The cultural legitimacy of prog, metal and punk

If there's anything my studies of the subject have taught me, it's that the difference between "high" and "low" culture is mostly a matter of which audiences embrace the art in question. What in turn decides that, though, comes up to different factors.

In the field of literature, I remember reading interviews with both Stephen King and Amy Tan that at book fairs the questions they were asked by fans revolved around characterization and plot structure whereas "high" authors like Don DeLillo and Cormac MacCarthy were more often asked about the prose style. I think there's some truth about how in literature "low" audiences are more concerned with plot and character, whereas "high" audiences are more concerned about prose style and abstract theme. Just notice which authors of crime fiction have been embraced by academic elite audiences, it' s usually ones like Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy who abandon traditional narrative structures and use very stylized prose. I also remember reading something somewhere about how the metal artists became popular among cultural elite audiences are often more concerned with exploring sonic textures than with identifiable riffing and traditional narrative song structure, but I can't find it now. (when it doesn't have to do with image, like Black Ivory Tower's article about blackgaze pointed out)

Then there's the stuff I mentioned earlier about art either actively or unintentionally evoking some external context of meaning, rooted in cultural tradition or autobiography or sociological/political circumstances, lends itself easier to academic analysis despite not having any bearing on its objective quality. This might explain why academics writing about popular music might take so easily to hip-hop, indie, psychedelia and punk, whereas most metal artists' influences from "high culture" is either second-hand through pulp/B-movie escapist genre fiction or filtered through that aesthetic, but of course this theory relies on much generalization and speculation about people's motivations that's hard to verify in particular if you go beyond specific examples.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 16 2014 at 05:32

Not to mention that on the other side of the pond punk has been going on since at least the 1960s with the MC5, New York Dolls and the Stooges. I also think its taking off really begun in the post-Watergate mid-1970s' cultural climate of pessimism, that was around the time that the NY protopunk artists ExitTheLemming mentioned made their names. Still, notice that punk's most extreme incarnations ("hardcore" as it's called today) and most outside-the-box-thinking styles ("post-punk") which didn't really take off until the end of the decade... the book in question is about how the latter turned into the beginning of the indie rock scene in the 1980s.

This excerpt from Death to Trad Rock reveals that many of the UK '80s indie groups did define their entire worldview and guiding virtues as opposed to the Thatcher administration's, even the less openly political ones. I guess some art forms really do lend themselves more easily to analysis as part of a greater context - be it biographical, cultural, historical or political - than others.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 15 2014 at 15:12

Toaster Mantis wrote:   At the same time, if we're too insistent on seeing art as first and foremost a product of the surrounding zeitgeist's (or volksgeist's) context we just end up missing the forest for the trees in many cases. See my post about Kerouac earlier in the thread for a specific example.

rogerthat wrote: Maybe it is just a wrong impression that I have but a lot of writing on these genres seems to focus heavily on the sociological context without much of musical analysis.  One of the reasons may be that from a music-academic point of view, rock music is still not taken seriously and it's only classical and jazz that are regarded as academic music.  That being the case, it is possible the writing too hunts for a fertile sociological context to the music to be written about.  There's plenty of it in 60s rock a la Dylan/Beatles or punk and not much of it in prog or metal.  This may not necessarily say much about the enduring popularity of a given music genre or subgenre, though.  The particular context of the 60s may no longer be as relevant anymore and in this much more mass media driven age of music, music that loses relevance will probably get forgotten pretty quickly.

I think that depends on where you live, a friend of mine who is minoring in musicology is going through a couple courses on popular music. As for sociological study of progressive rock and heavy metal, the former did evolve out of the 1960s psychedelic scene developing an interest in "serious music" like jazz and classical which becomes clear if you notice Yes' career trajectory out of the ashes of Tomorrow up to their gradual development of their neoclassical signature style... or for that matter Pink Floyd's evolution from Syd Barrett's vision to Roger Waters'. You could tie that into the larger pattern on the 1960s' turning into the 1970s. Then there's my pet theory that progressive rock's mid-1970s decline and both punk and metal's coming into their own at that time had something to do with the increasingly pessimistic zeitgeist in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis and Watergate.

