so tell me, why is Kaputt better or worse than Let England Shake?

you're not even interested in the theory of music if you blanket reject canonical music; you are interested in the fashion of music

and that's cool, there's a lot of crossover between the two. honestly, i'm a bit of a reactionary myself, and often reject things casually on the basis of where they seem to fit into the culture. but i recognize and try to fight this impulse - while still respecting the fact that i do have a point of view and even a "tribe". it's complicated...

not listening to music because its 'in the canon' is the most stupid thing ever.

I'm actually always motivated to investigate canonized works; this is exactly what I'm NOT tryin to say.

i'm not certain people are trying to canonize anything, they're maybe just doing some rankings and talking about albums they like and consider to be great (LES is one, kaputt even more of one, whether people will talk about LES for example in five years we shall see...)

Lex brought up the canon!

no point in worrying about what people will talk about in 5 years. You wont know for 5 years so talk about it in the present.

I'm not so much anti-canon (I actually find it interesting and culturally significant/important the way we create and alter and evolve our various canons) as I am anti- obvious attempts at canon-building.

isn't that even worse though? instead of pushing back against an established tradition, you're then pushing back against anything that seems to get too much acclaim, and constantly having to calibrate this against your sense of how that acclaim equates to "canon-building". and, god, there are so many different canons in different subgroups. sounds exhausting.

It's all good. Half – more than half maybe – of the battle waged when I write concerns to what degree I fight my biases or accept them.

The canon rules, so many awesome jams in that funky old canon

James brown, the fall, zz top, etc

clarke i was more responding to i'm anti-canon as a matter of principle

which as a long time poster on ilm, i have seen these statements made many times over the years, especially back in around 2001 when i first started postibg rather than lurking. Funnily enough Tom and others did move away from this and started listening to and liking beach boys,rolling stones etc.

It's best not to think of it as The Canon but more like "people who recorded music I like before I was alive."

instead of pushing back against an established tradition, you're then pushing back against anything that seems to get too much acclaim, and constantly having to calibrate this against your sense of how that acclaim equates to "canon-building". and, god, there are so many different canons in different subgroups. sounds exhausting.

Haha, it is! No, it's really more a matter of feeling alienated by intense hype. It's really hard for me to form personal connections to things that are so surrounded by it.

Oh shit, up on cripple creek just came on! Thank u based canon

rap canon, jazz canon, electronic/dance canon, lolindie canon, fogey canon, artfuxx canon, ponytail worldmusic canon, etc, etc, etc. so many tastemakers to oppose...

oh i hate it when you can feel opinion ossifying around a new record that ticks every critic-friendly box and you can feel the canon forming inexorably around it. i remember getting that very clearly with sound of silver. it's probably different with LES cuz i loved it and PJH

i find the best way to judge music is by listening to it. Whether its in a can or not has no influence other than maybe giving the impetus to check something out. However there's a LOT of great records not in the canon that should be. And I feel that would be better served by getting good records IN the canon rather than dismissing the canon altogether.

*in a canon

i don't think excessive hype by itself would be enough to put me off hearing a record though - usually when i try to avoid a hyped album it's also cuz i have good musical reason to suspect i won't like it

oh i hate it when you can feel opinion ossifying around a new record that ticks every critic-friendly box and you can feel the canon forming inexorably around it. i remember getting that very clearly with sound of silver. it's probably different with LES cuz i loved it and PJH

In other words the canon is okay if you like the artists in them

However there's a LOT of great records not in the canon that should be

yup that's why i don't put much stock in it. it's fairly meaningless and dry but i don't like the idea of those records that weren't "right" for it getting lost.

sometimes hype can put me off but later i hear it without the surrounding hype and actually like it. Which i know happens to you sometimes lex as you've posted about that before.

No, it's really more a matter of feeling alienated by intense hype. It's really hard for me to form personal connections to things that are so surrounded by it.

okay, scratch that last one. being suspicious of hype makes a lot more sense, though that too can turn into a reactionary position. i'm sort of oppositional (no, really!), so as much as i'm leery of hype, i find that the more time i spend on ILX, the more i'm inclined to embrace things that attract collective loathing. and that's often the overhyped flavor of the week.

x-posts

which as a long time poster on ilm, i have seen these statements made many times over the years, especially back in around 2001 when i first started postibg rather than lurking. Funnily enough Tom and others did move away from this and started listening to and liking beach boys,rolling stones etc.

I've posted about this on various other threads here and there (I've been on ILM on and off since 2000 myself), but I think the old-ILM tendency to canon-bash was an exhilarating attempt to shun something that felt stale and oppressive so that we could start fresh and talk about pop and whatever else in open, non-self-conscious, honest, irreverent ways. What has happened over the years, it seems to me--and I don't mean to be mean, but Lex at his most rabid really embodies this for me--is that this canon-bashing that started as an act of therapy, really, has hardened into just another critical position: pop-ism, whatever you want to call it. One of the biggest eye-opening realizations old-ILM helped me achieve is that having a relationship with music should adamntly NOT involve principles!

