Sorry, I know, "here we go again." But I was surprised to discover that this term has some currency--and utility--outside the ILX context. Here is a post from a film mailing list, which was meant to clarify the notion of rockism after a few posters had taken some gleeful swipes at "American Idol" and "pop." The URL of the post is http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/10326. Sorry about the formatting problems.
In a message dated 5/27/04 11:47:22 AM, j_christley@y... writes:> I agree with your "state of the world" thing, but what is rockist cant?
>
> At least we can all agree that Tom Waits' golden throat blows all that R&B
> yodelling clean off the map.
>
No, we can't ALL agree on that! I cannot believe you actually said that!!! As
if it were common knowledge, tacit even!!! Grrrrrrrrrr!!! But I will explain
why at least I can't agree by explaining what rockist cant means.
Just as one can spout off racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. cant, one can also
spout off rockist cant and there are correlations between the two
afflictions. It comes from the term rockism and has its origins in that moment
when
rock-n-roll matured into rock, its modernist manifestation, and began to foster
a
variety of myths that helped define 1960s countercultures. One characteristic
of the discourse is the desire to maintain a distance from the commodification
it associates with mass culture and all the attendant fears that association
carried, particularly an engulfing femininity. Another characteristic would be
a transasethetic quality that it shares with the great monuments to modernity
in architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe). In
short, rockism is the upholding of rock’s modernist virtues as they became
institutionalized and, as with most institutions, averse to change.
What happens, then, is that a high/low stratification gets replicated within
mass culture. And the tension gets played out as a series of rock vs. pop
dichotomies, with various disenfranchised social groups associated with the pop
side of the equation: albums vs. singles; author vs. consumer; interpretive vs.
utilitarian, etc.
Now, like any critical framework, you can Swiss cheese this up and find
countless artists that straddle both categories, thus making the framework
supposedly untenable. I'll preempt by nominating the Pet Shop Boys and, perhaps
my
all-time fave band, New Order. But I still think the rock/pop dichotomy is a
useful precept because it reminds us that one can never assume certain values in
music (interpretation, Tom Waits) to be universal.
So, for instance, if you believe all music must be available for the mind to
interpret, then you're not going to understand tons of music that is available
for the body to dance to (heaven forbid!): disco, house, some techno, R&B.
If, perhaps in an auteurist spirit, you privilege the author for providing you
with such mind work (or the music itself begs interpretation), then you'll be
deaf to music that privileges the consumer, music that resists interpretation
or renders it moot. Most of the lyrics in disco, R&B, etc. are blank so that
the consumer can project upon them, dance to them, fuck to them, whatnot. And
sometimes, as in tons of dance music, there's not even an author in any
traditional sense to privilege.
Again, there are fine to distinctions to made, especially to buck some sort
of mind/body dualism. Creedence Clearwater Revival mean to mean, privileging
John Fogerty if not Stu Cook. But if you can't dance to much of their music, you
oughta get your butt cheeks checked (I recall a DJ throwing the meaning-laden
"Fortunate Son" into the mix to excellent effect one euphoric evening of
clubbing in the mid-90s). Similarly, Black Box and Next are designed for the
dancefloor and the bedroom but you can't help guffaw at the cheek of the samples
in
"Ride on Time" or the single entendres in "Too Close" or "Butta Love." And
dancefloor mainstays Pet Shop Boys are so heady that they make you wonder
whether any political platform should be based on rational, face-to-face
communication.
One of the many things that makes American Idol so thrilling to look forward
to each week is that my man Simon articulates this pop side equation without
even explicitly trying to. Rock voices get continually shafted not only for
their indifference to pitch but also for their difficulty in being recuperated
by
the song doctors and image consultants of the pop machine. Take the World
Idol extravaganza, for instance. The Norway entry sang "Come As You Are" (I
believe) by Nirvana. He did a good job but Simon asked him if he realized the
incompatibility of singing a Nirvana song (standing for noncomformity and a
disdain
for the commercial) on a show where you're vying for a chance to be a puppet.
Or a kinder way of putting it - on a show where you don't get to be an author
who means to mean.
This pop machine burps up more masterpieces than you can possibly imagine.
But it's also responsible for hours and hours of dreck and for that reason, I
fear for Fantasia. She's really the only candidate in the history of American
Idol to have any art in her voice. Thus I don't think she'd be well served by
the Idol machine. She needs to go down to Muscle Shoals for some greasy ass
funk, some classic blues. I'm thinking Ann Peebles, Millie Jackson, Esther
Phillips. Instead, she'll be fed Diane Warren and Desmond Child hand-me-downs
(although some nuggets from Linda Perry and Gregg Alexander might work).