Which brings us to: Both the late-'70s/early-'80s punk explosion and the indie rock scene that followed have been analyzed as simultaneously a reaction against the bleak conformity of the Thatcher/Reagan era and embodying the era's entrepreneurial spirit in their "do it yourself" business ethos. You could make a similar point about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal which took off at the same time. The most interesting studies of the Scandinavian black/death metal scenes of the early 1990s, Daniel Ekeroth's Swedish Death Metal and Michael Moynihan's Lords of Chaos about Norwegian BM, characterize both as the result of above-average intelligence angry young men reacting against a comfortable but boring social-democratic welfare state society where mediocrity was basically forced upon you by going in the polar opposite cultural direction. It was also around the same time that it became fashionable to talk about the "end of history" (as Francis Fukuyama called it) and the death of the grand narratives driving them.

At the same time, if we're too insistent on seeing art as first and foremost a product of the surrounding zeitgeist's (or volksgeist's) context we just end up missing the forest for the trees in many cases. See my post about Kerouac earlier in the thread for a specific example.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 15 2014 at 06:44

rogerthat wrote: I am not sure I would consider doom accessible except maybe stoner rock bands like Kyuss.

Or bands like Pentagram, Saint Vitus, Witchfinder General etc. who aren't terribly removed from Black Sabbath themselves. In the case of Pentagram, it was more a series of bad business decisions and their singer's drug problems that kept them from getting popular.

I am not really as sure of that but for the second part of your comment I agree with Exitthelemming.  I don't think legitimacy needs to be conferred by academics or journalists.  What matters (if even that matters) is what the people like.

That's the classic is/ought problem: The kind of artistic importance that goes down in cultural history is the one that can be measured by academic recognition - like it or not. Notice that the Impressionist painters of the late 19th century weren't very popular back then, but they're the ones that are remembered today as emblematic of the period. The actually popular academic painters of the day, like William-Adolphe Bouguereau who stuck to more conventional styles and mythological motifs, have basically been forgotten by all except academic art historians.

I'm also more interested in the basic analysis of exactly how that happens without necessarily getting into the prescriptive part of the equation. Why have more subcultural-anthropological studies and respectful music analysis been written about Krautrock and the '77 punk explosion than about NWoBHM, and why are they more frequently brought up by cultural historians as landmark signs of the changes that happened in the society of their time? Also, why do outside observers seemingly care more about all this than most of the involved musicians themselves?

Of course, the last question is where it's hard not to get judgemental as ExitTheLemming's post pointed out. To quote the Demontage guy once again: You could possibly point to a number of books that have been written about punk, but you could just as easily argue that the fact that there are published books about the punk movement signifies the end of punk as a movement... and what do Arts and Culture sections of upscale newspapers know about punk? And is their writing about them a sign of success or failure?

Actually, the specific snob I had cited listens to more of 90s metal.  Don't forget that Brutal Death Metal took root in the 90s.

Well, that's kind of my point. If someone really stresses the disconnect between metal and rock they've usually gotten through the former through its more extreme incarnations.

It is not a question of genre chauvinism per se but the belief in a 'metal' way of life.  That makes metal snobbery more imposing - like if you don't wear long hair, you are not metal enough and all that.  It is kind of 'mandatory' to do all this to fit into the metal community.

I've definitely noticed the same, though with the caveat for the record Anglo-Saxon metallers seem to push that angle much harder than Continental European ones in addition to also being more hostile towards other alternative subcultures and musically unconventional metal artists for reasons I don't completely grasp. (not familiar enough with the metal scenes in the rest of the world to really analyze them the same way) That said, hip-hop, punk and goth/industrial have the same fixation on also being a cultural identity and lifestyle, not just a genre of music, that you have to follow if you want to be really into it. I actually think punks and rivetheads can be more puritanistic about it than metalheads but that of course depends on where and whom you ask.

