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

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.

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

Lex, even your inconsistency you express as a principle! ;-)

which no one ever has been

well, oscar wilde maybe

but isn't the canon for people who are not as much into music as most people on this board? a starting point not to lose too much time in finding good music. that's how i always interpreted it. a time-saving tool for the masses. as a music lover i am not particularly against canons. there is lots of good music in canons. but i don't think i need a canon. i am looking for persons with similar tastes to mine who tell me which new music they like. and some of these people are around here.

nah i think it's a tool for people who are pretty into music but also want to tie everything up nice and neatly.

Interesting point, Alex, and I too rely on the recommendations of specific individuals moreso than any sort of larger hype bubbles or broad-scale canons. I think canons are almost a natural, organic feature of a community, though, don't you? I mean, I'd say ILM is old enough and established enough to where it can be said to have its own canon...

ilm canon = new order at the top

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.

Listen to Destroyer, they're as good as the Beatles.

maybe it's a mistake to look at canon primarily as a concrete thing intentionally made, like a tool? i'm more inclined to view it as an artifact or by-product, this ever-shifting perceptible phantom created as a result of human communication and the categorical impulse. of course, once perceived, it does begin to be a concrete thing, like a tool, and people do work at and with it directly. chicken v egg, i guess.

or what clarke just said :/

a lot of people think canons are made by tools

Listen to Destroyer, they're as good as the Beatles.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

otm

Listen to Destroyer, they're as good as the Beatles.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol you truly know the path straight to my heart

clarke and cntnrdrzr are right about how canons are developed in communities like this one. but there is a large, well-known, and pretty unchanging "rock canon" that totally sucks and extends beyond the bounds of any one community.

maybe it's a mistake to look at canon primarily as a concrete thing intentionally made, like a tool? i'm more inclined to view it as an artifact or by-product, this ever-shifting perceptible phantom created as a result of human communication and the categorical impulse. of course, once perceived, it does begin to be a concrete thing, like a tool, and people do work at and with it directly. chicken v egg, i guess.

This ties back to my earlier comments about hating to see critcs straining to build or add to the canon. In doing so, they're fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of canons, the fact that we don't choose our canons so explicitly and with such willpower, that they evolve complexly and sloppily over time and space.

the funny thing abt this is that the internet has totally helped to shake up the canon -- pitchfork saying destroyer released a great record has less power today than if they said it 5 yrs ago, and says less abt the state of music than pazz & jop circa '80

lex's criticisms feel really outdated to me. At this point, there are too many rival voices proclaiming canons; if you want to influence ppl on your worldview, you need to make convincing/widespread/viral arguments that resonate w/ people. not to sound like BH Ideas, but its all networking & connections & shit. railing at some huge canon is totally irrelevant any more, b/c its way more diced up now

there is a large, well-known, and pretty unchanging "rock canon" that totally sucks and extends beyond the bounds of any one community.

Why is this such a big deal...? English lit has a canon. It's helpful in a way to know that if you're interested in 19th century country life then Jane Austen or Tobias Smolley wrote novels about it. No one forces you to accept them. It's just a list.

Whenever RS publishes one of its umpteenth GOAT lists and spot What's Going On I remind myself, 'Oh, right, I need to own it.' Yet I own and love (among others) the decidedly non-canonical In Our Lifetime.

*Smollett

in my perfect world its nothing but goregrind and latin freestyle on the radio 24/7.

clarke and cntnrdrzr are right about how canons are developed in communities like this one. but there is a large, well-known, and pretty unchanging "rock canon" that totally sucks and extends beyond the bounds of any one community.

same thing & process, just on a larger scale and over a longer period of time. i wouldn't say the semi-official rock canon "sucks", just that it exists and that it has certain qualities, some positive, some negative. i mean, i like the beatles and the stones and the velvet underground. this isn't to say that there isn't room for other voices and visions.

It's helpful in a way to know that if you're interested in 19th century country life then Jane Austen or Tobias Smolley wrote novels about it.

i don't feel like pop/rock music canons are presented in quite this neutral a fashion!

"if you're interested in music in the 60s the beatles and the stones wrote some records then"

and i should be careful and say i don't think the stuff in there nec. sucks, but it's more how ppl use it/talk about it that can suck. does that happen with the lit. canon? idk haven't been in that game in a while.

people really do seriously rep for the enduring importance and quality of like shakespeare, joyce and dostoyevsky, though. it's really no different than putting leadbelly and led zep up on a pedestal.

the beatles and rolling stones are not presented as 'part of a canon' to most people, they're presented as bands that millions of people across the world liked, important historic figures in the history of pop music, etc. etc. whereas, idk, big star are 'part of the canon' but relatively few people listen to or care about them. being on lists probably increased the # of people who listen to them, but pretty marginally in the big picture.

I think the general public 'canon' is pretty far from what people who care a lot about music think is the 'canon'. most of the world considers coldplay 'canon'.

xp yeah true, also gets into things like scope and scale and how lit vs. music gets consumed etc. etc.

ftr i am slogging my way through kaputt again trying to figure it out while positing itt

the canon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_worldwide

I think the general public 'canon' is pretty far from what people who care a lot about music think is the 'canon'. most of the world considers coldplay 'canon'.

I think that's stretching the notion of canon way too far... We should be careful to differentiate between canon and consensus, and between those notions and large-scale popularity as well. I maintain that canon implies some temporal distance and involves the notion of serious enduring popularity/meaningfulness beyond just being widely enjoyed.