Frank Kogan's forthcoming "Real Punks Don't Wear Black"

Can a band (or someone's music) be rockist? Or is this primarily a pejorative to fling at critics/fans (or at musicians speaking outside their role as musicians, e.g. in interviews).

"In most principle respects, this album is straight, rockist Brit-pop."

"Hammond and Rhodes organs, guitars, and drums kick out the jams trio-style (keyboards at the front), and their muscular output sounds about as authentically rockist as possible in 2003..."

"Lenola take a decidedly rockist approach to their influences..."

"...the Pin-Ups represent the absolute bottom of music's barrel-- they're burned-out studio hags so entrenched in rockist dogma that they lose all frame of reference."

Hm. What about something like one of Glenn Gould's piano recordings, which uses a lot of splices to create an "ideal" version of a Bach prelude, or a track from one of Miles Davis' '70's albums, where bits and pieces of in-studio jams were stitched together to create an entirely new piece of music.* In these cases, the recordings aren't a snapshot of a performance. If a recording is a recording of someone playing the guitar, but sped up ten times as fast, then it's not even a recording of something that's theoretically performable. So the Glenn Gould, the Miles and the superfast guitar recordings aren't snapshots of performances. Unless, of course, the studio work involved is the performance. But...hmm...we don't call On the Corner a Teo Macero album so much as a Miles Davis album...uh, right?

Is "snapshot" redundant? "A recording is a snapshot of a performance" = "A recording is a recording of a performance."

*These may be mischaracterizations, sadly.

Thinking a little more about the D MOB / Dion point. Instrumental dance music operates under same strictures that all instrumental music does - it needs to communicate to/elicit in the listener a set of emotions and ideas non-verbally. Every choice of chords/instruments/effects has an impact on a musician's ability to convince you that they have created a valid musical statement (or even a valid genre entry) - just as a singer's/actor's choice of words or tone has an impact on their ability to convince you that their performance has aesthetic value.

I'd say that splices are aesthetic musical decisions, and "stitching together" becomes another method of composition. Whether Miles chooses not to play a particular run, or Macero or Davis decides to remove one he's played on tape, both are examples of aesthetic decisions (and deciding not to do something can be as important as doing it). You bring up another point, which is the trouble of authorship in collaborative arts (e.g. is the director really the "author" of a film? it's usually assumed so but generally not the case), another factor complicating the defense of authenticity.

In a way, they are, but it's the performance of Macero/Davis on the studio-as-instrument at a given point-in-time. If you were provided the same set of musicians and tools, trying to recreate In A Quiet Way would be just as difficult for you as recreating Birth of the Cool (perhaps even more difficult). An ex-girlfriend of mine was dumbstruck when she tried to learn the guitar solo from "Comfortably Numb" - how did Gilmour play it? His fingers seemed to have the ability to be in two places at once on the fretboard! She learned years later they had spliced together the best bits from several different solos. Can't remember where I heard this (Dylan doc again?) but there was some folk guitarist marveling at someone else's playing ability on a certain recording, only to find out later the tape had been sped up, even the guy he was admiring couldn't play it that fast!

Another way to look at it is - a director shapes an actor's performance by editing longer pieces of film. Is the actor no longer performing?

"In most principle respects, this album is straight, rockist Brit-pop."

This doesn't tell me much, aside from the prejudices of the reviewer.

"Hammond and Rhodes organs, guitars, and drums kick out the jams trio-style (keyboards at the front), and their muscular output sounds about as authentically rockist as possible in 2003..."

This is slightly more defensible, one could argue the reviewer is speaking to the music's perception-by-others rather than any inherent properties, i.e. this music will be acceptable to rockists, though again that's not saying much at all.

"Lenola take a decidedly rockist approach to their influences..."

Understandable, since it addresses the musicians as listeners, but who knows what tosh came after the ellipses.

"...the Pin-Ups represent the absolute bottom of music's barrel-- they're burned-out studio hags so entrenched in rockist dogma that they lose all frame of reference."

