Simon Reynolds

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or frank kogan, or tom ewing, or ian penman, or any of the other people who liked lovely paris's music who are a hundred times the writers/thinkers reynolds will be...

i'm not responding, it's lazy thinking (i mean...WHY is it a sign that "we" have "gone too far"? please to explain your regurgitated received ideas!) and is not really worth the 5 seconds i just spent typing this

xp to marcello

― lex pretend, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:16 (nineteen years ago)

k-punk: "Of course, one interesting thing about the 70s and 80s was the white influence of white pop on black pop. That seems completely unimaginable now."

even the influences are white. these guys have some serious hang-ups.

lex justify calling paris hilton 'lovely'.

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:18 (nineteen years ago)

Neither SR nor MF seem to like music by living people. They prefer dead things (Ghost Box, Burial, Focus Group), i.e. music that can't talk back and knows its place.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:20 (nineteen years ago)

"You started getting people arguing that singling out a figure like Timbaland as an auteur and an innovator, that is rockist. Or that if you allowed your sense of the artist’s personality - their intent and integrity - to interfere with your enjoyment of a record, that meant your mind was still shackled by rockist hang-ups. There seems to be a drive towards eliminating all axes of judgement beyond pure pleasure, the supposed purity of the consumer’s unmediated experience of the pop commodity. The distinction between “urgent” and “trivial” is obviously a no-no for these heroic anti-rockists, but you even get people seriously debating whether distinctions based on quality - good/bad - are rockist and should be jettisoned. The most recent test case figure for this lunatic fringe of anti-rockism is Paris Hilton. When you’re developing elaborate validating analyses of Paris Hilton, that ought to be a sign that you’re gone too far!"

is the full quote and it's manifestly 8080. but there haven't been any elaborate or validating analysises of paris hilton anywhere, not from kogan or from penman.

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:22 (nineteen years ago)

Simon Reynolds - instead of letting the butterflies flutter around his garden in vibrant colour, he kills them all so he can pin them down with labels.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:24 (nineteen years ago)

Reynolds is wrong though, because the poppist approach to music criticism is manifestly *not* about pure appreciation of music. In fact, I can't think of any other critical approach that places less emphasis on how much the listener is actually enjoying the music they listen to. Popism revolves around a weird outdated sense of being challenging, it's more concerned with *not* liking the music it *doesn't* like, rather than enjoying the music it does.

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:27 (nineteen years ago)

That quote makes no sense at all and makes so many unjustified assumptions I don't know where to start.

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:29 (nineteen years ago)

Or, to put it another way:

http://www.fistoffun.net/book/16.jpg

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:29 (nineteen years ago)

manifestly 8080

have you finally lost yo mind nrq, what is 8080 supposed to mean?

― lex pretend, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:29 (nineteen years ago)

sounds like Pat Metheny?

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:32 (nineteen years ago)

dom 8080

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:35 (nineteen years ago)

Dom's argument "all popists are just being ironic" = dud

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:39 (nineteen years ago)

"Or that if you allowed your sense of the artist’s personality - their intent and integrity - to interfere with your enjoyment of a record, that meant your mind was still shackled by rockist hang-ups."

is definitely true: it's the (extremely old -- waaaay predating barthes et al -- and discredited) attempt to dissociate author/performer from text, which is neat when yr performer is a racist no-talent skank.

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:40 (nineteen years ago)

Braveclub not reading anything I say = dud

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 19 April 2007 09:41 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not reading Dom Passantino's argument as popism=irony. Popism seems to me...to be a kind of a 'corrective' to...not necessarily rockism but to external factors/influences

The problem, as i see it, that this leads to...is that this runs into the same arguments about 'what is pop?', a style..or something that is popular?...is pop a genre itself?

If its a genre, it quickly runs into exclusionary territory..and we've seen this with micro scandipop that sells a whole lot less than Razorlight. I'm not sure how popism can sit easily with exclusion due to popularity.

If its something that is merely popular, then popism can really be reduced to 'stating the obvious'..an argument that music is just music, that external factors are irrelevant. This can be an attractive position, removing all the 'nonsense' that surrounds culture. But i think the danger here is in reducing everything to merely sound, and i don't think people live their lives this way. Or perhaps, increasingly, they are?

