The cultural legitimacy of prog, metal and punk
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Topic: The cultural legitimacy of prog, metal and punk
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Subject: The cultural legitimacy of prog, metal and punk
Date Posted: January 08 2014 at 08:58
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This is a very long post, but I've been building up some thoughts over the last year or two about whether progressive and psychedelic music really are higher artforms than "non-progressive/psychedelic" metal, not to mention the extent to which either has succeeded as cultural movements and not just genres of music esp. when compared to punk. A couple discussions I've had a while ago on Facebook with several black metal musicians, revolved around the issue of how psychedelic/progressive rock and punk have gone down in history as important cultural movements that had a lasting impact on Western society be it for better or worse... whereas almost the entirety of metal is seen as a footnote in rock history and a cultural dead end. This extends down to people who can't stand the genres: Those who intensely dislike psychedelia or punk have to accuse them of "ruining rock music forever" if not blame the associated subcultures for perceived social problems in the present day, whereas at least in my own country I have to go back to the 1990s to find comparable indignation over metal bands that aren't either openly Fascist or pretend to be. Consider how either of the three genres are covered by magazines like Mojo or Record Collector or Sound Venue, how many academic studies have been made of them as artistic movements with a significant sociological impact et cetera, how they're described by the people who write about music for the "arts and culture" sections of upscale newspapers. (not to mention how positive/negative their assessments are) Here's where it gets weird: Not only would an argument that any of the three genres is objectively sillier than the others be one hell of an uphill battle, there's also been a significant degree of mutual influence between all three since at least the late 1970s. (as much as the more genre-chauvinist elements of both metal and punk subcultures would deny that) Now, I can actually understand why psychedelic and progressive rock is in general considered "higher culture" than metal... to the point that those metal groups who are most respected by the people deciding that usually have one foot planted in prog/psych or post-rock:  Its main ideological inspirations came from the Beat Generation and the hippie movement, subcultures that would both go on to replace the cultural elites they originally reacted against.Psychedelic rock being musically defined by its attempt to expand the stylistic vocabulary of a genre originally considered superficial entertainment, its spawning progressive rock when it begun incorporating more and more influence from "art music" styles like jazz and classical.There's also a sociological element in that many of the influential progressive and psychedelic rock groups like Genesis and Pink Floyd met at art school or university whereas Black Sabbath and Judas Priest both came from the industrial slums of Birmingham.As far as punk goes, while it's obviously on average less outwardly complex and intellectual than heavy metal or prog rock, it's obvious why it's perceived as more serious: It's by far the most realistic and least escapist of the three genres. This becomes even clearer if you compare grindcore to regular death metal and sludge to traditional doom metal: Both genres approach specific metal subgenres but from the "outside" perspective of punk, the resulting music as a consequence being way more abrasive and intense than its original form. Whether that makes it inherently better is a completely different issue, though, and something I frankly consider mostly subjective - the entire "true art is realistic" ideology has only enjoyed its present level of popularity since the mid-19th century after all. Thing is, how much of the described status hierarchy is actually warranted and based more in the music's content as opposed to more superficial factors if not the plain old cultural snobbery I mentioned when comparing the demographics of prog/psych and metal? http://degtyarov.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/blackgaze-does-not-exist/" rel="nofollow - This article by the metal webzine Black Ivory Tower points out how often which black metal groups are accepted as artistically legitimate and which don't comes down to more a matter of image than with music. People who know more about music theory than I do have pointed out something similar with how categorizations like "progressive metal" are applied. For instance, I've been told that Sepultura's Beneath the Remains actually is more structurally complex than Coroner's No More Color despite not being categorized as progressive.The conception of punk as more artistically valid than metal also bears revision in light of the amount of punk groups who either became more metallic later in their career (e. g. Black Flag, Killing Joke) or jumped ship completely (e. g. The Exploited, Napalm Death). By the same token, the idea of punk being more serious than prog/psych should be taken with a grain of salt considering The Boredoms' career trajectory or the recent phenomenon of sludge metal groups (read: punks playing doom metal) turning to progressive rock for inspiration after Mastodon became popular.Finally, there is the issue of how often the musical cultures in question actually reach their self-proclaimed ideals when it comes to the genres' thematic content. While a common criticism of metal's inspiration from both classical mythologies and 19th century Romanticism, the genre's main claim to "cultural legitimacy", is that the vast majority of metal lyricists reduce those rich traditions to escapist fantasy on the same level of pulp genre novels... these very boards have seen quite a few threads about the lack of insightful lyrics in progressive rock, and I've met plenty of musicians from classical and jazz backgrounds who find progressive rock's approximation of either awkward and superficial. As for the extent of punk adhering to its own virtues, that's been pored over by fanzine editorials ever since the late 1970s.What are your thoughts on this? Is it even a desirable thing for music genres to also aspire towards doubling as "cultural movements" in the first place? The entire "putting ideology ahead of music" thing is not just by far my least favourite aspect of punk, it's also the main reason I find 95% of the more national-romantic type of black metal an absolute chore to listen to. It might also be relevant that one of the black metal guys had no idea that prog/psych-rock was a considered "higher" form of cultural expression than metal to begin with. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Replies:
Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: January 08 2014 at 09:21
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That's a pretty good question, if I understand you correctly. I think I
understand what you mean by "cultural legitimacy" - and believe it's
just a fabricated idea put forth by the media. But since the media do
define what is remembered (and how) and what is forgotten (or dismissed
as unimportant), then being "just" a fabrication actually does carry
more ongoing meaning than most of us are willing to admit. The question
is, why? Why is metal "unimportant" and punk "important"? I'll get
back to you on this, but I think I have an idea.
