What Is Rockism ?

"If its problems are not immediately obvious to you, I got nothing."

There you have Rockism nicely reduced to a syllogism.

https://i.imgur.com/UxDmSUJ.jpg

xp hell yeah

I think if I had seen these guys live as a teenager I probably would have dug it

If I saw them live now I think it would largely be a matter of what scene they played. If they played a big stage at a stoner festival I'd be like get outta here with that weak, derivative bs. But if they played to 30 half-interested families on a tiny stage at a county fair I'd probably find them endearing and happily clap along.

I think the annoying part is that there's a lot of good rock music out there, retro rock too, and this is really nowhere near top tier, but for reasons that are not completely clear to me (perhaps a mixture of marketing and their radio-friendly blandness) these guys are getting a ton of attention, and so when you read something like that youtube comment:

'I'm a classical guitarist, so I don't keep up with the latest rock or metal, but these young guys are the first thing to catch my ear in a long time with high energy, well written and well played infectious licks. The Kiszka boys have got it going.'

it's like, well no, you don't keep up, and though I'm v happy you were now exposed to this and enjoyed it, I hope it works as a gateway to some really rawking zep/rush-inspired bands, cause this is like the Domino's Pizza of rock and there is some seriously tasty pizza out there

if you want to hear Zep worship pushed in a cool direction I recommend, as kurt schwitters once recommended to me, Danava's Unonou album

here. the last track is amazing and also a zep rip-off apparently

https://youtu.be/x-cvvpiqL-w

Rockism is remembering the names of the records

If I saw them live now I think it would largely be a matter of what scene they played. If they played a big stage at a stoner festival I'd be like get outta here with that weak, derivative bs. But if they played to 30 half-interested families on a tiny stage at a county fair I'd probably find them endearing and happily clap along.

i am so glad i will never have to go to bonnaroo

people have made the point that lots of kids still go a Zep phase, so it makes sense that there's a band like GVF - do kids still go through a Doors phase? it would be cool if there was a successful band that's like GVF but for the Doors instead of Zep, with a singer who looks like Bruce McCulloch in that Kids In The Hall skit

it occurred to me that the dead sara record from 5 or 6 years ago is probably the upper limit of what gvf could conceivably accomplish and no one really rode for those guys...hmm i wonder why

engagement with the details of the music can miss the wood for the trees and a review like that has its own use and value. there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary, its like asking to take the politics out of an issue or insisting we can just rationally debate the facts

I'm interested in "retro-fetishism" being used in a pejorative way in that review. What's the difference between retro-fetishism being "overly precious", and being a clearly studied and loving tribute? I mean, a lot of the music Pitchfork has loved over the last few years could reasonably be described in both ways. It just seems like that, in this cultural moment, white male boomer-canon classic rock is the 'wrong' (read: not hip) retro to be fetishising preciously. I feel like a blatant tribute/rip-off to late 80s Janet Jackson would probably get BNM for doing basically the same thing.

I'm sure this band will be fine or whatever - they seem popular outside of internet music nerd circles. But it seems pretty transparent to me that this review was, as someone said above, written as brand positioning for Pitchfork, and was approached without an open mind. It kind of makes me want to root for them a little bit. But whatever, I think this review says more about Zeppelin's (and 60s-70s blues rock) changing place in the popular music canon as opposed to Whether The Greta Van Fleet Album Is Good or Bad.

I mostly agree with this, but where do War on Drugs and Black Keys fit into this rejection of white male boomer aesthetics? Pfork rides pretty hard for those bands.

surely not Black Keys??

Yeah, I don't really recall them fucking with Black Keys that much past the mid-2000s. War on Drugs is slightly different - I think they have a later point of retro reference than GVF's blues rock cribbing, where they're more influenced by heartland/synth rock of the Springsteen ilk. Springsteen is still riding high on a critical career victory lap that seems to have regained steam around the start of this decade, and so I think bands directly influenced by him will get a pass for wearing their influence on their sleeve. It helps that compared to most rock stars Bruce is squeaky clean on a moral level, which Zeppelin certainly aren't.

the vocalist for this band mostly sucks because he's such an impersonator that he has to contort his voice to do things it isn't really built to do, which is why it sounds competent, but doesn't have the 'body' of Plant's voice.

Like his intonation in his lower register is clearly manipulated to be similar to Plant's and as such it sounds weird, like karaoke, and his high pitched wails are reedier.

be amazed if this kid doesn't have vocal cord nodules in like....a year.

re: bands who do retro better, the string of pre-hiatus Graveyard albums comes to mind, as well as the first Blues Pills.

there's lots of good retro cos mostly it manages to evoke an era rather than a specific band and adds its own flavor to it.

the vocalist for this band mostly sucks because he's such an impersonator that he has to contort his voice to do things it isn't really built to do, which is why it sounds competent, but doesn't have the 'body' of Plant's voice.

Like his intonation in his lower register is clearly manipulated to be similar to Plant's and as such it sounds weird, like karaoke, and his high pitched wails are reedier.

be amazed if this kid doesn't have vocal cord nodules in like....a year.

That makes sense, yeah.

