Simon Reynolds - C or D

This is the primary reason why I've been so irritated by "nu-rockism" as a rallying point, it seems like an unnecessary allegiance which adds nothing to Simon's long-standing critical project. I'm glad that in Simon and Mark K-Punk's most recent posts linked to here they're both demonstrating some ambivalence towards the notion that the underlying conflict is between nu-rockism and popism (and I say that as someone who has done more than most here to give rise to the notion that most debates can be reduced to r vs p).

(as Matos points out: "given what it's surrounded with--several records I voted for included--who, precisely, thinks that M.I.A. got to no. 2 on the plastic-fun vote?")

is this what they call 'kicking it upstairs'?

I suspect that to understand Simon's occasionally confusing use of different approaches [...] the important thing to remember is that he fundamentally believes he is right

kind of sums it up!

(if anyone is starting it again, though, it is S REYNOLDS, though that blisspost is not so much starting anything again as STILL HARPING ON ABOUT IT)

i like ariel pink too! it is great hangover/stuffed-up-with-the-flu music.

it reminded me of that 'times' thing.

lex, i know about my ends, ur just romanticizing youth and dare i say it none-whiteness.

[that wasn't a reynolds quote above, more a paraphrase]

xpost - i live in brixton and well, ive never heard grime on any bus here, or from any car, or from well, anywhere really, except when i went to ministry for a grime night last year. i used to live in east london where again, i never heard it from any cars, except one time when i was in essex, a guy had boy in da corner playing, and in hackney, some kids were playing it from their ghetto blaster on the street.

by the way, ive seen tons of kids singing songs in public, its really fucking annoying. and now they play songs from their phones ALOUD on the tube, which is evn worse

-- okok (okok...), February 3rd, 2006.

it's a tru phenom. we've got two threads on it on ile.

i know one girl from action who "sometimes" listens to grime on the radio, but other than that, only quasi-hipster internet dudes.

Didn't the Lex go to public school and Oxbridge? I love how he has become ILM's street-representative!

-- Jerry the Nipper (jerrythenippe...), February 3rd, 2006.

i think u underestimate ILM's sense of hunmour sometimes.

and discussing Simon's take in the Frieze article seems more relevant than rehashing MIA (although yes Simon was the one who wants to do that and the items are connected and 'voice of the streets'...)--

From his Frieze article-

"The most striking thing about Pop in 2005 is how little conversation there is between black music and white music. Mainstream UK Rock, from Coldplay to whoever’s on the cover of NME this week has never sounded so bleached. The main effect of this (apparently, hopefully) unconscious drive towards sonic segregation is a grievous lack of rhythmic spark and invention. Catch some highly-touted Brit hopeful on the TV programme Later With Jools, and it’s instantly audible how the drummer contributes nothing to the music in the way of feel, tension, or dynamism, but instead just dully marks the tempo. He’s seemingly there simply because that’s what proper Rock bands have – a live drummer.

Things aren’t much different on the Rock underground, where the coolest thing around is Free-Folk (aka Freak-Folk, Psych-Folk … ). Ranging from beardy minstrels like Devendra Banhart to trippy jam bands like Animal Collective and Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, Free-Folk is a recombinant sound that draws on a whole range of historical sources beyond the obvious traditional music and Folk-Rock ancestors. It just so happens that none of them (apart from a trace of utmostly ‘out’ Free Jazz) are black. Free-Folk’s accompanying ideology – a mish-mash of mystical pantheism, paganism, and sundry shamanic/tribalistic impulses – places it in the same continuum as the hippies and the beats, but, significantly, it has broken with Beat’s ‘white negro’ syndrome. Elsewhere in the leftfield, there’s the neo-post-Punk fad, fading somewhat after a good three-year run. These groups engage in white-on-black, Punk-to-Funk action, but only by replaying genre collisions from 25 years ago. Whereas the true post-Punk spirit manifested today would involve miscegenating Indie-Rock with Grime or Crunk."

I am also not sure how Simon's top albums reflects the above though.

i don't read it anywhere, and it doesn't sound like anything SR would write, to my ears. source?

"As a critic championing Grime, one of my angles – beyond the sheer excitement of the music, the brilliance of the wordplay, the charisma of the MCs – has been ‘you really ought to check this, it’s the voice of the UK streets.’ But I suspect that not many people actually want to hear what the voice of the streets has to say: partly, because it ain’t pretty, and partly, because most people honestly don’t give much of a fu k"

i'm not sure what this conversation is about, really. it seems more about twisting SR's words and biography into a version that everyone can easily despise.

No, it's what's called 'making a point that hasn't been made exactly the same way 64568765387576 times before.'

there's not much diff between paraphrase and quote, i just added the fact that i'm damned if someone who lives in new york is going to tell me what the 'voice' -- singular, ie 'unitary' -- of the uk streets is. how have i twisted anything?

Don't you agree (or not) that saying 'Please don't comment on what Mick Jagger means in "Under My Thumb' or "Some Girls', that's just how Brit rockers speak would be wrong also. Yea, it's a delicate and compllicated thing that needs to be written creatively and thoughtfully, but ignoring it does not seem the same to me as the Matos example upthread of not writing in a review of a punk cd--the guitars are loud.

outside of london i've just been on like a and b roads. "the voice of the streets" in shropshire is sheeps bleating.

"Whereas the true post-Punk spirit manifested today would involve miscegenating Indie-Rock with Grime or Crunk."-Reynold in the Frieze piece

I think on threads in the past, people have discussed the failures of '80s and 90s American rap-rock, and the playing out of the liberal guilt thing among other Anglo musicians who sub-consciously or consciously avoid trying to incorporate current Black pop for fear of being derided aesthetically as phony and insincere.

If anything, the problem is that issue isn't covered enough by most writers, who can never say anything specific about the language/violent imagery/sexism in a hip hop track or album beyond the fact that it exists. As if it's all the same. As if they have mental censors which, when the rapper swears, translates what they hear into a neutral announcement "The rapper used a filthy swear word at this point in the track".