------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 08 2014 at 09:23
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Ah... no. As strange as this may at first appear, it is nothing to do with the music. The music was at best a by-product of the cultural change and predominantly the change in youth culture that was happening at the time. The music was a result of the change not a driver for it, therefore the cultural movements that we now associate with the music, to the point where it is impossible to separate them, were a product of the environment they developed in and developed in parallel with the music (and for the benefit of Pedro: the art, the literature, the cinema, the theatre, etc. if, and only if, it is applicable). As I have argued on several occasions, Prog Rock has never been a cultural movement, a subculture or an all embracing artistic movement, there was no fashion or literary subgenre attached to it, no cinema, no theatre. And the same is true for metal (in the main) - loose biker-imagery of leather, studs and denim is the best you'll get - jeans and a band t-shirt doth not a uniform make.
------------- What? |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 08 2014 at 09:31
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As someone who majored in philosophy and minored in art history, I've always been fascinated by exactly where the lines between "high" and "low" culture are drawn not to mention the hows and whys behind that. As the blog post I linked to mentions, it's often basically a matter of marketing. The editor of that webzine also posits http://degtyarov.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/diabolus-vobiscum-et-cum-spiritu-tuo/" rel="nofollow - elsewhere that punk is long past its expiration date, and the best thing to come out of it is its recently increased influence on black metal. (using the specific example of Peste Noire) ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 08 2014 at 10:19
AGREED.
However, what I have suggested is NOT that it is a sub-culture, or a subgenre of anything. What I have suggested was that in many ways, what happened in many of the bands and works that became known as "progressive" (or any scene for that matter), was that they had similar threads and ideals that also created other cultural and historic events.
I'm not the only one, for example, that has discussed "krautrock", but even that one special calls it an environmental response. Those responses, are ALL valid. And YES, many of them are just pop music, but the media (recording and otherwise) have helped make a lot of other things a bit more valuable and sometimes way more valid in their ideas and points than most artistic discussions and history of such. And by the time that you get the anti-anti anybody, the whole thing in "progressive" becomes extremely difficult to discuss.
In the end, I am almost ready to agree with you, when so much of this is popular music and most of it has very little meaning or valid anything to help define it as anything else but just another song. It's like sitting down and write a book on the history of a ... stove! Might make for more entertaining reading!
Also remember that a lot of these things are MEDIA CREATIONS, that sometimes I can not help think that they are there strictly to make you think that you should buy the album/music. However, I believe that there are more "media creations" TODAY, than in 1968. In fact, the media in those days was dead set on hiding a lot of things, which helped a lot of the lyrics in the early days. I mean, Bob Dylan was not exactly about nothing! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Dean wrote:Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 08 2014 at 10:40
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My work here is done mwwahahahahahaha!
------------- What? |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 08 2014 at 16:07
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There's a red thread running through all of this I can't believe I haven't noticed until now: It appears that the people most concerned with which types of rock music are most "culturally legitimate" are usually reviewers and scholars rather than musicians and songwriters. Somehow, I don't think this is a coincidence. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 09 2014 at 06:12
[QUOTE=Toaster Mantis] Its
main ideological inspirations came from the Beat Generation and the
hippie movement, subcultures that would both go on to replace the
cultural elites they originally reacted against.There's also a sociological element in that many of the influential progressive and psychedelic rock groups like Genesis and Pink Floyd met at art school or university whereas Black Sabbath and Judas Priest both came from the industrial slums of Birmingham./QUOTE] I think Dean is probably correct, after all, art is a product of history, not vice versa. You sure that the hippies got to rule the cultural roost with their cosmiche w.a.n.k.e.r.y vindicated?  This strikes me as (mercifully) untrue. Pacifistic/Communal altruism is now but a quaint anachronism while the poisons of capitalism as foretold by the 'love generation' are now so ingrained in the west that most of us cannot even remember the inoculation shots they gave us for socialism. (Although the Tate/La Bianca Murders would have qualified) However, I don't think you mean political or economic control. Although I do recognise the working class/middle class divide, the examples anyone might cite can be made to look a tad glib e.g. Geezer Butler was purportedly white collar middle class trainee accountant material. John Lennon was considered considerably 'posher' than his fellow Beatles, Greg Lake was of very impoverished working class origins, The rabidly left wing anarcho punks Crass contained English Public schoolboys while Joe Strummer was the son of a diplomat etc (the list goes on) That's not to say anyone's demographic origins necessarily invalidate the legitimacy of their work but it's a dangerous distinction to make BTW Pete Townshend, Ray Davies and Keith Richard went to UK art schools and such were certainly not the preserve of a gifted cultural elite in the late 50's early 60's. Art School was very often somewhere the educational establishments would put unfocused but basically bright and harmless youths that just didn't fit anyplace else. I've also long held the belief that the rudimentary musical style of punk (in the UK) was simply a nihilistic knee-jerk reaction against hippy aesthetics which was never intended to stand up to the scrutiny of longevity (No Future etc) Music that is principally political in intent has NEVER stood the test of time (write a book or stand for election, don't make us sit through another humorless polemical album man) Music that will be remembered and cherished will be so by virtue of its aesthetic qualities alone ( the medium is the message) and yes you are right, the remainder is best left to those lonely furrowed brows ploughed by sociologists, post modern revisionists and academics etc What is cultural legitimacy anyway? Is this when someone deemed to be qualified as an arbiter of value confers a pass mark against the music we profess to enjoy (for its own sake)? Who amongst us requires such validation unless they might belong to that very elite for whom the device of culture was manufactured to protect: those who are either unable or unwilling to express their own ideas. ------------- 
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: January 09 2014 at 06:52
Sorry Iain - your reply is as profound as always, but even when you're right on the money, you're still a sarcastic bugger that makes me laugh myself silly. Very nice observation from the rodent 'down under'. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 09 2014 at 06:58
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That's another thing about the question I asked in the whether music genres/scenes should even aspire towards also being cultural/ideological "movements": Neither psychedelic, punk or metal culture have had anywhere as radical a social impact as their more outspoken members have aimed for... and could they ever have succeeded in the first place? I'm far from certain. Your other point is the second reason I question the utility of musicians politicizing their work: My experience with punk has taught me that the music very often suffers as a result. Not that ideology does not belong in music, in fact I enjoy quite a bit of music with political or religious themes, but when a project's entire "band concept" revolves around some kind of obvious agenda the musically creative side of the equation almost always ends up taking a back seat. As for the demographics of the three genres, I'm of course generalizing but it's clear progressive rock strives more openly towards virtues of high culture than the vast majority of heavy metal. On the subject of punk, I think it depends on which regional scenes and specific substyles you're talking about because its "Do It Yourself" business ethic decentralizes it much more... but you might find http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/13741" rel="nofollow - this essay on why professional reviewers were quicker to embrace punk than metal interesting. (as much as its perspective is informed by what you could call "vulgar Marxism") I'll finish the post right now with a quote from the Black Ivory Tower guy:
(those two bands I can kind of understand their motivation in that they're trying to find a new cultural frame of reference for a self-styled transgressive genre which ran out of new tricks in the mid-1990s, but the resulting music just isn't very interesting and that's what I'm really looking for) ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 11 2014 at 15:00
An interesting angle that I didn't include at first because I couldn't find it, but would have liked to: I remembered an old thread wherein several posters claimed the opposite, that the general public considered metal more obviously complex and intelligent than prog... and http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=80679&PN=1" rel="nofollow - I've found it .
