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

Novelty (part one)

[koganbot]

My brother, Richard, writes:

OK, Frank, you end by saying, "If something vital loses its psychological protections when discovering its own significance, well, why did it need the psychological protection of not knowing its significance? What does it need to be protected from? Is there a grave insecurity that causes us to seek fake significance and flee the real thing?"

1) Let's start by supposing that the attribute we are discussing is not significance at all, but rather novelty. Or more precisely, assume that in artistic endeavors, everything that has more than marginal popularity is significant BECAUSE it is popular - but a new subgenre can only be new once. Under this framework, "loses its psychological protections" merely means "loses its novelty." That's obviously inevitable, it cannot possibly be helped, and we would be well served to avoid pondering deeply about this fact. Stated differently, something that is both new and successful is vital; you have perhaps defined vitality as "the quality of being new and successful in part due to novelty," so by definition this vitality must be lost. This is not per se because of a subgenre learning of its own significance; it is merely because the passage of time perforce removes novelty.

Here's a possibly apt analogy. There is absolutely nothing like falling in love, especially for the first time. Suppose that this leads to a successful courtship followed by a long and happy marriage. (To Frank's readers: this does happen on some occasions.) Well, the couple involved learns full well that it will never duplicate the "vitality" or "significance" of falling in love. Vitality is "lost." Remaining in love is less vital than falling in love. So what?

And in this analogy, the sense of vitality is psychologically legitimate - I am be no means knocking it - and is inextricably linked to the novelty.

2) If all the above has merit, then it is not clear to me that "psychological protection" has much to do with the discussion. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that people only fall in love when they are capable of blinding themselves to mundane reality - and that blinding constitutes a form of psychological protection. (I actually might acceptthat argument.)