Ooh, watch out Dissensus indy-rock haters!

joeschmo

Well-known member
I love grime. Just thought I'd get that out of the way.

But really, why should it get the "future-oriented sound" free pass? Because it's got electronic noises on it? That's 100 years old, the art of noise and all that. I mean, we've gotten past the year 2000 now, we can stop going all googly-eyed at anyone who slaps some weird noises on a track (and I love weird noises; just thought I'd get that out of the way). It's just not all that "innovative" (and this is not a criticism; just thought...) Yes, there's a coherent sound at work that allows you to identify it as a new genre, but we're hardly talking Les Damoiselles D'Avignon here.

And isn't it obvious why grime hasn't succeeded? It doesn't make singles! Hip-hop didn't really cross over till producers figured out that if they put a big, catchy chorus on top, they could keep doing their innovative beat futurism underneath it. I know Roll Deep tried to do a crossover album (and didn't do it very well, unfortunately), you've had your More Fire Crews here and there, but mostly, grime isn't reaching out to people who aren't already immersed in it. Say what you like about Arctic Monkeys (I happen to like them, which surprises me because I would normally despise this sort of thing), they make really catchy songs that stick in your head. That's what you pretty much have to give people if you want to sell a lot of records; music is a peripheral thing in their lives, not a vehicle for social revolution.
 
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k-punk

Spectres of Mark
joeschmo said:
I love grime. Just thought I'd get that out of the way.

But really, why should it get the "future-oriented sound" free pass? Because it's got electronic noises on it? That's 100 years old, the art of noise and all that. I mean, we've gotten past the year 2000 now, we can stop going all googly-eyed at anyone who slaps some weird noises on a track (and I love weird noises; just thought I'd get that out of the way). It's just not all that "innovative" (and this is not a criticism; just thought...) Yes, there's a coherent sound at work that allows you to identify it as a new genre, but we're hardly talking Les Damoiselles D'Avignon here.

I agree with most of this, actually, which is partly why I'm not terribly enthusiastic about grime. But describing grime as 'future-oriented' isn't saying much - more an indication that it gestures towards a future, not that grime already constitutes it.
 

ChineseArithmetic

It is what it is
joeschmo said:
Say what you like about Arctic Monkeys (I happen to like them, which surprises me because I would normally despise this sort of thing), they make really catchy songs that stick in your head.

I reckon, and I didn't particularly hate what I've heard, that the bulk of this huge mass of people hadn't really heard them before buying their album, they're just interested because of the collossal hype across all the press at the moment. They're this years media story, "little band blows up thanks to internet word of mouth",the new Joss Stone or whatever.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
K-Punk
Is there a paradox that Grime's obsession with making it is stopping it... make it?

Is that obsession really still there as an overriding concern in grime as a whole? I don't know, I'm not anywhere near close enough to the scene to really say where people's heads are at.

The sticking point may be that grime needs to actually recognise what its relevance is - beyond personal and local concerns. This needs to be understood and articulated. Wasn't it that kind of 'political' or universal awareness that allowed Jazz, Rock N' Roll, Punk, Hip-Hop and Acid to speak to a larger constituency?

You know, grime practitioners, I may just want YOU to show me that YOU understand what I might see in your music. Otherwise I'll have a riot of my own thanks very much. 'I' being the wider populace. That is if you do care about such things.

Just a thought, is that really so unfair?

joeschmo
But what is the future that it gestures towards, exactly?

It actually doesn't have to be anything in particular does it? The gesture in itself creates a sense of excitement and possibilites, a feeling of imminence and immediacy of experience. In a social setting (gathering) this can lead to REAL and extra-ordinary things happening. Although the music works on this level (as the latest iteration of the rave continuum), it ISN'T getting a free pass because....well that's the big question isn't it? I would say it's because there is suspicion of, or lack of identification with, the (verbal) content?

More big choruses might do it too :) But I think that as a route to success would be a betrayal of the form's potential. Perhaps the some of those attempted 'crossover' albums illustrate this all too well.
 

joeschmo

Well-known member
<i>It actually doesn't have to be anything in particular does it? The gesture in itself creates a sense of excitement and possibilites</i>

But I'm really not sure where the gesture is. Which is why I asked, what future?

<i>Although the music works on this level (as the latest iteration of the rave continuum)</i>

Well that's exactly it! Why is the latest iteration of the rave continuum any more futuristic than the latest iteration of the indie rock continuum?

