"Surely its better when its a band that play their own music rather than girlbands in underwear prancing about onstage?

I wouldn't mind a jot if it was a friend who just casually liked music. But she professes to be a music geek and buys a lot of albums.

(and if they legalised monkey fighting - bad pun sorry.)

[/grandad]

Here is what she had to say about the Kaiser Chiefs on a different message board (no i'm not stalking her - she linked me out of pride for her 'rant')
**********************

don't listen to anyone bad mouthing the chiefs...

They are one amazing band. They saw what was missing in music and the produced the goods. Sure its pop, but when has pop been bad?

Their fucking amazing live, I've already seen them twice and I'm seeing them twice more in the following month.

Their care-free, fun attitude to music is like a breath of fresh air amoungst a lot of the bummer music going round at the moment. Ricky Wilson plays the happy, cheeky chappy well in the press but hes actually a very intelligent young man whos really giving the nation what they want..he knows how to act to do well in the charts. He's actually been in the business long enough.

In conclusion to this little rant, the Chiefs are a great band as faar as catchy, happy, pop tunes go and amazing live sets (please see for yourself, their honestly very good!) go. Yes the album is worth buying! I love it myself and can't stop playing it to get me in the party mood. Watch out for songs like Na na na na naa, saturday night and you can have it all...their amazing.
Please give them a go.

But Tom, that is the logical answer to this argument.

Why do so many people hold this view about bands and writing their own material? It's definately not the first instance of this i've come across.

(xxpost)

1. "amazing live"
2. "carefree, fun"
3. charming personality
4. knows how to play the music game
5. "catchy, happy, poppy"

You can be all of these things without writing your own songs.

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), February 22nd, 2005.

Can someone prove me wrong other than "listen to what you like"? I mean, would you think it was odd to see me reading Sugar magazine or the Beano or whatever?

(I like the Beano sometimes and I'll sometimes pick up my sister's Cosmo, but I wouldn't buy it or subscribe to these).

Yeah, which is fine - I mean the thing with these attitudes is that for a lot of people they work as a guide to "what music will I like?", and that's great. (Hi Dog L!)

In this case tho' she's actively positioning the band she likes AGAINST "bummer music"! (by which she means serious artistes I guess, though she might mean something very different.)

similarly if someone wears make-up and is a guy, they are wrong because it's not marketed at them, just as yes it is as you say "weird" for straight 24 year old men to be into boy and girl mags.

honestly look at what you're saying. "people being different from societal norms are fucking weird, prove me wrong!"

Dan Hill
Don McLean
U2

It's when they go off at the deep end about it not being 'real' that it becomes a problem for me.

xxxxxpost

Including Mary Mary?

I'd take the Carole King penned 'Pleasant Valley Sunday' over Mike's 'Listen to the Band' though. Ugh.

Yeah, there you go. Carole King is the example you should throw out (re: the Elvis, Billie Holiday, Sinatra argument v. rockism). Anyone who ever sang a Carole King song > anyone who didn't.

Sure did:

http://members.tripod.com/~colli/moreof/mary.html

And speaking of Hal Blaine on drums, what about all the guff Beach Boys got for not playing their own instruemtns on Pet Sounds. That argument surely didn't hold up over the years.

(enter sacred cow post here)

I'm not disputing this Hari, but surely once you analyse and reanalyse the argument one can be as pernickety as the original rockist. It is arguable that there is a clear difference between music that is made for music's sake and music that has been fashioned to make a quick buck. Obviously there are fuzzy lines here where arguments can be made for or against each side (Daniel Bedingfield, Maximo Park, Busted etc). Pointing to the past is different, the way music is marketed has changed since the days of Elvis and the Monkees. We now have sprawling music videos and tv shows like Pop Idol to promote bands like Girls Aloud and what have you (showing my ignorance here).
I find a lot of "grown up" people who like the so-called "manufactured" pop bands of today listen to it for the camp factor, or they work within the industry and are genuinely interested in the pop climate. Is this genuine appreciation of music for music's sake or is it appreciation of the gloss and glam and tack?

wow! i never knew that.

Being only 19, i'm not sure how much i'll like this kind of pop music in twenty or thirty years time (infact i'm sure the climate will be different then anyway), but for now it's like my friend said (to boil it down very simply); happy music that makes me want to party. And I find some pop songs very touching. I don't really care for the 'gloss, glam and tack'. I don't watch the music videos or what have you. I don't think i even have a popstar crush.

