Rock 'n' roll: more harm than good?
- Thread starter swears
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nomadologist
Guest
Out of curiosity, how can you be so sure? Don't believe every press kit you read, love. I used to write those.
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nomadologist
Guest
EXCUSE ME? EVERYONE relies on marketing and the industry. I've worked at record labels. Nelly Furtado has the kind of fanbase that the music industry DROOLS just thinking about. One that crosses all sorts of demographics but hits a KEY "underrepresented" one, I.E. LATINOS. All of this, which yes is VERY manufactured by her labels' amazingly saavy PRESS division as well as the AUDIENCE RESEARCH COMPANIES that provide the data that makes it possible to strategize and all of this together has propelled her to the top of the charts.
The lie they always sell rock fans is that "these were a few guys kicking around in grandma's basement till they made it big" because that speaks to rock's "authenticity" shtick. YOU ARE GULLIBLE. Sorry. That's me being straighforward. Nickelback has relied in the industry as well, and what you're saying is just plain uninformed.
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nomadologist
Guest
No, not at all. Sublimation is not a safety valve. Sublimation is what keeps repressed desires, the hideous socially unacceptable ones, from turning to uglier more destructive impulses before they can discharge and do all sorts of damage.
Because Freud's model is structural, nothing is going to subvert it. No "erasing" of entertainment. Bread and circuses is hardly new, remember, Rome?
Only Deleuze (imo) offers a viable escape route from the Freudian model in the Anti-Oedipus and none of you here accept that when it's brought up. What do you mean "pseudo-Eden"? Distractions from what? The media, owned by a bunch of moguls with political interests, are full of distractions from pressing political matters, yes, but this does not mean that our sublimations are not essential or interesting or vital. Even on the Freudian model.
I don't believe in the "oedi-Pod" idea because I don't believe in Freud's model. I'm just throwing it out there. Swears might like it.
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nomadologist
Guest
I agree with most of what you say (especially about late Freud) but I don't think that you can harness the Id on the level of HOW and WHAT it desires/cathects--this is the problem with it, our Ego with its reality principle can only harness the uncontrolled/uncontrollable desires of the Id for so long. Can only stem the tide temporarily. Even if our reality principles are all encoded with and limited by and bogged down in kapital, the Id will never be. If you're going to believe Freud.
I think the way advertising works is by appealing to the reality principle. The survive and thrive impulse. The "keep up with the Joneses" thing. It can't get at the Id. The Id is everything that can't be wanted, that can't be represented, that is too difficult to acknowledge.
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nomadologist
Guest
The leisurely perch from which any of us would be talking about "distractions" from "real issues"--you're on a message board, for Christ's sake, people--is a strange, unnecessary, and unfounded hypocrisy I'll take no part in.
I am not distracted from any important real world issues by music. My days are balanced by due attention to both as fully as I can manage and still make a living and whatever.
If what the individual does matters so greatly with regard to music listening habits and "taste" (eclectic versus fanatical--wtf is this even about? are you people kidding?) then by all means stop listening to music and only listen to music you fanatically love. Yeah, uh huh. Or draw up a business model that can change the shape of the industry. Then I'll care about what you have to say.
I am not distracted from any important real world issues by music. My days are balanced by due attention to both as fully as I can manage and still make a living and whatever.
If what the individual does matters so greatly with regard to music listening habits and "taste" (eclectic versus fanatical--wtf is this even about? are you people kidding?) then by all means stop listening to music and only listen to music you fanatically love. Yeah, uh huh. Or draw up a business model that can change the shape of the industry. Then I'll care about what you have to say.
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nomadologist
Guest
haha, gotta love the extended "junkies get constipated" metaphors. you guys are somethin else.
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nomadologist
Guest
don't know if i fully buy that, but it could be an apt metaphor. maybe you can only be one kind of junkie at a time, so i don't know what it's like to be a media junkie because i'm technically not "cured" yet. i can take this message board/music/tv/movies blah blah shit or leave it. i could NOT take or leave dope. there was one option: take. there's not even an illusion of choice (like there is under kapital) when you're a real junkie.
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nomadologist
Guest
This is something I've heard said by art forum editor once: advertising sells us the lie that there is a terminus for desire. Period. It's not the Id they appeal to, it's the Ego. Ads tell us--if you want this, then you get it, you will be sated. They create needs that the Id knows nothing of, nor cares anything for. I don't think I would use the word "animal" for the Id, either. That's a little more loaded than I think is useful.
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nomadologist
Guest
Be "fucked" if you want to, Swears. I'm going to do everything in my power to avoid it.