I do think that grime is more novel than Arctic Monkeys et al. But not a whole hell of a lot.

<i>More big choruses might do it too But I think that as a route to success would be a betrayal of the form's potential.</i>

I tend to disagree--I don't think Sean Paul is a betrayal of dancehall's potential, and I don't think, say, Naughty by Nature were a betrayal of hip-hop's potential. At any rate, grime is of course perfectly free to continue making music that isn't particularly "catchy" (and I think there are other ways to be catchy than big choruses, btw)... but if it does, it shouldn't be surprised if it doesn't sell many records.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
joeschmo:
But I'm really not sure where the gesture is. Which is why I asked, what future?
Why is the latest iteration of the rave continuum any more futuristic than the latest iteration of the indie rock continuum?

I think we might actually agree on a lot of this, but just to clarify - I didn't bring up the idea of 'the future', and I didn't say that the latest iteration of the rave continuum is necessarily any more 'futuristic' than the latest iteration of the indie rock continuum. I was just wondering out load why grime hadn't achieved wider market penetration ;) :(

You mentioned grime being described as "future-oriented music". This type of description K-Punk said wasn't saying much, "more an indication that it gestures towards a future, not that grime already constitutes it". For my part I just ran with the idea of sonic 'signifiers' of 'future', which has always been a big (and fun) part of electronic music - you mentioned the Futurists. Even when those signifiers are stale or cheesy, they still work - it's a very strong association for most of us.

When the rave continuum iterates, it is 'because' the previous version has lost it's frisson, or relevance. So grime's rhythmic and sonic novelty, such as it is, combined with the rush of urgent voices can now create that immediacy again. Which I would maintain is a good thing in and of itself. Perhaps the 'future' that is indicated as being gestured towards is actually the 'present' + possibilites, as opposed to the same old present that's more or less just like the past. There isn't necessarily anything different in this compared with other forms of dance music, or indeed rock, it just works better on those terms right now.

Obviously there's quite a bit of music out there that is more novel, exciting, weird, unexpected, more 'futuristic' (implicitly or explicitly) than grime - what is exciting (and the only reason I really give a damn actually, apart from just enjoying the music) is for that tendency to exist in, and be a fundamental aspect of, a scene , or a movement. With the potential to 'blow up', and go 'pop' (or Pow!). I'm not taking sides over indie-rock / rave at all (well, maybe just a little) - personally I prefer the anomalous :D

I wonder if a lot of this doesn't rest on whether you think RAVE is doing something essentially different to ROCK?

And are you really saying that the Arctic Monkeys constitute a further evolution of anything? Even the indie-rock continuum :eek: ?
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
i think people are responding to this Guardian article as if it exhausted everything that could be said in favour of Arctic Monkeys music or lyrics, anything interesting about the phenomenon (which is phenomenal, and contradicts the arguments made in the Pillbox comments box fogie-fest about how kids-today don't give a shit about music, it's less culturally central to them -- well, maybe, but getting on for half-a-million cared enough to rush out the first week and buy the record!)

i mean, if someone was anti-grime theycould go to some chat-room and find some awful specimen of text-spk discourse to discredit it, but that wouldn't exhaust everything there is to say about grime

the Guardian piece, it's an ineptly expressed article based in an authentic emotion (an emotion that on some levels goes against retro culture--having the glorious rock past shoved down their throats ever since they were born). the Bizspeak bits are really just brandishing the fact of the phenomenon in the face of the elder-wisers and naysayers (and everybody today is super-aware of stuff like sales --- the first-week grosses of movies are always in the news, etc. i remember talking to the kids of kieran's baby-sittter who were like 11 and really into rap and was struck by how they knew how many a particular album by one of the Ruff Ryders had sold in its first week and how it had short-fallen expectations, and that made it a non-event, a bust. it's a different generation, same as with brand-name consciousness.