See # 1.

For years, Queen printed "No synthesizers" on their album covers (untill, of course, they started using them). Rockist?

I guess one could argue that the "No synthesizers" label was rockist, because it seems to be a claim for a type of authenticity that rockists would value. In this case "synthesizers" are like some kind of synthetic food additive (think MSG) that might make the food taste better for a moment, but is bound to give you headaches and dizzy spells afterwards. A synthesizer tuned to sound like a guitar might be a way for bands who lack real chops to fake the sound of a real band.

Projecting onto an artist's intention = can of worms + can opener. Or building yr house on sand. Or setting yourself up for a broken heart (see my Dylan comments above).

I'd also think rockists would adjudge Negativland to be a load of crap, since they do not rock. Rock on U2!

(Anybody see the MTV interview where Kurt Loder asked a squirming U2 if they had cleared all the copyrights for the clips they projected behind them on the Zoo TV tour? Classic. He should have gone for the gold and brought up Negativland, though.)

Supposedly Queen did it because so many people assumed they had to be using synthesizers to get the sounds they were getting. Then again, what's the difference between using a synthesizer and laying down 20 vocal tracks running through 10 rack processors? Both smoke and mirrors anyway.

My favorite no-machines-used-and-proud-of-it band, as I've said many times, was Tesla, who always named their albums after mechanical stuff and who were named after the guy who discovered alternating current (or something).

It's not written into the concept "ideal" that it keep changing, even if the ideals designated by a word often do change. In fact, you can use the word "ideal" to designate what doesn't change. I'm not up on my Plato, but I think he'd think of "ideal" (or whatever word he was using) and "Superword" as antithetical notions.

I'm no expert in Greek philosophy and y'all are probably better off reading Plato entries in wikipedia, but here goes: Plato divides the world into two realms: the world of things and the world of ideas. The world of things is populated by objects: horses, tables, poems. We recognize these various horses, tables, or poems as being alike because they are expressions of an idea, the abstract conceptualization of a horse, table, or poem. The relationship between the two are kind of like the cookie and the cookie cutter. The cookie cutter is the idea, with straight lines and perfect curves. The cookies are the real things, bumpy edges, broken corners. In Platonic terms the words idea and ideal become interchangeable.

Plato took this to a metaphysical/spriritual level - he believed there is actually a World Of Ideas, kind of a heaven of forms, where these perfect things (the Universals) live. Human endeavors are attempts to recreate that World Of Ideas on our own plane. If you make a table or a poem, you're trying to make the perfect table or poem, but you never do. A thing in the physical world is an imperfect expression or instance of a perfect form or idea. We're separated from the World Of Ideas, but are painfully aware of it - a perfection we can't ever attain.

It's a powerful concept, and it's had broad applications in everything from art theory to physics to manufacturing to programming (object oriented programming borrows a lot from this - forms, instances, objects). People use it and aren't even aware of it. A lot of genre theory is bound up in these terms.

So when I hear "there's a perfect ideal and each expression of it falls short of someone's expectations, causing debate and further attempts at expression," I think Plato (minus the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo).

I do think that all genre names can get used as Superwords. But nonetheless, the word "genre" doesn't contain within it the idea that it represents an ideal that keeps changing.

I'd say the modern concept of genre contains exactly that idea. Some theorists think that every instance of a genre modifies the genre's definition in some way. Check out that Chandler link above, if you get a chance.

ROCKIST

And since when do rockists care about whether music rocks?
-- xhuxk (xedd...), May 12th, 2006 4:56 PM.

So true. Like Dylan rocks, gimme a break.

"For example, it bugged me when Michael Roberts called Ricky Martin 'watered down' in comparison to (supposedly) real Latin music, but I can easily myself criticize antirockists for a distorted, domesticated, watered-down version of Meltzer-Bangs-Kogan-Eddy style criticism. So I don't see where Michael Roberts and I are different in kind. He's just wrong in that particular instance. So I don't think rockism exists or ever existed, though I realize that I'm not going to convince people to stop using the word."

