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Rules Of The Game #8: Which Social Class Sounds Better?
Rules Of The Game #8: Which Social Class Sounds Better?
At 2 a.m. Tuesday, with the column due in nine hours, I realized I simply couldn't create a coherent piece about social class, so I started this, went to sleep for a couple of hours, then finished. It reads OK but feels like a holding action. And honestly, I'm not sure where I'm heading now. For weeks 1 through 7 there was a clear line of thought; now I'm searching for a direction, though I know that Ashlee needs to become the subject sooner or later. And the question atop this piece is provocative, and there's more to explore.
My use of "class" is as problematic as ever, but the question here is can one class (or whatever) make better music than another class? And my answer is "sure," but this isn't inherent in the class; the goodness of the music happens in a particular time and place and has to be explained historically in reference to that particular time and place. From 1963 through about 1979 Anglo-American bohemia made some of the best music in the world; then it rather abruptly went down the crapper (at just about the time I was starting to perform onstage). This doesn't mean it wasn't subsequently meaningful and of value to the people who cared about it. And interestingly some of my favorite current music from both the mainstream and from country - ordinary mainstream girls like Ashlee Simpson and Kelly Clarkson, country oddballs like Deana Carter and Big & Rich [whose new album is a snore, unfortunately] - is saturated in old bohemian values. So...????
EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.
UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:
http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html
At 2 a.m. Tuesday, with the column due in nine hours, I realized I simply couldn't create a coherent piece about social class, so I started this, went to sleep for a couple of hours, then finished. It reads OK but feels like a holding action. And honestly, I'm not sure where I'm heading now. For weeks 1 through 7 there was a clear line of thought; now I'm searching for a direction, though I know that Ashlee needs to become the subject sooner or later. And the question atop this piece is provocative, and there's more to explore.
My use of "class" is as problematic as ever, but the question here is can one class (or whatever) make better music than another class? And my answer is "sure," but this isn't inherent in the class; the goodness of the music happens in a particular time and place and has to be explained historically in reference to that particular time and place. From 1963 through about 1979 Anglo-American bohemia made some of the best music in the world; then it rather abruptly went down the crapper (at just about the time I was starting to perform onstage). This doesn't mean it wasn't subsequently meaningful and of value to the people who cared about it. And interestingly some of my favorite current music from both the mainstream and from country - ordinary mainstream girls like Ashlee Simpson and Kelly Clarkson, country oddballs like Deana Carter and Big & Rich [whose new album is a snore, unfortunately] - is saturated in old bohemian values. So...????
EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.
UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:
http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html
2 Questions
1. How are you using class here? Is this some kind of bourgeois V. proletariat class distinction, with the Monkeys being the bourgeois (safe, conventional, status quo) and the Rolling Stones being the proletariat (I remember V for Vendetta playing Street Fighter during the closing credits). Or do you mean some kind of other musical class? In a sense, the question of 'Who Wrote It' which you want to say is indicative of greater class issues, has - either way - become emancipated from those issues. If you ask someone today if writing your own music is important, their answer may have more to do with some kind of new musical standard (that writing music IS important) than with an underlying class issue. For example, the Strokes are probably more bourgeois, but they write their own music. Contrast to, say, Avril Lavigne who is more proletariat, but does not.
2. You write: "the question here is can one class (or whatever) make better music than another class? And my answer is "sure," but this isn't inherent in the class." Does that make the class incidental? Or is it that the class is only an indicator, not a contributer. Or can class contribute even? Certainly the Rolling Stone's were great because they were grimy and dirty and rolled around in the mud and their music sounded like that. So the class contributed. Etc.
Re: 2 Questions
(1) I'm deliberately using the word "class" loosely and problematically, which we discuss a bit here. Briefly, in some circumstances (e.g., a high school) you have to treat groups such as preps and burnouts and freaks as social classes, because it's these classes that structure the school social environment. But you also have to see relationships between these classes and stuff like "middle class" and "working class."
(2) Class not incidental or I wouldn't have mentioned it. What's going on in the culture will have a different impact on different classes, and classes will also evolve their shape and character over time, so a class that consistently creates good music at one time may do much more poorly at another. (Think of an analogy to genres.)