A Paler Shade of White---Sasha Frere-Jones Podcast and New Yorker article Criticizing Indie Rock for Failing to Incorporate African-American Influences

Well, he had 900+ ILM posts to draw inspiration from.

except Carl Wilson really didn't need them, dude can think for himself

yeah, while I wouldn't be shocked if he read part of this thread, there was nothing here that was obviously lifted for the piece. The problems are pretty obvious, and his points re: class went beyond most of the zings here.

Just re-read the Slate piece. Yup, still great.

It's been pointed out elsewhere on this site but the first two chapters of Wilson's forthcoming book will find their way to anyone who emails letstalkaboutceline at yahoo dot com.

Yes, I got those two chapters and thought they were great - no idea if he can sustain that over the length of a whole book, though?

I haven't requested the PDF (gonna wait to read the whole book) but I have no trouble imagining he can sustain it, Carl's a great writer.

so I've already said my piece way up there somewhere. but will add that what SFJ is really bemoaning, in my opinion, is some kind of irretrievable loss. the romance of black music, if you will. I know what that means. I used to go fishing in West Tenn. with my father. We went to a place called Reelfoot Lake, where extreme NW Tenn., SW Ky. and SE Missouri meet. a swamp. and I used to hear Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James on this station from somewhere up there, coming across that weird waste of stumps and cypress trees, in the middle of nowhere. that to me was the blues, and it was mysterious. now, of course, I know more about where that stuff came from. but it still seems a bit strange to me, as all good art perhaps does. SFJ might not have ever gone to that particular place, but seems to me that's what he's talking about. the removal of historical perspective, distance and mystery from music-making. and the removal of racially based shit, too, which can only be healthy for the body politic but perhaps not so good for...poetry, or something. not to say that poetry depends on distance, but maybe it does in some small part. and let me just add that I grew up maybe 200 miles from bluesworld (Memphis, N. Miss., W. Tenn.) but it was another world. so the inability of indie people to "swing" or "use space" or whatever SFJ thinks they should be doing, to use that old-time black-music stuff (which I firmly believe in myself) doesn't seem such a pretext for criticism. this whole country is fucked when it comes to that stuff, if it weren't we'd all be down in New Orleans shoring up the levees and taking stock of our heritage.

the romance of black music

This is a great subject for a full-length essay, and not restricted to a white author.

On "the romance of black music": I read a book called Smokestack Lightning, by a couple of guys who worked with Wynton Marsalis, that is mostly about barbecue but also about the romance of black culture being lost (in barbecue) in recent times; but they have a lot to say about music too, as they travel mostly through the south and other "great migration" strongholds like Chicago and St. Louis. Great book, and relevant here in an indirect way.

I don't think the dissapearance of mystery/romance from music has been a exclusive to any one race. Whisperin Ed, your story rings a bell with me and I could tell a similar story about a hundred what-was-THAT?! experiences of hearing something new and impossible to place in my experience and being floored by it, but in my experience it hasn't been just from black nor just from white musicians (nor just white musicians doing "black" musics). Maybe part of what Frere-Jones has keyed into and regrets is the way the strangeness that a lot of music fans, and certainly a lot of music critics, prize in music has (in a lot of indie music) been reduced to mere eccentricity. What music today is larger than life? That's what I want to hear.

lets all be honest and admit that what we're talking about is the loss of romance associated with certain black musics to a specific generation... still plenty of "kids" (black and non-black) who see a romance in contemporary (and, frankly, older) black music.

Max, I think it depends on how you read "romance". As early teens my friends and I were your typical white gangster herbs (yeah yeah), listening to the Dogs and NWA and cracking up. That music had a kind of romance, I guess, but I don't think that's the romance that Elvis or Alex Chilton or David Byrne felt.

Joshua Clover responds, giving Hall & Oates their proper place.

max, I think that's what Frere-Jones was talking about, how he thinks white indie kids are shying away from that hallowed hipster romance with black music, but I'm driving at a different point. Country has lost its mystery/romance for me, though I still hear and like some current stuff. And that happened to folk music a long time ago. Are those what you'd call black musics? I'm much more likely to feel that romance about older records in general lately, music overall seems less wild now, and blackness isn't somehow code for wildness.