Of course, another angle I could elaborate on is how much "intellectual substance" each genre has thematically... but articulating exactly how you measure that in a way that's not extremely subjective would probably require more work than I could be bothered with. I'll probably edit this post more when I've figured out how to do that. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 11 2014 at 17:12
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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? -------------
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 12 2014 at 04:10
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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. 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. One of the black metal musicians that discussions with whom inspired me to create this thread, it's http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Demontage/17437" rel="nofollow - 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, http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=96451&PN=1" rel="nofollow - 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. 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) ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 12 2014 at 08:31
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Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 12 2014 at 12:37
I've always been wary of that, specially when I was already aware of literary scenes that inspired these folks, and one other theater scene that did the same thing in England (Angry Young Men), which was similar to the punk scene then, and its "revolt" and later, the American rap scene.
It might not be a social phenomenon, but it makes those scenes VISIBLE, and the importance of it, is not something that you and I will know or understand until 50 years on, so to speak.
I don't think, and never have, that "progressive" was not that complex in the first place, although we love to use Chris Squire and others as examples. Sometimes, this was their comfort zone, and what they wanted to do. And I love the example of John P and John M (DT) talking about learning to play the LP at the faster speed, and see if you can keep up. All of a sudden, it makes you look at music differently, and you might find something that is useful that you are capable of learning.
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.
The only concern I have is that the English speaking world has a tendency to play the imperialist and consider that they invented the world and their opinions and ideas are more important. (joke coming up!) This would explain why the best known version of the Bible is also the worst translation there is of the real books! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: January 12 2014 at 19:54
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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.
Metal is the most exclusionary by its very nature of the three and since the 80s has headed off in a single minded pursuit of the extreme. Obviously, not everyone is going to be interested in that. This exclusionary path has also sparked a kind of 'dumb snobbery' that is quite unique to metal. As an example, when I once shared a lovely performance of a Ghulam Ali ghazal on facebook, one metalhead friend jumped up to comment snarkily that did I really need to already start playing stuff for my grandchildren or something to that effect. I call it dumb snobbery because it is based on the ludicrous assumption that anything that is slow and soft outwardly is neither worth listening to nor possesses any real technical brilliance. The objections of classical snobs are usually based on pedantic or class considerations but not so when it comes to metal. This form of snobbery is hard to avoid if you talk to a lot of metalheads regularly so somebody who just has eclectic tastes that happen to include metal would find it hard to get along with metalheads' obsession with metal and their celebration of it as a way of life rather than just music. Metal is all important within the metal orbit, but its very nature and its deluded superiority complex (remember Araya's unthinking comments on how classic rock would be so boring to play?) tend to exclude the rest of the rock crowd who therefore become indifferent to it.
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 13 2014 at 11:45
The weird thing is that despite borrowing a good chunk of its symbolism from the NSDAP by way of biker culture's appropriation of same, and Anton LaVey's Church of Satan notorious for promoting "might is right" ethics, until the early 1990s the metal genre didn't have much of a honest right-of-centre political presence at all except the occasional outlier like Alice Cooper or Ted Nugent. It gets even weirder when you consider that the person most responsible for the metal scene's turn to the far right in the 1990s, the late Type O Negative frontman Peter Steele, happened to be a transplant from the NY punk scene! For the record, I get the impression that Social Darwinist/Fascist Revivalist loyalties aren't anywhere as widespread in metal circles as they were in the early/mid-2000s... probably as a result of the genre's recent re-mainstreaming since then. (and Pete's death in 2010) By the way there's also still plenty of hardline leftwing sentiment in the more extreme subgenres of punk... even if those are (often by design) very inaccessible to mainstream audiences and hence don't get noticed much. Likewise, I've noticed that at least in Denmark and Sweden the death metal subculture is at least as hard left as black metal is hard right in many countries, probably because its fanbase overlaps quite a bit with certain punk subgenres. (crust and grind in particular)
Well, there's two obvious reasons for that: The earliest black metal groups (Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost etc) were all very strongly informed by punk, something the genre gradually dropped throughout the 1990s but has returned to in recent years; there's also the extent to which the French Symbolists dabbled in Satanism - in particular Baudelaire, Huysmans and Lautreamont. I actually think a recent English translation of Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil was done by a practicing Satanist! For the record I've seen Baudelaire and for that matter Edgar Allan Poe brought up as forerunners to psychedelic culture too. (in Jim Derogatis' book about psych-rock Turn on Your Mind)
It's the same basic phenomenon of a pulpy "low culture" artform evoking "high culture" as inspiration, though, and the same question of how often that's a case of signing checks you can't cash. (I personally take it on a case-by-case basis) ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 13 2014 at 11:59
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!) ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 13 2014 at 12:45
Couldn't you say the same thing about the more "traditional" metal subgenres like for instance NWoBHM sans its rawer-than-roadkill Venom/Atomkraft/Warfare corner, newer power/speed, the styles of doom that still are close to bluesy hard rock etc.? Another thing: I'm also certain that around here the more accessible metal and to some extent prog (depending on the social milieu) are actually more popular than the comparably accessible end of old punk at least as far as the general public goes. 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)
I really think that depends a lot on which parts of the metal scene you are exposed to, in my experience it's usually people who got into it first through its most extreme incarnations and don't listen to very much before the 1990s (or maybe the mid-1980s) who are like that. I've also encountered at least as much genre-chauvinism from indie kids, jazz enthusiasts, prog/psych fans and the most purist folk/blues fans too for that matter. And in Tom Araya's defense, he fronts the group most responsible for separating heavy metal from normal rock music. I'm pretty sure Slayer wouldn't have ended up being that musically groundbreaking in the first place if they didn't find the vast majority of hitherto existing rock boring. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 13 2014 at 16:14
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 Awards are only as significant as the folks who choose the winners, the criteria laid out by the organizers and how closely the electorate follows those criteria. (Gabriele Marcotti ESPN)
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Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: January 13 2014 at 19:53
[/quote] I am not sure I would consider doom accessible except maybe stoner rock bands like Kyuss. Stuff like Candlemass is too slow for a typical rock listener's requirement. I agree that NWOBHM/80s pop metal would not be a big leap for rock listeners.
