― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 8 September 2002 20:05 (twenty-two years ago) link
mark s said, "music *itself* is anti-systemic by virtue of having evolved wordless logics of construction..."
josh said, "there are certain facts about music in general (sort of metaphysical/ontological ones?) and pop music in particular (as opposed to say art music/classical; sociological, economic, etc. etc. facts) that make that importance of being a listener possible in ways that are distinct from literature, film, etc..."
well, film, literature, and art are representational in a way that music is not. even with abstract things, it seems like you have to struggle not to interpret them literally or derive their meaning by comparing them to things in the world. with music it's not like that: there's no correspondence, or only ones that the listener makes up. you have to struggle to pin things down. so it seems interpretation, i.e., the role of the audience, would be more important with music.
mark s, on another thread, said, "pile of books = taller and more stable than pile of all music formats i have so far encountered" and i think this comment is related to what he has said here.
at first, i resisted taking lit courses with books that i liked on the reading list. with music, i think it would be worse.
sociology = guaranteed to deflate soufflés
― youn, Monday, 9 September 2002 03:49 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Sunday, 15 September 2002 23:28 (twenty-two years ago) link
This is my long way of saying that I don't think that there are facts about music in general. There may be facts about "pop" in general, just as there could be facts about "physics" in general or "France" in general; which is to say that (vaguely) "pop" is a form or discourse or something without being a subset of "music."
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 16 September 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 16 September 2002 00:03 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 16 September 2002 00:05 (twenty-two years ago) link
But I think that distinguishing music as something perceived as more tonal than everyday speech is still useful, even if four or five words in this sentence need to be more clearly defined. The fact that this means music overlaps with a bunch of other art forms, as well as cultural categorisations, doesn't worry me. "Pop" and "music" can have an intersection, so although they cover very different territory, they can still have a shared subset of "pop music". More importantly, "pop music" then necessarily has interacting cultural and artistic components. If you think this way, it's harder to ignore "pop" at the expense of "music" or vice-versa.
So if you want to talk about "pop", talk about pop, and if you want to talk about "music", talk about music - I'm fascinated by both these subjects. But if you want to talk about "pop music", bring that interaction.
― B:Rad (Brad), Monday, 16 September 2002 02:31 (twenty-two years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 16 September 2002 07:36 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 16 September 2002 09:04 (twenty-two years ago) link
clue: the word "popist" is completely unnecessary, since any meaning it has is perfectly well covered by the word "rockist" clue two: sex: sexist <=> rock: rockist DO YOU SEE??!!
"reviving old popist/rockist dualisms" = meaningless phrase historically AND aesthetically
ok but mea culpa: i'm gunna get the 96 THESES done this week if i can, since frank's strength of expression will otherwise totally distort the field of argument
if people don't like the word "rockist" used in the sense i'm using it it's THEIR JOB to find a better one: so far only ArfArf has been down this road (he said rockism = romanticism: i don't really buy this, but the effort was appreciated, thankyou ArfArf)
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 16 September 2002 09:38 (twenty-two years ago) link
― chris (chris), Monday, 16 September 2002 09:54 (twenty-two years ago) link
Unfortunately this may well be on principle.
― Pete (Pete), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:13 (twenty-two years ago) link
I don't think the popist/rockist dualism is meaningless, Mark (and I think your response is a bit patronising DO YOU SEE?). For example: the early 80s NME new-pop disputes about Dollar etc. And then the mid-80s MM revalorisation of rock as a site of differance. Both of these encounters contrasted depth models of meaning and history with pleasures of texture, surface and presence: pop and rock as philosophical categories. In my dopey old way, I think of them as popist/rockist debates.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:15 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:20 (twenty-two years ago) link
please state what you find unclear abt what i have already said about this (clue: use SEARCH at bottom of page) (pinefox: ask someone to do this for you) and i will then perhaps be able to be clearer
i suspect that i consider the 90s MM usage to exhibit some of the failings suggested (i never read it, so i'm not a good judge there): the 80s NME new-pop disputes weren't dualist => excactly the opposite (hence my annoyance at a word coined as a crit/collapse of dualism being co-opted by people who dislike dualism to beat dualists abt the head)
as far as i'm concerned, rockism is required as what frank wd call a "superword", because its contestation — ps have i made up *word* — is key to the aufhebung blah blah
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:30 (twenty-two years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:31 (twenty-two years ago) link
Actually, debates are like this are why I get frustrated with ILx and go away for long periods - you can't respond to non-verbal cues/tone of voice (esp if you are writing hurriedly at work, and your tone comes out wrong - 'dreary', with it's langourous disdain was the wrong word, in retrospect) and so things get too heated too rapidly and everyone shouts BUNDLE. And someone gets buried at the bottom of a pile.