Wolf People's Steeple some kinda recent watermark as well, in terms of deliberately retro sounds that are somehow not completely played out

I hadn't heard about Dead Sara getting a WWE plug but that's great news, they could use a lucky break or seven

These Led Zeppelin comparisons always make me wonder if the listener has ever really heard the band. In musical terms they have more in common with the Meters or Pentangle or Eddie Cochrane or whoever than any of these caterwauling+riffage! bands.

engagement with the details of the music can miss the wood for the trees and a review like that has its own use and value. there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary, its like asking to take the politics out of an issue or insisting we can just rationally debate the facts

― ogmor, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 3:11 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i roundly disagree with this but i would

i would say in this particular case though the band’s music is so shallow that i’d have trouble describing it with any depth

but in normal situations: you can have both

xps I also don't get the persistent tipping of When The Levee Breaks. Is this mainly by people who aren't nuts about Zeppelin? I mean the production is sublime but to me it hardly seems representative of the band's strengths

I'm interested in "retro-fetishism" being used in a pejorative way in that review. What's the difference between retro-fetishism being "overly precious", and being a clearly studied and loving tribute? I mean, a lot of the music Pitchfork has loved over the last few years could reasonably be described in both ways. It just seems like that, in this cultural moment, white male boomer-canon classic rock is the 'wrong' (read: not hip) retro to be fetishising preciously. I feel like a blatant tribute/rip-off to late 80s Janet Jackson would probably get BNM for doing basically the same thing.

I'm sure this band will be fine or whatever - they seem popular outside of internet music nerd circles. But it seems pretty transparent to me that this review was, as someone said above, written as brand positioning for Pitchfork, and was approached without an open mind. It kind of makes me want to root for them a little bit. But whatever, I think this review says more about Zeppelin's (and 60s-70s blues rock) changing place in the popular music canon as opposed to Whether The Greta Van Fleet Album Is Good or Bad.

― triggercut, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 6:05 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm cannibalizing my own FB post here but Pitchfork is on board with giving Best New Music to Car Seat Headrest who are a slavish a poor imitation of workaday 90s indie rock as Greta Van Fleet is of Led Zep

here. the last track is amazing and also a zep rip-off apparently

https://youtu.be/x-cvvpiqL-w

― imago, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 2:40 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is good!!!! but really sounds nothing like led zep. imago go on Chapo listen to Physical Graffiti

re: bands who do retro better, the string of pre-hiatus Graveyard albums comes to mind, as well as the first Blues Pills.

Graveyard and Blues Pills bored the shit out of me. Witchcraft and Horisont were much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASjhcPwyxKA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fELhPgQgDVY

I have no idea why anyone would find these bands exciting and Graveyard (esp circa Innocence and Decadence) boring but ears are funny things

you can have any mixture you want of analysis of the details and analysis of overall gestalt, I just don't think largely focusing on the latter is some abdication of serious critical responsibility

xpost

I know the differences are minuscule, but somehow these bands do it for me where the other two don't, even though I wanted them to. In the case of Horisont, it's because of how much they remind me of November, an amazing early '70s Swedish band that almost nobody remembers.

v good reasoning in the context of the rockism thread tbh

fwiw I would invite GvF to play a six hour private house concert for me before I would ever grant Car Seat Headrest a full minute of my time

Also, anyone here dissing GvF on the basis of them being cartoonishly, unimaginatively retro who also reps or has repped hard for Alabama Shakes or St Paul & The Broken Bones has some explaining to do

I can't believe I am now suddenly defending this horrible band

You’re settin’ up strawmen & knockin’ ‘em down! 😉

there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary

Treeship brought up aesthetics, fwiw; I was talking about engagement with the actual music.

But I don't agree, in a lot of cases. If I talk about why I like Odessey and Oracle and I say, "I think it differentiates itself from other records from the time in its approach to harmony and melody and that it's soft, but retains some good energy," none of that is even implied social commentary.

Also, anyone here dissing GvF on the basis of them being cartoonishly, unimaginatively retro who also reps or has repped hard for Alabama Shakes or St Paul & The Broken Bones has some explaining to do

I can't believe I am now suddenly defending this horrible band

― Paul Ponzi, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 9:22 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILM favs St. Paul & the Broken Bones

xp that's a really great description of why Odessy & Oracle is a masterpiece, never heard it put that way but you nailed it

Alabama Shakes have kinda disappeared, huh? That last album was actually pretty solid and not at all in line with the hyper-retro touchstones being tossed around, iirc

the fact that some things are definitely red and not orange does not mean there's a clear distinction between red and orange

xp

brittany did a solo project i think--thunderbitch

yeah, i recoiled from the shakes' first project, but loved the second

What I said on the other thread:

there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all, or at least I don't think it's any truer than saying "there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and physics".

― The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Wednesday, October 24, 2018 8:45 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tbf, though, you clarified your position, ogmor, and I understand it better now.

I've heard Physical Graffiti! IIRC I loved Ten Years Gone and obviously Kashmir but didn't find much of the rest particularly exciting. I'm sure I could put together a LZ compilation from all their albums that I'd enjoy

If this isn't Rockism...

https://imgur.com/a/dgFzB8f

Oops:

https://imgur.com/a/dgFzB8f

the fact that some things are definitely red and not orange does not mean there's a clear distinction between red and orange

― ogmor, Wednesday, October 24, 2018 10:39 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're making the apples and oranges idiom complicated

ppl have been appealing to physics to justify and explain aesthetic/musical preferences & principles since ancient times so it seems like an apt comparison. I'm taking 'social commentary', 'social positioning', 'sociology' (?!) or whatever other reductive name you want to give it to refer to the wider human/social/human significance, or if you like, the semantics behind the semiotics. The Actual Music is the means to an end* - das effekt as bach wld have it - and when the ends are rotten it seems masochistic to insist we dwell on exactly how they were achieved

*w/ standard caveat abt redundance of authorial intent, things being repurposed, misheard, mutable &c.

Yeah, I do think it is. I just hear "you can't separate the music from the physics" far less than I hear "you can't separate the music from the social commentary/political context", at least from the sorts of writers who are discussed most often here. But the position you were taking was less extreme than the position I originally thought you were taking (and which is one I have heard elsewhere).

Danava are cool btw.