Also, now that I've mentioned hip-hop I think it along with disco might be relevant to the discussion that both genres were at first seen as annoying fads at best threats to common moral virtue at worst. Now they've been rehabilitated by academic musicologists and other experts as legitimate artforms that were misunderstood at first.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 14 2014 at 04:43

Toaster Mantis wrote: When it comes to what's acclaimed by the kind of people who write books about the history of rock music, though, and professional critics in general the script flips completely. (that's also one of the main points of that Spiked Online article)

This seems to indicate that the so-called 'cultural legitimacy' of these genres will be decided solely by academics and authors. (Ain't this a bit like letting bats vote on daylight saving?) I always have a problem with the word 'culture' in any discussion like this, as I find it difficult to reconcile my understanding of the indigenous and shared aspects of same with what (I think) you are proposing. That may be lack of knowledge on my part but it seems self-evident that any cultural elite is going to endorse only those values that beget its existence in the first place. Historians of culture are hamstrung by the same problem faced by any historians i.e.their knowledge of the motives behind the events they are describing is at best speculative and more often than not, self-serving

moshkito wrote: The complexity there, is different than what one gives credence to other musics and artistic scenes, with all the intelectual this and that! I simply do not believe that ANY scene, is not a valid expression, because IT IS, and it does not make their music better, or worse than anyone else! But the music (or any of the arts) helps validate the scene.   It's like saying that Kesey, or Kerouac or others did not influence and help one scene or another. I think they were just concurrent with the weather, instead of one being more important than the other. And at that point Hesse is just as interesting as Kesey, just like Amon Duul is as interesting as Pink Floyd and vice versa.

Interesting namedrop of Kerouac because he hated being called "the voice of a generation", as did Bob Dylan while we're at it, and that might have been a factor in him becoming a paranoid recluse later in life. As interesting and as valid a field of study it is, I think it's clear there's some necessary cautions you should take when it comes to the whole "cultural/social relevance of art" business and it doesn't become more about the personal agendas of the person doing the study than what's actually there.

(even if it's questionable whether the interpreter's biases can be separated from the equation in the first place, and they indeed might be necessary for the whole endeavour!)

I am not at all sure what cultural legitimacy of music is supposed to be.  However, to answer in your question in simpler terms, why punk gets an easy pass from a cross section of rock listeners as opposed to prog or metal is because it has the strongest connections to out and out rock music.  There is no need to get to some other place or push your tastes in a certain direction (in favour of the complex or the extreme) to appreciate at least the likes of Sex Pistol or Ramones.  The complexity may turn people off prog but its more accessible side via Floyd, Jethro Tull may still find (has found) following.  