"music overall seems less wild now" and I seem like a hundred year old coot. Kids, in my day ...

for a lot of people, the black music that we're talking about (blues and r&b i guess? i dont know exactly what we mean) still holds a certain amount of romance, and it seems to me that the loss of romance is connected more to age than to the progression of time, but im willing to say that the "romance" of early-20th-century black music is different somehow from the "romance" of contemporary black music.

what this line of questioning has to do with sfj's article, im not sure... but one of my major problems with it is what seems like a kind of mysticization or romanticization of "black music" that im not sure is fully explored. i think wilson's best point is that SFJs piece reads more like a first draft than a published essay.

I'd agree, the New Yorker piece treated certain black styles as a magic cure-all for a sickness he'd improperly diagnosed, and the rough draft looseness was oddly bloggy. I think he's a much better and more interesting and more enjoyable writer than this almost all the time, but the glaring exceptions seem to happen when he's on his White Guilt Supremacist hobbyhorse.

my blues is house music and it's for many of the same reasons mentioned in the last few posts. for the longest time i have wanted to write about it. i used to record house music with a guy from deep on the south side of chicago (he was black, i am white, both gay). needless to say i think a lot of the romance was born out of hardship (economic, racial and sexual prejudice, drugs, shitty jobs) which was subverted when we played together - it made everything that much more powerful (house is about escape and release and deep spirituality). he is gone now, but i will never forget those times. they were real in a way that is hard to put into words without succumbing to cliche or the authenticity police. i don't know if that's what SFJ is talking about because i haven't read the piece yet, but i suspect it's related.

You know, I just figured out this wasn't a revive. I just assumed it was, like, from 2005 or something. Someone better send the kicked-out-of Indieville memo to TV On The Radio...

there was some clusterfuck thread from a few years back, not the emp one, where stormy or someone pretty much called out sasha to his face (sfj was posting on the thread) regarding how Ui didn't sound very "black" or something. he dodged the question IIRC. anyone know what i'm talking about??

If forced to choose between tolerating some boringly undersexed rock music and reviving the, er, "vigorous" sexual politics of cock rock

I've often thought that a lot of emo has a kind of wounded-man misogyny that's not all that far removed from some Zeppelin stuff. Also there's a fair amount condescension to women, although nothing quite as unsubtle as what you'd hear in most 70s cock rock.

And yeah, that Wilson article. Wow.

Max, I think it depends on how you read "romance". As early teens my friends and I were your typical white gangster herbs (yeah yeah), listening to the Dogs and NWA and cracking up. That music had a kind of romance, I guess, but I don't think that's the romance that Elvis or Alex Chilton or David Byrne felt.

-- Euler, Friday, 19 October 2007 02:45 (2 hours ago) Link

lol @ reading universal profundity from anecdotal experience

rap isn't a joke to everyone

not saying its DEADLY SERIOUS BUSINESS but yr perspective is v. v. http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspect5es.gif

Hurting OTM re: emo but I didn't realize it was intended to be read as anything else. Blue October "Hate Me Today" worst offender evar in this regard, if not technically emo.

I believe the 'romance' exists primarily in the experience of the listener, not the music itself. Generally music + nostalgia evokes a feeling of romance. That's why every generation goes through the same tired criticism that music au courant just doesn't have it anymore. Circumstances change, good musicians don't and as long as talent is still in our gene pool it'll manifest itself in one genre or another.

Summertime is romance... Shook Ones is romance.

I've been thinking about this and, that he manages to troll all the free-weekly/blog ppl so successfully is kind Madonna-In-Her-Primesque from where I sit is really totally OTM. This is totally SFJ's "Like A Prayer" video, if not song.

(white working-class culture once had a kind of significant berth in rock 'n' roll, too.

xpost to A, LS

Still does in UK indie - Arctic Monkeys, The View many more - not so much in US, no?