Lex you do a lot of fancy gymnastics to basically say ” stuff I like rules, stuff I hate drools”

Also clarke otm w last post

it's not particularly fancy tbh

One of the biggest eye-opening realizations old-ILM helped me achieve is that having a relationship with music should adamntly NOT involve principles!

Honestly, I don't think this can be stressed enough.

here here

or is it hear hear

hear here

ear ear

geir geir

canon-bashing that started as an act of therapy, really, has hardened into just another critical position

agree w this. canon-bashing and indie-bashing (and anything-bashing) get tedious very fast. the need to constantly define oneself in opposition to one's imagined inferiors is nagl, unless it's done with a very sharp wit and/or real political substance. "cool kid" snark is semi-endurable when it comes from teens and young adults, simply because they don't know any better and their naive passion is charming, but it quickly loses its appeal after that.

i find myself avoiding canonical or popular stuff a lot not on principle but because i spend a lot of time digging into stuff that isn't particularly 'popular', which comes from investigating music over time i guess, idk. i go from johnny cash and country into folk and fairport convention and into steeleye span and solo maddy prior and then june tabor and so on, to cite an example. sometimes of course it happens to lead into popular stuff but since the vast bulk of all music is out of the spotlight (and a corresponding percentage of excellent music is too) i end up naturally finding more obscure stuff i like. and my obscure tastes are only relative to some, by the standards of others on ILM i'm pretty MOR.

i think people have an idea of me as way more dogmatic than i am! i don't have principles or rules

prove it. go listen to a bob dylan album.

I totally get what you're saying omar, as someone in a similar situation, but it was very lol to read "i spend a lot of time digging into stuff that isn't particularly 'popular'" followed closely by "i go from johnny cash and country"

i tried that in 2001

lol well i mean a path like that would be going from popular to 'obscure'

position omar describes is totally cool, imo. being open-minded doesn't mean you have to embrace everything. you still get to dive deep into the stuff that excites you and more or less ignore the rest, if that's what you want. nothing wrong with dodging a canon that doesn't interest you. that's very different from sneering at canon because it's "too easy" or the wrong people like it or w/e.

i don't want to get into this too deeply but the problems with canons is usually not what they include, it's in what they exclude. they lead to a really boring and shallow way of talking/thinking about music when taken on their own--an effort to avoid them is what led me to ilm among other places.

When I avoid things, whether currently hyped or canonized for ages, it's usually done not at all as a matter of principle but the opposite--it's because it feels wrong to engage with it at that time. If I have the sense that I won't be able to engage with something in a relatively unmediated, unclouded way, I don't want to force myself to do it. I get flak from some of my pals about not knowing about so-and-so a current musician or recently relased record, but the moment keeping up with music starts to feel like a chore or a checklist to be monitored is the moment it starts to lose its allure and magic.

i think people have an idea of me as way more dogmatic than i am! i don't have principles or rules

lex you just said !

i'm anti-canon as a matter of principle
― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Thursday, February 9, 2012 8:06 PM

i change my mind all the time! i don't do consistency

hahahaha

Chuck Pretend?

i don't want to get into this too deeply but the problems with canons is usually not what they include, it's in what they exclude. they lead to a really boring and shallow way of talking/thinking about music when taken on their own--an effort to avoid them is what led me to ilm among other places.

this is a very good point, and it's what clarke was getting at a few posts back. problem, as clarke said, is that principled opposition to a suspect canon can quickly harden into thoughtless, knee-jerk tribalism.

better to champion that which you think should be included than to elevate yourself by sneering down at what you don't care for - unless, of course, you're really fucking funny about it.

which no one ever has been

I mean, the most exciting discovery I made last year was Iron Maiden, for God's sake. I kept up with electronic music fairly well because it's fun and dizzying to do it, but I basically ignored most rock and indie because I wasn't feeling it. I rekindled a love of old jazz and discovered some new-to-me artists. I got deep into Theo Parrish and Moodymann and Omar-S (yep, real late to all three parties!).

One of the advantages old-ILM had was that it felt like basically a group of people who had a lifetime of listening-via-one's-own-lights behind them, who had developed their tastes in eras that weren't so rigorously dictated by keeping up with the furious pace of new releases, finally having room and a captive peer group to make sense of the highly personal mazes of taste they'd built up over the years. I don't ever want to lose the feeling of control I have over my tastes and my pace of exploration of music.

one thing that drives me fucking nuts about canonization is the idea that i should listen to (or worse) should have listened to thing x because it's part of a canon. if you want to demotivate me re: listening to something please just give me a version of that as if it's a good reason.