See you next yoghurt

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Viva manufactured hip-hop! The Fannypack album - SO GOOD. I had most of it as MP3s but the whole thing is just wonderful, if only my copy wasn't swears-free.

Anyway here's a question: how far can an aesthetic or taste be positive, i.e. how strong can it be without defining itself against something else? Obviously this came up in thinking about indie, which defines-against very strongly vis-a-vis the mainstream. But everybody does it.

I like the idea of an aesthetic which avoids this, but that leads to another qn - is there anything wrong with defining against? I kind of have a knee-jerk irritation with it, has that got any rational basis beyond my optimistic faith in the decency of individual humanity?

ph34r my ill-thought out groping towards the qns I want to ask.

Comments

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

There is the theory that innovation largely comes from an agonistic impulse, the feeling that 'I can do something better', and from misunderstood imitation - as with say Owen Gray and Kenneth Richard getting the rhythm a bit wrong on their copy of Rosco Gordon's 'No More Doggin'' and inventing all subsequent Jamaican music (yes, spectacular oversimplification). I mention this because the former leads to that defining-against tendency, in that punk was an attempt to go back to energetic rock instead of the prog art rock, and so on, whereas the latter doesn't - how does reggae ever define itself against anything? That might be cheating, as it's the dominant form in its territory, but I'm not sure hip hop ever did it either.

So I guess I'm saying with these examples that it can work either way. I don't even think it's a criterion of success for a genre/area/aesthetic.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I guess with reggae and hip-hop the defining-against stuff is intra-genre, w/soundclashes and rival geographical crews and so on.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

hmm, it's mostly my own fault, but we should distinguish between straightforward competition to be the best and any stylistic reaction against something else. Most of yer reggae soundclashes would be the former, whereas underground hip hop I think tries for very much the same kind of spurious superiority over the mainstream as in indie vs pop - but I'm not sure the battles within that underground generally involve defining against.

Part of the problem with defining against is that it feels negative - you're defining less by what something is, more by what it isn't.

I've departed from what you asked, of course - an aesthetic or taste can map to a genre, but that's almost incidental. I think we can choose how to express our aesthetics - an indie fan might say they are against the manufactured, or they are for the sincere, and so on. Obviously each carries the other, so I'm not sure we solve the issue with that idea, but I think how much someone chooses to express it one way or the other tells you something. I would always prefer that someone expressed a positive love for what they like, rather than expressing it as dislike for the other stuff.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

hiphop defined itself against disco, michael jackson, sellout soul
latterday reggae defined itself against babylon!!

if you define yrself STRICTLY against something then the full import and expressive content of what you are requires that this something abides and continues (ie you are affirming yr foe not challenging it)

i think the competitive-rivalry intra-genre "against" is a totally difft kettlafish than the genre-contra-genre against (which is oedipal market differentiation confusing itself with historical progress)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

punk wasn't "an attempt" to go back to energy, it DID go back to energy

the [something]*-psych-prog-pubrock-punk-popu-pigfuck line - even if treated as a series of internal self-defiining negations (which it really isn't)** - contains the full tangled heart of the story of rock-qua-rock-qua-NONPOP***

*[something bein a combo of surf, stones and sgt pepper!]
**well unless we allow the hegelian NEGATION OF THE NEGATION movie *(dr alex to thread), which is a basically winning the chess game by knowing over the table
***and even with pop then the negation is ambivalent (ie punk's main idea of energy = the 60s POP SINGLE, even when it pretended it wz reachin back to the 50s)

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

FANNYPACK IS THE BEST ALBUM I'VE HEARD ALL YEAR.

And possibly beyond.

Feet and Hands is The Song for me, just now.