Toaster Mantis wrote: I don't believe either that technical complexity alone qualifies music as intelligent or intellectual, indeed that mentality is one of my least favourite things about the progressive rock scene as it stands right now. Kudos for clarifying that, as the merits of Dylan, Velvets, Television, Patti Smith, Pete Townshend, Nick Cave et al would be rendered spurious for our purposes otherwise. I hope none of us continue to feign surprise at the resistance shown from any rawk sphere to a genre interloper that tacks on the provocative 'progressive' prefix What matters in my book is what the recordings do with that technical proficiency, that would be underlying concept behind the music the performance serves to express or communicate. This goes into the question of whether the three mentioned genres have some kind of unifying ethos or ideology, let alone said ideologies are well-thought out. Forgive the glib inanity but the most valuable unifying ethos in the 1st world has always been the fostering of individualism. All three genres tick that box, albeit they might be guilty of spouting platitudes and clearly have different motives. As far as political leanings are concerned I discern significant right wing sentiments in much Metal but considerably less so in Punk (the Nazi Punks have largely followed the advice on the badges and erm..f.u.c.k.e.d off accordingly (trad anarcho socialist punks must be considered a quaint anachronism now surely? Social Democrat Punk just doesn't have the same frisson does it?) Re Black Metal and its purported links with Satanism/Paganism/National Socialism (sic). It really dosent require a sociologist to tell you that these are a right wing stratification driven enterprises. Those successful in Metal/Punk/Prog are no longer revered as ideological knights with a romantic quest to change the world for the better. Rather, they are seen as successful businessmen or entrepeneurs who embody the capitalistic dream of mastering your given resources towards a material goal. As much as I admire someone like say,  Frank Zappa's music, he is surely the embodiment of an american dream he routinely professed to abhor. I cannot discern any overriding political orientation in Prog and can only surmise that like US Punk it was largely apolitical. One of the black metal musicians that discussions with whom inspired me to create this thread, it's Demontage's percussionist "Abominable Reverend" if you're curious, brought up that the artistic/literary lineage (Wm. Burroughs, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey etc.) that psychedelic rock has brought up as forebears isn't that different from certain metal subgenres' evokation of the more morbid side of 19th century Romanticism and the French Symbolists in particular. (Charles Baudelaire, Comte de Lautréamont etc.): Most of said intellectual precursors came from a different generation and often didn't have much of an active interest in rock music to begin with (Burroughs being mostly into jazz), not to mention that their output was way more advanced both in the depth of the literary themes explored and the narrative structure of their prose composition when compared to the vast majority of rock songwriters to take inspiration from them. The same thing goes for progressive rock's inspiration from classical music, the thread I started in the Prog Music Lounge about the subject brought up the revelation that neither Genesis' Selling England by the Pound nor Yes' Close to the Edge fulfil the formal criteria for a proper classical sonata. Anyone facile enough to think the contradiction of Abominable and Reverend represents wit is not deserving of anyone's curiosity. I can't comment on the literary influences at play in Black Metal but it's interesting that you cite the French Symbolists as being pivotal. (Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Poe, Verlaine etc) These were the same influences that shaped the work of Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, Richard Hell and much of the NYC proto punk milieu circa the mid 70's. The only Prog musicians I can cite who subjected their musical materials to the same sort of structural and developmental rigor as that of classical 'sonata' composers were Keith Emerson, Jon Lord and Robert Godfrey of the Enid. Everyone in the Prog domain would admit to borrowing freely from the classical past but very few saw themselves as the successors of that tradition. Then again, have all but the most exceptional prog/metal/punk songwriters ever even aspired to that level in the first place? If not, I don't think it's reasonable to hold them to that standard at all. More than anything else it reminds me of modern science-fiction/fantasy literature evoking classical mythologies as predecessors: Yes, there is an obvious lineage, but when was the last time you read a SF novel as advanced in theme or style as Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and Odyssee or the Ramayana? Does it even have to be in order to succeed on its own merits? (for the record I have very little active interest in either genre these days, being more into crime/horror fiction) I heartily loathe SF so will steer well clear of this point (Apologies)

Edited by ExittheLemming - January 12 2014 at 14:25

Had to think about this idea for quite a while as I just don't get the metal is more intelligent/complex than Prog attitude at all from most music fans I know. I'm guessing that people who claim such mean the overtly technical end of the spectrum e.g. Meshuggah c/f Twisted Sister

Just for clarity, is it a given that one genre considered more intelligent/complex than another can be deemed to also have more cultural legitimacy?* Please explain in simple terms what you mean by the latter as such a judgement clearly rests upon who is doing the judging, e.g. if only metal fans made this judgement it seems unlikely that this view would ever reach beyond its confines and take hold as 'conventional wisdom' in a broader cultural milieu.

*I just think of this as being tantamount to acknowledgement/approval/credibility in the eyes of those consumers with a modest knowledge of prevailing musical styles.

It also has to be said that Rock genres where the 'guitar is God' seldom have to preach to atheists. People 'get' the message and attitude of a distorted electric guitar and correctly equate this with rebellion, irreverence and dissent packaged together as entertainment (a.k.a. Rock'n'Roll)
Maybe Prog, being perhaps more keyboard oriented and eclectic/esoteric by nature, finds it harder to be accepted and recognised without such a signature calling card?


Edited by ExittheLemming - January 11 2014 at 17:15