Simon Reynolds - C or D

Perfect Sound Forever - Simon Reynolds on post-punk
http://www.furious.com/perfect/simonreynolds3.html

All the debate about rockism over the years on ILM has made me realise that I haven't got a clue what it's all about anymore now the whole things has had several lifecycles. All I can conclude is that any notion of the pop/rock or popist/rockist divide is kind of redundant now and has been for years. I think it had a purpose back in 81/82 when people were trying to set up a context for nu-pop. Even then I think it was the punkist idea of having to be 'against' something that spawned rockism. Of course all the writers and nu-pop class of 81/82 were all punks in in 1977, so that's natural.

the blog screeds... I dunno, seems more like the urge to document ("here I am comin' atcha straight from the grime trenches at their realest") takes over from rational thought. complaining about the presence of "long-form Works that take effort and perseverance and time to unlock their depth and detail" on a BEST ALBUMS list, good god.

I quite like the use of imperatives! and exclamation marks! in fanzines!

It is sweet that you kept them, Tim.

Who did "KoA" mean stuff to? As Matos says, clearly it meant a lot to a whole lot more people than just music critics and whatever the 1980s equivalent of blogosphere fluffers was (zineosphere?). It seems fairly clear to me that "crit-bubbleworld" here must mean the kind of people who would scour the NME and take what it said seriously. I was one of those, too. I should give up completely, really.

The answer to original question is, I think, classic. That's even though I disagree wth SR much of the time and our tastes barely coincide.

I think college radio figures in here pretty heavily, as much or more than print media, at least in the U.S.

and yes, christ, everyone please stop talking in incoherent generalizations about 'rockism' and 'popism' and hyphenated variants thereof

speaking of which

*That's why they get to be near the end of Dewey decimal divisions.)

King of America is quite good, I think.

It's funny - maybe even reassuring! - to see Reynolds ranting in a strangely standard vein about rockism. What year is this ... 2002?

It's funny how he talks about Ewing though I don't know that web site that Ewing was on, or what it was all about.

When SR says music is mostly seen as a background to words, I don't really think I agree; it's not like everyone is voting for or buying Lloyd Cole records. Mind you, they have fun music on, too.

I like some of the last 37 posts. People say sensible things.

xpost: make that 44 posts or whatever.

haha, no, not so much.

That's how I understand it too ... nu-rockism is the same as old rockism, but with a different canon, i.e. after you boot Joni Mitchell from your music collection and replace her with Fiona Apple, it's back to business as usual.

xpost

theres a lot to be said for this, i agree. but i think in order to accept this kind of viewpoint, you have to divorce this from music entirely, and make it entirely sociocontextual. ok, i mean, all this really comes down to is "when i were a lad we had to entertain usself wi' matchsticks, an we were happy", and now there are a dizzying array of non-music 'options'. this is fairly standard though, and easily agreed with

perhaps he is really saying, 'pop music is less important now'. i can see this, but i dont see how it really makes any difference whether it is arctic monkeys or girls aloud. ie, arctic monkeys are neither sympton nor cause

Trad Rockists: NPR Rock [see recent ILM thread: look at WXPN Top 50 of 2005 for a good idea of what is meant] + NME Bands = media over exposed music reliant on traditional song structures. Music likely to be favoured on playlists on Xfm and 6 Music in the UK or NPR radio stations in the US.

Vs

Interesting soundscapes:

Art-Metal, Post-Punk, Progressive rock, ambient, Industrial, Shoegazer, Experimental Electronics, Avant Jazz, Psychedelic/ Space Rock, Post Rock, Dubstep, Black Metal, Avant-Prog, Techno, Microhouse, electro, synthpop, avant hip hop, techstep jungle etc

[music unlikely to heard on 6 music playlists, or marginalized at best]

second category is reliant on sounds and soundscapes NOT words and conventional songs that fit into radio playlist agendas

I meant radio stations like WXPN, look at their music charts.

Looking at the grand decades-spanning scheme of American critical consensus, there’s a sense in which even art-rock is marginalized (the relatively low presence and this year and every year of instrumental or mostly-intrumental abstraction--prog, fusion, ambient, industrial and the more abstract forms of postpunk, post-rock, experimental electronics; the abiding suspicion of artifice in re. glam or New Pop). See, rather than art-rock, what the critically esteemed stuff really is, most of it, it's lit-rock: music as dramatic backdrop to words. Stuff that is purely, sheerly sonic is still felt to be de trop, suspect because self-indulgent, decadent, music for music's sake, mere ear candy with no "improving" aspect. And stuff where there are words but they're "inane" or incidental is completely marginalized (look at the almost-utter non-presence of functional dance music, the near-absence of non-auteurist, non-socially redeeming hip hop).

"For most of the past decade, street Rap and R&B has been the engine of Pop culture, both in its pure form and various teenybop dilutions. Give or take a gem – Amerie’s ‘1 Thing’, Three Six Mafia’s ‘Stay Fly’, Kanye West’s ‘Addiction’ and ‘Crack Music’ – its remorseless rate of innovation stalled this year. And formal advance was always the compensation for its counter-revolutionary content of bling and booty-worship." Reynolds from Frieze

So if Reynolds doesn't like a supposed emphasis on lyrics, why does he in Frieze attack hiphop lyrics as counter-revolutionary, and on his blog he recently criticized them as well. But then in his latest posting he seem to be taking folks to task for not including such allegedly non-auteurist hiphop in their p & j ballots.

So what kind of hiphop is acceptable under nu-rockism? When can hiphop lyrics be discussed under nu-rockism? I mean if I am gonna get with his program and not endorse popism, and take the good but not the bad aspects of rockism, and call it nu-rockism, well then...
I give up...