It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

i find the idea of objectively good music as annoying as the next man but everybody has their own personal canon and amongst whatever group there is received wisdom, it's how people have discussions. eg i can't discuss techno with a group of friends if half of them think that all techno is repetitive and boring rubbish, an opinion anyone is entitled to. every discussion you have is based on accepted or shared wisdom. often, to have a discussion, there has to be a certain amount of accepted wisdom amongst people. it just so happens there's a vaguely annoying shared wisdom that more people share.

i find the problem as a critic lambasting this idea of the canon (which is subjective in itself obviously) is that generally the critic wants people to listen to other things which they think are good, instead.

and those things are no more objectively good either.

once you start battling for objectivity vs the canon you might as well give up writing about music.

yes ronan we should all just give up writing about music

all of us

everyone knows it's completely pointless and anyone with a career in it should just face up to the fact that their entire life is a waste of time

now will you FUCK OFF

will you please stop being so virulently rude?

i'm discussing something i'm genuinely interested in, if you are incapable of not having a tantrum then don't join in.

erm implying that the careers of half this thread are pointless ISN'T rude?

never said that, you take the implications you want to allow you to tell someone to fuck off though.

oh you're so fucking disingenuous, fuck off for real

if anyone wants to discuss my post then that's why i posted it. i'd like if there's a hope of staying on topic.

ronan's post was good, lex needs to chill

it's the same shit you always post so you could probably look up the 94387449393493 other ronanbot whinges about the existence of arts journalism as a practice in the meantime

once you start battling for objectivity vs the canon you might as well give up writing about music.

fwiw... the point i was making here is that it's a pretty slippery road to go down, battling for objectivity is quite nihilistic by nature. if you actually really do believe some things are definitively better than others and want to make a career out of saying this, or be that type of critic, then maybe there's a different lawbook you should go by... a discussion of that is what i'm after.

i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from.

so yeah we are all post-canon now except for whoever writes the blurb for BBC Breakfast or etc

or maybe what you're getting at LG is the idea of criticism as taste-making? which i'm not sure is a worthwhile endeavour but is maybe wrapped up in the whole idea of criticism

i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from.

yeah its purpose as "history" is the most fucking annoying part for me. and the way you get that narrative like "and then x invented dance music" like it was penicillin or something (tho actually the invention of penicillin is just as stupidly credited to alexander fleming anyway, so maybe this is just a flaw of history itself.)

nah, it's usually a flaw of laziness and thickness trying to justify itself as explanation or introduction, the "all ideas shd be explainable simply to an attention-addled 5 year-old" argument

i guess there's a place for Dummies' Guides but i strongly resent all mass communication becoming one

I think a lot of people had a reaction like this to PE back in 1988 (minus the Drake and Maybach mentions)--they were too harsh, you couldn't dance to them, etc.

xpost

I would like to add that as a fan, not a professional critic, it's fun to talk in hyperbole. It's fun to say Kanye sucks and PE rules! I don't expect my opinions to taken as objective.

Critics and cannons have always served a purpose for me. If I see something placing high on a list that I haven't yet heard, I will at least check it out for myself.

The integrety of cannon/list makers going forward might seem suspect to some because there are sooo many professional critics today, and sooo much consensus in year end lists lately?

I don't know. I do know that tend to cynical about a lot of things.

Critics and cannons have always served a purpose for me.

http://content.scholastic.com/content/media/products/7X/043965467X_rgb8_xlg.jpg

lolz

"i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from."

i agree!

has there always been such a huge agreement between rock critics before?

(I don't remember if we ever covered that aspect of theat in those huge post-GAPDY P&J conversations)

that Lester Bangs line "I can guarantee you one thing, we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis" seems pertinent

xpost

"except for Tuneyards"

lol

i can't remember if i'm a rock critic anymore, but i don't agree on lots of things that critics agree on. i think the history of pop music crit is pretty dismal though. like, i'm way more apt to read and agree with a 50 year old lit crit book or film crit book than i am an old book about rock or pop or whatever. bangs and all them, they were really entertaining and i like their love of language, but they were so friggin' dismissive of so much music. and i kinda can't take them seriously about music because of that. and while i'd like to think that people have broader horizons now, i'm not so sure if that's true. i think most criticism is the pits nowadays.

so true

i guess for all the old lit and film crit had an element of exclusion it was centred on close reading which is never completely useless. the history of music crit feels more centrally concerned with praising one thing at the expense of a lot of others, maybe because there's a lot less close reading going on.

Not sure Bangs is the best example there--his single most famous piece was a passionate defense of garage bands that people dismissed or had forgotten about at the time. (xxpost)

he may have been soft on garage bands but dude definitely was happy to dismiss large swaths of music

i mean i love bangs, but yeah he's a great example of someone saying culture is worthless for pretty solipsistic reasons

I just think Bangs and Marcus and the rest praised what they loved and dismissed what they didn't, like anybody else. Sometimes, like Marcus with the Velvet Underground, they'd experience a turnaround years later.

Sorry--old guy defends older/dead guys. Habit of mine.

music is just a very different medium from lit or film and is a lot more resistant to consensus or universal standards that transcend cultural differences. for one thing a lot more happens much more quickly, other artforms don't have much of an analog to new songs being released and discussed literally every minute of every day, even pre-internet. a lot of good and interesting stuff can be done with music crit but canon-building and asserting values, narratives tends to be kind of a mug's game imo.

i'd argue it's a mug's game with other artforms too but i get your point

Not sure what i think about this canon business - had sorta assumed it had faded a bit as "a thing"

― coal, Friday, July 20, 2012 2:30 AM (4 hours ago)

music is just a very different medium from lit or film and is a lot more resistant to consensus or universal standards that transcend cultural differences.

― Barack 2 Chainz Obama (some dude), Friday, July 20, 2012 7:24 AM (2 minutes ago)

"it holds"

those "Acclaimed Music" lists are nothing to go by really tho cos they're the work of a tiny fraction of music listeners with a specific kind of bias?

if those wretched fucking "acclaimed music" top lists that someone keeps polling are any indication, then the canon is alive and well and hasn't shifted much in the last couple decades. the consensus is strong, it was established early, and at holds. btw, rock albums by white guys are the best.

― contenderizer, Friday, July 20, 2012 10:36 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

the consensus is weak vs. other mediums though, is my point. i don't know if a mainstream list of the best films or books from a given year would prompt dozens/hundreds of alternative suggestions like an album list would. music is still a much more personal/subjective experience in terms of people happily putting their favorites up against the known classics.

lol contendo I was just going to bring those up. Yeah, the canon exists, but considering how inordinately pissed those polls make you, maybe we'd be better to go on acting like it didn't :)

btw, rock albums by white guys are the best.

― contenderizer, Friday, July 20, 2012 10:36 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

kinda racist, but you have a point

i mean zz top and all

was contend making a point or just expressing the same taste he always does there

canons are more a product of mass consensus than elite management.

canons are more a product of mass consensus than elite management.

I agree, which is why canon-building always strikes me as a futile exercise

i don't buy that, tho yr elite might be a pretty big group. sure we've been here before anyway, disconnect between biggest sellers in various artforms and yr actual Canon is usually clear

but again, in the case of literature or movies you can absolutely point to a handful of critics who play a big role in shaping the canons

canons are pretty interesting

'the canon' is pretty interesting

no one ever espoused cultural relativism and meant it