koganbot | Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

Here's the latest column, once again about antirockism.

The Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

I agonized for about ten seconds as to whether I was being fair in the sentence "the antirockists put defeating an enemy ahead of trying to understand him, so in effect were seeking stupidity in others rather than trying to strengthen their own comprehension." Then I figured if I was being unfair, you'd tell me. It doesn't seem to me that those of you who used the word on ilX weren't trying to understand Patrick Hould or Dave Q or Sundar Subramanian or Glenn McDonald or Alex In NYC, but then I don't think the first three had anything to do with "rockism" as you guys seemed to be using it (though I think that Patrick was confused enough by your usage to think he might be a "rockist") or that your use of the term had anything to do with your actual attempts to interact with and understand these guys.

Also,

dickmalone made an interesting point at the end of last column's thread where he said "applying 'rockist' principles to acts from the rockist era (60s/70s) is totally fair, and that's why those terms of discourse came to be so prominent." I didn't have the time to respond that day, but one of the problems I'd have had in responding is that I really really really did not know what he meant by "rockist"; if he meant what most of you seemed to be meaning, he's wrong, in that it was just as stupid in 1966 as it is now to say an act is no good if it doesn't write its own songs, and conversely if it was valid in 1968 to praise a performer for trying to oppose or stand outside an injust socioeconomic system, and to criticize performers that seemed to reinforce the injust system, it's just as valid now. Or if "rockism" means assuming that electric guitars mean electric excitement and that other instrumentation doesn't, yes that was more true in 1967 than it is now, but it was still dumb as a principle, and anyway that isn't what most antirockists mean by "rockist," I don't think. And also, I'd say the average rock critic in the '60s was probably more antirockist then than the average rock critic is now, if "antirockism" means something (obv they didn't use the word "rockism" then), though that's just because there are way more rock critics now and the average is someone who's a lot stupider.

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

thinking a bit more about the "signal vs noise" version of the dichotomy, i guess what's being striven for -- not quite in so many words -- is a shortcut to a routine that can always deliver surprise?

(can it be taken as a given that part of a critic's role is to produce shortcuts -- either to do some of a reader's work for them, or -- less negatively -- to teach a reader where and how best to poiint themselves to get what they want, even if they don't they know that?)

Striven for by whom, the rockist or the antirockist?

But this is where we always stop talking to each other and instead talk past each other. If you define the rockist as "someone who fetishizes the old symbols of surprise but manages to evade actual surprise" or something of that sort (is this what you're saying? your being too condensed for me) then yes of course the rockist will be dogmatic - because that's how you defined him.

But then I don't see how it is that my friend Nathan, for instance, is a rockist by your definition. "The pretty girls had me in their spell, and I was never going to get anywhere with them. But I could listen to their silly music, vapid go-along/get-along tripe, and someday a nice girl probably would have won my heart, and I would have thought she was 'halfway decent' and been that much better for the experience." How does this register as Nathan preferring "signal" to being "lost in noise"? This registers comes across as a loser in the high-school social hierarchy rejecting the music of the winners. And as I send in response to your drunken poptimism post, a preference for "signal" to "lost in noise" is a temperamental characteristic, not an ideological position, and I don't see where this has anything to do with rockism - except that you've decided to only count someone as rockist if he's dogmatic or something, so someone like me doesn't count as rockist to you even though I have many of the very same values and concerns and impulses that the rockist does. (Also, I find noise more boring than signal, and I think creative types have less tolerance for noise than the average person does; Mr. Normal Person is fine with a little bit of noise, doesn't even notice it - doesn't notice the contradictions until they hit him in the face, whereas it's the creative guy who tries to rework systems and ideas so as to take away the contradictions.)

no i'm not trying to rescue "rockist vs anti-rockist" as a way to see the world -- i'm trying come up with terms that push the old conversation into better, more fruitful kinds of comparison and contrast (though partly by going back and trying to recapture what i felt i was chasing when i DID divide the world into rockists and anti-rockists)

"noise vs signal" seems to map some of the same impulses, but it maps them much more compellingly (and fairly), and -- as you say and i don't disagree -- we're all after both elements, just in different kinds of combination: i'm certainly not an advocate of noise-noise-all-the-time

and "surprise vs analysis" would also be a way to map them

my jab back at someone who was doing the defining-a-rockist-dance you pick up on there would be to say, well, WHAT KIND OF SURPRISE ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE? bcz a routine that always delivers surprises is kind of a contradiction, isn't it? so is it a creative contradiction (= possibly yes to start with) and when does it stop being one? when you walk into the avant-garde club and get exactly what you expected, and enjoy that for what it always is? IS THIS A BAD THING? (ans = sometimes yes and sometimes no: i'm interested in craft technique after all)

"creative types have less tolerance for noise than the average person does" <--- this for example seems to me an interesting point to pursue, bcz if true (and i think it arguably is) then it's a problem as well as a power, and i like that kind of tension

OK, well let's see how your idea of new fruitful convo as opposed to old might fit with mine. In "What's Wrong With Pretty Girls?" I ended with: "[stand-in issues] allow us to feel class issues without actually discussing them and allow us to indulge our uneasiness with happy songs and the pretty girls who dance to them without our really exploring where the uneasiness comes from." For me the logical next step is to say, "So let's talk about class issues and about why some people feel an uneasiness towards happy songs and pretty girls." And in the most recent piece I'm talking about "The impulses, tropes, and habits that get labeled 'rockism' existed throughout the culture from high to low, long before rock, and the general cultural debate and uncertainty as to the value of popular culture was also already in place, these impulses etc. managing to run simultaneously in contrary directions - towards respectability and seriousness and towards subversion and wildness, the subversion and wildness themselves being completely torn as to whether they're a form of respectability (albeit a supposed outsider's respectability) or of irresponsibility. There's simply no way to understand why 'real versus fake' is a big anxiety if you're not willing to think about people's conflicted attitudes towards social power, how authenticity and respectability are required to present themselves as opposition to authority." So for me the logical next step is to discuss "the subversion and wildness being completely torn as to whether they're a form of respectability... or of irresponsibility." And one way to have such a discussion is to ask, as I did in my book, in regard to similar conundrums, "What do we - as individuals and as a society - gain by trying to meld subversion to respectability and vice versa?" (I'm not so much a functionalist as to assume that because this conundrum exists that we must gain something from it, but I think the hypothesis that we gain something from it is a good starting point.)

So my question is how does "preferring signal vs. being lost in noise" help me in my discussion? It doesn't have to, and we could be having totally different discussions. Is there a way to combine our discussions? Don't say "authority" is signal and "opposition" is noise, and that "noise" is trying to become "signal" and "signal" is trying to pass itself off as "noise." That's too abstract.

Again, it seems to me that preferring "signal" or preferring "being lost in noise" are characteristics of temperament, and someone could have either one of those preferences while having no interest one way or another in social class and in whether or not the pretty, preppy girls reinforce social inequities.

So I think what I want from you here is:

(1) What is the signal vs. noise issue? I think you're relying on our already having an idea what those terms mean in relation to music, but I actually don't know what you mean by them.

(2) What the relationship is between the signal-vs.-noise issue and some other musical issue. What does it have to do with what "rockists" and "antirockists" are generally to say?

What does it have to do with what "rockists" and "antirockists" are generally to say?

"...are generally believed to say" (is what I think I meant).

Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

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