From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V1 #202 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Sunday, August 19 2001 Volume 01 : Number 202 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] Hornby [Roger Winston ] Re: [loud-fans] Hornby ["Andrew Hamlin" ["glenn mcdonald" ] Re: [loud-fans] Hornby [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey [Stewart Mason ] [loud-fans] re: ["Brian Block" ] Re: [loud-fans] Hornby [dmw ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 09:10:31 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby At Saturday 8/18/2001 01:16 AM -0500, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: >Long story short: shock and rebellion once were intended to mean >something. Now they're just the sizzle covering up the lack of steak. "I'm after rebellion, I'll settle for lies" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 1974 "I'll turn my revolt into style" -- Bill Nelson, 1979 Sorry, I couldn't resist. Later. --Rog - -- When toads are not enough: http://www.reignoffrogs.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 09:17:05 -0700 From: "Andrew Hamlin" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby >(Remember that piece in _The Onion_ a few months back about Marilyn >Manson going door to door trying to "shock" people?) Judging from the below, he can lay off the Fuller Brush sideline awhile: http://entertainment.msn.com/news/eonline/081701_manson.asp Now if I could just find the link linking(?) Manson and the Italian girls who killed their Mother Superior, Andy "Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish." - --Michelangelo ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 13:53:03 -0400 From: "glenn mcdonald" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby OK, slow down, we're starting to get sloppy in some ugly ways. "P. Diddy" is a rap name, not a rock name, and participates in an entirely different naming tradition than The Amazing Rhythm Aces or Mahogany Rush. I don't pretend to *understand* rap naming (and I'd love to hear a coherent explanation of it from somebody who does), but simply dismissing it based on its misspellings and apparent meaninglessness is lazy and risks playing into race- and class-divide complacency. The top ten is not homogenous. Certainly there are lots of records being made today under the supervision of media-company demographers with little but massive short-term multi-market commercial success in mind, but you can't just assume that any name you don't recognize on the chart is one of them. I don't personally find Staind or Linkin Park appealing, but they're real bands who clearly don't regard themselves as disposable novelty acts. The current cross-media nature of entertainment marketing even sometimes results in the people making the music getting left just enough alone to do something surprising; compare the weird, jittery rhythms on Destiny's Child "Independent Women, Part 1" with the plodding beats on Britney Spears' "Stronger". And I don't know that much about 1971 (I was 4), but certainly by disco in the late 70s there was plenty of me-too, image-centric crap on the charts. And if we're still listening to "YMCA" in 2001, then I'm willing to believe that some of these flimsy things we're hearing now will end up sticking around as well. The thing about rebellion, however, I think actually goes far deeper. Corporate consumer culture is now orders of magnitude quicker and better at coopting subcultures than it was 30 years ago. It's *hard* to rebel now, in any way that isn't just going to show up in a soda commercial three weeks later. The Sex Pistols could say "the fascist regime" and get themselves happily pilloried (which was exactly their intent; "God Save the Queen" was hardly written as the cornerstone of an articulated political campaign to end the monarchy). Today you've got to do something far more extreme to hit a point of public discomfort. So I don't take the dog-fucking stuff as much different, in underlying nature and motive, from the New York Dolls' cross-dressing or all the cheerfully eldritch imagery on the early Black Sabbath albums. Kids need someplace to stand that's identifiably Outside, and they'll take the quickest routes there they're implicitly presented with, which at the moment include a lot of violent posturing and the few sex acts that "not that there's anything wrong with that" condescension hasn't yet embraced. You'd have to do a lot of work to convince me that rebellion used to be primarily concerned with establishing productive social discourse and now it's just petulance. I think it's always mainly been for effect, and only a small minority ever has much of a cogent agenda in mind (so, for example, a lot of mindless rap-metal party bands like Limp Bizkit, but lurking behind them Rage Against the Machine; lots of hip-hop about clothes and pimping, and then a few songs about inner-city police response-time and racial profiling). So are the charts really at a historically low ebb? That's my visceral impression too, I guess, but I'm not sure I believe there's any truly meaningful way to make such a judgment. A lot of people seem pretty happy with music today. Looking over today's Top 100 at billboard.com I even find a new Isley Brothers album I know nothing about at #3, the _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_ soundtrack at #15, Enya at 27, Dave Matthews at 36, Cake at 42, and Tool, Weezer, Lee Ann Womack, Crystal Method, Jill Scott, Dido, Jimmy Eat World, Radiohead and David Gray all somewhere in the bottom 50; all musics with, I think, real fans who like them for real reasons and aren't likely to desert them for whatever happens to be two slots above them this week. glenn ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 15:33:45 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby On Sat, 18 Aug 2001, glenn mcdonald wrote: > "P. Diddy" is a rap name, not a rock name, and participates in an entirely > different naming tradition than The Amazing Rhythm Aces or Mahogany Rush. I > don't pretend to *understand* rap naming (and I'd love to hear a coherent > explanation of it from somebody who does), but simply dismissing it based on > its misspellings