1)It's created in the US.2)It's imported in the UK, where it becomes big.3)It's mutated into million different subgenres by the UK producers.4)Then, maybe a small chapter or an epilogue about it going worldwide.
Reynolds doesn't claim that his is the complete story, but he also doesn't say it's just the British story. I mean, Reynolds does write about foreign scenes as well, but mostly about the stuff he himself fancies. To be objective you'd have to at least acknowledge the impact the German scene has had on electronic music.
― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 11:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
http://members.lycos.co.uk/dubplate/
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 18:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 19:09 (twenty-one years ago) link
Second most frustrating thing about ILM: seeing a new thread when it pops up and thinking "Oh I'll have to check that out later" and then coming back after an hour and realizing it's too lengthy to digest. Most frustrating thing about ILM: seeing the same thread revived a year after it started and being reminded of the first time you said you'd have to read it later.
― Andy K (Andy K), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 19:51 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 20:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Andy K (Andy K), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 20:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 2 April 2003 20:08 (twenty-one years ago) link
"It's Not Where You're At, It's Where You're From"
Seeing that on the subway gave me a rush.
(Then almost immediately thought of the acrimonious debates earlier this year about a certain mud-hut dwelling young lady whose publicity shots invariably depict her crouching on a jungle tree branch; that bizarre net-spectacle of folks who disdain the concept of authenticity engaged in frantic authentication!)
Perhaps someone can clue me in to what he's talking about with regards to M.I.A. here? He is referring to her right? I can't recall a single publicity shot where she's dwelling in a "mud-hut" or crouching on a "jungle tree branch". She appears in a jungle themed setting for the "Amazon" video. How exactly are anti-authenticity types "engaged in frantic authentication"? It would seem to me that so many of her detractors are *obsessed* (perhaps unconsciously) with where she's from (not speaking of Sri Lanka here, but with her art school/class origins? forgive me, I'm only an American here). Is there some assumption that everyone who likes her is somehow reveling in some kind of 1950s cliched exoticism?
As for the phrase above, I've always thought it was originally reversed and very American - i.e. it's not where you're from (place, class etc), but where you are now, where you've brought yourself (by the bootstraps) to. The inversion as quoted just seems like a moderately clever play on the original phrase and something that would mainly make sense in NYC (as in, which suburb do you represent etc).
Sorry if this is the wrong place to bring this up, but I don't have time to figure out dissensus.
Also, could someone please give a layman's account of Simon's nu-rockism idea?
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― strng hlkngtn: what does it mean? (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:27 (eighteen years ago) link
Where she says things like:"'I'm glad I went that far into it. I was the best hoochie on the West Coast at the time. I had the best clothes 'cos I was coming from England and really good at shoplifting. I had Versace on before Lil' Kim started rapping about it 'cos the only place I could steal at was Harvey Nicks, where it was sooo easy. So I studied, like, the whole thing out in Compton: how the best you could do is be there for your man, be really good at sex, throw barbecues in the park, have babies and keep that unit together with the money that you get.'"
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― strng hlkngtn: what does it mean? (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― strng hlkngtn: what does it mean? (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:54 (eighteen years ago) link
This obliquely reminds me of the revelation about the philosophy department here at UCI. In the men's restrooms there, there's a huge amount of anti-Derrida graffiti, obviously prompted by his residence here every spring. One time I asked someone in the department about that -- "Geez, are the grads here really ticked off with him?" "Oh no," came the reply, "that's from the professors."
thats a great anecdote!
― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 4 October 2005 23:57 (eighteen years ago) link
This leads him to conflate the apparently rockist and popist arguments put forward in M.I.A.'s defence. He assumes that all M.I.A. fans are anti-authenticity popists who nonetheless love M.I.A. due to the perceived authenticity of her Sri Lankan/terrorist/anti-globalist lefty imagery.
For him the M.I.A. fan contradicts him or herself by moving between two arguments: "M.I.A. is important because she is [x]!", and "so what if she is not really [x], it is rockist to care about such things!"
It is true that different M.I.A. fans have touted these lines. But unless I'm forgetting some glaring example I can't remember an instance of the same person using both.
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:16 (eighteen years ago) link
the funny thing is, if you look at reynolds' piece in the voice, it's really very even-handed and bends over backwards to give her the benefit of the doubt, even though, at the end of the day, it's critique pretty much amounts to *points finger* "she went to St. Martins!"
and then, after being attacked from all quarters, his rhetoric got surprisingly spiteful online, especially dissensus, and he wound up attacking her for a lot of the things that he went out of his way not to attack her for in the voice piece (eg, supposedly stealing grime's thunder)
and at this point he's reduced to pretty much incoherence i think.
time for a group hug, really
― bugged out, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 00:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:00 (eighteen years ago) link
It's not an issue of people contradicting themselves, it's a question of a contradictory articulation of authenticity in the first place: how MIA herself has been constructed. Neither position, either the popist or the rockist, is particularly convincing as a result.
