It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

For the 1981 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Critics' Poll, Lester Bangs turned in a blank ballot, protesting the worthless state of rock and roll. "New Wave has terminated in thudding hollow Xeroxes of poses that aren't even annoying anymore," he wrote. "Rap is nothing, or not enough. Jazz does not exist as a musical form with anything new to say. And the rest of rock is recycling various formulae forever. I don't know what I'm going to write about - music is the only thing in the world I really care about - but I simply cannot pretend to find anything compelling in the choice between pap and mud."

i think 'inability to have critical perspective on own burnout' is this whole other thing y'know

is that the year he interviewed captain beefheart about retiring

thanks for finding the paragraph i was gonna paraphrase, scott

also bangs admitted to wailing the stones were dead and resurrected within a single night in 1965. Scott's point is that he's tired of boomer rock critics who didn't hesitate to dismiss anything that didn't fit their limitied view, and damn right that Bangs is stellar example (even if I don't begrudge the fact as much).

see the sad thing is when i finally outlive the last baby boomer i'll have to read long articles about the legacy of wilco written by generation x people. and i might not outlive all of generation x!

no you won't, unless you want to

haha i meant "reading long articles about wilco" not "surviving gen x" but i guess that's true too

Did rap constitute a "swath" of music in 1981, though? How much do you fault the guy for a quote like this:

"I wrote in another publication: 'What I did (in 1981) was what almost everyone else...did: listened to old music, when I listened at all'. So I get a letter from one kid berating me for listing Beck, Bogert, and Appice as a listening preference over, say, X or Joy Division: 'How can you be so nostalgic? Don't you know there are all kinds of great new groups like the Fall, Fad Gadget, the Dickies, Clock DVA, and Orange Juice?'"

you know, you're still allowed to think bangs was a smart, observant rock critic and still accept that other people will not be wrong find his perspective heavy on the emotion and short on perspective

haha woops at the double "perspective" but c'mon is it really hard to grasp someone having this complaint about bangs even if had a good fad gadget zing and liked half japanese

No, I have the same complaint but he was good and I thought the "dismiss large swaths of music" and "saying culture is worthless for pretty solipsistic reasons" comments were overstated.

if we're going to chalk his dismissal of 1981 up to critical burnout I'd say you've standing on small semantic ground

tbh i'm not entirely sure what relevance bangs had to the wider conversation or how we ended up talking about him

we were talking about rock critics in a thread about rock criticism, scott said he was sick of all the old rock critics for being so dismissive of stuff outside their purview and some folks went "SURELY you don't mean BANGS" etc...

scott said he was sick of all the old rock critics for being so dismissive of stuff outside their purview and some folks went "SURELY you don't mean BANGS" piled on the hyperbole.

bangs's dismissal of the-culture-as-is wasn't a matter of reverence for the canon, though. i don't know, i have now reached the point where it's so long since i read them i can't remember which bits are bangs and which meltzer: who had the rather facepalm bit re: MAYBE THE CLASH ARE ENOUGH TO GIVE US HOPE

Bangs was preoccupied with both novelty and music-as-transgression, values which I don't find particularly relevant. good writer though.

Fwiw, Scott also said, "i kinda can't take them seriously about music" and I just don't happen to feel the same about the guy who wrote, say, the liner notes to the Them reissue (Bangs) or parts or The Aesthetics of Rock. Because I don't know how many music critics I take more seriously than those guys.

meltzer wrote BOC lyrics so he is the greatest rock writer ever

I think Bangs' '81 ballot, or thoughts about 1979, needs to be placed in the context of his life. Just about everyone who writes about pop music for a long time (Christgau being the obvious exception, and even he has his moments) hits a point where disengagement/frustration starts to creep in. Generally, re-engagement happens soon enough. The timeline is different for everybody. My guess is that Bangs' '81 ballot was just a stop along the way, and had he lived, he would have found lots to enthuse about soon enough.

was contend making a point or just expressing the same taste he always does there

― Barack 2 Chainz Obama (some dude), Friday, July 20, 2012 8:56 AM (1 hour ago)

well, i was trying to make the point that canon, in its current, informal incarnation, remains both solid and influential. this seems to be true despite big changes in tastes, values and media over the past few decades, and despite the fact that the established canon and its promoters have been subject to aggressive interrogation. i don't accept that canon is weaker in relation to music than to film and literature. it's different, sure, but the landscape in question is no less well mapped out. while popular taste may be as big a part of what establishes canon as critical opinion, one of the principal features of canon is durability. once enshrined, songs, albums and artists tend to stay stuck there for a good, long while. i love exile on main street, but i have to believe that its continued elevation in the rock canon is as much a product of its canonization as anything else.

i don't think i'm making a big or controversial point here, but that was the essence of my argument. i also spun out into pointless griping about the retrograde features of the late 20th century pop canon, but only cuz that's what i do.

i was just joking around dude cause you never seem to provide much evidence that your taste contradicts the "rock albums by white guys are the best" philosophy you mocked

this was not written by an intern.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/11/the_ten_bands_i_will_be_forced_to_listen_to_in_hell_salpart//

does anyone still read salon? i have no idea.

haha a good chunk of that piece is clearly mitigated by the author proclaiming himself to be a total asshole who is going to hell

While it’s true that one man’s hell band may be another man’s rockin’ ceiling poster, I think we can all agree that that this whiny, falsely poetic, utterly self-satisfied unit, slated to ruin every wedding from now until the name “Duritz” is struck from the connubial lexicon by writ of post-apocalyptic parliament, is an obvious candidate for The Dark Prince’s most damned playlist. They are melody made torment, choruses made grief, hooks of despondency and woe, a steamy squirt of maudlin pandering.