And she'll still be great. She'll sing her ass off on those, right, vapid
slabs of bombast just like Mary J. Blige sang her ass off on a typical piece of
Warren product back in 1999. But I pray she gets some unvapid ones or gets to
write her own.
But it won't matter that much with her. Because I'm also thinking of Aretha
Franklin. Yes, Bill, she's that good. And here's where we get into that
"screaming" (yodelling?!???) stuff. Fantasia proved her enormous flexibility
with a
subtle, gut-wrenchingly gorgeous reading of "Summertime" (yes, don't worry -
tradition lives!!). But reaching for the rafters isn't always dreaded excess or
a will to power. Robert Christgau said it best in relation to Aretha: "Guided
indiscretion, that's the key--her great gift is her voice, but her genius is
her bad taste." The same can already be said for Fantasia. Her "screaming" will
be its own reward and she'll transform that vapidity into something you just
gotta hear again and again.
All this is why I am so enraged with the blanket condemnations of pop in the
Idol screeds here. They're so unexamined. Jamie, what kind of R&B are you
talking about exactly? I assume you're not referring to the 1950s R&B of Hank
Ballard, Wynonie Harris, Roy Brown, etc. But you're not going to understand
Babyface or Lisa Stansfield or Aaliyah or Kelly Price or Brandy or Boyz II Men
or
Next or Mary J. Blige or Erykah Badu or, ok, R. Kelly with a Tom Waits
framework. He means to mean; most of the above don't. And if you don't think
Waits'
croak get wearying across a full-length, then you owe it to yourself to at least
seek out the Sugar & Poison compilation released in 1996 by Virgin in England.
Critic/compiler David Toop goes against the idea of post-60s R&B as little
more than smooth groove, quiet storm fuck songs and instead plumbs 70s Isley
Brothers, Tashan, Loleatta Holloway, Loose Ends, Zapp, Luther Vandross, etc. for
premillennial tension and unspecific dread. A landmark recon job!
For the record, I like Waits a great deal but he's sitting on one mighty
inconsistent oeuvre (that Alice thang from a year or so ago was a disaster). And
I'll take Neil Young over any of the R&B named above, inconsistencies and all.
Yes, of course, neither would make it on Idol. But to assume that
automatically makes for great art while winning Idol wouldn't is to succumb to
the
vagaries of rockism.
Damien's post is more problematic because the era of (hell even???) Sinatra,
Dearie, Clooney, Dennis, Baker, etc. is typically referred to as pre-rock pop.
Nevertheless, interpretation and the author (as singer) are clearly central
to the judgment. And while it wouldn't be 100% correct to call this rockist, it
certainly shares with rockism an aversion to change. If you think great
interpretations of the great pre-rock songwriters are dead, you clearly didn't
hear
Fantasia own "Summertime." And if you think the songwriters themselves are
dead, check out Stephin Merrit/The Magnetic Fields.
But the really infuriating thing about your post is that there actually WAS a
crooner obsessed with this pop past on American Idol this season. No matter
what anyone thought of John Stevens, no one could possibly claim that his voice
was "all about bombast." Emotionally meaningless, maybe. I found it a bit
one-note myself although he could do wonders with the songbook of Paul Heaton
(look him up). But that's besides the the point. You obviously didn't watch Idol
enough to know what it was "all about" and thus shouldn't have made such a
sweeping condemnation of it.
J-P, your post didn't bug me as much. But there's tons of 80s/90s stuff out
there for a Tina Turner fan. Check out Blige and Badu above. They're
jaw-dropping! In general, though, how much do people on this list actually know
about
artists who rose in the 1980s and 1990s to rip on them so ignorantly? All this
reminds me of an anecdote from an early Pauline Kael book (it may be Kiss
Kiss). It's been eons since I read it so my memory may be clouded. But it was
about her encounter with a sort of jaded aesthete who could barely get out of
bed
or couldn't wait to get to bed or something like that. Kael was enraged at his
chic laziness while she tried to make her days longer in order to incorporate
all the things she wanted to see/write about. Mind you, I'm no big fan of
Kael but I admire this sentiment. I spend so much time trying to keep up with
the
new (o9, Kanye West) and the old (my man James Reese Europe beat Berlin out
of the gate, though not Cohan) (and that's just music) that it really turns my
stomach to hear these "things were better" cries.
Please please please, people! No more! They take too long to respond to.