Rules Of The Game #8: Which Social Class Sounds Better?

[koganbot]

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

Comments

Digressing a little...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The age is mostly a 'control over your environment' issue. Aged 12 I had my own radio/cassette player but for CDs or vinyl I had to use my parents' players in the living room (which they barely used compared to me, I have to say). I wasn't allowed out on my own to go record shopping and usually had to ask my parents for money to buy anything more expensive than a cassingle. Just two years later I had a CD player, a guitar, more pocket money and freedom to go out and spend it on whatever I liked. Plus I had started to care about how my music was produced & the image of the popstars rather than my hitherto objective appreciation of a good tune. I was spending 90% of my pocket money on music and wanted to make sure it was going to a 'deserving' cause! Luckily I've grown out of all that and will splash my cash on any old toss that sounds a bit boshing...

Re: Digressing a little...

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

this is good!

Re: Digressing a little...

[koganbot]

And "control over your environment" definitely has a class element (though it's not simple), in that in junior high school it was the cool kids and the hoods who were doing (or at least pretending to do) stuff - cigarettes, sex, and drugs - that symbolize "older," and that were older people's prerogatives, and were flouting or ignoring school authority; whereas non"bad" kids need other ways into authority and autonomy (which isn't to say that they all avoided sex and drugs and cigs, but that they didn't flaunt them), a school-sanctioned way that doesn't leave you being a teacher's pet. Extra-curricular activities were where preppy types could attain authority, whereas the hoods and the future freaks would leave the school behind during leisure hours.

I remember as high school went on fewer greasers or freaks would attend school dances (and I stopped as well).

Re: Digressing a little...

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

computer nerds = exercise unusual authority over the selections playing on the computer with big speakers in the computer lab