and apparent meaninglessness is lazy and risks playing into > race- and class-divide complacency. There's something to this view, surely - but really, all I'm saying is "P.Diddy" (apparently, I've been informed, he prefers no space after the period) sounds silly to me. I wouldn't want to mount any large-scale cultural arguments on the basis of what collection of phonemes happens to strike me as funny. Let me note in passing that "Myracle Brah" is among the dumbest band names ever. And I'm not saying *all* rap names are humorous (unintentionally), only P.Diddy's. The misspelling thing seems to result from (a) wanting to make names distinctive, much in the way brand names (tediously) do (*), and (b) an apparently more hardened immunity to the onset of cliche than whatever culture I might be considered a part of, in that the whole "substitute -az for -ers" thing and its like seem completely played out to me, to the point of self-parody (once again, I'll cite _The Onion_, in this case, Herbert Kornfeld, the H-Dawg). (*) I ran across a particularly galling one of those the other day: some company called Exekuspeak. It took me several readings - EKS-uh-kus-peak? EKS-uh-CUE-speak? eks-KUS-peak? - to recognize the name was playing with the fetishization of the "executive," and the name would have been quasi-properly spelled "Execu-speak." I drove by a bar the other day which was billing itself as an "Executive Sports Bar." I assume this means the TVs in the joint are tuned to the goings-on of George Steinbrenner, Bud Selig, etc.... > The top ten is not homogenous. Certainly there are lots of records being > made today under the supervision of media-company demographers with little > but massive short-term multi-market commercial success in mind, but you > can't just assume that any name you don't recognize on the chart is one of > them. I wasn't, and neither was Hornby - who, recall, did trouble to listen to them all (and I, to read about them all). > The current cross-media nature of entertainment marketing even sometimes > results in the people making the music getting left just enough alone to do > something surprising; compare the weird, jittery rhythms on Destiny's Child > "Independent Women, Part 1" with the plodding beats on Britney Spears' > "Stronger". True - and the fact that record companies still cannot predict what will and will not be a hit with any great degree of certainty means that a degree of risk-taking will happen in the search for whatever the next big thing might be. And I don't know that much about 1971 (I was 4), but certainly > by disco in the late 70s there was plenty of me-too, image-centric crap on > the charts. And if we're still listening to "YMCA" in 2001, then I'm willing > to believe that some of these flimsy things we're hearing now will end up > sticking around as well. I suppose I could note that even though I was 4 in 1966, many of the songs on that top 30 list posted a few weeks back are familiar to me - which supports my argument that many of them have turned out to be better, more lasting songs. As for "YMCA" and others: I suspect most people listening to "YMCA" now like it more for kitsch and nostalgia than straight-up like it. Even if plenty might like it on its own intrinsic merits (the beat, the horn part, whatever), I'm not saying *nothing* in the top ten Hornby describes is any good; I was only saying (and he, too) that its proportion of disposable to salvageable is quite high - esp. in comparison to the chart from thirty years back that he used in comparison. > The thing about rebellion, however, I think actually goes far deeper. > Corporate consumer culture is now orders of magnitude quicker and better at > coopting subcultures than it was 30 years ago. It's *hard* to rebel now, in > any way that isn't just going to show up in a soda commercial three weeks > later. Which is why rebellious attitude is a dead end: "attitude" is currency of the realm, reimbursable always at the interest of the First Bank of Commerce. But that's another argument from Hornby's, about *why* rebellion today seems shallower and more pointless than it did in the past. It takes as a given the claim that it is so. > Sabbath albums. Kids need someplace to stand that's identifiably Outside, > and they'll take the quickest routes there they're implicitly presented > with, which at the moment include a lot of violent posturing and the few sex > acts that "not that there's anything wrong with that" condescension hasn't > yet embraced. Despite my defense of Hornby, I wouldn't want to taken as arguing that the article is some work of genius. One of the problems is that the demographic being appealed to is almost exclusively the "kids" glenn refers to - and that rebellion is being pitched to them as almost the only appeal. (Anyone who wants to read someone going on at great length about the whole commercialization of rebellion might read Thomas Frank's _The Commodification of Dissent_ from a few years back. I will just briefly note that 'rebellion" and "outrage" are about the most conformist attitudes any teen could possibly adopt.) And Hornby's failure to even consider this weakens his article. > You'd have to do a lot of work to convince me that rebellion > used to be primarily concerned with establishing productive social discourse > and now it's just petulance. I think it's always mainly been for effect, and > only a small minority ever has much of a cogent agenda in mind (so, for > example, a lot of mindless rap-metal party bands like Limp Bizkit, but > lurking behind them Rage Against the Machine; lots of hip-hop about clothes > and pimping, and then a few songs about inner-city police response-time and > racial profiling). I don't know that I'd claim "primarily concerned" etc. as ever having been the case. And yeah, you can look at the charts in the sixties and early seventies and see a parade of bands clearly trundling a cart loaded with sitars, love beads, and peace'n' love sentiments onto the charts. It's just that at least, "lurking behind" those bands were some real issues - Limp Bizkit borrows from RATM only its music (as far as I can tell) and not its (rather oversimplified, but genuine for all that) political perspective. > So are the charts really at a historically low ebb? That's my visceral > impression too, I guess, but I'm not sure I believe there's any truly > meaningful way to make such a judgment. A lot of people seem pretty happy > with music today. Looking over today's Top 100 at billboard.com I even find > a new Isley Brothers album I know nothing about at #3, the _O Brother, Where > Art Thou?