I will tell you if you change
And who's been saying things
It's hard to tell who is real in here
Come on let's go

You know who to turn to
Now everything's changed
Come on lets go
Stop looking for answers
In everyone's face
Come on let's go

What's the point in wasting time
On people that you'll never know
Come on let's go

When you're looking for a friend
But it's empty at the end
When everybody's disappeared
You won't be alone

If you want I'll compensate
If you over estimate
So there's nothing left to fear
You won't be alone
You know who to turn to
Now everything's changed
Come on let's go
Stop looking for answers
In everyone's face
Come on let's go

hahaha

what about aphex twin-26 mixes for cash? did that sound like other music made to make money? Or was he not actually doing it to make money, even though he said so?

artistic intention is a total red herring.

People turn to music for different things. A lot of people enjoy music because, and only because, of the feeling of personal connection they have with the artist. Similarly a lot of musicians write songs for the express purpose of communicating their Deep Feelings to kindred spirits. Other people turn to music for different reasons and find the 'personal connection' experience less relevant; but that doesn't mean it's an illegitimate way to enjoy music.

Implicit in everything this girl is saying is the fact that she likes music that is about making that personal connection. What's so bad about that?

Nothing, but I'm not exactly convinced that's the case, based on her comments about the Kaiser Chiefs.

The wrongness comes in with the snobby, "that's not real music" attitude towards those who don't write their own songs that more often than not is attached to this way of appreciating music.

And fuck the original example, I'm talking about actual reasoned arguments on this very thread that manufactured pop is somehow inferior by default to other genres. I enjoy plenty of obscure music, I haven't actually listened to the radio or manufactured pop at any great level in months as my taste goes a bit more leftfield than usual, but nonetheless the distinction between manufactured pop and other genres based on financial motivations etc is not only misguided, it's clichéd and completely boring.

And also, I don't see how saying 24 year old straight males listening to manufactured pop is "weird" etc is simply "choosing one over the other", particularly given the heaving weight that the word straight in that sentence is placing on common decency.

Well obviously there's a snobby attitude in reverse! How quaint! She likes people who "write their own songs." Pffft. I mean, it's not like they bought their own guitars, right?!?!?!?! Har har, etc.

()ops, no, but the analogy between music and film is a little half-baked, right? nonetheless there are obvious differences between 'pop' films and 'rockist' films?

It's called image. Get one Pet Shop Boys CD. What you call "gloss and glam and tack" are a belief system for many people.

Also if you're talking about music for music's sake, why are you having a massive aesthetical argument which is nothing to do with music for music's sake on this very thread, surely your argument suggests that the music you listen to is for FAR MORE than simply music's sake??????

But it is a real distinction! You can pretend that there's no difference or be bored by it, but you can't deny that the difference exists. Some people care about it, others don't. Whatever.

xxpost

1. that popism and rockism are aesthetic choices;
2. that anti-rockist hostility to pop is indistinguishable from popist hostility to rockism;
3. that most listeners fall somewhere between pure rockism and pure popism.

sure, her argument is not watertight, but she's not submitting a thesis either. she just likes the music she likes, which is the point of music. saying she should like 'everything' is just creating a weird reverse canon.

except that it is. one says "all this stuff that isn't AUTHENTIC is crap" and the other says "you're a arrogant douche for thinking that"

no, but at the same time, you can't deny that there are differences between, say, bob dylan and the spice girls. obviously there's lots of music that falls between the two extremes, since the two extremes are totally hypothetical. britney is all about 'her truth,' remember. we can't steal her truth!!!

i'm arguing against this black and white distinction, which i think only comes out anyway in these abstract discussions of rockism and popism.

the rockist says "pop is manufactured and awful, it is always worse than rock"

the anti rockist says "pop can be every bit as good as rock, here's why"

I see nobody saying "rock is worse than pop by default, it is weird for people to listen to rock"

I do see people saying "it is weird for a 24 year old straight male to listen to pop"

I think this pretty much says it all about why some people find one position tedious and stupid. If people dislike pop for non conservative reasons then fine. If they don't, then they can expect to irritate non conservative people.

http://www.creakyjoints.com/graphics/images/desktops/beatingadeadhorse_400x300.jpg

Ronan, my response is in the post above yours.

yes there are differences, my differences are different to yours, and everyone elses are different. there are differences between every single record ever made, I'm not sure how that proves anything. Of course that's because I'm not bothering to fill in the lines and complete the conservative backbone of the point you're trying to make, which is "bob dylan is better than the spice girls because recieved wisdom says so".

