― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 14 March 2003 16:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 14 March 2003 16:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 14 March 2003 16:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― gareth waiting for mary to get out the damn shower (Mary), Friday, 14 March 2003 18:11 (twenty-one years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 14 March 2003 18:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ally (mlescaut), Friday, 14 March 2003 19:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 14 March 2003 19:33 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 14 March 2003 19:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
What I've read of "Against Health and Efficiency" is quite fascinating re: the childlike (not childish) air of indie-pop, the ethereality, the focus on memories and childhood and innocence lost... I do agree with SR that a drive for an "Edenic state of purity" (his words? it's a cliche anyway) is the real motive behind indie-pop... hence the phenomenon of kindercore and, if you look at mainstream emo music as being heavily influenced by indie-pop (and I do, there's cross-fertilization all over the place) you see it in things like chris carabba singing about "making out" at 30+ years old. This is not to say that such things are bad; it's just interesting to see an unofficial hypothesis of mine in print as an academic article, and done back in the mid-80s no less. Sort of reinforces my current opinions, gives me a wee bit of confidence.
What do you all think about that article?
― justin s., Monday, 12 May 2003 14:01 (twenty years ago) link
Funny... had a conversation with a friend of mine over the interweb about this very subject... my eventual resolution as to the asexuality/coy adolescent sexual perspective is just kinda germane to this style of music, surmised in my idea that it just wouldn't sound right if pasty emo-rockers began to sing about "getting their freak on"...
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Monday, 12 May 2003 14:06 (twenty years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 12 May 2003 14:49 (twenty years ago) link
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Monday, 12 May 2003 15:00 (twenty years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 12 May 2003 15:01 (twenty years ago) link
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Monday, 12 May 2003 15:03 (twenty years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 12 May 2003 15:09 (twenty years ago) link
― the pinefox, Monday, 12 May 2003 15:09 (twenty years ago) link
― justin s., Monday, 12 May 2003 21:49 (twenty years ago) link
― Evan (Evan), Monday, 12 May 2003 21:55 (twenty years ago) link
― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 12 May 2003 21:57 (twenty years ago) link
― justin s., Monday, 12 May 2003 21:58 (twenty years ago) link
― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 12 May 2003 21:59 (twenty years ago) link
― justin s., Monday, 12 May 2003 21:59 (twenty years ago) link
justin s, I have an unproven theory that the accuracy with which one may define a genre has an inverse proportion to its relevancy. It sounds like the rap slang jess talks about in Dismemberment Plan songs serves to strengthen the genre boundaries in place rather than complicate them, at least the way he describes it. Not really an "Olé" as Frank might say. Which is why, at least on this front, I like Limp Bizkit more; when they drop slang it's not "realer" but it doesn't throw up a wall either, or ironically call attention to itself, it does something else.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 12 May 2003 22:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Dave M. (rotten03), Monday, 12 May 2003 23:12 (twenty years ago) link
― justin s., Tuesday, 13 May 2003 05:48 (twenty years ago) link
it's not about keeping people down, it's just fucking obvious - it would be ridiculous for morrissey to start making cars and girls records like ludacris, and it's not out of order to say that he should stick to repression and bicycles... people have their own metiers and it's ok to push the boundaries, but completely overstepping them is never rarely too clever also the way in which sex is discussed usually corresponds to the overall aesthetic of the music in question, that's all i was saying... i mean for crying out loud how crapulent would it sound if chan marshall started to spit lil kim-style lyrics? both are pretty good when being themselves, but this kind of fusion would be pointless, unconvincing and daft...
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 10:14 (twenty years ago) link
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 10:16 (twenty years ago) link
Article Response: Indie Kids
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 02:48 (twenty years ago) link
― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 13 May 2006 01:23 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Saturday, 13 May 2006 01:28 (seventeen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 13 May 2006 01:35 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 13 May 2006 01:37 (seventeen years ago) link
Snrub, are you being funny. Google is your friend--you'll find Simon's latest book and his blog and maybe some articles for magazines.
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Saturday, 13 May 2006 01:46 (seventeen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Saturday, 13 May 2006 01:51 (seventeen years ago) link
― Space Is the Place (Space Is the Place), Saturday, 13 May 2006 02:20 (seventeen years ago) link
"I also had to wonder again about where all these reactionaries actually are. Maybe I live in a rarified world, but I don't know anyone who thinks albums are intrinsically superior to singles. I'm not sure I've ever met a person who espouses that much-pilloried view about singers not having written the songs they sing being inauthentic and thereby lesser."
Yes Simon, you do in fact live in a rarified world. The attitudes you describe are still in full effect and believed by most consumers in a knee-jerk way. The reason people priviledge those things (or variations of those things) and treat those beliefs as natural is because they form the very basis of western values - i.e. rockism doesn't just come from the rise and study of popular music, it is a symptom of a larger cultural tendency. To think that rockism no longer exists in one form or another is a fantasy.