And don't distract yourself with wondering whether Meltzer-Bangs-Kogan-Eddy can really constitute a genre, or how much the antirockists took from people like us (and from Xgau and Frith and Emerson etc. etc. etc.). This is just an example. But it's a good example, given that Kogan et al. probe themselves and their culture, while the antirockist plays a game of pretend where it's the other guy who's hung up on authenticity and the antirockist pretends not to be. "Rockist" is not a viable concept, and this is because it can't distinguish the rockist from the nonrockist.

But anyway, how about this:

"So now so many musicians conform to the idea of truth that says that truth is raw, ugly, and primitive that this primitiveness is a cliché, it's a new brand of deodorant, punk-hardcore deodorant; ultimately, it's nothing. Punk isn't punk anymore, it's a bunch of musical/clothing signs that symbolize punk. It's closer to literature or advertising than to music."
—Frank Kogan, 1985

And now, let's rewrite it: "So now so many musicians conform to the idea of 'Latin' that says that Latin music is energetic that this energy is a cliché, it's a new brand of deodorant, Latino-energy-brand deodorant; ultimately, it's nothing. Latin music isn't Latin anymore, it's a bunch of musical/clothing signs that symbolize 'Latin.' It's closer to literature or advertising than to music."

So, again, how is Michael Roberts different in kind from me? How is rockism different in kind from any other criticism that sees something of valued being cheapened? I'm guessing Roberts thought Ricky Martin was watering the music down to appeal to an audience that can't tell crap from the good stuff. I thought punk was dumbing itself down to appeal to the punks. "yr. identifying the term 'rockist' with the FORM of an argument." So? It seems to me I'm identifying the content as well. The only difference is that Roberts is walking an old trail in saying that the ethnic thing is more real than something that takes on Anglo characteristics, whereas my attack is somewhat more novel. But not all that much. Maybe I think Iggy is more real than something that now meets audience expectations. The content - not just the form - feels similar here. Both "Latin" and "Iggy" get to play the "other." And lauding Meltzer-Bangs-Kogan-Eddy: maybe that's because we're the other, the ones you've never seen before...

maybe the point of talking about "rockism" is to talk about this pejorative idea of things being cheapened. there's a fear of corruption of some kind there, whether it's platonic or not.

xpost: i'm a little unclear on this superwords thing, but i'm guessing "democracy" qualifies in spades.

* Not being an expert on Latin music, I don't know the extent to which that criticism of Ricky Martin was valid. (I happen to like "Livin' la Vida Loca.") I thought the guy I overheard in the record store whom I mentioned above seemed biased in what are commonly considered rockist ways: valuing instrumental chops over technology, valuing a standard rock-based notion of lyrical "relevance," etc.

"They don't write their own songs" is a placeholder, an "explanation" that gives him the excuse not to probe himself for the real reasons ≠ it makes no difference who writes the songs

(I.e., I'm not a "music" purist who thinks music can be reduced to sound and that all other considerations can be ignored.)

But Enrique, notice your own screwy assumption (that the UGA Press's primay interest is in making a buck, whereas my primary interest is in expressing my ideas, and that the two interests are in conflict). Why assume that Martin & Rami are interested in making a buck, whereas Timberlake and crew would be interested in expressing themselves if they only were allowed to? Or, for that matter, why assume that they're not expressing themselves?

Also, that I want to get rid of the word "rockist" doesn't mean that the word is meaningless in its present usage (doesn't mean I can't more-or-less guess what kind of argument or attitude will get called "rockist"). Buzz words aren't meaningless; the problem is that they're used to produce a buzz in oneself rather than to probe.

Alex, my Superwords paper in college used "freedom" as one of its examples; "church of Christ" was my paradigm example, though I forget if it was in the paper. In fact, I forget if "Superword" was in the paper. (The paper is sitting in a box in my closet, so I can find out, in case I'm feeling energetic.)