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.
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.  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 have not experienced that in jazz or prog, not so far. There will always be purists as long as there is art, of course. I find prog metal heads the least snobbish and would argue that many gravitate to prog metal because they dislike this 'metal way' and 'metal lyrics' and want something sensible within the overall package of heavy riffs/high singing/grunts etc.As for Araya, it is not the fact that he finds classic rock boring that I find remarkable (that's ok, it's just his tastes). He goes on to presume that for a classic rock band, it would be so boring to keep playing the same songs for 30 years (whereas, so the argument goes, because Slayer songs are so fast and brutal, they never get boring). This ties in what I said about the peculiar brand of metal snobbery. It is not restricted merely to assuming that metal is the best form of music and metalheads don't need any other music. They even question, usually boldly and brashly, what pleasure do non-metalheads get from their music. The thought that a classic rock artist may not have an emotional connection with his work just because it is not as fast as metal is ludicrous.
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 14 2014 at 04:09
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.
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 http://www.bouguereau.org/" rel="nofollow - 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?
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.
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. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: January 14 2014 at 09:31
I am not sure that what works with respect to classical music of the 19th or 20th century would necessarily hold good for rock and pop music of the 1960s and onwards. 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. Not that I think that necessarily applies to punk but I am just saying what attracts academicians may be altogether different from what the public wants to listen to but it is what the public wants and why they want to that needs to be analysed, not what looks more interesting to analyse or write about.
Point taken, I cannot comment on those examples because I have never met a punk or hip hop purist. Maybe it's the combination of metal's extreme-ness and the snobbery that makes it more exclusionary. It is hard to pinpoint in words but my impression is that metal has over the years evolved on an independent path with its own culture, removed from rock. As rock sought to get dirty and simplify in the 90s, metal got more brutal and faster at the extreme end of the spectrum and more ostentatious and grander at the 'power'/'symphonic' end of the spectrum. Metal bands, especially in doom metal, have continued to pile on long (not necessarily prog) tracks oblivious to the anti-epic rhetoric in the rock world. All of this might mean that the initiation process itself is fairly lengthy for a new listener
and the effort required might repel fans. Metalheads can be pretty nasty if you cannot name the exact bizarre subgenre combination required to be suffixed to a band. I found a college friend to make sense of the nonsense to me, else I might have been at sea. |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 15 2014 at 06:43
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 http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/8241#.UtaBF7TzV8l" rel="nofollow - 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante" rel="nofollow - 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. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 15 2014 at 08:52
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Hi
I think that within 20 to 30 years we will have our answer on this.
Popular music has never gotten the credit and respect, that some of it deserves for its inventiveness, because it was just popylar music, and bar music! And 100 years ago, that kind of music, never got one iota of attention that we are aware of, as there are no details or stories, or history for any of it.
The age of electricity and RECORDING, will change all of that, and now I have a feeling that "popular music" and other forms of music that were heretofore ignored, will get some well deserved attention, and more than likely better definition than the wishy-washy and non-musical description that rock music has helped create for "progressive".
So, now, we can go back to Plato, if you learned about that in school, and ask ... does might make right? ... and I can tell you one thing, right now! If that were the case, the music we love would NEVER have made the grade because folks like you are too concerned with the sales, not the music!
I am, NOW, a serious believer that there has always been some music, that the populace enjoyed that we will never know about or hear, because it is gone. The 20th century changed that recipe, and a lot of things can be heard, and they have put a serious dent on books on music and their definitions, when all of a sudden, they are seriously lacking, and some rock folks are doing far more than Rachmaninoff! But I will STILL tip my hat to Dean, as most of this stuff is just pop music, and it is still being treated as such in a top ten environment.
Again, might makes right, should not be the indicator for the arts, otherwise a commercial Blade Runner will eat us alive ... and we might as well die, and not give a sh*t about anything! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: January 15 2014 at 09:17
That is exactly what I am trying to say. I can understand the attraction of music that evolved as a reaction to certain historical events as a subject of study but not every artist making music does so for such reasons. As Ralph Vaugh Williams said of attempts to interpret his Symphony no.6 as based on the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music."