i take your points martin, indie-rock not being based in the same kind of deprivation... but the landscape of youth in the broadest sense is pretty bleak i think... there's a lot of zones of possibility that got closed down over the last couple of decades .... just something like comparing what being a student is like now with what it was like in my day (early 80s), it's a whole different reality

plus a big part of rock's always been about 'middle class blues' ain't it, it's not like most middle class people are destined for anything more than a line of mediocrity and emptiness and being a humiliated cog in a corporate machine, is it. the tiny bit in life before buckling down is pretty much what the arctic monkeys write about in their best song.s i would compare them in that sense to an alan warner novel like the sopranos

for instance, it's really striking to me that two of the songs--'riot van' and 'red light indicates doors are secure'--involve young people being locked in a vehicle by an authority figure

on which subject, i can't help feeling that a lot of the anti-AM's are not actually acquainted with the album but have maybe passingly heard the hits---listening to the whole thing , especially the second side which has more of the slower, plaintive songs, is really an essential precursor to pontification i would humbly suggest!
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
blissblogger said:
i think people are responding to this Guardian article as if it exhausted everything that could be said in favour of Arctic Monkeys music or lyrics, anything interesting about the phenomenon (which is phenomenal, and contradicts the arguments made in the Pillbox comments box fogie-fest about how kids-today don't give a shit about music, it's less culturally central to them -- well, maybe, but getting on for half-a-million cared enough to rush out the first week and buy the record!)

No-one is saying that the article exhausted everything about the AMs music and lyrics - how could it, it doesn't mention music and lyrics once. All she talks about is the PHENOMENON, which contradicts nothing said in the Pillbox comments box, because it is only about people buying a record. So what? How do you know it's 'kids' who are buying it any way? (Anecdotally, I've heard more thirtysomething lecturers at our college enthusing about the record than any of yer actual kids.)

The comparison that springs to mind is Tarantino. Immediately massive. Not because he was doing anything new or interesting but, on the contrary, because he gave people something very familiar, very comforting.

the Guardian piece, it's an ineptly expressed article based in an authentic emotion (an emotion that on some levels goes against retro culture--having the glorious rock past shoved down their throats ever since they were born).

yeh lol but this is where it uh deconstructs itself; the people attacking the AMs (and where are they in Old Media?) are doing so BECAUSE they are retro - their success is a triumph for retro-culture, not an alternative to it. Trad jazz must have sold a lot in its heyday. And it was supported by young people too.

the Bizspeak bits are really just brandishing the fact of the phenomenon in the face of the elder-wisers and naysayers (and everybody today is super-aware of stuff like sales --- the first-week grosses of movies are always in the news, etc. i remember talking to the kids of kieran's baby-sittter who were like 11 and really into rap and was struck by how they knew how many a particular album by one of the Ruff Ryders had sold in its first week and how it had short-fallen expectations, and that made it a non-event, a bust. it's a different generation, same as with brand-name consciousness.

You talk as if there was SOMETHING ELSE in the piece apart from biz-speak. There is NOT ONE WORD in the piece about how exciting, interesting, novel the music is. As for the different generation point - well, yeh, a nihilistic consumer generation whose every pore is penetrated by Kapital maybe....

i take your points martin, indie-rock not being based in the same kind of deprivation... but the landscape of youth in the broadest sense is pretty bleak i think... there's a lot of zones of possibility that got closed down over the last couple of decades .... just something like comparing what being a student is like now with what it was like in my day (early 80s), it's a whole different reality

No-one's denying that, but how is this relected in indie beyond the Arctic Monkees? C'mon, Franz F and Kaiser Chiefs have no relationship to any contemporary landscape; it's record collection rock, every pose and attitude cribbed from 20 years ago.

on which subject, i can't help feeling that a lot of the anti-AM's are not actually acquainted with the album but have maybe passingly heard the hits---listening to the whole thing , especially the second side which has more of the slower, plaintive songs, is really an essential precursor to pontification i would humbly suggest!

But the objections aren't to the good quality songwriting and all that Elvis Costello-type stuff, but precisely to the fact that things have got so bad that a no doubt well put together rehash of The Jam! The Smiths! The Libertines! Oasis! is a PHENOMENON. Talking about the quality of the record is reviewing not criticism. Critical objectivity would be compromised by listening to the album. :D Assessing it on those terms woud mean final concession to retroism, or to the position advanced by some on this thread and elsewhere that 'it's only entertainment, why get excited, new things are so last century don't you think?'

In answer to the questions about futurism of grime versus AMs - imagine it's 1981. Grime comes onto the radio. You are taken aback. You've never heard anything like it. Now the Arctic Monkeys come onto the radio. Are you (future)shocked? No, not at all. You're likely to think, 'isn't this stuff a bit two years ago?' (When I first heard the AMs I really really did think that they were a new wave act from 78 I'd missed. Which I suppose does make them better than Franz Ferdinand or the Kaiser Chiefs, who'd never be mistaken for the real thing.)
 
