Douglas Wolk, clearheaded, on rockism

(the prob w.his crit of popular music is that he just didn't know very much about the machinery of its making and made a bunch of broad assumptions abt said machinery based on the pop industry's own claims for itself as regards pure marketing effectiveness) (but his analysis of composed music, ancient and modern, is exemplary anti-rockist thinking)

(actually i don't much like the stuff on stravinsky in PHIL OF MOD MUSIC which is as a result by far his weakest book, written in the shadow of WW2 in exile and despair: implicitly, godwin's law applies, i think)

Depends. Criticising Schönberg, or even Wagner or Mahler, from a "standarised" entertainment music point of view would be rather pointless indeed. The same way, it would be just as pointless criticising Britney Spears or Celine Dion from an "artistic" point of view.

But there's a lot of stuff in-between those, both in classical music and in popular music. And the latter is where most of the popular music "canon" is found.

Please read more carefully before repeating the same unsupported argument over and over again.

ps) james hunter seems to judge lots of the music he writes about on *architecture* terms. i don't always get it, but i'm usually fascinated regardless.

i will say that i still don't understand what is gained with *limiting* rockism's definition

I still wonder this as well.

I especially can't stand the use of "rockism" to describe pre-rock attitudes (i.e. the Adorno example above).

Couldn't this broad use of the term actually be a kind of inverted rockism itself, i.e. it still places rock at the center of the musical universe.

This is exactly what happens when singer/songwriter/producer/arranger/instrumentalists such as Todd Rundgren or Stevie Wonder make music.

I just don't believe this!! I'm pretty sure that assuming most of the population of the planet is somehow closed-minded and dumb is a) closed-minded and dumb, b) not true and c) as close to 'rockism' in my definition as anything I've seen on this thread. I often think it's a good thing that "most of the population" doesn't write about music (they criticise it in much more productive ways, like living to it) since writing about music turns people into dicks really fucking fast.

is there such a thing as a rockist as opposed to rockist arguments?

This is a great question too, because I think it relates to Douglas' concern about people getting defensive as soon as they hear the term.

"(they criticise it in much more productive ways, like living to it)"

i don't even know what this means. they live to it? who doesn't?

I do kind of like Rush, Queensryche, Dream Theater and The Mars Volta. That is, there are things about their music that I love and there are things about their music that I strongly dislike. The latter consists of 1. screaming vocals 2. slightly too blues oriented melodies 3. too many loud guitars 4. not enough keyboards and not enough mellow parts.

Considering these four things are the "metal" elements of the styles of these four bands, I have a reason to be sceptical towards prog that has obvious metal elements.

Well, if you don't accept anything that you can't dance too, then you don't accept 90 per cent of all Western music.'

If I am in doubt, there is always Soulseek.

Regarding Opeth and similar, I am not even in doubt. I know a lot of today's metal has prog elements, which is nice. I also know most of today's metal has extremely loud guitars, annoying grinding or screaming vocals, and basically not a lot of good tunes. Which is not quite as nice.

I find this a little irksome actually, Scott. Are people supposed to just do this arbitrarily? If not, then how should they go about it?

If someone sends me something in the mail, I'll listen to it at least a little bit. I also make some attempts to keep up with things I might not be optimistic about so that I don't miss out on things that interest me. Mainly, though, through the years, I have followed the trajectory of my own interests. I don't feel that this is a narrow "comfort zone." And it takes enough of my time that I don't really have the additional time to IMMERSE MYSELF in a bunch of other stuff "in order to learn more about music or even learn more about why I do like what I like." Maybe it's because I studied music in school and had a decent amount of discipline outside of my areas of interest there. But I also feel that I have learned lots about music by following the trajectory of my own interests.

But I still think the comfort-zone argument sucks, A) because I just don't think it's true, who are these people? and B) because it takes an art-music argument about proper aesthetic-critical experiences and generalises it to everyday life (itself part of the trajectory of the aesthetic-critical argument, so perhaps reasonable in its terms, but terms i"m not totally happy with) but also to music that simply doesn't demand or expect that kind of response. (In fact, to a large extent doesn't demand a 'proper' response at all: pop music simply says live with me, take me into your life on your own terms, or don't. This is why it can't be 'damaged' by mechanical reproduction whereas the argument that a symphony designed to be heard in a concert hall is not being 'heard' properly over the radio does have some value). It looks to me like a way of hanging on to the pretensions of the art-tradition (i.e. pretending to have something other than an instrumental / consumerist relationship to music) without asking whether this idea of art was ever / is still possible / as desirable as it claimed to be. That is pretty much my definition of rockism, as I may have mentioned :-)

sure, why not? whenever you feel like it.

As someone who's background is Funk/Disco/Hip-Hop, followed by Jazz/Race Records/non-Dylan:Stones Oldies, I've spent my life defending agsinst rockists, and then having them embrace me and my music on their terms only.

Hearing a panel of critics come around to embracing Public Enemy, but then tell me about how avant-garde it is or how similar to musique concrete it is just tells me that they're still waaaaay off base. It's mostly fucking James Brown loops. The only siren on PE's break through was used in the opening intro record live at a concert that predated production on It Tkaes a Nation of Millions. Yet, the "sirens" always get pointed to. Context is overlooked, and instead, they apply their history to something that already has its own history.

I have spent too long with my constant knee-jerk response of "get over your rock-as-art perspective on ALL music." I'd like to think that eventually my perspective on my own music becomes validated by the people who control the platform.

Thanks Doug!