But I'm not willing to make that leap, not because I don't believe Bob Dylan is worse than the Spice Girls (I don't care about either of them) but because I don't agree there is a fixed difference between the two.

xpost i think we're talking about two different sets of people. you seem to be saying that it's impossible to defend pop without attacking those who prefer singer/songwriters. which is kinda odd considering you're all "let's stop this binary people!!"

Amd popists, it seems to me, are just as interested in authenticity as rockists, as we can see by all the 'music-for-music's-sake' arguments that revolve around it. Popism says that 'real' music listeners like all music, as if this girl is under an obligation to find manufactured pop authentic when it's not. The whole thing is crazy.

e.g.: "I wouldn't mind a jot if it was a friend who just casually liked music. But she professes to be a music geek and buys a lot of albums."

x-post I don't think anyone here has once said rockists do not like music, what people are saying is they do not like music any more than people who don't like rock music, as their constant claims of authenticity and realness attempt to suggest. in fact "liking music more than the general public" is in the rockist and music fans manifesto, for all of us here, but to flat out defend it is still not right.

"authentic": 1 of undisputed origin; genuine : made or done in the traditional or original way.

Sure, at a certain level, it's all the same, or it's all subjective, since this isn't something that can be proven (it's music, obviously). But there is a difference, it isn't effaced just because it's not black-and-white. And I don't see how you can say that anti-rockism isn't snobby--I mean just look at how this thread started: 'and she calls herself a music geek!' well she is, she loves music too. I'm not saying she's right to diss pop music absolutely; ideally rockism and popism would live together peacefully, or something. But the idea that her tastes disqualify her from being a music geek or that they are on some level just adolescent is silly.

xpost

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FROG-CROAKING FOLK SINGER STRUMMING A GUITAR AND A GROUP OF FIVE WOMEN SINGING AGAINST A BACKDROP OF STUDIO MUSICIANRY?

THE FUCK

"manufactured" (adj.) - Made by human beings instead of nature: artificial, manmade, synthetic.

To clarify my feelings, and a few thoughts.

The majority of my friends are staunchly against the kind of manufactured radio-friendly pop we have been talking about - I am mild by comparison as I reckon I listen to a pretty wide range of styles (even by a lot of ILM standards) so I can appreciate that a dedicated music fan can enjoy all styles of music on many different levels. I'd say my peers, also music fans, can be classed as extremists. If it doesn't fit into a certain aesthetic it won't be tolerated and even scoffed at. This view opens and narrows from person to person and I find it a bit of a headfuck when I read ILM and find people who appreciate both the chart pop of today and, say an obscure Norwegian black metal act or whatever.
However I do not enjoy, and often detest listening to what I shall from now-on refer to as "manu-pop", this is to say the kind of modern pop that is often played in the charts, particularly girl/boy bands, commercial rap and r'n'b. Is this a bad stance to take? To tar them all with the same brush? And why should I do it? And do I deserve to be flamed as a rockist for taking this attitude?
One cannot take a dualist view to music i.e. this is manu-pop, this is "real music" etc, but I believe that certain aesthetics lead to me being able to tell I just won't enjoy a certain act, or parse another.
It isn't about people writing their own songs - I'm a huge fan of Aphex, the Beach Boys, Elvis and many other dubious acts who have been mentioned upthread, whereas I cannot tolerate acts like Daniel Bedingfield, Coldplay, Jay-Z and Turin Brakes who all probably write and play their own material to one extent or another. Still I realise that I have a categorical filter which will allow some bands through and others not.

Maybe it's because I see Manu-Pop as an artisan form molded and created by fat cats to make money. It is wallpaper to me, it is bland and does not appeal to my aesthetics or taste. It is not for me. But then again a lot of pop, songs like Toxic for instance ARE pushing a lot of boundaries. Doesn't mean I like them.

