What Is Rockism ?

Authoritative generalist is like an artifact of another era

Authoritative objectivist generalist? Idk

I think thinking about the idea of critical generalism is a much more than interesting discussion than triggercut's gross aggrieved-sounding framing of the piece.

"to be annoyed at Sirius XMU, their leading alt rock station channel 35, for playing Mariah Carey?"

I listen to this station at least once, more often several times, a day and as recently as five minutes ago, and I would weep grateful tears if the above occurred when I was listening (my other fave is The Heat.)

So we are using ‘rock’ as a verb and a big umbrella term – not a narrow genre – and trying to avoid the traps of what music critics call ‘rockism.’

http://thequietus.com/articles/25545-women-who-rock-evelyn-mcdonnell-interview

one set of values being substituted for another does indeed constitute a fundamental revision of the value system even if it remains structurally analogous. flipping a value system with race and gender at its core does not give rise to 'the exact same thing' unless one wrongly assumes that racial and gendered stratification of our society has had the potential to systematically benefit *any* racial or gender group with even remotely similar probability throughout history and up to the present day -- it's simply absurd. how many ways do we need to remind ourselves that reverse racism isn't a thing that has ever *really* existed?

some other quibbles:

- 'the old rockism' never respected the taste of what you call the 'white frat-kinda-guys'. now i'm nothing even close to an expert on the history of how the value system of the popular music press has evolved over time but to me it seems like the last time the tastes of the unremarkable and unenlightened white male were actually acknowledged as worthy of special consideration or even normative was like... the 50s? from the 60s onward the pop music press seems to have largely reproduced the values/tastes of a certain subset of white males who disdained much of what they saw in mass culture and felt that the 'typical' consumer, especially female but also male, was insufficiently discerning and had no regard as to what works were likely to have lasting 'impact' or 'influence' or otherwise signpost some kind of progress, whether artistic or social.

- has the value system even *actually* been revised? plenty of people have disliked or even been blatantly biased against rockist-favored work for the entirety of the period rockism has prevailed -- although, of course, the music press seldom reflected the views of those people. now that more such people have the opportunity to participate in the music press and amplify their voices, their views are sufficiently shocking to those who have come to expect one thing from the music press that they fallaciously convince themselves that an entire sea-change of the press's values is imminent if it has not already occurred. meanwhile all available evidence actually points to the continued prosperity of traditional rockist-favored acts like, e.g., the national, war on drugs, father john misty, jason isbell, spoon, whateverthefuck-else.

so what's actually changing? i remain unconvinced.

In other words, dave matthews band, why are they so bad & hated

Yeah, afaict, critics in the ostensible heyday of 'rockism' preferred Donna Summer and Blondie to Black Sabbath or Rush (although they probably preferred Elvis Costello to all of the above).

Yeah there's a lot of stuff in the old threads (possibly even this one if you load all the messages) about how rockism as such was always at least in part a self-hating mindset which reserved its greatest scorn for the rock it didn't approve of.

Ha, there's a solid chance that I made the same point a decade and a half ago.

But if you grew up listening to underground music, seeing someone who embodies everything you hate like an indie band you love still has the power to annoy you.

Except that I'm not sure there was anything 'self-hating' about Randy Newman fans hating on Black Sabbath. Younger brother hating, maybe? xp

the biggest bully in my junior high introduced me to yo la tengo

https://www.morrissey-solo.com/news/2004/images/freddurst.jpg

xxpost it's not like music fans are necessary literally self-hating on an individual level, but a creed which values and prioritises "rock" in the abstract but doesn't like large swathes of its purer manifestations is a bit contradictory.

I don’t think “Rockism” is literally a “creed” that anyone has

i am pro- the pitchfork piece. it means that for this writer at least, culture still matters and taste means something other than just preference. the writer *wants* there to be an underground that stands for values that are marginalized by the mainstream and the market. the idea of the counterculture or the underground is more important than the actual underground and its ability to truly be different. it's a way to keep doors open, and stave off a situation where all culture is boiled down into a homogenous consumerist soup.

Yeah, but if this move just makes Chainsmokers seem like poseurs, then Beach House’s underground coolness has been reaffirmed, no?

yeah, in the fulness of time and from the omnipotent standpoint of god, sure, but humans are territorial and the idea of the "underground" survives because people are willing to risk looking ridiculous and like hypocrites in order to defend it

there is no "outside" of capitalism but there is indie music

If your concept of "underground music" is Beach House...

not my idea, the writer's. i do love beach house, though, and i think their music complements a different... pace of cognition than what we live with in the smartphone era. so yeah, counterculture for sure just not in a confrontational way

I understand the writer being “annoyed,” don’t get me wrong. I’m trying to think of an analogy for “my” era (based on my limited understanding of where these two artists fall on the cultural map). Maybe if Warrant had name-checked R.E.M.? I dunno, I probably would’ve just laughed... but it was a different scene then.

