Simon Reynolds - C or D

HI DERE

I remember a long thread back in the dark ages of old-ILM about canons. There was a poster (Arf Arf?) who said that we needed canons in order to have discussions, that without agreed upon standards there was no point even talking.

I disagreed with that then and I still do, but there's maybe a kernel of it which is on the right track: maybe what we need is the desire to agree upon standards (which we've yet to actually finalise). ie. music discussions are not about canons, but about canon-building. The search for an impossible objectivity-to-come rather than the deference to an objectivity laid down in precedents.

to me, this implies the romantic objecitivity objective of acheiving a standard of communication so peerless that it denatures the author. ie there is an objective reality that we all can experience if only the writing around it is of a quality high enough to take us there.

i probably think that the fierceness of that 'shared visceral reaction' can only really take place on a dancefloor - codifying in words subjectivizes - but i guess that takes you back to the notion of dancefloors as temporary autonomous zones with happy romantic elision of class, race etc. however corny that is, tho, that is something i still sometimes personally feel and that recognition, however indididual and potentially empirically false, isn't something i can get from reading about music. this may make only subjective sense.

I didn't really mean this (i'm not making some habermasian point here). I meant more that all we can ever really access is an imagined objectivity, something that seems like it must be objective but isn't really. This seeming, though, is worthwhile in and of itself. Hence the point re dizzee - if a critic insists that the music conveys authenticity of class/race etc. whether or not the artist lives up to that in truth, what we're really talking about is a certain apperance-of-objectivity rather than objectivity itself.

the holy grail of music crit as continous enrichment of listening experience thru the inspired search for universal critical standards without the desire to ever actually acheive a static imprint.

i think the most important point about canons isn't whether or not we have them, but the fact that they don't exist as generally perceived. cultural proscription in the leavisite sense has been dead since the 60s. the universal allowance of counter-canons, even within the most conservative bits of academia, invalidates the whole notion of ur-canon in the first place. you can either have a canon or you can have no canons. you can't have lots. therefore there aren't any. but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and form them whilst happily acknowledging the hopelessness of the search.

yes exactly! But I think a lot of great something elses come from discussions about music: more intense enjoyment of music, a better understand of why we enjoy (or don't enjoy) stuff, an insight into the way other people relate. But I think it's hard to get to all that without presupposing the potential for agreement.

Mmm, I still hold that a canon of the personal exists for every person, that you CAN have lots -- I may only be playing games with the language, but to me this demonstrates the crypto-religious power that individual musical (or artistic or whatever) obsessions has for an individual. The 'potential for agreement' lies less in what is agreed on than the recognition of the ways in which are moved (and even that is intriguingly fractured). That said, while I'd love to get into this more I've got a full day's work ahead of me and I won't be near a computer much until the evening, so have this discussion without me and I'll say more tonight!

Ned I totally agree with this. The point is not so much that there is a potential for agreement but that we explore it; the desire to write about music is in some ways the desire to tell stories about our experiences, to give people something that they can use. In this sense the differences and fractures we discover (which obstruct agreement) are as useful as the commonalities.

not sure if there's an album out yet but if/when it does get publicity expect all the mia arguments to be dragged out again.

Why not? That seems as relevant and vital a way of responding to things as any other; and probably better than if you reverse the polarities, and like nasty things and dislike nice things.

But in truth, I probably don't really know what this discussion is about any more, or was at that point, or whatever; never mind.

I think this might be one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

Also Tim, do you have some kind of cult set up - or at least a PayPal account so that we can just send you a portion of our income?

Yeah I'm finding this hard to believe myself.

I thought it was kinda bland in a WorldMusik(RegisteredTrademark) kinda way. But I will admit that I only listened to it once, so it's possible that I dismissed it too soon. I can be cruel when I have too much to listen to.

-- Jedmond (jedmon...), October 8th, 2005. (Jedmond) (later)

That's completely wrong. "Boy In Da Corner" entered the top 40 on three seperate occasions (at #40, #39, and a Mercury spike at #23 later in the year). At a rough guess, it may have cracked the US top 200 as well? "Arular" still hasn't gone top 100 in the UK, or top 200 US. Before Antony and the Johnsons won the Mercury, he was at 15,000 sold in the UK and the album had just failed to make top 40 (42? 43? I forget. Obviously, now it's gone top 20, he's probably looking at aroun d80,000). Considering that album came out roughly the same time as "Arular", the idea that it would have sold six times the level whilst achieving chart positions of around 50 to 60 places lower is absolute nonsense.

The 100,000 figure for MIA was for worldwide sales, whereas I'm seeing multiple references for Dizzee having sold 100,000 each for both of his albums in the UK.

* Of course, I don't actually know anybody who voted for the Democrats during the last election.

Also, I think the M.I.A. album is *much* more popular than either Dizzee record in the USA. I don't know *anyone* outside of ILX who owns it. I know a bunch of people who have Arular.