I'm sure there is a Superword aspect to a lot of what Plato did. But the point I was making was that "Superword" itself isn't a Platonic concept, and it's one he would find abhorrent, probably. I was responding to the attempts above to say that "Superword" simply regurgitates old concepts, so who needs the term?

I'd say Plato's big Superword was "Reality," and that subsequent philosophy followed him in this. (His use of "idea" didn't really catch on, did it?) They had to destroy the village to save it. They had to make reality inaccessible to save it from being mere appearance. And eventually "reality" crosses over from super to stupor, if you buy into an either/or between "flux" and "antecedent being" - Plato did buy into that dichotomy, did he not? (But he wouldn't have used the term "antecedent being," which is a term that Dewey used to critique that notion of "reality.") (Again, I'm not up on my Plato.)

Wait, are you saying there are people who believe this?

--> this comment led me to reviews of the book found on complete-review.com, which in turn led me to Luc Sante's review, which in turn led me to Mark Twain's "King Leopold's Soliloquy", which in turn has inspired me to begin working on "King Dubya's Soliloquy" in a similar spirit

"We firmly believe that the pre-construction planning phase to a project is the 'Heart of Darkness' to a project's success."

--> and not its "Paths of Glory" or "Full Metal Jacket"?? ;)

"...I'll feel more comfortable deploying Koganian language..."

how do you differentiate between the various concepts of Koganian, Koganesque, and Koganistic? And which of these, do you think, is most likely to become a Superword?

this is kind of interesting, primitive garage scuzz take on a more nihilistic modern lovers vibe

https://zachphillips.bandcamp.com/album/stars-vomit-coffee-shop-osr72

I didn't know this thread existed. I feel a little self-conscious if I post a link here to a Zoomcast or to something I've written--Frank was posting whole reviews of his book!

I downloaded that Stars Vomit Coffee Shop cassette a while back--seems to have gone on Bandcamp in 2016.

Didn't know that 'til I read it here; thanks for the tip.
I asked Frank about it after seeing this thread, and he says:

Zach’s a guy who had his own label, OSR, in Brooklyn* for a while and decided to do a reissue of Stars Vomit Coffee Shop. I’m sure it cost him far more than he made from it, though we actually put it together out here: I’d already done a transfer to digital and I guess what they call a remaster several years prior, and my friend Nathan at Denver Disc duplicated the discs for Zach at a discount.

I put up the old liner notes and a few new comments when the reissue came out:

https://koganbot.livejournal.com/362896.html

And, unrelated to Zach, I’d done a digital transfer of England’s Newest Hit Makers at the same time as SVCS, and as luck would have it a Leslie Singer fan by the name of Hal McGee decided in 2018 or so to stream Leslie’s early music and videos online, with Leslie’s help and permission. He’s created a very handsome site, with notes and archival photos and posters. Anyhow, here’s the link to Your Mom Too’s England’s Newest Hit Makers. I recommend you listen to the individual songs since those use my (relatively) higher-quality digital transfer, rather than the stream of the cassette at the top of the site, the cassette being a duping generation or two down in fidelity.

http://www.haltapes.com/your-mom-too.html

Also, I did the camera work and gave advice and encouragement on a couple of Leslie’s videos, Hot Rox and Smokie: Portrait of a Glitter Babe, which you can find if you scroll down here. They’re quite brilliant:

http://www.haltapes.com/gof-videos.html

And you should check out the other of her vids too, obviously.

The general site that links the rest of her tapes is here. Girls On Fire was the name Leslie used on much of her music.

http://www.haltapes.com/girls-on-fire.html

In any event, I don’t think anyone else has ever made music that sounds quite like Your Mom Too, especially the great “My Couch.”

*But I see that Zach moved to Brussels last year!
Still got all the above music on tapes: good fun stuff, not quite (at *least* quite)like anything else.