Rockist vs. popist- who cares?
In Slate, their music scribe Jody Rosen had this recent article: Does hating rock make you a music critic?. If you haven’t already, take a minute to read it- it’s worth it. It’s a very good thoughtful piece but the issue obviously deserves some more debate and discussion.
Two things that I really like about this article: 1) the whole pop vs. rock battle is (or should be) B.S. (which Rosen acknowledges), 2) most of the argument being made there almost exclusively exists in “music-wonk circles” as he calls them. Both points are related and they point to a bigger problem, specifically related to us ‘wonks.’
Ask someone outside of the music crit world what they think of the popist/rockist decade and they’ll likely give you a blank stare and think that you’re crazy. We scribes are the ones who sweat over this and debate it endlessly but many of our readers and the many more people who never read us could care less. It’s not just that they don’t know the terminology, it’s also that, frankly, this just doesn’t matter to them and that’s a problem for us scribes.
The way that we are writers react to this is also instructive. We can ignore the facts and plow on with these debates in our little ivory towers. We could confront this apathy and go on a crusade to educate the great unwashed. We also could remain cognizant of the debate and yet stay out of it.
For the crusaders and zealots on the popist or rockist side, these issues matter enough that we want more people to get involved and care about this. The motives for that are also instructive. Some have a stake in a battle like this, whether they’d like to admit it or not- Rosen does seem to (at least to some extent if you go by this article). It not only defines them and their taste, it also informs the way that they’d like to see the world. For better or worse, every music scribe makes decisions about what they support or don’t support depending on what they decide to cover and how they cover it, good or bad. We want people not just to know about the artists that we champion but also to agree with how we see them- when it comes down to it, our reviews or think pieces or even our interviews are our way to persuade the reader to see whatever artists we’re covering the same way that we do.
So if we take sides (or even cover) in something like the popist/rockist battle, obviously we have some kind of agenda ourselves. Rosen deserves credit for making his own prejudices open and clear. Truth be known, I’m brandished with the R symbol somewhere on my body (started with the Beatles, Stones, graduated to the Clash) but I have learned that it makes no sense to piss on a pop star for being what they are. If Motown manufactured their own boy bands complete with their own producers, studio musicians and songwriting stables, it doesn’t make any sense to start hating the latest crop of boy bands because they operate on the same principle. However, I do reserve the right to think that say the Backstreet Boys aren’t as great as Martha and the Vandellas because Martha Reeves had a better songwriting/production team backing her up. As someone much smarter than me pointed out, as long as there’s teens, there’ll be teen pop. As with any genre, some of it will be great (my own recent faves are Annie, Sassy and Custom) and some of it will suck.
But again, in the end, we writers live under the semi-delusion that our words will convert the masses or least help the converted entrench what they already believe. Like it or not, I honestly think most of our readers fall into the later camp even if we like to think that there’s a few of the former around that we can help along. As such, this rock/pop argument ain’t gonna hold much water and not just because it’s lost on many people who’ve already made up their mind and decided that they’re in one camp or the other.
The other reason that these kind of arguments are lost on many people who don’t live in our “wonk” world isn’t that they aren’t smart enough to understand it but because even if they did read up on this debate to understand the positions, they’d think that we were freakin’ out of our minds for blowing this up into such a big deal. To us of course, it IS a big deal but many others (some much saner than us) would say that it’s only music. “Only music??” we counter. “It’s our lives! It’s YOUR life too!” It may very well be but the important distinction is that it’s not as intrinsic to their lives as it is to ours. Rather than pity people like that, many times, I envy them. After all, there’s more to life than music and sometimes we forget that or get too involved in it, arguing about it in newsgroups, mailing lists and ahem, blogs. The end result is that sometimes we get too caught up and forget this, resulting not just in endless flame wars but also the dreaded groupthink were we reach our own consensus with similar minded scribes.
I think it’s also a reason that we don’t see much engaging music criticism outside of the print world. Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot have their Sound Opinions radio program in Chicago, which is about to branch out to Minneapolis next week and maybe elsewhere after that. I asked Derogatis if there were other programs like his on the airwaves and he said that as far as he knew, there weren’t. Mind you, they’ve done the program for a while and are only now branching out. Part of the reason that you don’t hear more of this is because, truth be known, most other writers would probably bore people to tears with these kind of spats. In many polls, despite the infiltration of the Net in our lives, many people still admit that they get news from their local stations and our “wonk” arguments just don’t cut it in a medium like that.
...Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have arguments or discussions like this (hell, I’m participating in it right here) but that we should realize where these discussions really circulate and ultimately then, what they’ll mean for those involved. We’d like to think that we write for people who “get it” and it’s too bad if they can’t dig our debates. Then again, it’s too bad that we don’t think about how we do or don’t connect with a larger readership because of that.
Comments
Nice way to put an interesting spin on the already over-worn argument. I elaborated on your post here: http://alimarcus.wordpress.com/2006/05/16/be-my-head-and-ill-be-yours/
Comment by Ali Marcus from Seattle, WA — May 16, 2006 @ 7:16 pm
Excellent take on the rockism-popism debate. I was planning on writing up some thoughts on my own blog at a later date, but I think I might just link to yours instead—you effectively captured a lot of my thoughts on the issue, while also bringing up some points I hadn’t thought about.