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nomadologist
Guest
I like this sentence very very much. It's like being in a dysfunctional sexual relationship but enjoying (needing?) the "sweet little lies" too much to extricate yourself from the embrace or fend off the advances.
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nomadologist
Guest
OK LAST POST for me on this thread tonight. There's some interesting stuff bifurcating the paths on here.
I don't think fanaticism bespeaks a deeper engagement with music or an art object, or a more substantial or substantive understanding of it than any other kind of appreciation can reflect. I think fanaticism betrays a sort of desperation, a need to identify with an artobject for reasons outside its content/substance or artistic merits alone--really, it is often the need to be one of an elite who has sole access to the true meaning of the object, who is one of the few who identify with the artobject. This identification is in the service of piggybacking on the artobject's credibility or intensity or greatness or social relevance or significance, whatever. It's maybe the most self-absorbed or at least the most self-interested way of loving something.
You can observe this in sexual relationships between humans and humans (not just humans and objects) as well. It's like the jealous lover. The fanaticism with which the jealous lover "loves" another is less about who that other is, less about the flesh and blood living being who has needs like his/her own that are worth being reciprocated because the loved deserves fulfillment, and more about possession, the jealous lover needing the other to be theirs, subsumed by them, a component part of the jealous lover's own ego with little or no regard to the other's being or personhood. You know, fetish objects and that sort of thing...
I don't think fanaticism bespeaks a deeper engagement with music or an art object, or a more substantial or substantive understanding of it than any other kind of appreciation can reflect. I think fanaticism betrays a sort of desperation, a need to identify with an artobject for reasons outside its content/substance or artistic merits alone--really, it is often the need to be one of an elite who has sole access to the true meaning of the object, who is one of the few who identify with the artobject. This identification is in the service of piggybacking on the artobject's credibility or intensity or greatness or social relevance or significance, whatever. It's maybe the most self-absorbed or at least the most self-interested way of loving something.
You can observe this in sexual relationships between humans and humans (not just humans and objects) as well. It's like the jealous lover. The fanaticism with which the jealous lover "loves" another is less about who that other is, less about the flesh and blood living being who has needs like his/her own that are worth being reciprocated because the loved deserves fulfillment, and more about possession, the jealous lover needing the other to be theirs, subsumed by them, a component part of the jealous lover's own ego with little or no regard to the other's being or personhood. You know, fetish objects and that sort of thing...
the undisputed truth
Banned
...well rock and rock n roll did me more harm than good
i came from a small town in rural new zealand where if you liked anything other than pink floyd, ac/dc and jimi hendrix...etc etc...you were some sort of alien freak...
I used to wonder what was wrong with me not liking that shit instead prefering funk and r'n'b...
...thank fuck for hiphop !!!
i came from a small town in rural new zealand where if you liked anything other than pink floyd, ac/dc and jimi hendrix...etc etc...you were some sort of alien freak...
I used to wonder what was wrong with me not liking that shit instead prefering funk and r'n'b...
...thank fuck for hiphop !!!
swears
preppy-kei
Jesus christ...I was just describing the concept.
john eden
male pale and stale
Not got time to read or respond to everything on this thread, but will reply to DWD!
Yeah yeah - I am in agreement with you on the subcultural stuff for sure - I think what was at the back of my mind was that capitalism takes different forms and goes through different stages. In its purest, most advanced form capitalism clearly welcomes lots of niche consumers, the "pink pound" etc.
But I think the situationist contribution was pointing out that capitalism does care about what happens in "non-productive" time outside of work - i.e. keep consuming (but it doesn't really matter what you consume)
Yes it has, but in previous stages (or when capitalism is in crisis) the old bigotries can return in force.
There can be quite a simple dynamic at work - sexual repression stops people fully expressing themselves, makes them insecure, and therefore easier to control. Perhaps it could be argued that this is part of a pre-capitalist mode of control, but I think personally that that sort of thing is still very much happening now with moral panics, racism, etc.
Well perhaps that is over-simple but it's surely easy to see that capitalism evolves, as do the methods of social control. Being old-fashioned I see the negotiating factors in capitalism as being classes. Though I don't think I would go as far as people like Camatte and argue that capitalism had taken on its own autonomous existence which now threatens humanity as a whole!
Yeah yeah - I am in agreement with you on the subcultural stuff for sure - I think what was at the back of my mind was that capitalism takes different forms and goes through different stages. In its purest, most advanced form capitalism clearly welcomes lots of niche consumers, the "pink pound" etc.
But I think the situationist contribution was pointing out that capitalism does care about what happens in "non-productive" time outside of work - i.e. keep consuming (but it doesn't really matter what you consume)
Yes it has, but in previous stages (or when capitalism is in crisis) the old bigotries can return in force.
