Frank Kogan

Btw, I still think my "PBS" metaphor is (i) important, (ii) half-assed and problematic, (iii) never likely to coalesce into something that isn't half-assed and problematic, and (iv) important nonetheless. Something to remember — two things to remember — is that the metaphor really had two parts, the parts not clearly delineated or conceptualized in my initial WMS writeups:

(1) Postpunk (etc.) as a cultural corner (or something): so the metaphor "PBS" wasn't particularly saying that this band or that performer had broccoli-like "good for you" tendencies.* Rather, the metaphor vaguely referred to a whole constellation of opinions and interests and attitudes that turned a broad and contentious (towards each other as well as towards the outside) group of people into an "Us" that believed itself better than a mainstream "Them." But what made (and makes?) the metaphor potent and shocking isn't that it fingered Talking Heads for being tasteful or the Clash for being socially progressive but that it also included stuff that the real PBS would never ever touch with a 10-foot pole: the Mentors (believers in "peaceful rape"), Psycodrama, GG Allin, the whole Forced Exposure/Conflict vibe. (Don't have the exact quote with me, but my favorite Byron Coley contribution to Why Music Sucks was when he responded to "Isn't it time the Rolling Stones were put out to pasture?" by saying, "If by 'put out to pasture' we mean, 'Take them out to a field, pull their pants down, and fuck them from behind,' I'd have to say, 'No.'" And PBS included me. So it wasn't all nice stuff. But it all more-or-less constituted a loose nexus that rationalized and justified and made respectably "challenging" a whole bunch of "out" behavior some of which was unapologetically do-good (the Clash) and some of it almost the opposite, a lot of it viewed by postpunk without being part of postpunk or knowing it was being viewed, but all rendered lame in the context of our appreciation. If I were to try to locate a "PBS" today, again not the real one but a more "out" one, I'd certainly include "poptimists" (which is now focused on Freaky Trigger), and your Tumblr world, and the Singles Jukebox. Regarding the new Lamar, which I haven't yet heard, the way it would fit into this "PBS Part One" isn't by being "good for you" in itself but by being embraced by "Us" for being the sort of thing that appeals to us. —An album's being genuinely good for us can be, you know, good, but that's also what makes it eligible for being rendered lame by us. Note also that our genuinely worthy attempts to embrace and understand hip-hop as a whole, including Rick Ross and ilk, are also "PBS." And our having some PBS tendencies is better than having no PBS tendencies, but creating a PBS nexus is worse than having just some PBS tendencies.

(2) A culture-wide "PBSification" that tends to support and romanticize fringes that move "out" but that also, once it perceives some phenomenon as "significant," turns the phenomenon into a symbol of its own significance and lets the symbol substitute for any actual significance. ("The symbol stands in for the event" is how I put it in WMS.) That "our" PBS renders things lame in the nexus of our appreciation etc. is an example of this cultural process whereby a symbol replaces the event it's supposed to symbolize.

—I wouldn't say, though, that out in the wide world symbols of "outness" always, without fail, neutralize what they symbolize. As I said, my metaphor is problematic. Among other problems, I manage to include a whole broad range of stuff in it, and the inclusion of this or that often seems arbitrary, even if it doesn't feel arbitrary. But the metaphor is important nonetheless because what it tries to describe does seem to actually happen, sometimes.**

*I like the taste of broccoli, by the way.

**I brought up "Symbol stands in for the event" in my convo with Josh yesterday. It's on my mind.