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Posted By: Cactus Choir
Date Posted: January 15 2014 at 11:23
I've always maintained that linking the advent of punk to Thatcher/Regan is a myth and historically incorrect. Neither was in power before 1979 so how could punk have been a reaction to them? The UK economy had been going down the pan since the early 70s but there was an old school Labour Government in power in 1977 (the "Summer of Punk") with a still comfortable welfare state and relatively low unemployment. I've read one theory that punk would have been much harder if Thatcher had been in power as she brought in youth job creation schemes that you had to attend or lose benefits. Under Labour you could loaf around on relatively decent unemployment benefits and form bands! ------------- "And now...on the drums...Mick Underwooooooooood!!!" "He's up the pub" |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 15 2014 at 13:59
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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. http://thequietus.com/articles/03280-death-to-trad-rock-by-john-robb-an-extract" rel="nofollow - 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. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 15 2014 at 23:00
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I enjoy very many of the so-called Post Punk bands cited in John Robb's article (the Fall, PIL, Joy Division, Fire Engines, Monochrome Set, Wire et al) but would struggle to endorse much of anything that followed in their wake into the mid 80's. It seems significant that a bunch of artists whose only common ground was a shared antipathy to the Thatcher persona and an endorsement of Punk's DIY ethos are now largely all but forgotten. Their unquestioning support for the miner's strike from our post socialist perspective just seems incredibly short sighted. It really ain't hard to deduce that heavy industries like coal mining and ship building's days were numbered and had to be replaced by alternatives. This was always going to be a very painful process but perhaps we should have been campaigning for the need for retraining and support for the communities affected instead? it's all too easy to forget how the UK was routinely brought to its knees by industrial action from intransigent trade unions throughout the 70s.
I've always suspected that the 'C86 freebie cassette movement' was a desperate piece of aesthetic gerrymandering engineered by the NME in response to their being marginalised by Sounds coverage of '76 punk. Looking back over the tracklist, only Primal Scream ever amounted to anything. It's interesting that Robb lavishes so much attention on the Stranglers as if they were the embodiment of the prevailing zeitgeist (they were a psychedelic pop group at the right place right time in 1977 writing short memorable aggressive songs. They were never a punk bank and Entwistle really initiated the bass guitar revolution not Burnel) Oh yes and lastly, although it's certainly a well written and passionate piece, Robb comes across in places like a nostalgic hipster pining for a past that never existed in the first place. He also completely fails to grasp that memorable commercial s.h.i.t. will trump disingenuous obscure s.h.i.t. every time. Give me Abba over Beefheart any day   -------------
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 16 2014 at 05:10
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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. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: January 16 2014 at 05:33
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I tend to agree with Iain here, that is if I'm reading him right. Very often these pieces look at history in a backhanded sort of way. They emphasise certain patterns that we today, with the gift of looking back from all kinds of different perspectives (much due to a thing like the internet), implement on days gone past without paying much attention to the people who lived it.
------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 16 2014 at 07:01
At the risk of coming across like a 'low culture' toerag, what the hell does that mean? ain't the foregoing just a very eloquent way of saying those outside the 'cultural elite audience' are incapable of appreciating the abstract in a work of art? You make the notion of 'traditional narrative structure' sound like a quaint nursery rhyme that only toddlers, the nil by mouth and mentally infirm continue to invest with any authenticity. Sorry to sound so blunt but this type of arcane speculation is all the confirmation bias the rest of us need to deduce that Prog,Metal or Punk require no retrospective cultural legitimacy conferred on it by academia to validate our tastes. -------------
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Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 18 2014 at 17:21
You really want to read Patti Smith's book.
It's tough to figure out how to explain all this, and put it into words and many folks here have no idea, and they don't care for ideas, because Kansas is their favorite band, and all of a sudden, your argument is taken out as worthless because of another point that might not, necessarily, be as valuable or important, except to that fan.
The fact that some of those individualistic scenes get attention is easy, to show and explain. They stood up and did something different! Kansas, didn't! They had a pop song that did really well on radio and was fantastic for the new FM radio in America, before it became commercialized!
I think that as time goes by, that some of this discussion will go more towards the artistic side of the discussion, I hope anyway, because otherwise it is just like the 300 pages on Italian googah, or 300 pages on something or other, and no one, will EVER take a look at those again, and so much of it gets wasted! But I think that the eventual demise of the populist thing is that no one will ever remember any of it. And too many of the bands out there suffer because of it, even though they tried.
As long as you and I see that and we make that visible, I will let the other folks do reviews that this song and that song is progressive because it sounds like Genesis! Or that it is Metal because of the compression or loudness on this or that!       ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 18 2014 at 17:36
As I have mentioned before, this is a problem that we will see an answer from in the next 50 years. Because of RECORDING, this is the first century that we have actually heard anything that was not "accepted" or considered "music" and the histroy of the art form.
There is no history of popular music, other than heresay and a few songs, all of which were, still following the old tradition of mouth to mouth and hand to hand, but there was no music, or notation about it anywhere.
I've come to believe that there always was other music's out there, popular or not, but too many of them were dismissed as just "bar room" stuff, or "whatever" stuff (so to speak!!!), and with RECORDING, this is no longer going to happen, and someone is always going to find something or other in those, and you and I can easily say and see that there are rock bands that are far better than Rachmaninoff, or Schoenberg! AND more adventurous!
But we have this "class" thing that is pathetic, and even some folks love to trash me on it, when I'm always the first to try and debunk that and put down the old historians of the arts, as snobs, which even my family IS, being a part of a very high literary force! They still ask me why I post in places that are not educated and would not understand what I am saying!
I'm here, aren't I? Now you know why! That bridge has to die and disappear. Just like we have to stop worrying about black or white, gay or straight. This is about PEOPLE and their spirit as an art form. Do we accept their beauty or not and go find excuses as to why we don't like them or the music? Now you know why I do not go around saying rap stinks, because it doesn't, specially when our attitude does more than all of it out there does! It has a right to live!
