Simon Reynolds

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I'm not sure about any of this. I don't think the above is pops core brief at all...musically at least. Imagewise, yes, its been a central plank of pop music to do this. But musically i remain unconvinced, and i'm not particularly persuaded by talk of the end of great leaps, because i'm not convinced by the concept of great leaps in the first place

visual transgression is central to pop, and always has been. its certainly still there, its perhaps more coded and sophisticated than previously. mainly because when it is 'overt' it gets called as contrived

if anything has changed its more the feeling that the world isnt going to be changed, that every gesture will be co-opted repackaged resold...its a cynical view, but its very difficult to refute. This is more tied up with rebellion. the imagery in popular music is of transgression , but no longer of rebellion. this is because the transgression is against other young people and genres...the narcissm of small differences. you dont rebel against those people though! rebel against who, the people that make money off you doing it?

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:17 (nineteen years ago)

i don't agree with the way that article conflates "revolution and transgression" with forward-looking music but i think it nails down british music 07 precisely, and explains why i think british music suxxxx right now. (i love amy winehouse but this is an anomaly in my taste!)

frankie (gareth?) otm above.

Also, I've always thought of Poptomism (or however you spell it) as an attempt to refute Derrida's hierarchical structures.

i think if we have to have a defn of poptimism this is as good and neat and concise as any.

― lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:32 (nineteen years ago)

visual transgression is central to pop, and always has been. its certainly still there,

I can't hear "visual transgression", and so I dearly hope that it isn't "central to pop".

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:33 (nineteen years ago)

The best bit in that article is where they ask the guy from Simple Kid about how disgusted he is with the music scene and he says something like "I thought every generation smashed its predecessors - I thought that was the rule!" (italics mine)

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:34 (nineteen years ago)

"How can you sleep at night when you're a washed-down version of the generation that went before you?"

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:36 (nineteen years ago)

Haha I had the same thought, Mr. Groke.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:38 (nineteen years ago)

"YOU'VE BUILT A BOX INSIDE THE BOX AND YOU'RE THINKING INSIDE THAT BOX."

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:38 (nineteen years ago)

To tired to read that Guardian article but this comment from the last para...

So where does that leave us? In a world in which originality is viewed with suspicion, radicalism has been subsumed by the mainstream, and bands are happy to churn out facsimiles of facsimiles of original pop.

... is total bollocks. When did anyone ever think originality was good? Well there's a two hundred year history of talking about art in terms of originality which hides the fact that it has always been a history of repetition rather than progression!! When was 'radicalism' subsumed by the mainstream? When we started talking about originality, i.e. when Coleridge went to work for the Royal Navy or Robert Burns took a job as a taxman? While one stole from the folk tradition, and the other from German philosophers! FFS.

― byebyepride, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:46 (nineteen years ago)

WHY DOES NO-ONE WRITING IN NEWSPAPERS THINK?

― byebyepride, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:46 (nineteen years ago)

WHY DO I EVEN CARE?

― byebyepride, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:47 (nineteen years ago)

I can't hear "visual transgression", and so I dearly hope that it isn't "central to pop".

-- mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:33 (10 minutes ago)

Yet every popular subculture of the last 50 years has had people dressing in ways that are instantly recognisable.

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:47 (nineteen years ago)

For the record, SR hated SAW.

SR's writing in '87 was great, but that was 20 years ago now and everyone he doesn't link to on his blog towers over him these days.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:58 (nineteen years ago)

When did anyone ever think originality was good? Well there's a two hundred year history of talking about art in terms of originality which hides the fact that it has always been a history of repetition rather than progression!!

it isn't that homogenous. some artists are content to repeat, others strive to progress. certainly they draw on, are influenced by or react against what came before, but to imply that there's no progression is just nonsensical.

and originality is certainly something to be valued, or at least pursued.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:02 (nineteen years ago)

never trust a sentence in an argument which includes the word "fact"

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:04 (nineteen years ago)

maybe there is nothing original in art. it's all just images and sounds and words, innit? same old shit.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:06 (nineteen years ago)

Mingus had the best take on it: "There is always great value in originality. But not originality alone, because there is originality in stupidity."

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:07 (nineteen years ago)

but there can be great value in original stupidity.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:08 (nineteen years ago)

it isn't that homogenous. some artists are content to repeat, others strive to progress. certainly they draw on, are influenced by or react against what came before, but to imply that there's no progression is just nonsensical.

A) If an artist sees themself as facing a choice between 'being content to repeat' and 'striving to progress' then my point still stands since the general parameters for talking about art are cast in terms of progression or its absence. In so far as the concept of 'art' is invented in the late C18th (i.e. the idea that there is some quality in common between literature, music and visual art, superseding the system of the arts), art and the problem of originality are intimately tied together.

B) 'repetition' and 'originality' aren't mutually exclusive.

C) Progress -- as opposed to development -- is a term that only makes sense with reference to society as a whole. There may have been artistic development, but with reference to the question of freedom/autonomy (on which the idea of progress depends) there has only been repetition of the failure to achieve progress.