― i'm from hollywood, Saturday, 13 May 2006 04:39 (seventeen years ago) link
All I would add is that anti-rockism is exactly like deconstruction (or maybe simply is deconstruction?), useful in its historical moment, or as a stage in an individual's personal history, as an anti-schlerotic of thought... but very much about the elimination of reasons to value, care, feel passionate, get worked up, etc. Its logic is one of discrediting ie. eroding the basis of beliefs, and indeed of belief itself, in favour of a pleasure-principled agnosticism. The net effect tends to be a kind of negative egalitarianism: not that all things become equally valued/valid, but that all things become equally trivial. (And that logic dovetails with aspects of late capitalism, digital culture, mp3/ipod/etc etc).
I don't know about anyone else, but reading that take I think not only is there nothing per se negative about what he outlines to me -- as much as there are implications otherwise, obv. -- but that the idea of 'a pleasure-principled agnosticism' is kinda my idea of a dream!
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 13 May 2006 04:53 (seventeen years ago) link
-- Tim (tfinne...) (webmail), May 3rd, 2001 1:00 AM. (link)
Jeez, years later, but if you still think so, I would ask why you feel that radical feminist theory has to be taken into account. Or: How does radical feminist theory (if that is indeed what is being employed in this book) result in anything resembling fairness or truth in The Sex Revolts?
Much of the book seemed to me to be a ploy, framing male behavior as one of two possibilities: 1) PHALLOCENTRIC or 2) the womb-fixated baby. This is not feminism aimed at empowering women, but rather to merely disempower men.
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 13 May 2006 04:55 (seventeen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 13 May 2006 04:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― xero (xero), Saturday, 13 May 2006 13:50 (seventeen years ago) link
I think you're right that the book (quite explicitly) splits male-performed music into those two ostensibly dichotomous positions, and in doing so it doesn't make any attempt to give a well-rounded assessment of the music in question, instead skewing it towards the notions expresed in the banner it has been grouped under.
...but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it "disempowers men". The message I got from the book was "gender fucks us up (men and women) and this can result in good, interesting music."
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 13 May 2006 22:09 (seventeen years ago) link
The idea that the book involves an underlying "ploy" of attempting to "disempower men" comes mainly from this branch of their dichotomy - painting males with a broad swath as "mother's boys," closet babies, "castrated," "sublimated," etc.
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Saturday, 13 May 2006 23:39 (seventeen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Sunday, 14 May 2006 00:35 (seventeen years ago) link
I don't think they argue that though. Their schematics are just one way to characterise the music covered. I don't think they're pretending that their readings in this book are anything other than highly specific, partial and explicitly not comprehensive.
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Sunday, 14 May 2006 08:13 (seventeen years ago) link
That is what I got out of that book, which I like a lot in spite of its obvious flaws.
― sleeve (sleeve), Sunday, 14 May 2006 08:47 (seventeen years ago) link
Or how about this:
"The leading edge in rock has been those bands that have intensified semiotic elements (chromaticism, noise) at the expense of structure (verse/chorus/middle eight narrative, the 'proper' ranking of instruments in the mix, which usually favors the voice and the lyrics). In fact, the emotionally regressive (that's to say, womb-fixated) seems to go hand in hand with formal progression: both share an impulse to transgress and transcend established limits."
I hardly see this as a partial reading. They are trying to suggest that ALL formal progression in rock is an act of emotional regression and code for womb-fixation.
Any melancholic music made by men (who have "castrated themselves" - taken "the soft option") falls in this category also: "For Kristeva, melancholy is 'the most archaic expression of a non-symbolisable, unnameable narcissistic wound'--in other words, the loss of mother." Again, I see this as a part of this book's ploy: painting men as closet babies.
All energetic music made by MEN, on the other hand, is, of course, "hormonal."
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Sunday, 14 May 2006 15:27 (seventeen years ago) link
Trying to cram everything into their paradigm, they make very objectionable personal statements about artists also. To strengthen the womb-fixation paradigm, for example, they state that Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Syd Barrett and Sid Vicious were part of "a lineage of rock heroes who allegedly had an unusually charged relationship with their mothers."
"Allegedly"
"Unusually charged"
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Sunday, 14 May 2006 15:37 (seventeen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 14 May 2006 16:28 (seventeen years ago) link
I think he lives in a rarified world.
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Monday, 15 May 2006 04:17 (seventeen years ago) link
― Makrugaik (makrugaik), Monday, 15 May 2006 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link
the state of popular rap in 2009
― curmudgeon, Monday, 30 November 2009 14:37 (fourteen years ago) link
Funnily enought, the company behind Zero Books is a wacky new-age crystals'n'meditation outfit. But I do think the imprint is a Good Thing (despite having a few issues with the whole k-Punk archipelago). I'm looking forward to N Power's One-Dimensional Woman.― Stevie T, Monday, September 7, 2009 11:40 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark
― Stevie T, Monday, September 7, 2009 11:40 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark
crystals'n'meditation'n'outspoken-anti-semitism outfit now
― sarahel hath no fury (history mayne), Saturday, 6 August 2011 12:39 (twelve years ago) link
expand on that
― Gukbe, Saturday, 6 August 2011 16:48 (twelve years ago) link
publishing gilad atzmon
― sarahel hath no fury (history mayne), Saturday, 6 August 2011 17:44 (twelve years ago) link