In before Anglo zing squad--using the Arctic Monkeys as an example of a working class band is pretty wrong, they're as middle class as I am. UK indie is more public school than it's ever been (in the UK public school = fee paying school.))

Yeah, I agree with that about the public school- ness of UK indie - maybe you're right about the AMs being middle- class, I honestly don't know, but the perspective they write from seems to come from that grubby white collar interstice between lower- middle and working class; and they appear too young to have been to uni before forming the band?

It's a middle class thing rather than a public school thing... AMs are a bad band to use when talking about "that grubby white collar interstice between lower- middle and working class" really, Hard Fi are a much better example. Remember that HF are the band that got butthurt when Simon Amstell made a joke about IT technicians, and Hard Fi were all "WE MAKE MUSIC FOR THE HONEST HARD-WORKING MAN THAT RESETS THE E-MAIL SERVER".

rap isn't a joke to everyone

this too is a rather romantic stance, in the strict sense of the term man - jbill otm!

Yeah, I agree with that about the public school- ness of UK indie

I don't see the problem with that.

In the 70s, most of the best British music was made by people with an art school background.

An art school and a public school are not even remotely the same.

rap isn't a joke to everyone

this too is a rather romantic stance, in the strict sense of the term man - jbill otm!

-- J0hn D., Friday, 19 October 2007 11:46 (1 hour ago) Link

uh i think i was implying the same thing as jbill actually

a thread about him on one popular music message board had racked up almost 1,000 posts by yesterday lunchtime by, well, claiming that Arcade Fire aren't funky enough.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/10/is_indie_too_white.html

Wonky first sentence there, Lynskey.

Wonky first sentenceskull bone structure there, Lynskey.

Fixed.

The Guardian's music ed posts (semi)covertly to it's blogs (as MHann)? Weird.

^^^found this weird. Not as weird as the Graun's current pop hardon for all things poptimist and right-wing, but still.

Not "semi-covertly", but under my own name. I often post on Guardian blogs. What's so weird about joining in a discussion we are encouraging? Intrigued to know we have a "hardon" for things rightwing as well. Hadn't noticed myself, but there you go. What would I know? Good to see you're as rational as ever, Dom, and not at all embittered about anything.

^^^ban

Sorry for posting under a covert name here, but I wanted to post on another thread recently without being called a cunt, so I changed and didn't get round to changing back. I'll leave you to your bile now.

Big Al's lead review is gonna open with another "Nerds on the internet, doing the shopping for their mum" paragraph next week, then.

It was me not Dom that said semi-covertly. I have never been employed by The Guradian but have bought it a lot so maybe you should show more respect.

You psted with a contraction of yr own name, and no title, which might be useful seeing as yr name and position is not that known to the majority of Guardian readers.

(xpost)

Misspelling of Guardian not intentional.

Come on now, let the man enjoy his persecution complex in peace. It's Friday, live and let live.

deej---rap isn't a joke to me, hasn't been for going on 17 years, and arguably longer, but when I was 13 years old it was "romantic" in a way tinged with jokiness and irony. I still see the same thing with a lot of---by no means all---white appreciation of r&b/rap today. So my point was that Max's view that romance remained among white appreciation of black music today was that this needed to be unpacked, and to see what the non-joky romance looks like, does it resemble whatever Elvis and Byrne etc., felt.

You can still think this perspective is suspect, of course.

I'm not going to lock Stephin Merritt in a cupboard and bombard him with Mobb Deep albums until he repents.

I read this as "until he represents."

Which would be a funny line.

stephin merritt reps the bridge

cambridge?

oh god why is this thread still happening

for the record I think SFJ is suspect in his logic but not in the basic supposition; the difference is that I don't have to listen to and opine about Arcade Fire for a living, and that no one gives an eff what I have to say about it

the dialogue has started -- MAY A THOUSAND BACKBEATS BOOM FROM THE SWEATER_WEARING SHAGGY_HAIRED BANDS OF W"BURG