D) I was being deliberately sweeping and provocative so OF COURSE I KNOW IT'S MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT!!!

― byebyepride, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:10 (nineteen years ago)

Anyway this is all beside the point of this thread, I want to go home and have a nap. So can we just drop it?

― byebyepride, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:11 (nineteen years ago)

However, the new Arctic Monkeys album.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:14 (nineteen years ago)

a) yes, but the long-running struggle between originality and conservatism doesn't in any way mean that former has never been valued.
b) very true. didn't mean to imply they were.
c) semantics and arguable usage of the term.
d) sweeping, provocative statement provokes repsonse? HOW SURPRISING.
e) this thread has a point?
f) please, let's do. and sweet dreams.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:22 (nineteen years ago)

I think the new Arctic Monkeys album illustrates a very interesting struggle between originality and conservatism.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:24 (nineteen years ago)

how so? haven't heard it. no interest in it, to be honest.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:25 (nineteen years ago)

Anyway this is all beside the point of this thread

C or D? C. He is one of the best of the demimonde of naked emperors putting virtual pen to virtual paper on the subject of popular musics (a naked empire in its own right).

I grade on a curve.

I have to go to work now.

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:27 (nineteen years ago)

He's a clapped out old hasbeen in a doughy bunker wondering why the sun doesn't shine any more.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:29 (nineteen years ago)

(btw marcello i dunno if you saw it on freakytrig but i love yr k8 bush piece on stylus! aerial continues to blow my mind)

― lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 11:31 (nineteen years ago)

(I'm at the office now.)

I (and SR) come from the generation where "Here's a chord... here's another... here's a third" first became a meme. And I find that way to engage with music a much higher calling than to be inspired to simply write about "music".

And to tie in with the "let's googlebomb Lefsetz" thread, writing about pop music and its ephemera -- however wonderfully it's done -- is an ultimately inessential spawn of the now-dying industry paradigm, at its worst reduced to trendspotting, trainspotting, dancing about architecture, or arguing that "every popular subculture of the last 50 years has had people dressing in ways that are instantly recognisable" has something substantial to do with music and its nuts-and-bolts.

Simon's a C, but the milieu is often a D.

I'm not interested in Ghost Boxology or retroactively naming things foo-prog. But I will be ordering a copy of his new book ASAP :)

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:47 (nineteen years ago)

Uh, that would be "Here's a chord... here's another... here's a third... NOW FORM A BAND!"

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:47 (nineteen years ago)

I (and SR) come from the generation where "Here's a chord... here's another... here's a third... NOW FORM A BAND!" first became a meme. And I find that way to engage with music a much higher calling than to be inspired to simply write about "music".

Fine, then form a fucking band already.

― braveclub, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:51 (nineteen years ago)

Been there, done that. I'm actually going back to music school. Why so touchy?

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:53 (nineteen years ago)

It's interesting cos - correct me if I'm wrong - SR is one of those critics who never seem to have had much urge to actually make music! It's a strange banner to stand with him under.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:56 (nineteen years ago)

indeed i seem to remember him saying that MIA should have started a BLOG rather than make music!

― lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:57 (nineteen years ago)

SR (and ILM, for that matter) tends to transcend/override my ambivalence about words-about-music.

xpost

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:58 (nineteen years ago)

writing about music can sometimes save lives, mark, be careful not to presume

(i'm assuming you're not mark perry?)

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:05 (nineteen years ago)

writing about music can sometimes save lives, mark, be careful not to presume

...and because of that, I could never, ever dismiss it entirely.

Signed,
Not Mark Perry

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:09 (nineteen years ago)

bump for neatness

― blueski, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:16 (nineteen years ago)

i seem to remember him saying that MIA should have started a BLOG rather than make music!

ok that is hilarious

― blueski, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:17 (nineteen years ago)

something substantial to do with music and its nuts-and-bolts.

thats because its not to do with nuts and bolts of music. its to do with saying i dont buy that pop musics role is musically transgressive, its transgressive elements are largely visual/imagery. the article complained that pop musics transgressive element had gone...my refutation was that 'musically' i dont really believe it was ever there, socially/culturally/visually yes, at certain points very much so.

my rather pat point about recognisability of youth cultures was a response to your point that you couldnt 'hear' visuality in music. though i presume you go into the world interact with other people and go to shows, and have 'seen' plenty of music before. musics power to shock and inspire is OFTEN visual. much of the uproar about the sex pistols was about their image and what they did, not their music (though sometimes their lyrics). the transgressive element was not really in those chords

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:20 (nineteen years ago)

and for the record, i do find 'heres a chord etc etc' go make some music a higher calling that writing about music, absolutely!

but, here we are

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:21 (nineteen years ago)

I get your point now about visuals, etc. I should scroll up higher and re-read the context.

