 2011 19:56 (twelve years ago) link
greil marcus should try writing in swedish
― chief content officer (m coleman), Friday, 5 August 2011 20:15 (twelve years ago) link
you know it! (I wasn't alone though)
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 August 2011 20:20 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 August 2011 20:22 (twelve years ago) link
xpost
no, and hence my whole argument crumbles like a day-old doughnut. funny how middle age has made me so literal-minded
― chief content officer (m coleman), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:06 (twelve years ago) link
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!
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:29 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:31 (twelve years ago) link
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!
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
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
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:35 (twelve years ago) link
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?
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:40 (twelve years ago) link
i still am not sure what this thread's about
― Neanderthal, Friday, 5 August 2011 22:41 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 5 August 2011 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
These sound like Jack Black quotes from School of Rock.
incidentally I was just quoting the house music monologue and replacing "house" with "rock"
― blapplebees (crüt), Saturday, 6 August 2011 01:09 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― some dude, Saturday, 6 August 2011 01:13 (twelve years ago) link
i judge how much music "rocks" by counting how many people I challenged to a fight while the song was playing
― Neanderthal, Saturday, 6 August 2011 01:14 (twelve years ago) link
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.)
― timellison, Saturday, 6 August 2011 01:46 (twelve years ago) link
it may not mean a thing but can still rock
― some dude, Saturday, 6 August 2011 01:53 (twelve years ago) link
Well, like "School Days" swings but "Johnny B. Goode" does not.
― timellison, Saturday, 6 August 2011 01:55 (twelve years ago) link
dude, amateurist, if you can't figure this shit out in 8 years maybe its time to get another aggravating hobby.
― scott seward, Saturday, 6 August 2011 02:15 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 6 August 2011 03:52 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 6 August 2011 03:53 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 6 August 2011 03:54 (twelve years ago) link
Well, why is the definition unsatisfying?
― timellison, Saturday, 6 August 2011 03:55 (twelve years ago) link
it doesn't rock
― blapplebees (crüt), Saturday, 6 August 2011 03:56 (twelve years ago) link
i already explained why. it begs the question of what "forward motion" might mean in musical terms!
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 6 August 2011 03:59 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― timellison, Saturday, 6 August 2011 04:21 (twelve years ago) link
This is like asking what makes pizza " delicious"
― fappin' duke (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, 6 August 2011 04:47 (twelve years ago) link
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
― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKbsdMRqhcI (Princess TamTam), Saturday, 6 August 2011 04:54 (twelve years ago) link
TamTam will u marry me?
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 6 August 2011 04:56 (twelve years ago) link
rock is its own reward
― lizard tails, a self-regenerating food source for survival (wk), Saturday, 6 August 2011 05:31 (twelve years ago) link
read his shit
― chawki (buzza), Saturday, 6 August 2011 05:53 (twelve years ago) link
― fappin' duke (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, August 5, 2011 11:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
how so?
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 6 August 2011 07:33 (twelve years ago) link
does tetzuki akiyama rock?
lol tam tam shill
― chawki (buzza), Saturday, 6 August 2011 07:35 (twelve years ago) link
some irritating troll somewhere
^^ missed amateurist display name opportunity
― uh oh whats your fantasy (flopson), Saturday, 6 August 2011 08:05 (twelve years ago) link