There can be quite a simple dynamic at work - sexual repression stops people fully expressing themselves, makes them insecure, and therefore easier to control. Perhaps it could be argued that this is part of a pre-capitalist mode of control, but I think personally that that sort of thing is still very much happening now with moral panics, racism, etc.
Well perhaps that is over-simple but it's surely easy to see that capitalism evolves, as do the methods of social control. Being old-fashioned I see the negotiating factors in capitalism as being classes. Though I don't think I would go as far as people like Camatte and argue that capitalism had taken on its own autonomous existence which now threatens humanity as a whole!
Precious Cuts
Well-known member
Sorry, w/regards to this matter I am way way over-informed. I wouldn't have opened my mouth in the first place if I wasn't absolutley sure of what I was saying, and in fact that's the only reason I did say anything - because I read something I knew to be patently false. I don't care about Nickelback at all, but the fact of the matter is that I just spent 6 long months living with a someone who worked at Sony-BMG and Coalition managing Sum 41, Our Lady Peace and a bunch of other bands. He is on a first name basis with pretty much every guy in the alt-rock industry and I have had to endure literally hundreds of hours of insider conversation about every aspect of every lame band and record label in Canada. I know way more about Nickelback's career than I ever wanted to know.
I don't like rock music, and I have zero interest in propping up some sort of fake story about this shitty band, but the truth is that there are no elaborate focus groups behind them, and no made-up story - this I know for a fact. I can tell you with absolute certainty that they are as plain and boring as their music, and that their story checks out. Their initial independent, self-managed and self-financed Canadian career was supported by CANCON legislation, VideoFACT and touring every rotten town in the country, not by any record company or payola whatsoever. Everyone in the Canadian record industry knows this, as do many regular Canadians. There's no such thing as payola for Canadian bands, and Canadian music videos are financed by the government (aka rapper welfare). The media are legally required to play Canadian music, and struggle to fill the quota - thus popularizing a lot of crappy independant bands like Nickelback without ANY record industry support. Even Nelly furtado relied on the same government system to get her acoustic trip-hop career started. The ones that do well in the government-rigged domestic market get signed and exported to the states. Some make it (Nickelback, K-os), but most get sent back to Canada with their tail between their legs (The Tragically Hip) - that's the Canadian system. It's essentially a government-sponsored record industry farm-league.
As far as how Nickelback have been managed/marketed outside the country after signing to an American label - I dont know firsthand. I can tell you that no aspect of their music or image has changed since they first appeared in the Canadian media as an independent group with absolutely no record label support, so I find your allegations that their music, image and story are manufactured to be pretty absurd. You may have worked in the record industry somewhere in the world, but you obviously have no clue how the Canadian record industry works. 50,000 units to go gold in Canada, 100,000 for platinum.. budgets are equally tiny. There is simply NO MONEY to speculatively develop domestic Canadian rock acts in the way that American pop stars are developed and marketed. It's a completely different ballgame here than in any other music industry, and that's what makes your speculations (which might be comletely reasonable based on how the American record industry works) so blantantly absurd in the specific case of Nickelback and the Canadian record industry. I'm giving you the straight facts, just ask ANYONE who has anything to do with the Canadian record industry.
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Its exactly these ugly impulses WHICH WE DEARLY need! Damage is precisely the point!
In reference to drug-entertainment/marketing/liberalisation metaphors, I think Heroin is a pretty weak one. Cocaine on the other hand fits the bill perfectly, primarily for the SENSE OF INCREDIBLE DISAPPOINTMENT! That total lack of of fuck me-complete enjoyment, rather that sense of eternal "is this it?"
Distraction isn't operating on a level of numb-out-bliss but rather eternal itchy dissatisfaction, false desires. Its not, Nomadologist that entertainment serves to make you forget, per se, but that it functions to entrap one inside IRRELEVANCE. Of course I am a hypocrite! I speak from a position of intense, loathsome and repulsive hypocrisy!
Exactly. There is obviously no evil cabal of mustache twiddling capitalists in black top hats smoking cigars debating about how much they will let the proles get away with! Its that Capitalism seeks to create ever greater number of desires, ie- demand, new demands which are inessential, in order to continue to grow once all primary demands have been met. This in itself functions as a control system. Its probably necessary to distinguish between Capitalistic organisations and what was once termed "The Political Establishment". If anything the negotiations of the 60s were between this third party and the masses, negotiated trough the functions of capitalism. In time of course the political class became increasingly irrelevant/directly identified with capitalistic organisations, and whilst capitalism doesn't care how you spend your free time, it hopes dearly that you literally spend it, (on lovely entertainment) rather than use it to destroy its interests!