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:15 (nineteen years ago)

Which..coming back to Paris Hlton. The argument evinced by Reynolds and others here, seems to credit Paris Hilton as somehow being responsible for 100% of her music/image...like some lone wolf without a team. As though Paris Hilton herself, Paris Hilton the brand, and Paris Hilton's music are all somehow indistinguishable, and the non-Paris Hilton parts of her output are not of any concern

Though this kind of thinking has lessened over the last few years, it tens to have morphed into producer-fetishism as a way of ignoring the performer

or to put it another way, allowing the personality of the artist to interfere with your enjoyment of output---this may be rockist thinking, it may not., but it doesnt answer the question of ...'which artist?'

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:21 (nineteen years ago)

OK maybe not "irony" but Dom you're making out that popists don't actually enjoy the music they're championing, which is plain wrong.

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:21 (nineteen years ago)

ie...We still seem to be stuck at the level of 'I can only really conceptualise something as coming from one person'

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:22 (nineteen years ago)

But i think the danger here is in reducing everything to merely sound, and i don't think people live their lives this way. Or perhaps, increasingly, they are?

I do/am. sort of.

I've mostly given up on reading interviews and bios, watching videos, looking at pictures, etc. I'm trying to strip out everything not immediately connected with the music, as it only serves as a distraction and clouds your perceptions. it's nigh-on impossible, but worth the attempt, I think. at least as an experiment.

― m the g, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:24 (nineteen years ago)

why so?

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:25 (nineteen years ago)

nrq you should understand, you do what m the g does except you go further and strip out the music too :D

― lex pretend, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:26 (nineteen years ago)

Well it certainly fits in with a theme of disassociativeness and anomie...of living in bubbles and pods.

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:27 (nineteen years ago)

Which is the suburban ideal and perhaps rings true for a lot of people..who have grown up in this kind of environment..a simultaneous need to belong to...something. But also to feel an individual.

the paradox of the suburban teenager

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:31 (nineteen years ago)

for one thing, I've naturally increasingly found the ephemera less and less interesting. but when you grow up as a music fan, you buy the mags, read the interviews, put up the posters, etc...all of this affects how you hear the records. serves to set it in a context, but I'm not sure that this is useful or desirable.

given my proclivities were leading me in that direction anyway, I made a conscious decision to see if ignoring all that stuff would lessen or enhance my music experiences. so far, I like it. a lot.

although, to be fair, this may arise from increased interest in genres that don't tend to be awash with promo shots, videos and interviews - improv, noise, experimental nonsense, old soundtracks, etc.

― m the g, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:31 (nineteen years ago)

I think SR is confusing "discardable" with "must be discarded".

― Groke, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:31 (nineteen years ago)

Which is really the indie-hipster in a nutshell, the impossibility of closing that particular circle

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:32 (nineteen years ago)

frankie basically otm about the 'problems' of popism - though another problem would be that there really isn't any one popism, most of the people i would call popists approach those difficulties in different ways, and in many ways it's not a clear-cut either/or; it's not either pop is a sonic genre OR pop is what's popular, but somewhere in between, and everyone draws their own lines. though i tend to automatically class it by means of production, or perceived means of production, which isn't necessarily accurate but it's why i think of ashlee simpson (sonically rock, doesn't sell much) as pop, and of fall out boy (sonically rock, sells lots) as not-pop.

to me popism isn't so much about what music you're open to but in the ways you approach it - what always ends up clouding the arguments is that they devolve into "but this act IS POP" "no they aren't" etc etc.

― lex pretend, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:38 (nineteen years ago)

I think SR is confusing "discardable" with "must be discarded".

i think SR has not really thought about what the word "discardable" actually means

― lex pretend, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:43 (nineteen years ago)

What I don't really understand is why Reynolds keeps going on about this stuff - obviously this idea he has of what "anti-rockism" is really annoys him or gets to him on some level. At first it was quite flattering and daunting, because I do still respect and admire Reynolds hugely and of course I identified with "popism", or assumed that he was talking at least in part about me and my mates. And I found the Dissensus people intimidating: I tend to assume they're cleverer than me, or at least better at following ideas through.