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joeschmo

Well-known member
<i>Assessing it on those terms woud mean finally concession to retroism, or to the position advanced by some on this thread and elsewhere that 'it's only entertainment, why get excited, new things are so last century don't you think?'</i>

That's not really my position.

To be slightly more nuanced about it, what I object to is the division of music into vanguardism vs. entertainment. In this world, music is either an aesthetico-political fusion of avant-garde form and class politics, or it's meaningless. And I find that very narrow.

I happen to love vanguardism too, and I'm very familiar with the tradition of it that you draw upon. But at some point, I guess I just got tired of that as the sole criteria for a piece of music (or any art's) worth. And I also don't think it has a whole lot to do with how music is experienced in the world, for the most part.

Sure, I'd love to see someone come along with a radical new sound that becomes an authentic populist youth movement. (Although I'm actually sceptical that that can happen anymore, for various economic reasons--there's a sense, too, I sometimes think, in which the vanguardist tradition is exhausted, at least in its 20th century form, and clinging to it is itself a form of nostalgia. A good Marxist deals with the conditions of the day, right? For instance, I don't know if I believe it's possible that there can be real subcultures anymore, certainly not in the Dick Hebdige model that is in many ways the root of the aesthetico-political vanguard model, at least in pop.)

But in the meantime, music continues to serve very well as an expressive artform that has the power to represent the society around it and to produce all kinds of emotions and thoughts in people who listen to it. I'm still perfectly capable of every now and then experiencing the sublime, for want of a better word, when I listen to a piece of music. I'm sure I'm not the only one. And that does not equate to mere "mindless consumerist entertainment."

And, while I'm rambling, this is the thing I like about popism, for want of a better word--it's willingness to pay attention to the unlikely and accidental ways in which pieces of music, regardless of what source they come from, can affect us. And not dismiss them if they're not lined up correctly with a larger ideological program. That just feels a lot more open to me, and a lot more realistic about how music actually works in the world.

As regards grime in 1981--I don't know if I would be that shocked, because I happen to think that in some ways grime is a return to hip-hop's roots! That first Dizzee album being a great example. Anyway, it's a moot point because I'm listening to grime in 2006, not 1981. The fact that the tradition it's a part of isn't quite as old as the tradition Arctic Monkeys are a part of doesn't really matter.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
joeschmo
there's a sense, too, I sometimes think, in which the vanguardist tradition is exhausted, at least in its 20th century form, and clinging to it is itself a form of nostalgia

Vanguardist, would be nice, but how about less blithe valorising of the adequate for starters.

But anyway, serious question, in what form might a vanguardist current survive? At sites other than music perhaps? I do hope it's not really exhausted - that would be most disquieting no?


K-Punk
it's 1981. Grime comes onto the radio. You are taken aback. You've never heard anything like it.

'cept for those of us who were busy pitching up beat poet acapellas over asmus tietchens instrumentals on our parents gramophones. ;)
 
k-punk said:
Ah, the Smug Police arrive.

Is there a Q message board? Perhaps you'd be happier in a bile-free environment like that.

Oh for the sake of fuck, man, are you ever going to tire of your shitty Bree avatar?

Can I be the only one sick of seeing that blankly malevolent crystal of ginger sub-HBO spite on every single page of this otherwise easy-on-the-eye forum?
 
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k-punk

Spectres of Mark
joeschmo said:
To be slightly more nuanced about it, what I object to is the division of music into vanguardism vs. entertainment. In this world, music is either an aesthetico-political fusion of avant-garde form and class politics, or it's meaningless. And I find that very narrow.

So would anyone. Which is why only a straw man (or Ben Watson) would hold it. :)

I happen to love vanguardism too, and I'm very familiar with the tradition of it that you draw upon. But at some point, I guess I just got tired of that as the sole criteria for a piece of music (or any art's) worth. And I also don't think it has a whole lot to do with how music is experienced in the world, for the most part.

Without what you are calling vanguardism, pop is just Trad. OK, then.

My discussion is of culture, not records. Pop ceasing to be vibrant as a culture won't stop it producing records which people like. But pop has not always 'been experienced in the world' in the context-free way in which you describe and seem to celebrate (or at least think that we should be resigned to).

A good Marxist deals with the conditions of the day, right?

Deals with them, not accepts them. Point is, if pop has been reduced to entertainment, OK, let's admit it, let's even be resigned to it. But let's not celebrate it, and let's not pretend that things have always been this way. If pop has gone the way of lyric poetry or opera, it's nothing to cheer about.