The cultural rag thing is for folks that feel threatened by their (lack of?) knowledge of things in general, as it threatens their "FAN" concept and ideals. Otherwise you would ask something like -- how do you see that if I may ask? instead of getting offended like so many do here! You would learn something! As would I be appreciative of your asking and helpig me clarify my comments better! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: January 18 2014 at 21:53
Very interesting points. Metal's own tendency to constantly militate against this typecasting as, well, 'dumb', 'brawn' music seems to confirm the stereotype in a way. As Pedro just said in another context, why would one react strongly to something if one didn't feel insecure that way. It ties in with my observations of simplistic notions about what makes for good music held in metal circles, the problem not necessarily so much that such notions are held (they may well be by individuals for whatever reasons they see fit) but that these notions are widely endorsed within the metal community and taken as conventional wisdom. Indeed, music that was actually sophisticated would not seek to constantly shackle its frontiers by rigid adherence to metal norms and would rather seek to subvert the norm. That is what experimentation is all about. I just watched Todd Haynes's brilliant short on Karen Carpenter (though I am not supposed to ) yesterday so I could relate to your observations above. I think the problem people have with this notion is that high or low may come to be equated with the respective economic or social strata. To extend this logic, as if only academics and such other highly degree-d individuals have the right to decide what is high and what is low art. That is something we need to avoid and whether it is high or low depends entirely on the particular individual's level of appreciation. And by implication, categorising art as high or low based only on the profile of majority of the audience may be simplistic (though I see we are getting into ought v/s is again); the Beatles could after all combine a high level of commercial as well as critical appreciation. Granted, that's Beatles, but critical analysis that fails to spot genius for what it is is more than a bit of a waste. I however fully endorse the line of thinking that an interest restricted merely to plot and narrative is a relatively low level of appreciation and that which extends to form and style is a higher level of appreciation. If that sounds elitist, I couldn't care less about that.
At the end of the day, every avid reader is not necessarily a bestselling author in waiting either. Some people do get more deeply involved in art than others, deal with it. It is only in art that people have huge problems with accepting this reality. Nobody would grudge a car enthusiast or an amateur chef his passion and knowledge on the subject. |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 19 2014 at 10:58
The problem is that ALL books that deal with history of ALL the arts, are done as academic pursuits, or it will be ignored, and has been ignored for hundreds of years, because the majority of the "lower classes' were uneducated, and in many cases, could not even read or write. I've wanted to put together a conglomeration of posts from folks in this board to show how valuable a lot of this work is. But even some folks get terribly yanked when that one guy did an insane breakdown of "Close to the Edge" in the most academic of styles ever done. I don't think we have to go that far, but I'm not sure that we can ignore, that kind of mentality and insanity, and would not want a portion of it, on our work. Or you can go read some pornographic stuff around the century (The Oyster comes to mind!), that has a lot of this discussion in place about the lower classes not being educated enough to even vote, let alone have a say in anything!
Education, is ALMOST, a 20th century thing. But you can go back to the Romantic Era of the arts, and already see the lower classes fighting back. If you ever watch the "Sharpe" series, Cornwell's stories are big on showing you how the lower classes helped bring the fight to the "people" and such as well. Even though it is a novel, the period that it takes place already shows signs of fight against the "authority" or the "upper classes" that were in power.
I kinda look at the turn of the 20th century as the time when things finally took hold, and individuality in the arts became OK and appreciated, specially in painting and literature. And later, in full force in music as well.
I think that, RECORDING, is the difference. Now we KNOW, there was music around all that "classical" and "artistic" stuff, that we know was ignored and not considered intelligent music. And there are many rock bands out there that are far more interesting than any work that Schoenberg, or Rachmaninoff put together, but they are not getting the credit because it is electric and not orchestrated in the way that "it is supposed to!".
It's a new dawn and day.
We're in the middle of it!
And we're the teachers and the folks that will help carry all this stuff through.
For me, "PROGRESSIVE" is one of the parts of it all. For me, a lot of it is the "classical music" of today, because all the other stuff has gotten boring, repetitive, and the ballerina has already banged her head and died, according to Ian Anderson!
But the "upper classes", will never again, have a say or control over what is good or bad or "classical music". And, honestly, I think that is a great thing! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 19 2014 at 11:42
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Meh, I remember reading that musicological analysis of Close to the Edge, as I recall it tried hard to prove something but kept stumbling on the fact that so much of it could be traced back to fairly standard rock music structures and progressions, even the overall 4-part structure was more related to standard rock tunes than classical sonatas. As I have often said - Close to the Edge is three normal rock songs crashed together with the final part being a coda that is a medley of those three tunes. The only classical elements are contrapuntal, ostinato and fugato motifs introduced by Wakeman to hold everything together (this much is documented by Wakeman himself) ... and of course ostinato in rock music is better known as "a riff" - giving it a musicological Italian name does not make it "art music" - no one goes running around shouting that The Kinks used an ostinato motif in You Really Got Me, it's a riff. Sorry Pedro, but it's just a Pop tune - a very good one of course, but a Pop tune none-the-less, and in this particular case I do not believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That's not to say that some Prog Rock couldn't be regarded as Art Music but it is never going to be "classical music". ------------- What? |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 20 2014 at 08:19
Yeah, but that's like saying that Bach never worked a "riff".
Or Mozart! (you're kidding me!)
Or anyone else.
The only problem is that for the most part we're dealing with three lines of music (the drums need one?) where most "classical works have 10, 12, 15, 20 or more ... and that makes it, as you say "pop music" and I agree.
But there are compositions, by many folks that try to encompass a different sounding instrument, let's say on a keyboard, to make up for something else. I would imagine that we're looking at that as one thing only, and not it's visual design (if there was one -- hard to proove and discuss, anyway), or intent by its creator.
But generally, it is a cultural phenomena ... and very similar to one of the most famous attributes to "gothic literature", the french revolution and its barbarous and public murderous activities. This is the reason why I like "Marat/Sade" the play, because all of a sudden, it is also a group of low lifes trying to get a life, and an aristocracy that won't allow them. They are incarcerated! It's a bit of an exageration, but it feels the same. This was what we felt in Lisbon in the 50's and is well documented, just as it was in Spain during Franco's time and the Civil War. Now you know why "Blade Runner" is so valuable to me! And its music!
