Frank Kogan's forthcoming "Real Punks Don't Wear Black"

Most of these debates are issues of style propped up w/ inappropriate appeals to grandiose concepts (e.g. authenticity, populism). I like Slayer, Joanna Newsom, Boogie Down Productions. I don't like Steely Dan, Ashlee Simpson, Eminem. What does that mean? Critical frameworks are often dashed against what actually occurs in music listeners' lives.

Superword just sounds like a manufactured buzzword - what is it bringing to the table that the word "genre" isn't? Most of the issues brought up w/r/t the superword concept seem to be issues of genre, a problematic construct in and of itself (e.g. ye olde "is there such a thing as a genre" debate). Is there a superword that isn't a genre?

How much formal music theory about pop have you read?

Blount, I think rockism lives on in the non-music crit world. There are still young kids who snear at Ashlee Simpson as being less authentic than their fave myspace.com band, and there are numerous folks of all ages posting comments at Slate and other sites offering similar rockism-based views.

what's wrong with running for that matter?

"Does it rock?" = question of musical content, i.e. mechanics of rhythm

"Is it rock?" = question of musical form, i.e. content, style, methods combining into the expression of a recognizable shape or ideal

"Jenny Holzer is so punk rock" = statement of comparison regarding content; Jenny Holzer's art possesses similarities to extraneous non-musical content or methods of a music movement

"Rancid is a punk rock band" = statement about form

Labeling them superwords seems to confuse the discourse, rather than shed light on it. The buzzword gets in the way. Am I missing something?

ROCKISM IS AS GOOD AS DEAD. all of these people are old enough that they're dead in 20 (25 tops) years and the way the 'music journalism' market is trending they're out of work in 15 (and i'm being VERY generous with that estimate). now here's my question for frank and whoever else: explain to me why this is a bad thing? when rockism's gone what will we have lost?
-- j blount (jamesbloun...), May 10th, 2006 1:23 PM.

Read some reviews of Destroyer's Your Blues, which was either dismissed or downgraded because it was a MIDI-based album. Then Dan Bejar records a "real" rock record (Rubies) and what say the critics: instant masterpiece! So I'd say rockism is alive and well among the under-30 set. Even if publications start giving lip-service to hip-hop/teenpop/whatever, you're still dealing with those underlying attitudes.

The rockist label doesn't help anybody though, it just draws unnecessary battlelines which people start entrenching themselves on either side of. Rockist, popist, who cares? You're both wrong anyway. Time is the only worthwhile critic of music.

pie is neither a genre nor a superword (thought what a great superword it would be) and people fight over the meaning of that too.

punk is a genre and a superword, but nobody fights over the meaning of it (only what its meaning applies to), i think?

huh?

Ashlee Simpson: Emo or Oh no?

(which I believe wound up dealing more with her possible punkitude than her possible emotude.)

yes, but as curmudgeon already remarked in an oblique way, all these kids with MySpace profiles might grow up to be rock critics, and we have to slay the dragon one more time.

Speaking of the Jody Rosen column, that John Cafferty reference was one of the few false notes. I don't know a SOUL who's hummed a Cafferty tune since 1985 (I couldn't even hum a tune anymore).

(Not so sure I agree punk has much to do with "breaking with old patterns, not repeating old patterns," either; I can definitely think of plenty of punk that wouldn't fit that definition at all: music that I'd call punk, music commonly thought of as punk, all of it. I'm not positive that was ever a real trait of punk in the first place.)xp
-- xhuxk (xedd...), November 10th, 2005.

But Ashlee's "I Am Me" [is/is not] punk in the same way that the Monkees' "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Good Thing" and "Kicks" and the Shadows of Night's "Gloria" and Question Mark & the Mysterians' "96 Tears" and the Troggs "Wild Thing" and virtually every other garage-rock classic [are/are not] punk. Which is to say it's music by squares who didn't quite "get" the freak thing but who were copying the look along with a range of popular sounds (and some may have "meant" the music heart and soul and others may not, and damned if I can tell) that included what retrospectively came to be called "punk rock."
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), November 10th, 2005.

it seems like guys who identify a little too closely with spiderman and whatever gene simmons is supposed to be in makeup vainly trying to convince themselves t they're using their superbrain powers to fight over "superwords". dudes, no offense, but they're just regular old words.

i guess my question is: what do we gain by adding "superword" to the lexicon? does it make anything clearer? from here, it looks like a humongous waste of thought.

"Hi, we're Charlie Parker and the Charlie Parkers, reminding you kids out there that Language Is Fundamental."

"A Superword is a controversy word, but not all controversy words are Superwords; for what makes a Superword really super is that some people use the word so that it will jettison adherents and go skipping on ahead of any possible embodiment. Like, no one and nothing is good enough to bear the word "punk," and I wouldn't join a band that would have someone like me as a member anyway. (Supposedly, in the late '80s I once claimed that Michael Jackson and Axl Rose were the only two punks going at the time.) "Rock," "pop," "punk," and many other genre names sometimes act as Superwords. So "punk" (for instance) can be an ideal, and every single song that aspires to be punk can fall short in someone's ears. But for the word to be super, not only must people disagree on the ideal, but some people must consciously or unconsciously keep changing what the word or ideal is supposed to designate so that the music is always inadequate to the ideal, even if the music would have been adequate to yesterday's version of the ideal. And the music then chases after this ever-changing ideal. Words bounce on ahead, and the music comes tumbling after."

Surely you agree that most words don't fit this rather stringent set of requirements?

my favorite band tries to sound like the second half of an eyebrow twitch (the wry kind, not the seductive one)

the "stringent" definition is (at its most concise) "for the word to be super, not only must people disagree on the ideal, but some people must consciously or unconsciously keep changing what the word or ideal is supposed to designate so that the music is always inadequate to the ideal".

again i ask, what is earth-shaking about saying that ideals are unattainable, and
people argue about and redefine them continually? what is news here? that words are malleable, and mean different things at different times? that ideas aren't super enough to hold in art, and that art isn't super enough to live up to words? it's not even an idea

surely you agree that ALL words about ideals fit this generic and loose set of requirements?

besides the meaningless of it all, there's something really sad about a music writer calling ideals "superwords". i'd feel the same way about a carpenter talked about his superhammer and supernails.

Pretty sure hammer and nails came up already via Wittgenstein in this thread. Worth reading, it was bumped earlier today.

That seems to me the most interesting part of the definition, SuperCharlie, the part that explains the social use of a Superword.

oh, break me a fucking give.