But in the meantime, music continues to serve very well as an expressive artform that has the power to express the society around it and to produce all kinds of emotions and thoughts in people who listen to it. I'm still perfectly capable of every now and then experiencing the sublime, for want of a better word, when I listen to a piece of music. I'm sure I'm not the only one. And that does not equate to mere "mindless consumerist entertainment."

Fair enough, but what WOULD be mindless consumerist entertainment then? No-one is suggesting that even the worst pop doesn't 'produce all kinds of emotions and thoughts in people', but so do tabloid newspapers, pornography...

And, while I'm rambling, this is the thing I like about popism, for want of a better word--it's willingness to pay attention to the unlikely and accidental ways in which pieces of music, regardless of what source they come from, can affect us. And not dismiss them if they're not lined up correctly with a larger ideological program. That just feels a lot more open to me, and a lot more realistic about how music actually works in the world.

It's certainly 'realistic', but realism is the name for the trap we're in. But I don't know who outside the Socialist Worker's Party in 1985 would take this stance about 'lining up pop with a larger ideological program'. There are certainly those of us who still believe that thinking about the tensions between pop and its surrounding society (rather than the way it simply 'expresses' social conditions), about the ways in which pop can articulate desires to escape, change, reject The World, about the [I}connections[/I] between pop and ideology, are important.

The alleged openness of popism, at least as you are constructing it, is of course exclusionary (I have no problems with discourses that exclude, every single one does, it's the pretence that some don't which grates) but in another way: context, form, social effect are verboten. Which is why I call Popism 'consumerist aestheticism'. Don't rush to read a moral or political condemnation into the word 'consumerist'; it is also a merely technical description of the focus of this theory, i.e. away from producers/ form/ context towards what the consumers of pop feel ('aeshetic' meaning, literally, 'feeling'). Part of my problem with this is that it doesn't even tell you much that's convincing about how or why people DO consume pop, which cannot be effectively understood in the ideal way which is proposed. (In this sense, Popism is like a cult studs remix of Practical Criticism.)

As regards grime in 1981--I don't know if I would be that shocked, because I happen to think that in some ways grime is a return to hip-hop's roots! That first Dizzee album being a great example. Anyway, it's a moot point because I'm listening to grime in 2006, not 1981. The fact that the tradition it's a part of isn't quite as old as the tradition Arctic Monkeys are a part of doesn't really matter.

I don't want to reheat the 'Is grime hip hop?' argument, but this claim really does reveal that all that was at stake in the equation of the two was that both are 'music using rythmic speech'. Think what rap actually sounded like in 1981. It's not the length of time the tradition has been around that is at stake, it is a question of how much the tradition is capable of renewing itself. In any case, the point is that Indie is not tradition, it's Trad. Tradition in the positive sense is BASED on continual renewal; Trad, however, is a condtion of endless re-instantiation/ reiteration (repetion without difference).
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Noel Emits said:
'cept for those of us who were busy pitching up beat poet acapellas over asmus tietchens instrumentals on our parents gramophones. ;)

Yeh, sorry, forgot about that. :)
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
HMGovt said:
Oh for the sake of fuck, man, are you ever going to tire of your shitty Bree avatar?

well, I was, but, just for you, I think I'll keep it for oooh at least another coupla months.

Can I be the only one sick of seeing that blankly malevolent crystal of ginger sub-HBO spite on every single page of this otherwise easy-on-the-eye forum?

Every single page? I think you'll be able to avoid it if you look on MOST of the threads here actually. You are particularly safe on Dubstep/ Grime/ non-critical Indie threads.... 'Malevolent crystal of ginger sub-HBO spite'.... mmmmmmmmm....
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
is there a comparison between indie and grime because they're both in some ways culturally myopic?

AM fans are oblivious to the fact the band are treading old musical ground. Grime MCs can't see beyond their ends, and so can't appeal to a broader audience.
 
k-punk said:
the Smug Police


smugpolice.jpg
 

Tim F

Well-known member
"Fair enough, but what WOULD be mindless consumerist entertainment then? No-one is suggesting that even the worst pop doesn't 'produce all kinds of emotions and thoughts in people', but so do tabloid newspapers, pornography... "

"Mindless consumerist entertainment" = a lie we tell ourselves about other people's enjoyment. After all, basically all musical styles and cultural pursuits have been faced with this charge. The issue therefore is not "how does one define and/or identify mindless consumerist entertainment?", but rather "on what basis can we <i>categorically</i> disprove the assertion with regards to a certain style of or moment in music?" (a debate which we've had several times here, and one which I do not propose we rush to rehash).

