David Brooks almost gets it; Jermaine Dupri doesn’t
Conservative writer David Brooks is no wingnut and once in a while, he has some thoughtful things to say about culture, as witnessed in a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. He’s smart enough to turn to Little Steven for additional words of wisdom and there’s no question that the music audience has gotten increasingly fragmented over the last few decades, even before the advent of the Net. Also, Frere-Jones’ New Yorker article about indie rock that Brooks cites is more than a little flawed. Also, I’m kind of skeptical about articles that see the 60’s or 70’s as a golden age where music brought everyone together- what about “disco sucks” or punk vs. oldies or rednecks vs. longhairs? Still, Brooks (and Little Steven) have an admirable idea about school curriculums centered on music, that’s not likely in a country where music programs are being cut all the time. Brooks is right up the upcoming dearth of area fillers, especially as the current crop of classic rockers may not have many years left in them.
Compare that to Jermaine Dupri’s A Good Album is More than Just a Collection of Singles. He might know a lot about making records but here, he’s the hateful soul of the record industry that he’s immersed, spewing on fans and Apple while taking no blame for its own problems. You don’t have to go any further than the article’s comment section to see everything that’s wrong with the article. An abject lesson of how the industry may still not get it and why they’re still slowly killing themselves off.
I tend to tune out when “Little Stevie” makes a public announcement about anything. Never mind that he carpetbagged the garage rock scene that existed for over two decades without his help, but come on:
“And he says that most young musicians don’t know the roots and traditions of their music. They don’t have broad musical vocabularies to draw on when they are writing songs.”
Gee, dad, thanks for the enlightenment. Um, yes, Stevie, they do. They’re just not interested in rehashing the Yardbirds for the 70th time - you can book the lousy bands that do for the next Cavestomp. They probably picked up a few newer influences in the four decades since the Rolling Stones cut their first album. And knowing the roots and traditions of their music? Does Stevie know anything about the Fall, Pere Ubu, Pavement, Sonic Youth, blah blah blah or, heck even the Gories or Billy Childish?
Comment by James — November 21, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
1. David Brooks is a wingnut; see his apologism for Reagan’s racism last week for evidence.
2. Leave it to him to take out all the anti-racist content of Frere-Jones nutty article, and preserve only the nuttiness, in order to
3. make a nutty argument for a conservative canon & music education, that
4. ignores the underlying problem of de-funding the arts in elementary and secondary education.
At least Dupri can make me dance when he’s not making sense.
Comment by Buster — November 21, 2007 @ 11:00 pm
Brooks is a bit of wingnut admittedly but not as batsh-t crazy as say Coulter and Limbaugh. He’s at least had enough sense to start throwing darts at the GOP after Bush almost single-handedly destroyed the party’s reputation.
There was a good comment about Brooks’ column by Jon Fine where he rightly argues that going back to ye olde days when we didn’t have Net access ain’t a great idea. Access to knowledge is a good thing and I for one don’t wanna give up and neither should anyone else.
Comment by Jason Gross — November 22, 2007 @ 2:44 pm