I disagree with Tom about the politically incorrect thing. Rockist has become a kind of ILx "superword" (Superword sounds like what Barthes called a "manna word", I think) and it seems to embody lots of things I disagree about with the FT pro-pop contingent (ie see last week's comment box debate on the charts). Maybe I should just write an article about it.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:46 (twenty-two years ago) link
The first thread about rockism on Greenspun was started by somebody (Patrick, wherever he is) saying I dont understand what it is, with the perception that we were using it all the time. That was also the first thread mark s ever posted to! By the time Lord Custos' thread about it ("The Scourge Of Rockism") rolled round there was a perception/assertion that it was mostly used jokily anyway. The "Rockism" thread on ILE shows the various types of use pretty well - frivolous batting around of the word as an in-joke, bafflement, vaguely serious definitions, aggreived and defensive interventions and responses to same.
― Tom (Groke), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:48 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:49 (twenty-two years ago) link
tom you also called nate the "acceptable face of rockism"!!
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:54 (twenty-two years ago) link
1. The charts are complete rubbish always and even paying attention to them is idiotic.2. The charts are bad and have been spoiled by marketing.3. The charts are neither a good or bad thing; pop is good but the charts at the moment might not be/are not.4. The charts are pretty much the same as they always have been and are a good thing as a reflection of public taste regardless of what you might think of the records.5. The charts are great right now!6. The charts are great right now and pop is a mystical and beautiful force which animates them and which some individuals can understand more than others.
Mark - yeah I did but that's after it had been established as a disputed joke-word super-word thing on the boards so I was ignoring any subsequent uses of it.
― Tom (Groke), Monday, 16 September 2002 10:58 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 16 September 2002 11:09 (twenty-two years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 16 September 2002 11:14 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Pete (Pete), Monday, 16 September 2002 11:22 (twenty-two years ago) link
i also tht last week's chart was GREBT — i listened to it v.loud while driving back from shropshire to london — tho this year's have been v.sluggish, yes: the 4-fold effect i was arguing for in that glenn macdonald thread HAS EMERGED but interestingly enough — i'm not surprised at this, actually, but i didn't expect it — hasn't yet been exploited much by the PopIdols uber-lizards => tho in a sense the Appletons were always already PopIdol-zoners
i never properly explored or expanded it, even when frank tried to make me: KymMarshinMarkSinkahland was going to be part of it but i got derailed on that (when is her fkn solo LP?)
btw edna the tolkien piece is "finished" (pending complete rewrite): wd u like to see it in first-draft form?
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 16 September 2002 11:27 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Monday, 16 September 2002 12:18 (twenty-two years ago) link
It's true - 'The Power Of Love', 'Back In Time', 'Stuck With You', 'The Heart Of Rock'n'Roll'...
― the pinefox (the pinefox), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 10:35 (twenty-two years ago) link
Brief sketch of what I mean by Superword: A Superword is a word like "punk," which is, among other things, a battleground, a weapon, a red cape, a prize, a flag in a bloody game of Capture the Flag. To put this in the abstract, a Superword is a word or phrase that not only is used in fights but that is itself fought over. The fight is over who gets to wear the word proudly, who gets the word affixed to himself against his will, etc. So the *use* is fought over, and this - the fight over usage - is a big part of the word's use. That is, we use the term in order to engage in arguments over how to use the term. Meta use is use!
So a Superword is a controversy word, and so far “rockist” would qualify, at least as a controversy word, except that it hasn’t surmounted the threshold into nonboringness. But what makes a Superword really super is that some people use the word so that it will jettison adherents and go skipping on ahead of any possible embodiment. Like, no one and nothing is good enough to bear the word "punk," and I wouldn't join a band that would have someone like me as a member anyway. (Supposedly, in the late ’80s I once claimed that Michael Jackson and Axl Rose were the only two punks going at the time.) So “rock,” “pop,” “punk,” and many other genre names sometimes act as Superwords, but “rockist” doesn’t.
If we must have a term for whatever it is that "rockist" is supposed to represent, I'd prefer some other words, since I'd want words that reference our own (often admirable) tendencies towards the meaning-laden and the quality-oriented, not merely the other guy's. Also, I'd want words that rock.