― mark 0, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:26 (nineteen years ago)

there's a conflation here of pop and rock, a bit (rock always had much more of a brief to shock, to overturn, than other kinds of popular music), but even pop had musical moments of pretty indisputable transgression, i.e. taking old gospel choir tunes and having the words be about romance, for instance - i.e. shake off those old traditions and boogie! it makes me think of the bit in "century of the self" where curtis finds some old fashion sales film from the 1920s, where an elegant woman stands in the middle of a room of frowsy wallflowers and says something like "each of you is special. each is unique. and yet you dress all the same! you must realize that your clothes say a lot about you. open yourself up to the world, show the world how special you are." music, especially jazz and pop music and rock, were taken up into this system where we show others what we're like on the inside by virtue of these signs. "oh, he likes pavement!" etc. i think music and clothes still operate this way but the society we're living in has changed. we're not all lonely hearts still trying to get out of winesburg ohio, any more, the weight of tradition which used to be so total and crushing has splintered, or melted into air. so one of the great aspirational justifications for this kind of commodity-as-expression-of-individuality has vanished too, but the phenomenon persists.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:23 (nineteen years ago)

^^^ back to the punk thread. transgression/rebellion is a capitalist response to tradition. transgression and rebellion are capitalisms allies, not their foes

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:28 (nineteen years ago)

well maybe not vanished, actually - it's still going strong, i.e. this IBM ad campaign:

http://www.ibm.com/innovation/guide/image/casehome/case_studies_home.jpg

and also that hair grooming ad with two kids from china, where they're stuck in stultifying, uniform classrooms and then secretly gel their hair up to look punky and western and crazy and then run jubilantly out of the school. but i think these ads trade today more on the (VERY) strong memories of this kind of thing, rather than on any current intensity of impulse.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:33 (nineteen years ago)

frankie that seems like kind of a blanket statement.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:34 (nineteen years ago)

"The first 60-second TV spot breaks Saturday during the NCAA basketball tournament. It depicts a stream of blue flower petals that emerge from a factory's smokestack and float over various settings, such as a cluster of office cubicles or the maternity ward in a hospital. The focus then shifts to groups of men and women who appear to be singing along to a song from the Kinks that speaks to the new positioning: 'I'm Not Like Anybody Else.'"

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:36 (nineteen years ago)

"never trust a sentence in an argument which includes the word "fact"

-- Marcello Carlin, Friday, April 20, 2007 2:04 PM (5 hours ago)"

insanity

― That one guy that quit, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:04 (nineteen years ago)

"^^^ back to the punk thread. transgression/rebellion is a capitalist response to tradition. transgression and rebellion are capitalisms allies, not their foes

-- frankie driscoll, Friday, April 20, 2007 5:28 PM (2 hours ago)"

insanity

― That one guy that quit, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:05 (nineteen years ago)

I love how efficient we all are. When some of us go to sleep, others pick up the thread. When you guys take a nap, I'm awake and ready to go at it again. We're like... the army.

Frank, what makes, I think, the new Poptimist games so interesting is that they acknowledge it's about personal taste - so maybe you have a hierarchy, but there's an admission that it is personal, not factual (or whatever the opposite of personal taste is). After you decide to give every song a fair shake, you might still dislike some, but you've at least not dismissed any because of assumptions of hierarchy.

Though, that hierarchy runs both ways. I've heard so many times in the last year about bands touted by the British music press - as though the fact they were touted is reason enough to dismiss them (Arctic Monkeys, The Klaxons, etc). Ideally, one of the accomplishment of Poptimism would be removing any of these non-music considerations, but I think what ends up happened is that people see Poptimisim as Rockism for pop music - yet another ideology.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:10 (nineteen years ago)

No Mordy, I don't acknowledge that it's about personal taste. I'm making value judgments, and in many instances I think my value judgments are right. Which doesn't make them "facts," either. "Personal taste" and "universal facts" are not the only two choices, and a value judgment is neither mere taste nor an undisputable fact. You're right that we try not to go in and dismiss something out of hand, and we like a cacophony of voices and judgments; but nonetheless the judgments I end up making (and sometimes revising) are usually based on ideas that I went in with as to what makes some stuff good and other stuff bad. And many of those ideas of good and bad preceded me on this Earth. "Going in with ideas of what's better and worse" is not the same as "employs fixed hierarchies"; still, the former is hierarchical: I think some stuff is better than other stuff. As does everybody, though not everyone is as opinionated about music as I am. (The statement "Nothing is better than anything else" is self-contradictory.)

― Frank Kogan, Friday, 20 April 2007 19:43 (nineteen years ago)

If one of my criteria for good music is that it makes the British music press choke on its own phlegm, then the Arctic Monkeys and the Klaxons make poor music. Of course, that's a boring criterion; but it's not obvious to me that someone who does use that criterion is bringing in a "nonmusical consideration." Such considerations are very much a part of music. Music is a social marker. We use our tastes in social differentiation. This is not something we have a choice about; and this applies as much to the pop audience as to the rock audience (who to a big extent are the same audience anyway).

― Frank Kogan, Friday, 20 April 2007 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

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Simon Reynolds - C or D