define "rockism"

5000 small Eggs
50 pounds medium Onion, chopped
75 Green Bell Peppers, finely chopped
1 1/2 gallons pure Vegetable Oil
52 pounds Butter
6 1/4 gallons Milk
4 gallons chopped Green Onion Tops
2 gallons finely chopped fresh Parsley
Tabasco Pepper Sauce (season to taste)
Crawfish Tails

Saute onions, green peppers in oil until tender. Drain excess oil and set aside. In 12 foot skillet, melt butter. Add sauteed vegetables and stir with 8 foot oak paddles. Combine eggs with milk, Tabasco pepper sauce, and green onion tops.
Pour egg mixture into skillet with melted butter. Stir gently as eggs begin to thicken. Add Garlic Sauce. Top with parsley.
For extra flavor, top with sauteed crawfish tails.
Serve Cajun Omelette with French Bread.

define "rockism" (5 new answers)
Albums where every song rules (119 new answers)
-- Huk-L (handsomishbo...) (webmail), January 27th, 2005 3:49 PM.

I think that's your answer.

I think rockism must be an invitation only club, deliberately secretive and unwelcoming, which is a shame given how open ILX usually is :-(

*(Substitute anything for Rock & Roll in the above instance..)

EVERY THREAD ABOUT ROCKISM IS ABOUT THE DEFINITION OF SAID TERM

"The concept of 'rockism' was coined by Pete Wylie, which was ironic because Wah! Heat were one of the most traditional and rocking outfits of the post-punk era."

Couldn't we have a rockist request hour on Ilm? And nonstop rockist only threads on sundays?
.

rockism is checked somewhat this time by a meticulousness that may put off casual sympathizers

rockism is joining the first bisbee underground

rockism is something to

rockism is like romanticism

How clever. I couldn't have put it more poignantly.

-- Spencer Chow (spencercho...), January 27th, 2005."

So it's like postmodernism? You get to feel smug if you think you know what it is, but you can't actually _explain_ what it is... now I get you!

haha!

(The flaw in this analogy is that rock exists, whereas race does not, but you get the idea.)

Common antonym: popism.

Examples of tendencies sometimes called "rockist": Liking "real instruments" more than turntables, classic rock more than Top 40, "live music" more than the pre-recorded kind, bands more than producers, home listening more than clubbing, albums more than singles, the '70s more than the '90s (rock&roll became "rock" around 1967), personal expression more than a beat you can dance to.

Common antonym: popism.

I think there was a thread were people took this idea to task.

You would never call someone who denigrated people based solely on their gender a homophobe. You would never call someone who denigrated people based solely on their sexual orientation a racist. You would never call someone who denigrated people based solely on their skin color a sexist. So why does it make sense to say someone who criticizes dance music for not adhering to a particular dance paradigm is being rockist?

In other words, I guess my position would be: ideally, we'd have a different word that hints at the more universal definition. Rockism is ok on its own though, assuming we give it a fluid definition. Worst case scenario would be having no word at all.

Sorry, was this linked on this thread? If not, could you please link it? Thanks.

MUSIC; The Rap Against Rockism
By KELEFA SANNEH (NYT) 2144 words
Published: October 31, 2004

Correction Appended

BAD news travels fast, and an embarrassing video travels even faster. By last Sunday morning, one of the Internet's most popular downloads was the hours-old 60-second .wmv file of Ashlee Simpson on ''Saturday Night Live.'' As she and her band stood onstage, her own prerecorded vocals -- from the wrong song -- came blaring through the speakers, and it was too late to start mouthing the words. So she performed a now-infamous little jig, then skulked offstage, while the band (were a few members smirking?) played on. One of 2004's most popular new stars had been exposed as.

As what, exactly? The online verdict came fast and harsh, the way online verdicts usually do. A typical post on her Web site bore the headline, ''Ashlee you are a no talent fraud!'' After that night, everyone knew that Jessica Simpson's telegenic sister was no rock 'n' roll hero -- she wasn't even a rock 'n' roll also-ran. She was merely a lip-synching pop star.

Music critics have a word for this kind of verdict, this knee-jerk backlash against producer-powered idols who didn't spend years touring dive bars. Not a very elegant word, but a useful one. The word is rockism, and among the small but extraordinarily pesky group of people who obsess over this stuff, rockism is a word meant to start fights. The rockism debate began in earnest in the early 1980's, but over the past few years it has heated up, and today, in certain impassioned circles, there is simply nothing worse than a rockist.