This is the experience that I know, and one of the things that shows it the best is Garcia Lorca and Picasso ... even if we don't realize that, and what "Guernica" is really about. A kid looking out the window and seeing all the bloodshed and hurt. But we think that "reality" doesn't exist, because we are in our "safe" environs, and that can't happen! Now, I can not say that any rock bands will come to the fore and be the equivalent 50 to 75 years later, but you and I do not know this, and probably won't see it in our lifetimes. ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 20 2014 at 13:49
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^ Ah... what's the point. Yeah, fine, fine, fine, whatever. I wish I hadn't started now. Is there anything good on telly? Is it tea time yet? That tablecloth needs a damn good ironing. I wonder if the car-wash faeries will pass by my drive tonight, I have a strange feeling that beneath all that grime and road salt there is a shiny red sports car, I'll be glad when winters over and I can drive around the countryside with the windows open and Highway Star blasting out of the stereo, oh what bliss to get away from this preten...
------------- What? |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: January 21 2014 at 06:08
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Hey everyone, sorry I haven't replied to this thread for the last couple days... but I've been rather busy in real life and haven't had time to read your posts in depth let alone respond to them. Stay tuned for me to drop in later with some more in-depth commentary and clearing up some things I apparently didn't make comprehensible enough. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 26 2014 at 13:20
I am more of a believer that the "punk" think is actually a continuation of a movement that started 10 years before in theater and film, and was called "angry young men" (both English and American variety!), which became well known at the time and gave us some writers, actors and directors, and I really believe that it was just a natural progression of the arts that it would eventually come up and down to others. The proto-type punk, like Sid or Johnny, is an enfant terrible that is rejecting anything and everything, and their feelings were not being heard, until someone decided to take a serious stab at it, and one producer, specially in London, made this scene come alive. But that 's like saying that Marlon Brando screaming Stella is not almost the same thing. Sometimes that is all it takes. America's version, of course, was Martha and George screaming at each other after Tennessee Williams spent his time insulting all his characters! Lyrically, it was very similar to a lot of rock music, right after the anti-war sentiment.
The sad part is that "reactionary" scenes don't usually last, and have a tendency to fizzle real quick, and the punk scene came and went and that was that. But sometimes, I still question, was there anything else worth while in the whole scene? And, honestly, I can not find too many things in it that make it worth discussing other than the attitude, but that's like saying that Mick Jagger is not a "punk", and he is! But he is a famous punk! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 27 2014 at 04:53
I don't often either understand or agree with you Pedro but I do concur with this sentiment. Perhaps play-write John Osborne was an unwitting carrier of the latent Punk virus via Look back in Anger. However, this was 1956 and contemporaneous musical developments at the time were certainly neither in harmonious or dissonant step with any such literary zeitgeist. (perhaps I resent your implication that the theater and cinema had their fingers closer to the pulse than musicians at this time?) That angry young WOMAN, Ulrike Meinhoff probably summed up best the dichotomy at the heart of permissive culture v activist dissent: Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more As far as the very notion of the OP's 'cultural legitimacy' goes, maybe the Greek myth of Erostratus can teach us a salutary lesson i,e, the destroyer of a cultural artifact is always more famous than the artifact he defiled -------------
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Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 27 2014 at 15:02
In some ways, I think that rock music had a lot more guts to do what it went on to do later, than theater or film for example, but when you see Godard just tearing up the whole concept of "film" as if he was ripped senseless with a camera on, it makes you wonder who is reading who, and who is seeing what and who is copying who?
If you get a chance, pull out "Tonight We All Love in London" and then ask yourself, what is the connection between all these folks, and this is the part that we're not asking ourselves.
Sadly, there is not enough of these "artistic things" these days, to help show music better and the media state is so harsh on these things that I think there will be another revolution soon.
Who woulda thunk it. Citizen Kane, is still true after all these years! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 28 2014 at 07:19
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Hi,
If any of you, want a slight parallel and how things sometimes connect, check this link out and make sure you read it.
In America, like everywhere else, a lot of things connect, despite the media always wanting to hide history, in one way or another. It is very nice to see the NY Times show some care on this one, but like the Washington Post, there are times when these folks like to be anti-establishment, and show the group how screwed they can be. And to this day, there are many countries that hound their singers and artists mercilessly, and incarcerate them.
A life like this, rarely goes by un-noticed, and to say that anyone, punk, or rap, or otherwise, does not have the ability to stand up is very incorrect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html?_r=1" rel="nofollow - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html?_r=1
There is as much legitimacy to prog, as there is metal, as there is punk or anything else. It's how we relate to it that is different and the true issue. Sometimes, just like school, we just don't bother with history, and you might even consider that American high school history books removed indigenous and black folks from their history up to about 20 or 30 years ago! Sort of like jazz and blues never existed kind of thing, which goes really well with Tom Dowd's short history on his DVD. ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 30 2014 at 05:59
To progress this thread any further I think everyone would be quite keen to learn what the OP means by the term 'cultural legitimacy' (in simple terms and frames of reference we can ALL understand)
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: February 08 2014 at 07:15
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Again, sorry I haven't had time for participating on this forum in general and this thread in particular, but http://degtyarov.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/the-white-echoes-of-mornings-dawn-profiling-the-epic/" rel="nofollow - this very long article from that webzine mentioned in the OP must surely be relevant. It basically concerns modern underground metal's legacy from not just the literary traditions of epic poetry but also the cultural/religious traditions underlying those. The specific examples used are Atlantean Kodex, Caladan Brood and Summoning but other artists are mentioned... it actually briefly touches on classic prog rock's influence too. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: February 13 2014 at 14:04
Funny that you should post this after my post. Cultural legitimacy is a funny thing. It can go both ways, and become a hit single and make someone famous, and it can go the other way, and no one ever heard it, but 40 years later someone finds that it was good and very strong, and we didn't see it at the time, because we were into something else. This is the part that is hard for us all. It is only "culturally legitimate", if you check the other arts, and you can compare them and see what gives. There are many roads and scenes that came and went, and many of those scenes were legitimate, though you could rightly say that they were peculiar to the scene in one place or another. For example, the glam thing in Hollywood/Sunset Strip was not the same as London or NY, but you or I can not say they were not legitimate at all. Punk, was legitimate in that it was a voice for something in London that was not being heard, regardless of what it seemed to be and came from. But that type of anger, was always around in one form or another, and did not have the same theme. Hearing Gil Scott Heron rap in "Performance" will send chills up your spine! But we can not say that eventually this became a valid form, because its strength was massive and it was to the point, although Gil was going after something that most of us do not think about, specially at the time, when ... the joke was that when you went to San Francisco you go with flowers in your hair, and when you go to London, you have a silk scarf around your neck. And no one in rock'nroll pays attention to the lyrics! Which is the real issue in the end! It's like they are not a part of it all, or the music. Where does one start is the problem. The OP is very nebulous and generic, and in a sad way, helps bring out a lot of ideas, that ... many would rather not hear or study, but these are ALWAYS, the enzyme that makes a lot of these scenes come alive. It is our not wanting to accept them, or appreciate them, that hurts and causes the anger. But one can easily compare Pete Seeger to the Pistols, and rightly say, there was a point to their voice, though there are times when we just don't want to hear it! Because it isn't the music that we want to talk about?
