Brainstorming thanks to the revive of
this thread...
One thing I've noticed that's a major difference between the approach of music journalism of the late 80s/mid 90s and today is that hype has a different form of targetting, depending on genre.
Rock writing has almost exclusively ditched "scenes" and have now become overly eager to mark singular bands/artists as the future "sacred cows", which is almost counter-intuitive. As I mentioned in the thread linked above, the two consistent elements I see that mark a rock band as a scared cow are a) time, and b) and being discovered EN MASSE after said band's original inception has already fallen apart.. Pixies and Slint, to name two examples. But thanks to a lot of modern factors and protocols, it's easy to cultivate an entire hivemind if you're in a relative position of power and influence in rock journalism. (See The Arcade Fire... again, nothing against that band at all. But without that Pitchfork review, where would they be?)
That said, this isn't a black-and-white thing.. scenes/sounds are DEFINITELY still hyped.. look at hip-hop and dance music -- especially in the same context.. grime, crunk, screw, reggaeton, etc. Although this is nothing new to dance music, this is somewhat new to hip-hop. (but again with exceptions.. "D.A.I.S.Y. age and Five Percent were terms thrown around in the early 90s too, granted.)
In any case, this is just me batting ideas around in my head, and forgive me for not having a major point, other than this general sense in rock writing that everyone wants to be the first to discover a "new thing", even if it's not a new thing and the writing must somehow be convincing enough to exemplify how "new" it is, often for the sake of the writing's integrity. It's a new form of writing as "dream publicist" essentially.
(ugh, i'm going to regret this thread...)
― donut ferry (donut), Monday, 15 August 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)
ok granted, although history makes it easy to forget, I forgot when "Gangsta Rap" was considered a "trend". SO forget what I said about "scenes" being a relatively new thing to hip hop.
― donut ferry (donut), Monday, 15 August 2005 22:05 (twenty years ago)
i think the "ditching scenes" thing is just the music press acknowledging that a good band can come from anywhere, and that after you've milked the couple of important regional rock scenes dry, there's not much left unless you wanna pick a city at random and call it the next big hotspot.
― sittin here la la waitin for my ya ya (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 15 August 2005 22:14 (twenty years ago)