A rockist isn't just someone who loves rock 'n' roll, who goes on and on about Bruce Springsteen, who champions ragged-voiced singer-songwriters no one has ever heard of. A rockist is someone who reduces rock 'n' roll to a caricature, then uses that caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher.

Over the past decades, these tendencies have congealed into an ugly sort of common sense. Rock bands record classic albums, while pop stars create ''guilty pleasure'' singles. It's supposed to be self-evident: U2's entire oeuvre deserves respectful consideration, while a spookily seductive song by an R&B singer named Tweet can only be, in the smug words of a recent VH1 special, ''awesomely bad.''

Like rock 'n' roll itself, rockism is full of contradictions: it could mean loving the Strokes (a scruffy guitar band!) or hating them (image-conscious poseurs!) or ignoring them entirely (since everyone knows that music isn't as good as it used to be). But it almost certainly means disdaining not just Ms. Simpson but also Christina Aguilera and Usher and most of the rest of them, grousing about a pop landscape dominated by big-budget spectacles and high-concept photo shoots, reminiscing about a time when the charts were packed with people who had something to say, and meant it, even if that time never actually existed. If this sounds like you, then take a long look in the mirror: you might be a rockist.

Countless critics assail pop stars for not being rock 'n' roll enough, without stopping to wonder why that should be everybody's goal. Or they reward them disproportionately for making rock 'n' roll gestures. Writing in The Chicago Sun-Times this summer, Jim DeRogatis grudgingly praised Ms. Lavigne as ''a teen-pop phenom that discerning adult rock fans can actually admire without feeling (too) guilty,'' partly because Ms. Lavigne ''plays a passable rhythm guitar'' and ''has a hand in writing'' her songs.

Rockism isn't unrelated to older, more familiar prejudices -- that's part of why it's so powerful, and so worth arguing about. The pop star, the disco diva, the lip-syncher, the ''awesomely bad'' hit maker: could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world? Like the anti-disco backlash of 25 years ago, the current rockist consensus seems to reflect not just an idea of how music should be made but also an idea about who should be making it.

If you're interested in -- O.K., mildly obsessed with -- rockism, you can find traces of it just about everywhere. Notice how those tributes to ''Women Who Rock'' sneakily transform ''rock'' from a genre to a verb to a catch-all term of praise. Ever wonder why OutKast and the Roots and Mos Def and the Beastie Boys get taken so much more seriously than other rappers? Maybe because rockist critics love it when hip-hop acts impersonate rock 'n' roll bands. (A recent Rolling Stone review praised the Beastie Boys for scruffily resisting ''the gold-plated phooey currently passing for gangsta.'')

From punk-rock rags to handsomely illustrated journals, rockism permeates the way we think about music. This summer, the literary zine The Believer published a music issue devoted to almost nothing but indie-rock. Two weeks ago, in The New York Times Book Review, Sarah Vowell approvingly recalled Nirvana's rise: ''a group with loud guitars and louder drums knocking the whimpering Mariah Carey off the top of the charts.'' Why did the changing of the guard sound so much like a sexual assault? And when did we all agree that Nirvana's neo-punk was more respectable than Ms. Carey's neo-disco?

Rockism is imperial: it claims the entire musical world as its own. Rock 'n' roll is the unmarked section in the record store, a vague pop-music category that swallows all the others. If you write about music, you're presumed to be a rock critic. There's a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for doo-wop groups and folk singers and disco queens and even rappers -- just so long as they, y'know, rock.

Rockism just won't go away. The rockism debate began when British bands questioned whether the search for raw, guitar-driven authenticity wasn't part of rock 'n' roll's problem, instead of its solution; some new-wave bands emphasized synthesizers and drum machines and makeup and hairspray, instead. ''Rockist'' became for them a term of abuse, and the anti-rockists embraced the inclusive possibilities of a once-derided term: pop. Americans found other terms, but ''rockist'' seems the best way to describe the ugly anti-disco backlash of the late 1970's, which culminated in a full-blown anti-disco rally and the burning of thousands of disco records at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1979: the Boston Tea Party of rockism.

That was a quarter of a century and many genres ago. By the 1990's, the American musical landscape was no longer a battleground between Nirvana and Mariah (if indeed it ever was); it was a fractured, hyper-vivid fantasy of teen-pop stars and R&B pillow-talkers and arena-filling country singers and, above all, rappers. Rock 'n' roll was just one more genre alongside the rest.

Yet many critics failed to notice. Rock 'n' roll doesn't rule the world anymore, but lots of writers still act as if it does. The rules, even today, are: concentrate on making albums, not singles; portray yourself as a rebellious individualist, not an industry pro; give listeners the uncomfortable truth, instead of pandering to their tastes. Overnight celebrities, one-hit-wonders and lip-synchers, step aside.

