Ashlee Simpson: Emo or Oh no?

"not until you explain why bad things happen to good people!"

= i. i want my zimmer frame and i WANT IT NOW
= ii. haha if ilm has demonstrated ANYTHING it is that in 20 years time we will still be discussing the merits of EVERYONE

i.&ii. are nicely contradictory hence mark s = punk-as-fuck

in communion (my second favourite film EVAH) christopher walken discovers the aliens DISCO DANCING

In other words, I'm not allowed to muck around with FACTS, specifically the FACT that Ashlee Simpson in NO WAY Punk Rock.

If an alien from another world appeared and earnestly asked to be shown examples of Punk Rock, i wd point to alex's heroically changeless mr.dadrock-gets-uptight declamations down decades of ilm, and say, "punk is the OPPOSITE OF THAT"

I've never claimed to be the embodiment of Punk Rock.

In any event, this thread has been terrific and has helped me greatly in pulling my thoughts together; especially thank you to Cunga and to Phil for your descriptions of the Ashlee image.

Also, thanks to me for suckering mark s back onto ILX.

now let us never speak of it again.

I know that someone might jump on that and tell me that you can't separate your aesthetic perceptions from your background and your psychological makeup, but what would someone be trying to establish by saying something like this?

Tim, someone (i.e., me) isn't trying to "establish" anything but rather trying to cajole, incite, inspire, badger you folks into saying why you hear a particular piece of music in a particular way. And that involves (1) describing what's going on in the music when you hear glossiness or rawness of punk or whatever, and (2) what's going on in your life that makes you hear glossiness or rawness or punk (esp. when other people are hearing something else).

Maybe social categories are aesthetic categories; it doesn't really matter to me which you use to explain the other; it does matter that you make an effort to explain - that is to say that you make an effort to communicate your experience and your ideas and that you make an attempt to explore where those experiences and ideas come from and why you in particular have and hold them. Of course, you can just spend your time stating an opinion and holding it against all comers. That's what a lot of ILX threads are, basically.

So, everyone who votes blue is a punk, and therefore is not eligible for "conversion"?

I don't think I've heard a Steve Earle song in my life, but I'll guess that one of the reasons that Montgomery Gentry might come across as "more punk" than Earle is that they're bullies and creeps and he apparently isn't a bully or a creep. (Nowadays Montgomery is dressing his creepiness in unctuousness and piety, which makes it even creepier.) Also, my guess is that Earle doesn't rock as hard as they do. That seems to be the general opinion. By the way, Montgomery Gentry are punk way way way way WAY more often than Ashlee is. I hadn't given a thought to Ashlee's being punk until I heard "I Am Me" a couple of weeks ago and read posted on this thread that her image apparently has something to do with punk as conceived by who knows who. Montgomery Gentry don't have punk in their image. They merely act like punks. (And I don't think anyone called them "punk" at all until a couple of days ago, when for half a sentence I did, when the discussion here spilled briefly back onto the Rolling Country thread. But I'm not seeing enough of the board these days, so you may be right, that they're being touted as punks.)

What in the world is "punk traditionalism"? What's a punk tradition? Killing your girlfriend? Dyeing your hair pink and purple? (I once saw Todd Rundgren with rainbow hair, in 1974. What a punk!)

I don't see Ashlee as doing much in the way of transgression either. So what?

"it sure looks and sounds like punk is something Ashlee picked up at the mall."

Again, so what? Where's she supposed to pick it up, in a whorehouse?

pauline kael, j.d. salinger, james thurber = more punk than ashlee simpson

it doesn't really matter to me which you use to explain the other; it does matter that you make an effort to explain - that is to say that you make an effort to communicate your experience and your ideas and that you make an attempt to explore where those experiences and ideas come from and why you in particular have and hold them. Of course, you can just spend your time stating an opinion and holding it against all comers. That's what a lot of ILX threads are, basically.<

Frank, do you realize how preachy and self-righteous this sounds?

Looking back at your posts on this thread, I don't see as that you've done any of this either! Where does your idea that a song like "La La" is good come from? Why do you in particular think that this is so? What's going on in your life that makes you hear it as "good?"

Montgomery Gentry also remind me of the Ramones:

"You Beat Your Brat (I'll Beat Mine)"

I've got Ashlee on now. Yeah, there are elements of punk, I guess. I little burr in her voice, some attitude. No more or less than, maybe, Pat Benetar, or Nancy Sinatra. One song sounds strangely like the Cardigans. Nice CD.

Sang, where exactly do you get this idea? Why wouldn't you just think that the intent is to describe how the music sounds, what it does?

wonderful. like im gonna get any work done today with that image floating around my head.

Intent is a tough thing to glean from a piece of writing, so it's more like a feeling, just based on having read lots of stuff in my life. I mean, I *wish* the intent were just to describe how the music sounds. But sometimes statements are made where the intent seems to be to incite, not describe. Like when Frank says up above that Ashlee "and Shanks rock harder than the Gang of Four and Franz Ferdinand, both of which sound like toy bands in comparison," it doesn't really help me understand what Ashlee's music sounds like. Admittedly that could be because I hear Ashlee differently than Frank does, so maybe it's just that his description doesn't connect with me. For instance, to me the Ashlee CD sounds like a lush studio construction, not a band at all, per se. Even when she gets angsty, every hair's still in place. Gang of Four sound positively ferocious by comparison. Certainly there's more money behind Ashlee than Go4, so yeah, the guitars are way fatter and the drums are deeper and the vocals are centered better in the mix. But the sound of Go4 is so completely different from Ashlee’s that the comparison isn’t useful to me on a descriptive level. To say that Frank is trying to “incite” Gang of Four fans with that statement is too strong, and probably baseless. But I think there is an element of that in there, of let’s push that button and have a little bit of fun with this.

I imagine that she is very attractive, though who knows.

OK, just scrolled up the thread and saw a picture; yes, of course she is.

pinefox -- 'la la' is the one song people (maybe including you?) have heard. it's really, really good.

xpost

by far the most intelligent thing said on this thread, yet it continues...

So what "same place" do Ashlee and Montgomery Gentry come from again?(Like, the United States? So do Living Things!) You're stating a tautlogy, I think: "When certain writers define bands as part of genres the bands are usually not associated with, those bands come from genres other than the one they're being newly defined as."

Only if it out of context, and leave out:

>the clipped-short guitar crunch style from that very same song, and when it's not the Clash it's the Specials and Gang of Four (and Franz Ferdinand, for that matter) for Shanks' snapping-twig guitar riff that runs throughout the verse. And I think Shanks plays it more effectively than G of 4 or Franz Ferdinand, both of whose guitar work I like a lot. <

Frank was describing how the record *sounds,* Sang.

(None of which to say that writers can't describe and incite at the same time. Nor that they shouldn't. Hell, inciting is punk rock too. {And right, it's the oldest cliche on earth, just like punk rock is.} But sorry, "that's not the way I hear it, therefore this guy must be trying to pull a fast one over on me" really doesn't hold much water.)