Some might hold to the notion that "vanguardism" (and its associated themes of some sort of socially transgressive/disruptive/transformative force within the music in question) is a really existing property inherent within a given piece of music, but this is surely one of the most de-contextualized, ironically <i>desocialized</i> approaches to music one could concoct, sort of like New Criticism married to comforting lefty sentiment.

I hope that Mark would agree that vanguardism is really a social matrix which a given piece of music gets swept up in: it is only insofar as music is <i>situated</i> within a social, historical and political context that its formal sonic attributes take on some sort of political lustre (I say "hope" because some of Mark's previous arguments regarding the inherent transformative properties of music suggest a position contrary to this). This is not to devalue the music's sonic properties, only to note that were we somehow able to remove ourselves from social context and consider all music objectively ("under the aspect of eternity") the notion of vanguardism wouldn't really make sense (indeed, under the aspect of eternity music itself doesn't really make sense).

In this sense for me the perception of vanguardism can only exist internal to the acceptance of a certain social matrix. And it's circular too: the acceptance of the matrix entrenches it. So what we're talking about is mythmaking. What is less abundant today is not records which are worthy of being lionized in myth, but any myth that could successfully lionize them for enough people so as to be meaningful or effective (at a more practical level, the music crit industry is choked by people who couldn't spin a good yarn, let alone construct a convincing flesh&bone myth, if their lives depended on it). There are many likely reasons for this, but I think most urgent is our increasing inability to forget the past (cue Disco Inferno's "The Last Dance").

"The alleged openness of popism, at least as you are constructing it, is of course exclusionary.... in another way: context, form, social effect are verboten. "

This is a nice line of argument which I can't quite agree with, both generally and as a critique of joeschmo's specific position. Nu-rockism and popism (or at least intelligent versions of either) are both obsessed with social effect - what is at stake is the difference being between Social Effect and <i>social effects</i>. To my mind Mark what you're looking for is a certain socio-political nexus point, a dynamite conflagaration of the individual musical experience with the broad social experience, the creation and transformation of entire "populations" (Social Effect). Whereas when Joeschmo talks about popism's "willingness to pay attention to the unlikely and accidental ways in which pieces of music, regardless of what source they come from, can affect us", he proposes society as an already constantly transformative (albeit almost imperceptibly) phenonemon, wherein tiny little explosions are going off all the time - to put words into joeschmoe's mouth, it's not so much that his POV doesn't care about the "source" of the music, but that the networks and connections facilitating these explosions become so complex and intricate that one cannot divine the music's sum total social effects from the source alone.

The move from social effects to Social Effect is the process of mythologisation, the move from specifically observable imaginary engagements (the individual listener with the radio, the 200-odd dancers on a certain dancefloor) to the <i>imaginary<i> of this music's specific engagement. Neither level is more correct than the other - there is no more or less "correctness" to the levels of the social matrix into which music connects. And I think music criticism which ignores one level in favour of the other does so at its own peril.

Mark, it's extremely relevant to all of the above for me to say again that it surprises and perplexes me that you're so ready to dismiss Frank Kogan's writing, which fulfils Joeschmo's brief while being <i>entirely</i> about "context, form, social effect".
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Tim F:
when Joeschmo talks about popism's "willingness to pay attention to the unlikely and accidental ways in which pieces of music, regardless of what source they come from, can affect us", he proposes society as an already constantly transformative (albeit almost imperceptibly) phenonemon, wherein tiny little explosions are going off all the time

Yes, that's a really nice conception that rings true enough. There's certainly value in those moments, where something leaks through? I guess one thing is that some of us are impatient with that and await the next 'phase transition', so to speak. Perhaps imagining that we can predict what this will be is a little deluded, but a fun game nonetheless. And maybe we shouldn't be so eagre to get there; it may not be all that pleasant :eek: Just feels like a dump that needs to be taken. Unless you're perfectly happy with where the broader culture is at right now.
 

martin

----
Cutters Choice said:

Have you got some magic power where you're able to find pics of people who epitomise qualities? That bloke really is smugness personified. Don't you just want to give him something to cry about?
 
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