(I guess the main source of concern is that Chainsmokers are credibly able to “encroach” on whatever it is that Beach House represents; whereas these artists’ equivalent cultural milieus would have been entirely separate in the past? And this is because “sexist bros” are making “cool music” now, rather than just cock rock and, er, License to Ill?)

Yeah the vibe I get from the piece is sadness at the realisation that beach house were always already basically expensive car / insurance advertising music, that it's too late to defend them from the chainsmokers because there's not really anything to defend.

I don’t think “Rockism” is literally a “creed” that anyone has

OTM

Maybe if Warrant had name-checked R.E.M.?

Not really the same thing but, tangentially, I really enjoyed how puzzled Sonic Youth were when Joe Satriani picked Goo as his AOTY for 1990.

chainsmokers and beach house likely shared a festival bill at at least one recent point. outside of the music writer bubble they aren’t so far apart fanbase wise as one might think.

Yeah I meant "creed" somewhat loosely, and I was also trying to make the point that sometimes there are features of a way of thinking that are difficult to reconcile with individuals who adopt it in part - e.g. there are probably no people who would exhibit all of the traits we associate with rockism.

I really enjoyed how puzzled Sonic Youth were when Joe Satriani picked Goo as his AOTY for 1990.

LOL, well done Joe!

From the August 1991 issue of Guitar Player:

According to Guitar for the Practising Musician[/i], Joe Satriani cited [/i]Goo[/i] as Album of the Year[/i]
Thurston: That's sick! That's so weird! Are we like a novelty pick or what?
Lee: That's perplexing. I don't think we feel much kinship with what he does, accomplished player though he is. He sure knows a lot more music theory than any of us. But what we lack in technical skills, I hope we make up in ideas. The conceptual side is 75% of what we do.

the first time i thought in depth about this stuff was when a friend and i saw a woman sing creed's "with arms wide open" on american idol. this friend has similar taste to me -- higher-than-typical affinity for teen-pop, r&b, rap, dance + other forms of music often seen as frivolous, lower-than-typical tolerance for rock music unless unintentionally silly -- so he took it as shocking and appalling when i said i thought the song was actually pretty good and that i was glad that the contestant had chosen to sing it!

it seemed so clear to me that my friend would have loved "with arms wide open", or at least a similarly overdramatic ballad about the uncertainty of facing parenthood, if it had originally been sung by a woman. so my thinking, at the time, went that well, we 'poptimists' have failed to truly revise what we expect from music and its performers, instead simply assigning different value-judgments to the same conventional performer-roles.

i'm not sure if that's aligned with what is expressed in triggercut's post. but my thoughts were definitely too simplistic back then.

Not really sure where to put this, but I thought it was kinda interesting: https://www.stereogum.com/2025666/mainstream-rock-2018-nostalgia-weezer-greta-van-fleet/franchises/sounding-board/

Wow. I grew up listening to 92.3 K-ROCK. I still live in the NY area but I had no idea it became a rock station again. If somebody's got to be the king of rock in 2018, Dave Grohl fits the bill. I just wish I liked the sound of the Foo Fighters records a bit more.

nice piece

the gritty reference made me nervous but I see that the author - Jeremy Yerger - is from Philly, so fair enough

As if we haven’t heard enough of Toto’s bro-drinking anthem already, Weezer’s “Africa” cover their biggest hit since “Beverly Hills” in 2005.

ha would never have described Africa as bro-anything. Also, I'm willing to sell this sentence an extra word or two.

imagine going back to the early 80s and telling people “africa” would be described as hard masc in 35 years.

“what, is it a flute thing?”

I mean they're not wrong, it is now

The Toxic Masculinity and Unchecked Patriarchal Privilege of Violence Anthem “Sailing” by Christopher Cross

surely it isn't controversial that regardless of whatever it was in 2018, it has now been adopted by redditors?

s/2018/the '80s

can i, like, take it back

I thought "Africa" had been adopted by, like, high school dances and Kristen Bell. Is it seriously part of some kind of tough guy culture?

they'll have "such a long way to go" before they can take "ride like the wind" away from me

(such a long way to goooo)

Like, the "Weezer Cover Africa" movement was started by a 14 year old girl.

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

How are weezer bros?