I’m sad that the most interesting part of this thread petered out (particularly that there was little discussion of my and the pinefox’s ideas, of the potential of sociology to analyze pop and the potential of pop to analyze sociology), though that’s partially my fault, since I didn’t get back to it. In any event, let’s make this argument: Whether you want it to or not, your liking or disliking something – e.g., a song – involves making a social commitment, at least if the like or dislike becomes known to others. Even if the like-dislike remains in the privacy of your own mind, that mind still lives in a social world. Sociology (as I barely knew it and hardly remember it) intellectually cripples itself by forbidding the question of whether something is good or not. If you want to engage in social commitments, you’re supposed to do it somewhere else than in sociology (and you’re not supposed to acknowledge that when doing sociology you’re making social commitments yourself). I assume that sociologists have raised the issue of sociology’s political commitments, but I’m thinking more or its mundane and everyday social commitments: like, does the writer of a work in sociology come across as a sk8ter? a prep? a dweeb? a rockist? a pussy? Does his writing swing? Does it rock? If so, what are the consequences for him?
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 26 October 2002 20:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 26 October 2002 20:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
But what compelled me to seek out that book in the first place was that I've been thinking about how popular music is generally neglected in the academy -- apart from the now-cliche, ideology-driven, cultural-studes investigations into things like "the image of Elvis." And as Josh suggested upthread, I do think there are substantial reasons for why music is treated differently from popular film/literature/art.
I think a lot of what it comes down to is this: Popular film/lit/art were accepted as valid fields of study once they could be considered properly "intellectual" -- the notion of the "auteur theory," for example, totally jump-started film studies. But it is much more difficult to see pop music as "intellectual."
Viz:
1. Unlike novelists and visual artists, who study the history of their discipline as a matter of course, popular musicians themselves are not seen as intellectuals participating in an unique discourse. (e.g., Beck is not reviewing Bjork in the NY Review of Books.)
2. There is a relative absence of legitimizing institutions (like the gallery complex) or gatekeepers (respected novelist-critics) to isolate significant works for study. (This is partly why writing about the Wonder Stuff, in the Pinefox's example, seems trivial: among all the music ever recorded, that band seems arbitrary to spotlight.)
3. While the lines between popular and high-culture art and literature are quite blurry (cf. the Jonathan Franzen debacle), thus giving more leeway for popular works to sneak into syllabi, they are much more stark with respect to music (composition or bust) -- and thus easier to justify pop music's exclusion.
4. Compared to literary and artistic "themes," the focus of much academic inquiry, it is not always obvious what popular music is "about" (it is often more functional).
I realize that some of these might be symptoms rather than causes. It's hard to say. But I'm curious to know if any of these thoughts make sense. Please pick 'em apart!
― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 3 June 2003 16:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
>>> Unlike novelists and visual artists, who study the history of their discipline as a matter of course, popular musicians themselves are not seen as intellectuals participating in an unique discourse. (e.g., Beck is not reviewing Bjork in the NY Review of Books.)
That's a good point, but they do TALK about each other all the time. So, I suppose, do footballers. I guess different levels of discursive elaborateness are involved.
>>> 2. There is a relative absence of legitimizing institutions (like the gallery complex) or gatekeepers (respected novelist-critics) to isolate significant works for study. (This is partly why writing about the Wonder Stuff, in the Pinefox's example, seems trivial: among all the music ever recorded, that band seems arbitrary to spotlight.)
But who legitimates a legitimating institution? The distinction between galleries and rock venues, or art magazines and pop ones, itself seems 'arbitrary' to me. (But we may be able to agree that 'The fact that the divide is a construct doesn't make it less real'.)
I'm not sure why it would be esp. 'arbitrary' to write about the Wonder Stuff. If you take pop 'seriously' (a dubious, un-Morleyesque word), then you might be interested in the Wonder Stuff - or violently uninterested.
>>> 3. While the lines between popular and high-culture art and literature are quite blurry (cf. the Jonathan Franzen debacle), thus giving more leeway for popular works to sneak into syllabi, they are much more stark with respect to music (composition or bust) -- and thus easier to justify pop music's exclusion.
I think that's true. But I would have thought that the last couple of generations of pop institutionalization - Sir McCartney, Dylan And The Poets, etc - have changed that. Or more generally, the post-Q / CD idea of the Back Catalogue. (Perhaps this is standard Rockism.)
>>> 4. Compared to literary and artistic "themes," the focus of much academic inquiry, it is not always obvious what popular music is "about" (it is often more functional).
Really? I think it's usually much clearer what pop music is about than what abstract painting is about.
I suppose that novels - White Noise, Lolita, The Trial - are about things. But they are usually about more things than pop songs (watering cans, sprinklers, queues): so it is less clear what they are 'finally', or 'ultimately', about.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 4 June 2003 12:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 4 June 2003 12:18 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 4 June 2003 12:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
― and what, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 14:55 (seventeen years ago) link
― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 14:57 (seventeen years ago) link
― jaymc, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 15:02 (seventeen years ago) link
― and what, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link