And just as the anti-disco partisans of a quarter-century ago railed against a bewildering new pop order (partly because disco was so closely associated with black culture and gay culture), current critics rail against a world hopelessly corrupted by hip-hop excess. Since before Sean Combs became Puff Daddy, we've been hearing that mainstream hip-hop was too flashy, too crass, too violent, too ridiculous, unlike those hard-working rock 'n' roll stars we used to have. (This, of course, is one of the most pernicious things about rockism: it finds a way to make rock 'n' roll seem boring.)

Much of the most energetic resistance to rockism can be found online, in blogs and on critic-infested sites like ilovemusic.com, where debates about rockism have become so common that the term itself is something of a running joke. When the editors of a blog called Rockcritics Daily noted that rockism was ''all the rage again,'' they posted dozens of contradictory citations, proving that no one really agrees on what the term means. (By the time you read this article, a slew of indignant refutations and addenda will probably be available online.)

But as more than one online ranter has discovered, it's easier to complain about rockism than it is to get rid of it. You literally can't fight rockism, because the language of righteous struggle is the language of rockism itself. You can argue that the shape-shifting feminist hip-pop of Ms. Aguilera is every bit as radical as the punk rock of the 1970's (and it is), but then you haven't challenged any of the old rockist questions (starting with: Who's more radical?), you've just scribbled in some new answers.

The challenge isn't merely to replace the old list of Great Rock Albums with a new list of Great Pop Songs -- although that would, at the very least, be a nice change of pace. It's to find a way to think about a fluid musical world where it's impossible to separate classics from guilty pleasures. The challenge is to acknowledge that music videos and reality shows and glamorous layouts can be as interesting -- and as influential -- as an old-fashioned album.

In the end, the problem with rockism isn't that it's wrong: all critics are wrong sometimes, and some critics (now doesn't seem like the right time to name names) are wrong almost all the time. The problem with rockism is that it seems increasingly far removed from the way most people actually listen to music.

Are you really pondering the phony distinction between ''great art'' and a ''guilty pleasure'' when you're humming along to the radio? In an era when listeners routinely -- and fearlessly -- pick music by putting a 40-gig iPod on shuffle, surely we have more interesting things to worry about than that someone might be lip-synching on ''Saturday Night Live'' or that some rappers gild their phooey. Good critics are good listeners, and the problem with rockism is that it gets in the way of listening. If you're waiting for some song that conjures up soul or honesty or grit or rebellion, you might miss out on Ciara's ecstatic electro-pop, or Alan Jackson's sly country ballads, or Lloyd Banks's felonious purr.

Rockism makes it hard to hear the glorious, incoherent, corporate-financed, audience-tested mess that passes for popular music these days. To glorify only performers who write their own songs and play their own guitars is to ignore the marketplace that helps create the music we hear in the first place, with its checkbook-chasing superproducers, its audience-obsessed executives and its cred-hungry performers. To obsess over old-fashioned stand-alone geniuses is to forget that lots of the most memorable music is created despite multimillion-dollar deals and spur-of-the-moment collaborations and murky commercial forces. In fact, a lot of great music is created because of those things. And let's stop pretending that serious rock songs will last forever, as if anything could, and that shiny pop songs are inherently disposable, as if that were necessarily a bad thing. Van Morrison's ''Into the Music'' was released the same year as the Sugarhill Gang's ''Rapper's Delight''; which do you hear more often?

That doesn't mean we should stop arguing about Ms. Simpson, or even that we should stop sharing the 60-second clip that may just be this year's best music video. But it does mean we should stop taking it for granted that music isn't as good as it used to be, and it means we should stop being shocked that the rock rules of the 1970's are no longer the law of the land. No doubt our current obsessions and comparisons will come to seem hopelessly blinkered as popular music mutates some more -- listeners and critics alike can't do much more than struggle to keep up. But let's stop trying to hammer young stars into old categories. We have lots of new music to choose from -- we deserve some new prejudices, too.

Correction: November 14, 2004, Sunday An article on Oct. 31 about rockism -- favoritism toward traditional rock 'n' roll over producer-driven genres like disco, rhythm-and-blues and hip-hop -- misstated the Web address for the Internet forum I Love Music, where rockism is often debated. It is www.ilxor.com, not ilovemusic.com.

Yep, cuz one is actually an important, real problem in the world.