Then it became irritating, because I felt so disconnected from what he was talking about and I felt myself being turned into a straw man. He seems to think there's some kind of Popist Manifesto out there to war against - I've never seen anything so programmatic, and as Lex says I see a bunch of individual "popisms" or "poptimisms" rather than a hedonistic credo.* Maybe he's more talking about people like Kelefa Sanneh or Jane Dark now, I don't know.

And now it's more embarrassing than anything else, because he seems to be wasting so much brain energy on fighting a quite minor coterie of critics, most of whom disagree with each other a lot (though not with his inkie-veteran relish) and hardly any of whom get published much. It's an embarrassment for myself too: the impression I get is of two groups of friends, each using the other - who they have barely any contact with, even online - as a convenient intellectual whipping boy.

* and I haven't used the word "rockism" seriously for about four years, I think. One day at a time, sweet Jesus.

― Groke, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:06 (nineteen years ago)

"nrq you should understand, you do what m the g does except you go further and strip out the music too :D

-- lex pretend, Thursday, April 19, 2007 1:26 PM (45 minutes ago)"

keeping up with shit is a big conspiracy. time is an illusion. in-built obsolescence. and all that.

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:13 (nineteen years ago)

I made a conscious decision to see if ignoring all that stuff would lessen or enhance my music experiences. so far, I like it. a lot.

although, to be fair, this may arise from increased interest in genres that don't tend to be awash with promo shots, videos and interviews - improv, noise, experimental nonsense, old soundtracks, etc.

Yes but i don't think that interviews and promo shots aren't really what this is about.

Where do you live, m the g?

I think this ability to mentally reduce music to just sound, whether desirable or not, is really only possible via isolation. and not from interviews and promo shots, which are pretty easy to avoid! But by being in a city, hearing music in shops, tv shows, at the game, coming out of cars, coming out the windows of other houses, at work.

these too are 'real music played by real people' like on that other thread, and shows that pop music itself is real music played by real people.

i think in the suburbs and subdivisions this is less the case...and comes back to bubble living, social context is lesser, people are simply more dissasociated from the social sphere...many young people feeling unconnected to society..the desire to fit in somewhere to connect, but a childhood and adolescence that paradoxically gives them a desire to NOT be like everyone else, to not fit in, to be an individial.

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:14 (nineteen years ago)

If Derek Bailey played a gig at the Little Theatre Club with no audience whatsoever, as happened more than once, was his music "real"?

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:19 (nineteen years ago)

I think in the suburbs you maybe have to work harder to create your own social context for the music - find people to share it with, talk about it, be proactive because the opportunities to absorb it and its existing social context are less. That's what I mean by imaginary communities, virtual communities, self-created communities. And of course you can opt out entirely - dissasociate yourself and enjoy it in isolation - but I don't think that's the norm.

― Groke, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:21 (nineteen years ago)

xxpost:

you're quite right, it's music in a social context, but it's still music in something approaching a 'pure' form, i.e. not surrounded by marketing, image, etc. i.e. factors intended to influence how you hear it.

but not that I really recognise what you're talking about anyway...'disconnected' is one way to put it. I live in a large, major city, but work at home. I download countless mp3s at random. piles of CDs come through my letterbox. I walk the streets with my headphones on. they come off at gigs. so there is no 'real music played by real people', which is incredibly patronising anyway. (memo to self: buy new issue of the wire) it's something of a solipsistic musical universe.

I think fitting in and defining yourself is only really important when you're a kid - although, interestingly, my close group of friends dates from that time, but is diverse and entirely non-music based. I was all about the metal as a teenager, they were all about the U2 or the beats and synthpop, and never the twain shall meet when you're 16. in some ways that's levelled out now and there's a bit more common ground, but there are still fundamental differences. the point is that music is not alwas means of bonding, it can be quite the reverse.

but I'm no longer a teenager, so can't be arsed with worrying about my sociability, individuality, or how the two are related. I'm more worried about earning enough cash to buy bran flakes and magik markers CDs.

― m the g, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:34 (nineteen years ago)

[i[If Derek Bailey played a gig at the Little Theatre Club with no audience whatsoever, as happened more than once, was his music "real"?[/i]

Ask the soundman...

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:36 (nineteen years ago)

memo to self: buy new issue of the wire

Why?

