Rules Of The Game #24: The PBSification Of Rock

[koganbot]

Latest column. I look at some of my own ideas and start asking questions, hoping that I'll inspire you to ask questions about them, too.

The Rules Of The Game #24: The PBSification Of Rock

I don't really go deeply into what I think PBSification is, or how we turned rock 'n' roll into something that's "good for you" in a bad, stultifying way. A question: Is PBSification inevitable? Is there a way to praise and preserve the great music of the past (girl groups, soul, etc.) and to recognize and speak for the great music of the present (Ashlee) without ultimately laying a sense of deadening Quality and Significance on it (or a sense of Glorious Frivolity, or some other deadening anti-Significance stance that is really the same thing run through a convolution or two)?

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

[koganbot]

Back in my fanzine I was saying that "dangerous edge" was just another version of the Protestant Ethic, so even if the dangerous edge were very real and very dangerous it would still be insisting that the music be good for you (or good for the world, by subverting whatever it is that's supposed to be subverted). But then, why should "good for you" and "dangerous edge" end up as bad things? Yet they do (it seems to me).

Oh, and thank you to you and Tom and skyecaptain for willing to talk to me about these things.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think 'good for you' can definitely be a good thing! Taking the (poptimist?) viewpoint, 'good for you' could mean broadening your horizons - listening to music that challenges you and puts your existing thoughts into perspective, refining your palette? Even if this refinement is "jebus the Plain White Ts are awful, now I have a better understanding of why I enjoy 2 Unlimited so much"? Subverting can be awesome, as long as you don't write off the non-subversive stuff. Also - who exactly is determining whether this is 'bad' or 'subversive' (or whatever) at present? The music press? Bloggers? The kidz? I'm fairly certain that *I'm* not...

[Happy to chat! I'm back at work and my brain is functioning again - also I started reading my Pocket Guide To Literary Theory today so WATCH OUT EVERYONE I'll be Derrida-ing it up in no time haha :)]

[koganbot]

Of course, broadening one's horizons can become We Are The People Who Broaden Our Horizons which could become burdensome and head us towards PBS but then again I think some amount of PBSification is more interestng than no PBSification, and some amount of dutiful Protestant Ethical this-will-make-me-a-better-person self-whipping may be better than just curiosity and free-play-of-inquiry and joy-of-learning, since PBS implies at least that there is something at stake and something to be lost by failure. I'm thinking of the need for balance (while sitting on the back of my chair), some useful PBS good-for-you pressure, but not overwhelmingly PBS. This is why in my idea of a Department of Dilettante Research I want the "department" to be an open space, which means that the semi-PBS of my own impulses gets input from kibitzers who want more True Seriousness and mockers who want more fun and joy and fizz and gush.

I like Tom's and your ability to make games and polls out of everything, and the possibility of commentary being both serious and frivolous, with the frivolity containing accidental truths and the seriousness being intriguing and fun.