D84 said:
Why? Does it embarrass you?.
Not particularly, it just seems unnecessarily combative without really saying much about the music itself. It gives me a mental image of someone going through a checklist of bands and placing them into middle/working class buckets and then scoring them as if they were competing fantasy football teams rather than artists making a wide range of musical statements. The need to do such scorekeeping strikes me as an unhealthy obsession. Such an obsession makes me think that k-punk prefers music that speaks to/about working-class issues, and maybe even prefers some musicians simply for being working-class. This isn't a problem, but perhaps it would make more sense to replace "All good music is made by working-class people" with "All of k-punk's favorite music is made by working-class people."
D84 said:
Not just class but all relationships: sexuality and politics are all part of the same greater social interaction.
No kidding? The reason I complain about aesthetic criticism that hinges on issues of class, race, gender, etc. is that I feel like I'm back in some college lit crit class. This was a really fresh way to examine art about 30 years ago, but it has turned into a cliche. It's not that the points are not valid, it's that they are unoriginal and lazy that bothers me. I don't feel like I'm really learning much about the music and why it is good or bad.
D84 said:
Hold onto your belt, mate. Those days will be back soon with a vengeance...
You sound so hopeful...
D84 said:
That Economist quote is interesting but I'm not sure if that helps your argument.
You are probably right. It just seems an indication that working-class trappings are often a put-on, and this is probably even more true for the world of music in which everything is a performance. Playing "dress-up" like this is kinda silly in much the same way that rooting for a particular socio-economic team to win the war against another team is kinda silly.
kpunk said:
The Stones were hardly card-carrying members of the bourgeoisie, they were just grammar school boys....A more convincing example would help; after all, if my story doesn't hold water, you ought to be able to think of countless e.g.s off the top off your head...
I'm not exactly clear on the meaning of "grammar school boys" and why that makes them more working-class than middle-class or if that is what you mean. Also don't know what "e.g.s" means exactly, but if I had to think of more middle-class musicians that I enjoy some come to mind (I don't know the full biographies of all of these, so my apologies if I get this wrong): The Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Miles Davis, Nick Drake, Stereolab, Can. I'm sure there are plenty more than that just as there are plenty more who come from working-class backgrounds. I don't really see a class-trend in category as diverse as pop. I mostly take any of these artists from your list or mine on their individual merits rather than seeing them as an exemplar of their class.
kpunk said:
So, by extension, we shouldn't talk about delta blues in terms of race, because, even though all of the artists are black, they don't sing about race much, therefore we should be quiet about it....
It is certainly fair to say that Delta Blues was dominated by people who were poor and black - it is a much narrower field than the global mass of pop music both in terms of geography and musical expression. But noting that Delta Blues was a poor, black phenomenon doesn't really get you very far - it certainly doesn't account for the variety in quality among Delta Blues musicians. Did the ones who were poorer or blacker tend to make better music?
Likewise, the artists discussed in this thread may or may not be from middle-class backgrounds, but that fact doesn't explain why some of them are better than others - for example, I think Franz Ferdinand is a much better band than The Futureheads - Could that be accounted for by the fact that the parents of Franz Ferdinand earned on average 5% less than the parents of The Futureheads? Did The Futureheads have fancier family holidays?
kpunk said:
I'm not saying that class is the sole reason for the ineptitude and shoddiness of current indie, there are all sorts of other reasons why it is crap... one is a complete detachment from social specficity, a merely formal manipulation of off-the-shelf styles...
I completely don't buy the music today sucks, music back then rules argument no matter what period you are talking about. I have never felt at a loss for good contemporary music.