― Tom D., Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:36 (nineteen years ago)

The person who Simon and Mark never confront in their anti-loony-popism is Frank, who loves Paris but is not anti-rockist or popist or anything (they even flee from him: Mark once made this weird pre-emptive dismissal of Frank who he admitted he'd barely read). The way in which the liking of Paris is conflated with this gone-too-far critical gesture seems to betray the nuance of the way they frame their nu-rockism elsewhere.

I've never understood why it is important that Paris being creatively bankrupt needs to "go without saying" - Simon's position on this particular issue implies that music crit would be a lot more robust if we could all agree on things. But music crit always strikes me as being most robust at sites of disagreement. Arguments against Paris are more interesting if they're forced to take the form of arguments, rather than mere invocations of some higher truth.

― Tim F, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:41 (nineteen years ago)

Who is Frank?

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:43 (nineteen years ago)

xpost: for reading pleasure. review section only.

― m the g, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:44 (nineteen years ago)

Frank Kogan.

― Tim F, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:49 (nineteen years ago)

robin - [Removed Illegal Link], also as seen on the rolling teenpop thread, poptimists and elsewhere

xp

― lex pretend, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:52 (nineteen years ago)

oh fuck nu-ilx! that was an amazon link to his book

― lex pretend, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:53 (nineteen years ago)

'real music for real people'...yes it is patronizing. it cropped up on another thread..im using it here as shorthand for social-music, genre-music, rather than individualist music

i think fitting in and defining of self are more important as children and teenagers but i think subconsciously they're still there throughout adult life, to larger and lesser degrees, you could ask, Why are there cypriot communities in england and america? Why do they need to be close together, why do they need to listen to the same music?

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:54 (nineteen years ago)

there isn't any real disagreement over paris, tim, it's a concoction. what is there to be said? nothing i've read has had the slightest traction. i don't know it's a bit like wyndham lewis on hitler -- he just called it wrong, move along now.

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:55 (nineteen years ago)

ie...for many people music isnt a cause of bonding..its a symptom

in anomic subdivision suburbia this really isnt the case, which is why you have rootless kids desparate to fit in, to identify, to belong, to define to something...Groke's 'virtual communities' perhaps

― frankie driscoll, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:59 (nineteen years ago)

"Of course, one interesting thing about the 70s and 80s was the white influence of white pop on black pop. That seems completely unimaginable now."

weird. id say black pop is very 'white' sounding these days.

― titchyschneiderMk2, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:01 (nineteen years ago)

How are separate urban communities less 'subdivision' based than suburban ones?

― Groke, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:03 (nineteen years ago)

xpost:

I know what you meant - the 'patronising' wasn't directed at you, but at the original quote.

as for your second point...I know this is true, but have no real direct experience of it myself. nationhood and any notions of identity that spring from it have always seemed fairly arbitrary and meaningless to me. I currently live in a country that's not the one I was born and raised in, but I don't feel any more or less of an outsider or a fully fledged member of the community here than I did there.

I don't like that kind of 'me and my kind' mindset. it just breeds division and misunderstanding.

― m the g, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:07 (nineteen years ago)

SR and k-punk are like the smug kids at university who have read a little bit of Baudrillard and have decided that everyone else is living in thought-prisons. They use other people's critical positions the way teenagers use bands: you're EITHER an emo or an indie or whatever, you can't possibly like both this AND that. (If you defend Paris you must think that all judgements about quality are irrelevant.) Just as two schoolkids on the bus arguing about who's in their gang would be really fucking boring to anyone else, when SR is in that mood he is just tedious. This isn't ALL that SR does though, and although I don't buy the hauntology stuff (which smacks of having backed himself into a critical deadend and finding music to match your ideas, combined with his own personal distaste for most current music -- and hey, he's a dad now, he doesn't HAVE to be down with the kids, he can't have time to keep up, really, but so much of his self-esteem must be built on this sense of being critically on top of the zeitgeist, which is basically a lame idea in the first place) I'll keep looking at his stuff for when he does have something interesting to say.

― byebyepride, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:09 (nineteen years ago)

It's been an awfully long time since he has, though.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:11 (nineteen years ago)

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Simon Reynolds - C or D