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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I'm a bit suspicious of the prominent link to Amazon.com in this article. Presumably Salon has some sort of revenue-generating agreement with Amazon. I don't think an article with such a feature should be the lead.
I wonder how different this article would be if Morissey hadn't made those clumsy remarks recently. It probably would have changed the whole white music / black music theme. It is ironic that this article ends up segregating music just as much as the musicians do.
I also take issue with the interpretations of "Panic's" "hang the DJ" lyric. I don't think Morissey was talking about a hip hop or house DJ but rather a radio DJ. He was talking about how music on the radio had nothing to do with his life, not "black music."
If I want to listen to authentic black gospel or jazz by an African American artist, it's in my music collection at my fingertips along with tons of other world music. I have no idea why critics have been harping on "white" versus "black" inspiration. Musical artists have individual voices based upon their own unique vision of the world. Why do critics act like the only legitimate music is a rehash of Mick doing Muddy Waters? David Brooks had the same criticism of musical segregation last week in the New York Times. Force feeding youngsters with the Allman Brothers isn't the answer.
The charge Reynolds levels here- that English rock is white, thus self-consciously racist, has been made elsewhere- http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2007/10/22/071022crmu_music_frerejones- about indie rock in general. Methinx it's a load o' bollocks, mate. What seems more likely to me is that the bands he cites simply play what they want based on what they like, and their audiences (note the plural) like their music for musical rather than socio-political reasons.
The audience is fragmented now. In a day when the technology and the Internet makes it possible for most anyone to make and distribute their own music- and for their audience to find them- there is no need for any act to hit the road and work their way up, and little possible reward. This is a blessing for the musician, because it enables him or her to play whatever they want. But it is also a curse, because there is no world left to conquer as there was in the classic rock era. The last band with this kind of ambition is U2, and there won't be another one in the foreseeable future. Most bands know what Joe Strummer knew back in the day: phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust. Under the circumstances I'd stay home and play music to people that appreciated it rather than come here and play what I like, only to be called a bigot by self-appointed cultural arbiters because it doesn't sound black enough.
You choose an arbitrary thesis, manipulate data to support contrived thesis, make preposterous claims that won't be challenged because it really just doesn't matter, and get paid by the word. Nice gig if you can get it.
Many seem to think that Reynolds and Sasha-Free's analysis hinges on the 'black/white' musical dichotomy, but I think what they generally are against is not 'non-black' or 'white' music per se, but a type of faux-folk, immasculated type of music that seems to dominate the mainstream of 'indi'. The Decembrists and Wilco are the biggest offenders on this point, but even bands like the New Pornographers (who I like), can be fall into this category.
By contrast, 'good music' is not simply music that has a heavy black influence. The allusion in this article to mid 80s hardcore bands make that clear. But rather, bands that express a 'soulfull whiteness', i.e. which aggressivly, but somewhat ironically express their isecurities, ideology, and anger not so much in the lyrics, but in the dissonant nature of the music. This wouldn't only apply to straight punk bands, but to geeky 'post-punk' bands such as Devo, Talking Heads, early XTC, Suicide, all the No Wave bands, etc. I.e. bands which bring a lot of their innovation to the front in their songs, as oppossed to through 'subtle' production based texture and b.s. self knowing lyrics, and stinky retro.
So an aggressive musical voice is what I think these authors are getting at when they think of 'good' indi music. If that's the case, then I agree.
Why does everything have to be dissected to death? Music is just music no matter how many intellectuals want to sit around and navel-gaze about it.
There is still one standard that they all have to live by: If we don't like it, we don't buy it.
Since we all sat around the cave camp fire and banged on whatever was handy at the time, music has been a subjective thing. I like what moves me. You like what move you.
What music ISN'T is a group of marketing types designing a box that panders to the snobbishness of others. That's just marketing - not music. And the snobs who think they have somehow avoided the crass commercialism of the rest of the genres are just in denial.
Jabolo - ironically, all those mid-80s hardcore bands were ripping off Bad Brains anyway, since BB laid down the entire sonic template for '80s hardcore. Sure, Black Flag paved the way, but their sound was a little too idiosyncratic to be replicated. So for better or worse, all those "white" hardcore bands of yore were STILL ripping off "black" music even if they didn't know it. But of course the real point of hardcore was that none of that shit mattered anyway. Back in the day, youth trumped race, class and every other consideration hands down.
Very well written, insightful review. The listener in the United States often ignores or disregards the circumstances from which arose their particular scene or sound, or worse romanticizes it. That said, I would have not associated Oasis and Blair, My Bloody Valentine and Thatcher (not that way that I *do* associate Elvis Costello with Thatcher, Joy Division and the Clash with their working-class Albion roots, etc). In fact, Britpop is seemingly so generic and out-of-time by design.
This of course all begs the question as to whether I plan on buying the box set. Being an avowed Anglophile, I like if not love many of the bands on this collection; but being a music fan, the level of filler and crap would be an affront to my tastes. Its just this sort of thing that the recording industry does that in my mind gives the music fan implicit permission to share and steal music, to wit, the industry saying, "well, fuck the fans." Fuck you too!
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