In terms of semantics, I completely disagree. The biggest thing ILM has to answer for is the creation of the rockist bogeyman.

(IOW what Matt said, ha)

It was relatively unambiguous what it meant to us when there were just a few people on ILM. But when you've got however many hundred people contributing, it's not possible/desirable to come along to every thread and say 'rockism means x'.

It's about an appeal to authenticity, to objective values of musicianship or whatever. It's one of those things that I kind of understood naturally, because of the ILM discourse that used to exist, and the rockist nonsense that was found all over the place elsewhere ("They don't even write their own songs!" etc.) I guess ILM can't be like that anymore. And it was funny to extend it to other things outside of music. Many people stopped using the term as anything but a joke many years ago. The "isn't it rockist to do x" pretend witch-hunts that went on were a big part of that. Maybe still are. Do a search on ILE and see what you find there for joking about rockism outside music.

There have been nice, patient, descriptions of what it means many times on ILX. I really can't face searching to dredge them up. Sorry.

Don't call people elitist cunts.

What Is Rockism ?

So this thread was a joke? Serves me right for looking at a rockism thread.

"An album is a labour of love, each track carefully crafted and placed in order. Concept albums, such as The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, would crumble into hits and bits if cherry-picked apart by a time-pushed teen with only two quid to spend on Napster. Especially if the shallow culture for renting songs through a subscription service, rather than actually buying them, continues.

Hidden tracks at the end of albums such as Nirvana's In Utero would no longer be a patient fan's secret surprise. New Order would be known as two-hit wonders - most people would only ever buy Bizarre Love Triangle and Blue Monday. [YEAH BCUZ THEY WERE *SUCH* AN ALBUM BAND]

The art of listening to an album from beginning to end, while poring over the cover art and liner notes, started to fade when CDs began to replace vinyl 20 years ago. Digital downloads might just quicken this demise."

It's this:

http://guardianmusic.tumblr.com/post/66372811249/rolling-stones-new-anti-dj-advert-this-is-an

lol

funny they couldn't even find a guitar song to put in the ad as the antithesis to all this anonymous DJ drugging whoring and partying. I was pulling for some Eric Clapton.

did they get the el guincho "bombay" guy to do that? feel like lots of people are ripping him off these days.

https://twitter.com/BEATKINGKONG/status/618845188258029568

internalized rockism

Mark E Smith blamed anti-rockism on Vic Godard in one interview

do you seriously think i give a shit what any of you will says??
― sannef hanna, Friday, January 28, 2005 2:01 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Liking pop music has been part of the listening and critical experience since the beginning
^^that's Alfred on the npr 150 thread

I'm curious about this idea, since the discourse on rockism/anti-rockism seems to rely heavily on a narrative where popular music did not receive proper critical attention in the 20th century - but when for instance I read old Pazz & Jop lists I can't really find this anti-pop sentiment, also when I look back on my own musical education I was always infatuated with radio hits, and so I'm thinking that in order to sell the rockism theory, perhaps some cards were overplayed

however, I recently read Elijah Wald's story of popular music in the 20th century, and he is rather critical of the way American music history has been written esp wrt early stages of jazz (where Paul Whiteman, apparently one of the most popular artists of all time, receives little attention as anything but a white copycat)

I started a Guy Lombardo thread once but hardly anyone replied.

I don't have Wald's book with me rn but I thought his position was a bit more nuanced than "rather critical". He definitely describes these biases or tendencies in the writing of music history but I wasn't sure that he necessarily said it was a bad thing that Duke Ellington gets more press than Guy Lombardo.

The interesting point was that the Beatles were celebrated for doing something similar to what Whiteman did: Whiteman wasn't just a white copycat - he fused jazz with influences from European orchestral music, downplaying elements of improvisation and rhythmic swing.

yeah that's def a simplification on my part

he did point out certain discrepancies between what music was popular and which acts are included not only in the canon but in the narrative of musical history, Paul Whiteman and Guy Lombardo being two good examples

and while he somewhat laments this exclusion from a historical perspective, I think he mostly justifies it aesthetically

Considering that Whiteman commissioned Rhapsody in Blue, I definitely think he deserves a place in the canon.

i always thought the rockism backlash was about the fact that rock no longer felt sufficient as a countercultural enterprise (especially as it became recuperated into capitalist structures). the thing that i feel like is the problem now is that there's been no replacement ideology, so on a macro scale you have an impotent and dispersed set of tiny countercultures/communities and a mainstream that's interesting but also feels more and more separate from that potential for disruption. overdetermining description of both sides, i know, but i feel like that's the narrative.