_ soundtrack at #15, Enya at 27, Dave Matthews at 36, Cake at 42, > and Tool, Weezer, Lee Ann Womack, Crystal Method, Jill Scott, Dido, Jimmy > Eat World, Radiohead and David Gray all somewhere in the bottom 50; all > musics with, I think, real fans who like them for real reasons and aren't > likely to desert them for whatever happens to be two slots above them this > week. Again, I'm not saying there's no good music, or that no good music is popular. I'm saying (and I think there are good, solid social, historical, and economic reasons for this) that the charts today are more segmented and generally filled with more, shallower stuff than at most points over the last fifty years. I admit I can't quantify this; I can only suggest it by comparison with things like that chart from 1966, or the one from 1971. And as we said the last time we discussed this issue, one huge problem is that Destiny's Child, Britney Spears, D12, P.Diddy, and Staind are not being heard on the same radio station (although they might be heard on MTV): everything's divvied up so it's theoretically possible for the fans of Staind, Linkin Park and that stuff to listen to their own top 40 station and never hear Destiny's Child...and vice versa. And that was a lot less true in 1971 - and that I can testify to, since I was 9 then and addicted to top 40 radio. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey, whose new band is called Zektiv Hoochie J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::glibby glop gloopy nibby nobby noopy la la la la lo:: ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 14:42:53 -0600 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby At 03:33 PM 8/18/01 -0500, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: >I drove by a bar the other day which >was billing itself as an "Executive Sports Bar." I assume this means the >TVs in the joint are tuned to the goings-on of George Steinbrenner, Bud >Selig, etc.... Assuming "Executive Bar" means the same thing there as it does here, an "Executive Sports Bar" would have both big screen TVs and strippers. Factor in the cheap domestic beer and Buffalo wings and you have some folks' earthly equivalent to Paradise. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 20:56:57 From: "Brian Block" Subject: [loud-fans] re: I don't have time to respond as convincingly as i'd like to Jeffrey's posts quasi-defendign Hornby's condescension (or at least challenging us for reacting to it), but in quick form 1. I for one do like Blink 182, Linkin Park, and in moderate doses Tool quite a bit. This is in no way incompatible with thinking the Loud Family are the best band in the world. 2. Blink 182, since Jeff dragged them into this, i will absolutely defend as good lyricists. They write from an adolescent perspective, but they write with utter conviction and seem like basically good people trying very hard to figure the world out without damaging too much in the meantime. The fact that they become less adolescent over time implies sincerity and autobiography, but even if they WERE taking years off their mental age to write this way, it is perfectly possible to empathize with adolescence for good reasons (teacher/counselor reasons, sympathetic presence reasons) rather than just money. 3. Bands that choose to channel anger probably aren't angry all the time, but then, bands that write from broken-hearted, in-love, or intellectually penetrating (hi, Scott Miller) perspectives probably aren't like that all the time either. The emotions that you best channel into songs can still be valid at the time of writing, and no assumption of commerciality is necessary. Saying "fuck" a lot isn't my idea of eloquence, but neither is saying "baby" or "ba ba ba". 4. As for mean-spiritedness, Nick Hornby is attacking other people. MAny of the anger bands tend to write more self=directed negative emotions than otherwise. 5. If some of the bands ARE in it in large part for money and fame, is this supposed to make them different from the Partridge Family, Herman's Hermits, the Monkees, the Captain and Tennille, Pat Benatar, Debbie Gibson, etc etc? I apologize if i have misrepresented any of those six, but the point should stand. I defy anyone to show that the modern hits chart is unusually commerce-driven or shallow next to any FAIR consideration of the charts of the past, including the glory days of the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five. And i don't like people dismissing a band as "not worthy of analysis" if they haven't given any sort of analytical attention. It's fair not to choose to look closely; it's not fair to then proclaim oneself right. - -Brian _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 21:30:08 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby jeFF > (*) I ran across a particularly galling one of those the other day: some > company called Exekuspeak. It took me several readings - EKS-uh-kus-peak? > EKS-uh-CUE-speak? eks-KUS-peak? - to recognize the name was playing with > the fetishization of the "executive," and the name would have been > quasi-properly spelled "Execu-speak." I drove by a bar the other day which this seems to be one of the silver linings of the new trend in weird coined names for companies (suntrust? eww!) -- the unexpected double meanings. fer zample, when one of the companies i worked for changed its name to "integic," all i could think of was one of the people i knew there trying to say the word "integrity" and giving up half-way through with a reflexive "ick!" at the end. tickled me no end. they think it's a feminine rhyme with "strategic"...but we know better, don't we? - -- d. Mayo-Wells Media Workshop dmw@ http://www.mwmw.com mwmw.com Web Development * Multimedia Consulting * Hosting ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V1 #202 *******************************