Or is it about lasting appeal versus fad-ism? I tend to feel very cautious of bands that appear to ride upon a trend and that may be why I got sick of the IDM scene once it became a bunch of Autechre copyists. It is too opaque to me that a lot of bands are popular because they were on Fame Academy or because they have a good looking lead singer, or that they will be forgotten about tomorrow. That said, I know that Britney will be remembered for as long as Elvis was and that a lot of the obscuro acts I listen to today will be nothing but a spark of memory to even the most dedicated music fans in 5 years time.

And yes, genuine-ness may be part of it. Britney may love what she is doing and do it well, but is she a true musician or is she an actress who sings? But then, does it matter? After all there are few artists I'm actually interested in reading about unless it is about the music so the background story shouldn't matter - it's the music that counts.

I feel that it is important not to get too academic about popism and rockism. After all, it is perfectly acceptable on ILM to treat rockists as mal-educated fascists whilst railing against corny indie fuxx0r. It is popular to slag off the bands that are hyped up by the NME (Libertines, Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian etc) while championing the Manu-Pop acts. In extreme cases, relatively popular bands outside of the ILM micro-world, acts like Biffy Clyro, Less Than Jake or Glassjaw are scoffed at on here because they represent a side of music that is neither rockist nor popist but is seemingly designed to appeal to another subsect of music listeners.

In conclusion, I have no conclusion.

manufacture (noun): the making of articles on a large scale using machinery : the manufacture of armored vehicles. • [with adj. ] a specified branch of industry.

I think the words 'manufactured' and 'authentic' as they are used by rockists have obvious, clear, and not illegitimate meanings.

I hate the Pet Shop Boys, sorry. They are the stem and epitome of practically everything I hate in music.

I have to wonder how true this is.

xpost

I think we rockists and popists need to call a truce and get over it. i'm going to go listen to the new etienne.

Been said before, will keep saying it, even if I'm as guilty of it as anyone - it is ridiculously disingenuous to presume you can intuit an artist's / performer's intentions based on the size of the scale at which they work. The song is the song is the song, regardless of who the writer had in mind when writing the damn thing, regardless of the means by which people are exposed to the damn thing, and if you're going to say, "well, these songs are PURE of any damning money-making taint, and are therefore ART, but THESE songs are rank w/ the scent of MONEY and FOCUS GROUPS, and are therefore PRODUCT", and not realize your indiscriminant discriminatory bent, well, have fun, but count me O-W-T.

(yes I am beating a dead horse AND DA DA DA DA DA I'M LOVING IT)

(also PS to doglatin - you make it sound like Elvis was a fly-by-night fad, which is, um, huh?)

They are? Why, exactly?

This thread is oddly enough casting light on a piece I'm writing about which notes that the real problem with r**kism or any putative derivation is the attempt to link it with morality.

This is OTM. The concept of rockism is flawed anyway.

Not at all, I am actually saying that a Manu-Pop act like Britney will have the same cultural significance as Elvis.

And I am also not bothering to argue anymore because there is so much of doglatin's post I disagree with and it is so fundamentally the same as every other defence of anti-manufactured pop I've ever read that my arguments against it would probably be equally tiresome.

My only point is to say I find it absolutely fascinating that a dance music fan can actually ask the serious question of "Or is it about lasting appeal versus fad-ism?"

thinking "lasting appeal" is important is every bit as slavish a devotion to something completely out of your control as liking manu-pop

Anyway, back to thesis.

Oooh eck, I've dug myself into a hole here. Okay, I don't HATE PSB, I just don't like them much, K?

Indeed. The basic argument is that discussions of r**kism can -- not must, but can and at points has -- veer uncomfortably close to questions of larger morality.

That aside, I think it's vaguely noble to pretend to listen to music in a vacuum. If it's recorded or on the radio, you can like *any* song by its merit, despite its origins. The same goes for live performances, although in that case you're evaluating a lot of visual and social input at the same time. Any time you trust anything beyond the audio or experience you get directly from the band, you run the risk of believing a fiction.

Maybe the Beach Boys didn't play their instruments, maybe they did. By listening to "Good Vibrations" I just can't tell from the music alone. For all I know, Britney Spears is a talented songwriter and producer and "Toxic" was the result of a weekend of recording and all the surrounding press and backstory is fabricated! Maybe the Kaiser Chiefs are talented performers doing songs written by a stealth middle-aged production team and it's a conspiracy to be unravelled. Obviously you have to trust what you're told at some point, but the music remains the same.

