Rock gods and things that have just.... receded.

xp yes that is otm. maybe something to do abundance of negativity endemic to the internet/social media & people resenting others that add to that by choice? but this doesn't apply to everyone: criticizing Beyonce is heresy, but 'Nickelback sucks lmao' has reached 'jokes about airplane food' levels of hacky cliche. dunking on Arcade Fire also acceptable bc they've violated their public persona oath. feel like it's related to increased social awareness and support and recognition of the discriminated and disadvantage that's simultaneous with the spread of childish & reductive phrases like 'garbage person' or 'garbage opinions.' and describing anything as a 'dumpster fire.'

Maybe the underlying assumption is that music – even so-called 'pop' music – isn't as crucial a cultural battleground as certain critics make it out to be (in part because writing about music implies a necessary socio-politicisation due to the recourse to language). Hence a certain degree of indifference towards public expressions of musical disgust: they have no bearing on anything that actually matters. The 'real' fight takes place elsewhere.

Right. (most) everyone is a cultural polyglot, it's not weird at all to rep Metallica and Madonna and Lil Peep in the same breath. The cultural battleground of HIGH FIDELITY type record/book/movie store clerks has vanished, thankfully. Now the argument or the 'fight' is about whether something matters, whether it adds to the culture, what it's saying, etc. Purely aesthetic disgust is frowned upon because it adds nothing to the conversation. you're otm that those opinions have no bearing on anything that actually matters.

As for Rock Gods mentioned in the thread title, the signifier of "rock" has become so disconnected from its original connotations that it's meaningless. Energy drinks, software companies, programming job listings, corporate correspondence are all rockin' rockstars. I supposed the same bleaching happened with "swinging" between the 1930s and 70s, growing more anodyne with each decade.

Now the argument or the 'fight' is about whether something matters, whether it adds to the culture, what it's saying, etc. Purely aesthetic disgust is frowned upon because it adds nothing to the conversation. you're otm that those opinions have no bearing on anything that actually matters.

I feel like rock criticism has always had strong tendencies towards this approach, honestly. Criticisms of e.g. Queen were so often about their purported fascist overtones as opposed to, say, "I hate the tone of Brian May's guitar".

I mean, what was the rockism that has supposedly been vanquished, if not an emphasis on "whether something matters, whether it adds to the culture, what it's saying, etc."?

(It sure wasn't about loving Queen or Rush or even Led Zeppelin.)

the whole fascist thing with Queen always seemed so weird to me? like get a sense of camp

Yeah, I agree. I wasn't advocating for this approach wrt any period.

ums you probably shouldn't click on that thread then

i'm too busy working on my "we will rock you"/"bodak yellow" mashup

I recall Run DMC saying they got a ton of shit for the trainers stuff.
There must be a ton of hiphop which is critical of that kind of thing?

A few questions about poptimism... I know I'm a few years late.

- I thought lots of poptimists (not to be confused with regular pop fans who want respect and write thinkpieces) were critical of the glorification of wealth in pop, with other similar critiques?

- Are actual poptimists very small in number but general pop fans benefited from it and taken their talking points?

- does it generally cut off somewhere in the 70s? Dadrockers tend to like Abba, old girl groups and pop music which was written by people outside the bands and produced by people like Spector and Meek.

- has pop really benefited from this globally? I feel like I'm generally hearing about the same old brits and Americans with a few European pop stars and occasional koreans.

Bo-Dak!
Bo-Dak!
Yel-low!

Goddamn it, ums.

Searched that, it's a Cardi B song?

Sorry, I have no insights about poptimism for you. Was just responding to upper mississippi sh@kedown's post above yours from two days ago, because the idea infected my brain.

I saw a skater yesterday wearing a Hendrix shirt, ergo Jimi still rules

Flappy otm. Speaking for myself but music enjoyment is generally is textural to me and aesthetic. Much harder (though not impassible) to have conversations about radical subjectivity wrt sound when we all hear so differently. Much like a food palate, but yeah easier to talk about what something means in the greater cultural context maybe. It's early so this may be bad logic.

*impossible

idk euler, out on the road last week i saw a hendrix sticker on a cadillac, ergo you can never look back

http://img.cakesdecor.com/c_limit,f_auto,h_1000,q_80,w_540/hkmrmf9cqwaiyzndihvt.jpg

J I M I R U L E S

http://emilyscakes.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Jimi.jpg

the kids are alright

https://inhabitat.com/greenhalloweencontest/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2012/11/Tat-GreenHalloween-Jimi-Hendrix1-671x417.jpg

if yr 6 year old were 9, I don't mind

I feel like cash-in greatest hits reunion tours are falling out of favor. Your Pavements, your Neutral Milk Hotels, your RATMs, your Polices... there’s an expectation now that if you come back, you better record some new material, regardless of its quality.

Whoever said upthread that selling out in hiphop was never a big deal is completely ignorant.

i think doing music that was considered watering down hip hop was considered selling out, but hip hop has always had a fundamentally different relationship to money and advertising and brands than rock

it was me BTW as my name was under my post

The main way the concept of selling out matters is if you go along with something out of fear of losing something, like not just an improbably lucrative deal, which might be at a brief career peak, get it and sock it away while you can etc., but your whole career---like the former Weinstein assistant who recently broke a confidentiality agreement she seems to have signed mostly out of fear: the deal was, "Take the money and shut up about what you know, or lose everything." Get blacklisted from the Industry, overqualified for Walmart (and no references, duh). And a number of other women in other gigs have said they put up what was being done to them, and/or looked the other way when it happened to somebody else.
he Dixie Chicks became an example: "See, they said that shit, and look what happened to them---you ain't nearly as successful, so just imagine how much worse it could be..."(Later for platinum, the Dixie Chicks went diamond).

But getting back to the main topic, some/most rock and other gods have receded in my interest just because---well like Van Morrison had a good long run, from the mid-60s to the early 80s at least, and may still be good for all I know---maybe I should check out his album of Mose Allison songs! But prob not. Prolific living geezer-wise, only Willie and Dylan keep me hanging on, and even with the latter I check in and out---may never hear Triplicate, even on free Spotify, and that's okay.

By the early 80s, we were getting a wider range of extant music than the 70s (like I was starting to find African music, King Sunny Ade, Papa Wemba etc), not to mention post-punk and so on--- good old Van had a lot more competition for my interest and budget.