I think the discussion is worth having not just because arguing about entertainment is fun (and entertaining!) but because talking about this stuff helps us music writers to avoid some of our more stupid habits.
Comment by Matt G — May 17, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
I have to say, I’m one of those people who doesn’t get this debate, or rather, I don’t get why it’s still going on. It’s not that it’s “only music”. I’m as passionate about music as you, but there is simply far more bad music than good in <i>all</i> genres, and to me this debate seems to have lost sight of the actual music, and devolved into useless bickering over interpretations of cultural signifiers. Thus rockism has nothing to do with rock and is all about suspicion of popularity and popism isn’t about broadening music tatses but about enforcing cultural relativity. Sascha Frere-Jones’s insinuations about Stephen Meritt are therefore a logical extention of this silly debate, where not liking a certain style of music is equated to hating ALL music by ALL artists of the same race as the music you don’t like. ...wow that was a lot more than I expected to say. Guess I’m part of the debate too now. And quite possibly more strongly on your side than you are!
Comment by Joey from Orlando, FL — May 17, 2006 @ 6:53 pm
Jason, check this:
you said - “As for the influence of blogs, the discussions that bubble up from there aren’t ones like these but instead they’re things like political scandals and record recommendations.”
Apparently this one has bubbled.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/arts/music/18rock.html?th&emc=th
Comment by Ali Marcus from Seattle, wA — May 18, 2006 @ 7:14 am
Some historical perspective. Rock was born to the sounds of jeers - the (adult) professional orchestras and bands were threatened, and eventually supplanted, by the seemingly unprofessional (teen) electric combos (and folkies). By singing their own songs, the rockers (and folkies) collapsed the infrastructure of the music business. Many ‘Tin Pan Alley’ musicians were put out to pasture in the 60’s and, logically enough, there were resentments. (Recall Dino’s on-air put-down of the Stones when they performed on his TV show in ‘65.) Rock had ‘to take sides’ from its inception. This ‘generation gap’ split was further aggravated (at least in the US) by the Vietnam War and the draft, thus an ideology accompanied the divide - something Jann Wenner amplified to his everlasting fortune. Parodoxically enough, Wenner’s own disdain for ‘heavy’ rock (note the exclusion of any mention of Iron Butterfly in the pages of RS) created another sectrian split. James Taylor vs. Grand Funk; musical ‘Trotskyism’ has been rampant ever since - it’s only natural.
Comment by Barry Stoller — May 18, 2006 @ 7:32 am
I liked Rosen’s point that it’s ultimately useless to fight canon wars. Usually one canon is dismantled with all sorts of anti-elitist fanfare and theories about the empowerment of audiences and end of the silencing of certain types of voices and so on. (In literature studies this whole argument played out in the 1980s and 1990s.) But ultimately a countercanon emerges, typically because criticism is a will-to-power game and what often motivates us to write is the influence we think we’ll wield. I like criticism that passes on value judgements and speculates wildly on what purpose a certain kind of music serves for a certain audience, or what role it serves in entertainment as a growth industry. But I understand that reviews have their purpose too, if one can ever find a reviewer one trusts.
Comment by Rob Horning — May 18, 2006 @ 2:55 pm
It’s interesting to note that people have a natural force and energy that they give off 24/7. Ever wonder why when certain people walk into a room, that the whole atmosphere changes?
What does this have to do with music?
Well, the kind of music you play gives off energy—why else does it help plants grow and at other times, when abused, has the ability to destroy?
I decided to test a theory today—that stated that music with a faster and heavier beat, destroy things.
I found a yellow jacket’s nest that was inside of a tiny hole in a metal pipe at my high school, quikly covered the hole with a wrong and proceeded to rhythmically beat on the pipe.
Now, this pipe was part of a fence so it wasn’t sitting on the ground—it clearly made a very loud, rhythmic clanging sound. I decided to speed it up and make the rhythm faster and harder.
I did this for about one minute.
I then took a small twig, knocked the rock out of the hole, and took one giant step back.
You should have seen them—they flew out of there in a vengeful rage. I can safely say that they were pretty upset. They weren’t the same as they were before—something had changed about them. Not only that, they angrily buzzed around in the air and it took them almost a whole minute to chill down and go back to the nest.
Some of them left—one of them crawled back into the hole.
This time, I decided to prolong my rhythmic beating and quickly, I covered up the hole with the rock again and THIS time, I beated with all my might and I intensified the rhythm.
A minute or so had passed and I knocked the rock out and took a big step back. It exited the hole breifly, and after a while, went back into the hole.
I decided to aggravate it—so I jabbed my stick into the hole. It attacked the stick but for some odd reason, didn’t fly out of the hole angrily.
It stayed in the hole—refusing to come out. And it moved a tad slower then it had before—like it was injured or something.
Why do I tell you all this?
Because it just goes to show that music can be used negatively (without lyrics). And that if it can hurt small animals, then why in the world wouldn’t it hurt humans as well?
One last thing; if you think music doesn’t have a force to it, turn on your cell phone and press down with your thumb over the little hole on the lid of your cell phone.
(You will actually “feel” the intro music.)
(I did this once and I thought the phone was on vibrate!)
Be informed,
—JJ
Comment by JJ — August 12, 2006 @ 7:30 pm