Music is largely a social interaction, even when enjoyed alone. Tastes are influenced by what you've been to exposed to, reactions from others, etc.

What 'rockists' and 'anti-rockists' seem not to discuss - and I know cos I surely haven't for most of my time on this board - is what this language and these ideas (of authenticity and manufacture in this specific case) are for. Who benefits? As you see in a lot of the posts upthread the idea of the 'manufactured' is incredibly problematic but also a lot of people believe in it and this belief has definite uses at pretty much every level of the industry.

For an individual listener it provides a readymade way to separate themselves as a real fan/hardcore/true head/whatever from other consumers. For the industry it's a godsend as it creates a language and framework to talk about product, and it's a very strong framework which acts as a real and useful guide for a lot of consumers. This is marketing gold: marketing isn't about persuading people to buy stuff they won't enjoy, because so much of value comes from repeat custom. It's mostly about getting people to notice stuff they would.

To do this you need a language to speak to people in and the discourse of authenticity, creativity and artistry provides that in pop (which isn't to say that the claims of self-expression that underlie these things are false, any more than washing powder doesn't actually clean yr clothes - you have to have a convincing product before you sell it). This discourse has powered a marketing miracle, taking something you flog to teenagers and sustaining a huge adult market for it. Authenticity has kept the "fat cats" DL talks about going for years and years.

I don't for a moment doubt that people who invoke the abstract of authenticity genuinely love music. And also I don't doubt that they loathe a lot of the music which the business invokes authenticity to legitimise. But I do think that we need other ways to talk about and value music (if only for variety's sake!)

Nym - given where Manu's right hand is in that pic, I think he DID pop!

This is wrong, or at least if an anti-rockist says this they're not thinking through things carefully enough.

The point is not that one can distinguish between rockists and anti-rockists in terms of who hears music "authentically" (a more precise word here might be "correctly") - we never hear music authentically/correctly, correct/incorrect is not even a meaningful or workable binary.

We all import "non-musical reasons" into the enjoyment of music. Talking about a band writing their own songs is on the same level as talking about what a girlgroup are wearing in their video clip in this regard. The anti-rockist position is not to assert a greater access to the universal "truth" of a particular piece of music, but to assert that the distinction the rockists use to defend their own superior access to the "truth" is illogical and unjustifiable as an objective universal rule.

(in other regards these two examples are different - what a girlgroup wears in a video clip is something that is concretely discernible, whereas the fact of a band writing their own songs is always processed as a myth rather than empirical fact unless you're in the studio with them at the time. I note this not because I think it's a meaningful distinction for the purposes of our argument, but because it's an interesting example of how poorly the "false consciousness" allegations that rockists fling at pop-listeners map onto what is actually going on)

and the monkees wote orignal songs too but weren't promoted, the monkees wote great songs but they're album tracks.

I HUNT IT AND SLAY

The only guitars to be played are blurry and pink and appear on Creation album covers from 1991. Yup.

"Look! The rockist in his natural habitat..."

"FREEEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWW...ONE MORE TIME!"

Review in Guitar Player magazine: "I looked up from transcribing the chord changes and wondered what strange music I heard. This lick, it was not tasty."

Strictly speaking this is an x-post, but then again maybe not.

http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/winter03/eng-4_files/1914-student-surveyors.jpg

"I think we need to lay the foundations for modern music over there. Has the guitar been electrified yet?"

Splicing the first rockist DNA...

"Tip Drill" to thread.

I mean, Del Shannon, Paul McCartney, Beach Boys, 10cc, ELO, Supertramp, ABC, Duran Duran, Wham!, Prefab Sprout, Thomas Dolby, Scritti Politti, Crowded House, Jellyfish, Dodgy

There is no way that one would call any of these acts rock by any means, they are clearly pop, but still, they wrote or write largely all of their own material.

And when you play power chords you make Euro-Trance!

Ned, come to Toronto so I can buy you a beverage.

Also, continuing from my post from yesterday...if all music was made by Milla this debate would not need to be made at all.
Writes and Plays her own songs + Talent + Saucy Underwear Model == Perfection.

Yum!