And besides, wasn't Reynolds' original comment that she doesn't "come from anywhere" directed at the promotion of MIA from the industry, at a promotional concert? I don't think that the fans are his target.
― Mika, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:04 (eighteen years ago) link
not really. it was that she didn't have the right to use images of war and struggle. and she doesn't have the right to use them because she is an outsider. and the only real evidence we're given that she's an outsider is that she went to st. martin's. nothing else about her background, apart from to say that her father's terrorism doesn't fit a third-vs-first struggle.
my beef is really that, all arguments about MIA's rather-more-complex-than-simply-going-to-st-martins background, it's a bit late in the day to be saying that being middle-class, or having the taint of the middle class that going to st. martin's gives you, means you come from "nowhere." it's the old rootless cosmopolitans vs. grounded proles trope. everybody comes from somewhere, including prince harry, and proles (like, for example, hip-hop loving grime MCs) are just as likely to pick up "other people's music" and use it for their own ends as anyone else is.
but god knows i'm not getting involved in this again! vye
― bugged out, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― bugged out, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:21 (eighteen years ago) link
"It's not an issue of people contradicting themselves, it's a question of a contradictory articulation of authenticity in the first place: how MIA herself has been constructed. Neither position, either the popist or the rockist, is particularly convincing as a result."
I agree Michael! That's what jars about M.I.A. (positively or negatively, depending on your position) and it's the tension which instigated the entire debate. But the attacks on M.I.A. inevitably did become displaced onto her fans and, by extension, all "popists" (as if popists had been responsible for her campaign strategy).
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:25 (eighteen years ago) link
Still only heard it all the way through once myself. Diplo was better than her at the live show I saw, frankly.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:28 (eighteen years ago) link
Fair enough, it's been done to death, it just struck me that Tim's popist defense of the fans was slightly skewed - but there were seemingly some quite heated debates over personal politics over at dissensus from memory. A few that Tim joined in.
But finally bugged, I think Reynolds is interested in the cultural politics of MIA - or what those would involve for Prince Harry to start making grime, for instance. This is not question anyone's ability to do so, it is examining the effects of those exchanges and the ethics involved.
― Mika, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:32 (eighteen years ago) link
uh uh. read the piece! he never once mentions the industry or the promotion of MIA, unless you count the "face of hype," which is very vague and more sensibly read as referring to critics
― bugged out, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:33 (eighteen years ago) link
Reynolds is more cluey w/r/t M.I.A. than most people on ILX give him credit for being, but that doesn't mean the anti-M.I.A./anti-pop position staked out on Dissensus wasn't absolutely riddled with holes (the biggest being the idea that M.I.A. = pop).
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― bugged out, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 01:36 (eighteen years ago) link
basically:fortysomething journalist who's just put out a book about music made a quarter of a century ago. hears the clock ticking. feeling on the verge of slipping out of the loop. sees mia video. decides to start an argument so that people will take notice of him again. it all seems pretty sad and pointless to me, and yet another indication of how reynolds seems to revel in painting himself into an aesthetic corner.
of course it doesn't help that dissensus is the de facto reynolds fan club message board, run by someone who is essentially reynolds' errand boy/lickarse, which thereby shuts off all potentially useful outside lines of debate. try and question any of reynolds' opinions on dissensus and see how long you last there (i speak from personal experience, lol). although it's apparently ok for ingram to insert snide comments about "let's hope mia wins the mercury 'cos that will kill her career stone dead," and have all the other smug 35-year-old wire hacks nodding their plump and ample heads in agreement.
i mean, is it just me, or was the simon reynolds who used to write lovely, lurid and lyrical prose about ar kane and the young gods and throwing muses about a million times better than the one who came out of the rave on the road to damascus/beltram? in a lot of ways i've stayed with that '87-'88 melody maker/monitor mindset but i still feel i've done more in the way of "moving on" than reynolds has.
usually if you decide to shut yourself off from all other options, you end up suffocating.
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 05:37 (eighteen years ago) link
Tim, I think M.I.A. is pop, or "Galang" is at least, it's being played on daytime Radio 1, it's out as a single called "Galang 05" (!!) next week, it fits the pop context at least.
Mind you I'm as arch a 'poppist' as they come and I can't stand most of her stuff.
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 06:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 06:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 07:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 07:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 07:13 (eighteen years ago) link
Also Marcello I think it's pretty much inescapable for message boards to defer a bit to 'celebrity' members - sure Chuck gets challenged on ILM sometimes but there's a lot of respect for his viewpoints too, ditto Mark and Frank K. And in fact if you look upthread you see J Sutcliffe complaining cos I'd threatened to delete something he wrote about Simon R! (I have no recollection of this). I didn't look at Dissensus for long but there was definitely a spectrum of opinion there.
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 07:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 08:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 08:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 08:11 (eighteen years ago) link
Is it utopian to hope that maybe one day the whole "who is the crankiest crank in Ye Olde Cranky Rock Critic town?" sweepstakes will give way to . . . . something else?
― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 08:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 5 October 2005 08:45 (eighteen years ago) link