And I thought I was verbose.

this guy is the voltron that forms when 5 middle-aged ilxors unite

Honour the hellfire.

terry adams from nrbq is in my store right now and he just told me that he hasn't heard a bob dylan album since blonde on blonde came out. he's got bangs and meltzer beat by a mile!

xp Well, that article is hits # 3 and 4 of only 83 for "fauxllectual" so there's that.

i was just joking around dude cause you never seem to provide much evidence that your taste contradicts the "rock albums by white guys are the best" philosophy you mocked

lol, yeah, it doesn't

i don't object to people liking whatever, though. do object to the crushing over-representation of certain voices in the canon-building process.

that's good. you should still walk the walk and listen to more, though.

but i like blue oyster cult a lot. i mean a lot a lot. you don't understand.

i can't argue with that.

salon piece is so OTT hyperbolic it doesn't really bother. even when he misrepresents the Beach Boys.

one of the principal features of canon is durability. once enshrined, songs, albums and artists tend to stay stuck there for a good, long while. i love exile on main street, but i have to believe that its continued elevation in the rock canon is as much a product of its canonization as anything else.

Is the argument, then, that its reinforcement through the years as canon material has been partly obligatory?

i'm listening to nas right now

i don't know if i'm enforcing or upsetting the canon

is that actually any good...?

perhaps incorrectly assuming you were listening to the new one...

um kinda? it's something! nas is insane. it's super overblown and odd in a way i can't articulate.

but i guess he's been crazy for a long time.

i mean it's not as good as his best ones.

Is the argument, then, that its reinforcement through the years as canon material has been partly obligatory?

― timellison, Friday, July 20, 2012 12:50 PM (23 minutes ago)

i'd probably say both necessary and self-perpetuating. obligatory in the sense that, once granted, canon doesn't rescind its esteem quickly. again, i'm not trying to make any novel argument about the nature of canon, just saying the canon of pop significance constructed between the 60s and 90s still seems to be quite influential. the best anyone can do is to glue new bits onto its existing body, perhaps at the same rate that time and indifference pry others loose (the way punk and new wave seemed to replace elvis and the icons of the early rock & roll era). this canon, "the canon", is not easily replaced or subverted, and it doesn't seem to have been rendered irrelevant by digital democratization.

doh, i should say the 90s seemed to occasion/accompany a gradual diminishment in the importance attached to the early rock era. rap, boy bands, indie rock, grunge: wasn't much connection from the present back. punk & new wave folks were obviously very closely connected to early rockers, the 50s in general.

But you were talking specifically about Exile on Main Street and I didn't know if you were speculating about its continued canon presence as an example of obligatory deference as opposed to genuine current taste.

It's #11 on the Pitchfork '70s list.

I kind of see most early punk as more connected to non-hippie 60s rock (e.g. girl groups, garage bands) than to 50s rock and roll, actually.

xpost

oh, i don't know that there's a difference. or rather, i wasn't intending to make a distinction. the two are interlinked, in that taste shapes canon just as canon shapes taste.

the most visible and codified aspects of canon are often out of step with actual popular and/or critical taste (the rock and roll hall of fame is an example of this), while our understanding of canon typically lags behind its actual formation.

that was xp to tim. this to sund4r:

yeah, that's probably fair. still, i do think that the likes of chuck berry and elvis loomed large over the punk/new wave era, either as direct or as odious posterity. beyond musical influence, many aspects of late 70s and early-mid 80s culture seemed like a deliberate response to images and ideals of midcentury modernity.

"...either as direct influences or as odious posterity."

I think Bangs' '81 ballot, or thoughts about 1979, needs to be placed in the context of his life. Just about everyone who writes about pop music for a long time (Christgau being the obvious exception, and even he has his moments) hits a point where disengagement/frustration starts to creep in. Generally, re-engagement happens soon enough. The timeline is different for everybody. My guess is that Bangs' '81 ballot was just a stop along the way, and had he lived, he would have found lots to enthuse about soon enough.

Respectfully disagree on this point, Clemenza. Bangs's alienation from it all, in the last couple years of his life especially, seemed pretty deep-rooted and consistent. It was a theme he returned to often (comes out even more in some of the interviews he gave at the time), and a few pet artists aside, he really did seem disgusted with the direction the culture in general was headed in (his oft-repeated refrain was that everything had turned into People magazine). It's all (useless) conjecture, of course, but given the ferocity with which he made such claims, again and again, I kind of doubt his feelings on this would have been reversible. Though sure, there likely would always have been a band or two around that he was interested in (but enough to compel him to remain a "rock critic"? I doubt it). Worth remembering, maybe, that there were a lot of first-generation critics around this time, less vocal perhaps in their alienation than Bangs or Meltzer, who dropped off the scene somewhere around this time also, i.e., probably half the contributors in Stranded.

My main point: I don't think Bangs's '81 ballot (which at the time was the funniest thing I'd ever read in my life up to that point) was any kind of aberration, or a "stop along the way."

Ah I think Bangs wouldve probably cone back around to hardcore after SST started getting weird/ambitious; I'm sure he'd have been an avid Meat Puppets/Butthole Surfers fan...