Cultural Cowardice

[padraig (u.s.)]

i.e. next door, extremity of Norwegian black metal was in no small part rebellion against placid Lutheran homogeneity

actually this is good - I know these aren't things people here are specifically interested in but it's a very good example

 

[luka]

nowhere near the trainspotter levels of yesteryear. mms and a guy called dominic were very good on early dance music i remember. bunnyhausen reputedly had a head full of memorised catalouge numbers. quite a few people were dealing records at least as a side hustle if not their main income stream.

but at the end of the day all that sort of thing gets a bit tedious. it's like trading pokemon cards. i'm not sure we're worse off for not having that level of pub quiz knowledge any more.

 

[luka]

what needs to be done to a music or culture to make it appeal to students?

what had to happen to grime for it to become palatable to louie and sophie?

how is jack law involved?

well you have a feedback mechanism in place dont you. you can see your audience reacting in real time. what gets the biggest response. what doesn't go over so well. i dont think corpse is to blame for any of that at all really? why would he be?

 

[sadmanbarty]

how do they operate in the world?

what aesthetic sensibilities does that draw them to?

what are they repelled by?

 

[luka]

well you have a feedback mechanism in place dont you. you can see your audience reacting in real time. what gets the biggest response. what doesn't go over so well. i dont think corpse is to blame for any of that at all really? why would he be?

oh i thiught that was padraig. i was confused. now it all makes perfect sense.

 

[luka]

how do they operate in the world?

what aesthetic sensibilities does that draw them to?

what are they repelled by?

View attachment 758

very good example that picture. i think that will help foreigners like padraig in particular.

 

[sadmanbarty]

well you have a feedback mechanism in place dont you. you can see your audience reacting in real time. what gets the biggest response. what doesn't go over so well. i dont think corpse is to blame for any of that at all really? why would he be?

what will get the biggest response from students?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

but at the end of the day all that sort of thing gets a bit tedious

ya I don't disagree

it would just be useful in this specific instance

like if you want to know the Middle Ages you'd ask a medievalist

it's not necessary tho

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

ya I'll be honest I've never understood the relation of English students to popular music

I mean there's the college rock tradition here and college radio stations and festivals and whatever

but nothing like you guys have where they're like the scourge of everything

does it maybe have something to do with class - granted ofc more well-off people got to college here as well, but do you guys have anything like the state university systems, community colleges etc that we have. students are probably more economically diverse in general here (varying hugely by school ofc) whereas maybe in England they exemplify bland middle class taste of whatever?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

like you would never have a "uni" genre here, or ask what appeals to "students" in general as their own class of music consumer

 

[thirdform]

hmm often its the middle classes who like the most rudebwoy stuff here, gives them cred with being with the streets.

 

[thirdform]

its often that they come to the genre when it has been *standardised* and perfected as a commodity. aka, when its too late.

it is always a commodity when it is being first produced but there is a danger of those use values disappearing.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

but that's a middle class thing everywhere

the vicarious thrill without having actually experience the danger/oppression/etc

 

[sadmanbarty]

i'd have thought that too, but stormzy, jme, skepta, instrumental grime...

something else going on.

i don't get the impression trim's big with students either (not for lack of trying). so it's fairly nuanced.

 

[sadmanbarty]

castration?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

its often that they come to the genre when it has been *standardised* as a commodity

right this sounds more like it

I guess I would ask - how does that work as the feedback mechanism luka mentioned?

like what is the interrelation between forming the tastes of students and standardization of the commodity?

cos they don't show up at college with pre-formed quintessentially bland taste

 

[version]

but that's a middle class thing everywhere

the vicarious thrill without having actually experience the danger/oppression/etc

It's why Grand Theft Auto V made nearly $2bn.

 

[luka]

part of the reason grime can prosper on the university circuit is that a university education is not the class marker it used to be. a far larger swathe of the population gets a university education now than has ever been the case previously.

but it's not the people who made up grime's original fan base. that was a very, very small band of people in a very narrow age bracket in a few areas of London.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

i don't get the impression trim's big with students either (not for lack of trying). so it's fairly nuanced.

too weird maybe?

he has that street intellectual - that's a garbage way to say it but I can't think of anything better - thing, too outre possibly

mind I haven't heard anything he's done in like 5 years so maybe he's smoothed that off

hard to see him have the pop instincts of a wiley or jme tho

 

[sadmanbarty]

94 jungle compared to 93 darkside.

cultural cowardice?

i prefer 1994 jungle, but undeniably it's retreating from the sonic frontiers of 1993.

on a cultural level the populist inclination applied to something that musically radical has something worthwhile to be said about it, not by me though.