------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: February 14 2014 at 04:54
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^ Well I sorta get some of that (although it's Friday so I'm slightly inebriated) but I'm not sure that legitimacy should be conferred on certain music just because similarities can be traced in other art forms. I mean we are very often a race of copy cats and plagiarists versus artists who arrive at similar content independently. It stands to reason that form and structure will be replicated across many artistic disciplines but surely the overriding criteria for our discussion here is subject matter? Yes, many of the musical styles we afford value were a conflation and accumulation of zeitgeist, scenes, shared influences and similarly minded individuals creating their own space for expression. However, so much of the music I seem to value highly appears to have been that sourced from mavericks (Thelonious Monk) misanthropes (Mark E Smith/the Fall) madmen (Lee Perry) and recluses (Scott Walker, Syd Barret) Although we can categorize the foregoing into broad generic styles, to claim with any credibility that say, Monk was Jazz would be at best misleading and at worst only serve to undermine his uniqueness. I guess I'm trying to say that erm...the driver (artist) is more important than the vehicle (music style) hence our endless rubbernecking as we slow down past crash sites like PA.... Good point you raised about the anger/dissent/protest in Pete Seeger and Gil Scot Heron being drawn from the same ne-er-do-well as that of Punk, albeit the fashion cops ensured that neither camp would hook up and become stronger/more influential by sharing their core values etc.Brand loyalty is engineered to be as strong in the record shops as the supermarkets. All up, I still cling to the idea that cultural legitimacy involves all the perils of a moving target and a never ending revisionism that is invariably monopolised by condescending academics. People in the future will be able to read books about Prog, Metal and Punk which outline their respective credentials with a view to knowing their value. This will mean squat to those who lived through their creation. Better to live than to know I say. -------------
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: February 16 2014 at 13:03
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The best I can clarify the "cultural legitimacy" part right now is the genres in question having some kind of unifying artistic ethos or philosophical principles behind its style, consciously or not, that comes from a certain heritage within world cultural history perhaps continuing other movements or reacting against them through the specific cultural vantage point of its origin - in a way that leaves some kind of long-term lasting impact on cultural history. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: March 02 2014 at 11:32
The only concern I worry about, is that we have a tendency to dwindle these down to just one person, or thing, and that tends to isolate the group/event, and make it less important than otherwise.
In many ways, that is the difference in the cultural legitimacy of anything. If only 4 people got up, burned themselves in protest, and newspapers ignored it, it was lost in the translation and no one will know about it or understand it and its motivation. But when a bunch of newspapers and media get onto it, and publicize it, now we consider it important, while a movie, play, painting, or novel, had a similar event that we did not know about because we did not read it or heard about it, and the local news in San Diego didn't mention it! That's a problem, because now, a scene in London is likely to get ignored as much as a scene in San Diego will get ignored in London!
Now, it's "cultural legitimacy" is an issue, because London is bigger, and 3 people wrote about it, and in San Diego, no one did! That's scary! And later, of course, you come to believe London is right, because San Diego couldn't possibly have a scene, unless it was part Mexican? ... that's not only non-sensical, it is also insulting!
In the end, all arts happen, and sometimes they are concurrent, and sometimes they aren't. But the time elements are not always that far apart.
In America, for example, the heroes that everyone had were movie stars and eventually some rock stars. Elvis, not withstanding, since his legacy is fame and money and not meaning, the others were all social rebels of a sort. Jimi, Janis, Jim, were no different than your Sylvia Plath's. But if you separate all these, and strictly by themselves, the majority of rock fans don't give a damn about Sylvia or the work she left behind, or her screams, which were no different than Janis! And then, someone is gonna come up and ask me about Iggy Pop! Same thing, and pretty much the punk version in New York, a vision of excesses gone crazy. Is it legitimate? Well, his getting famous, along with the brothers and other bands, the answer would be yes, but again, a similar band in San Diego, couldn't find any legitimacy anywhere else because no one in NY is gonna buy it.
I honestly feel that the question is too simplified, to get a good answer, and a college professor would probably nail that paper with a C or a D, for lack of continuity and completeness, and total oblivion to the rest of the world.
But it is a valid concern, and something that is difficult to discuss in a board that is only interested in rock music, and doesn't give a poop about anything else, because they never go to the movies or the opera or the museum, because they have been bought out by the Ring, the Potter, and Pepsi!
Now, with that in mind, where is the cultural legitimacy, specially when you are not important and no longer a part of the throng? And you think the media will help you, here? It dilutes the legitimacy, and leaves the top ten alone and a self-fullfilling prophecy, that convinces you that you are wrong and the masses (in this case numbers, not masses!) are telling you what is right, valid and important.
The scary part of the 60's that blows away a lot of people is that the scene happened, no one denies it anymore, and it made huge money for many people, which is no longer denied in the world of "greed is good", but the rest is kinda left behind, and ignored.
Only to be resurrected by you and I at PA! (I love that part!) ... And sadly, this thread dies out since it is not a top ten thread!
------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |