Flagplanters v Cogitants

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I pulled this out of the ILX EMP thread. It's by Scott P, who is a senior editor at Pitchfork (he edits my column, conflict of interest fans). He's summarising a current hot topic.

"...To an emerging generation of kids, music criticism is 24-hour news and leaks and mp3s and ratings and getting to things first. It's not about digesting music and it's not having meaningful conversations about it or reading someone else's ideas about it. Indeed, it's barely having conversations about it all. The democratization of music crit-- on mssg boards, mp3 blogs, etc.-- seems to not be resulting in ppl sharing more ideas with one another, but falling over another just to plant flags. And now many (specifically indie) fans seem actively suspicious of anyone who talks at length about music.

P4k's very act of printing longform reviews** and attempting to share ideas about music is, quite oddly, resented and seen to many as us cramming our opinions down someone's throat or inherently self-indulgent because ppl don't look to music writers for ideas, merely for suggestions on what to download. It's resented and kicked against because music crit is, to many of them, seemingly merely used as a tipsheet and now they can just 'listen to an mp3 and make up their own mind.'

And I fear that with mp3s giving people v. little tangible to grasp onto (no album art, liner notes, photos-- no product), the internet eliminating the need to hunt for info or sounds about/from an artist (let alone make choices about who to literally invest in), the rise of DVDs and video games as products that kids cherish, collect, and participate in w/o other distractions, and music almost exclusively something you do while you're doing something else (a background/lifestyle item) that there is little myth-making or magic in pop music these days, and as a result fewer ideas and conversations and arguments. In short, the future of writing about music, or whatever Amy's panel was called, is pretty grim because the future of getting people to invest their thoughts in music seems grim, too.

** Put it another way: P4k and its peers and contemporaries could be the first and last eZines. If the future of music crit is online, then the old print mag format-- followed by P4k, Stylus, Dusted, Drowned in Sound, CMG, etc.-- is almost N/A. Maybe I'm off but I can't recall a new eZine starting in the past few years. It's all blogs, and lately all that means is posting music or videos. The energy and ideas that departed the Voice, for example, seem to primarily have gone to writing for retail (eMusic), MTV Urge, or writing about single tracks (the very good PTW). I don't blame anyone-- you'd be foolish to start an eZine now-- but what does that say about sustaining lengthy word counts, which was the very thing the internet and the first wave of blogs got right, let alone expressing and communicating ideas?"

Thoughts? Comments? This is a huge topic, obviously.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My take is that it's a mix of stuff that feels intuitively true (the 24-hour leaks stuff, the anti-critical resentment) and stuff that doesn't ("little myth-making or magic", lack of 'tangibles' etc.).

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Also the idea that music is the only thing that kids multitask on = WTF.

It did remind me of your position that there is or should be nothing difficult to get about music, nothing that needs explaining. And I can see that a lot of things on EG Freaky Trigger is less "you should like this" than "if you know this, here's something to think about, a connection you might not have seen" - over everything rather than just music (okay, on a sliding scale, with Art at the other end).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Curse of the short attention span. I blame turkey twizzlers.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

In fact, I'm already more interested in Scooch flying the Eurovision flag the wrong way up in their video (see Popjustice for further details). It's a bad omen!

Srsly though: might it be true that most of the interesting things to say about pop music have already been said by various music writers over the last 30 years, and ver kids are intimidated by their legacy? I'm sure Frank would disagree with me here! But the only thing I feel I could write about at any length is my own personal experience, and that's boring for everyone else to read :-)

[pot80.livejournal.com]

I always get this maybe irrational feeling of guilt when I read points like this because I feel like I'm partly responsible for nudging things in a direction I don't really like at all.

I don't know if I'd be so doom and gloom about this, though. I think a lot of the things Scott is observing is just symptomatic of larger problems in the United States regarding anti-intellectualism, laziness, and amorality in young people, and it carries over into a lot of things, not just music.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Matthew do you find that the number of comments on Fluxblog posts is going down? One of the things I liked about it was that you seemed to actually get healthy comments boxes going.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I kind of agree in that it's how I feel about music now, the not entirely pleasant sensation of it all being a race, but I think this is partially a function of reviewing new stuff all the time/having that neophiliac hipster gene.

And now many (specifically indie) fans seem actively suspicious of anyone who talks at length about music.

I don't think this is to do with the internet at all. Well, I do, but it's to do with how the internet was first used rather than what it is: it didn't inherently stymie long-form crit, it helped it! To the extent that anyone could get a blog and do as much long-form crit as they wanted. And as 90% of it was a thousand times lamer than the worst excesses of print criticism, it's no surprise that scepticism about it has become prevalent.

And I fear that with mp3s giving people v. little tangible to grasp onto (no album art, liner notes, photos-- no product), the internet eliminating the need to hunt for info or sounds about/from an artist (let alone make choices about who to literally invest in)...that there is little myth-making or magic in pop music these days

However this is bollocks, and is actually one of the most liberating things about these new methods of consumption - the tangible stuff and the info and the context is all there (equally at your fingertips) if you wish to point and click, and it's so much easier to find than before, but I absolutely LOVE not necessarily being bombarded with it before you hear the song. Myth-making or magic?! These words get recycled to death in all articles I've seen about the internet and music; wtf do they even mean? For me the myth-making and magic is still present, right where it's always been and right where I think it should be, in the sound I hear.

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

I 100% agree with you on the second point - one of the joys of the new way of doing things is to be utterly liberated from baggage and preconception about music.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I sort of see what you're getting at with the second point but I do think there really IS a kind of opinion entitlement going on as well as a reaction against rub interweb writing (and most print writing is just as rub in IDEAS terms, it's more concise is all).

interesting

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

This should all be true for film criticism, too, shouldn't it? There has long been a tradition of academic film criticism that has relatively little to do with the market. Music has just been lucky (?) for the past forty years that it hasn't been taken particularly seriously as an "art" form and therefore there was space for "popular criticism."

I'm a little surprised -- if it's true -- that Pitchfork longform reviews are "resented" per se. Isn't the resentment more about its (perceived) commercial influence, the idea that its canon and values, although different from Rollling Stone or the NME's, are just as rigid?

Re: interesting

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

That's the root of anti-Pitchfork feeling on ILM - and P4k has actually changed LOADS since Scott started there so that feeling has mostly gone away I think.

But I'm guessing this is a summary of the emails and resentment "the kids" feel. The site has always had a weird love-hate relationship with its readers actually!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

(Also historically at least Pitchfork has never had much of a commitment to music conversation! For very understandable reasons of a) branding and b) bandwidth.)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason I came over to poptimists was a perceived higher standard of discussion - ie., no trolls. I think Pitchfork would have a hard time leading conversation even if it wanted to.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem is that a lot of different skills are getting conflated:

- Keeping up to date on music news and releases
- Accurately conveying where music fits on yr readers internal genre/fashion map
- Being interesting
- Having ideas about music
- Developing ideas about music
- Provoking conversation about music
- Encouraging that conversation to take place

Some of these are rarer than others, different writers/critics have a different mix.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

- Being able to string sentence together in non-annoying fashion!

I read one of the worst reviews of anything ever today (whilst looking something up for work), and the poor writing style was more of a turn-off than the clear rubbishness of band itself.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Taking the proposition in paras 1, 2 and 4 as read (I don't have the evidence to judge if it's true or not, but it feels right), the question is - does it matter?

To which my answer would be: only if the trend is permanent. I think it's still too early judge whether this is the case, given where we are right now on the technology cycle. Downloading is still a new thing for many (and uploading even newer). So we're at the point now where hanger loads of music history has suddenly become available and shareable to more people with more access to the internet than ever before. It's understandable that there will be a tendency towards flagplanting in this environment. Once the technological learning curve reaches a more stable state (and once most music worth re-hearing has been championed), my guess is things will settle down and there will be a swing back towards consideration of the bigger picture.

The stuff in para 3 feels off-base to me.

the freedom to be brief

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

length is also a response to a commercial pressure -- just an out-dated one (it doesn't pay to publish a one-sentence book)

when amy p. made this point at the final discussion, there was a visible recoil from the way she put it -- i responded by saying (something like) in an infinitely expandable medium where everything lasts as long as the oil lasts, there's room for a lot of other levels of response... also i said something abt kids frisking noisily on the surface while dark grey ageing sharks circle below them in the darkness

what i didn't say wz that the visible recoil is a manifest proof of the existence of other desires than amy's for the totality of a frenzied now: what's disliked abt her world and attitude will (has already) created a reactive community

i don't know which i'm in -- the anti-amyites seem a bit alex-in-nyc

Re: the freedom to be brief

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Wait, what did Amy actually say?

unclear me

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"this point" that amy p.made = a more provocative version of what scott sed, not abt length = commercial pressure, that wz me

Re: unclear me

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Who's Amy P? I sort of hope that it's AMP's friend superstern Amy Prior, but that does seem unlikely.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

one of the thing scott and amy don't really examine AT ALL is the social context "ver kidz" are downloading all this material INTO: the impulse to group-historicise what's shared is going to catch up with every new generation as it gets older (probably sooner as the mass requiring retrospective organisation will be massier)

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

How so? (Also, please to talk about the "results in bad writing" idea you were going to address in yr paper)

[koganbot]

Well, I draw a totally opposite conclusion on one point: given the Internet, the only possible future for print magazines (and to some extent, e-zines) is analysis and debate and personality (the personality of the writers, that is), since there's no way that a magazine can keep up with news and reviews. Problem might be that the magazines willing to print analysis will end up reading like boring mags like Harpers and the New Yorker. What needs to happen is for one person backed by money to make a smart decision, but I don't know if this'll happen in my lifetime.

And I'll say that in its prime the writing on ilX was way more alive and rocking and better than the writing in the Voice under Chuck, and that's not Chuck's fault at all - commercial rock criticism was already a sick sick puppy from long before the Internet. Why Music Sucks and Radio On were better than the Voice under Doug-Joe-Ann-Evelyn-Eric, and they were basically message boards on paper, though with many months of lag between posts. And the reason I got so frustrated with the smart people in WMS and on ilX (and poptimists) not taking their ideas further. You guys don't seem to understand that if you don't do it, no one will.

[koganbot]

Put a colon after "further"

[koganbot]

I have a couple of pieces to finish today, so I can't go into this, but the problem with music criticism is cultural, not new technologies. It's kind of like punk rock: punk got boring not because someone invented a drum machine, but because the culture of punk got boring, because as "punk" got larger it was taken over by punks who didn't really want punk, they wanted something more self-affirming. And rock criticism is by and large practiced by people who don't really want to do criticism, or don't know how, or something. Maybe the next "rock criticism" won't be about music, just as maybe the next rock-like cultural effusion won't be musical.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Is Scott confident enough that there have been enough new/interesting ideas in music over the last couple of years to really justify proper insightful discussion focussing on the now and not stuff from 20 years ago?

I'd have to ask him I guess!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

A red herring? 20 years ago informs the now, so your insightful prose would consider both.

Me me me me me

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Hanging out at elbo.ws turns my blood to ice, dunno about anyone else. The main thing I remember was in some thread there I mentioned that (per Matthew's dictat) if you know someone else has already posted something and you want to say, "hey, this song is neat!" then just link to them, and that it really matters less what songs you post and more what you say about those songs, especially if you're responding to what someone else has said.

This was met with total disagreement--I was told that they would post whatever they wanted because their site was a personal expression, and it didn't matter what other people said, they had the right to express themselves. But not by writing--by posting songs! I guess I'm more anti-taste than most people are, but this idea of "the songs on my webpage represent who I am, and that is beautiful" really, really bothers me.

So yeah, I think Scott's being a little off in suggesting this is all bad for music when it's clearly bad for writing.

Re: Me me me me me

[maura.livejournal.com]

the elbo.ws forum is really depressing.
(haha although i think it's ironic in this particular discussion that by posting this six hours after the original comment was made i've probably cut off any possibility for a response!)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

lol. but he really is a poor writer, isn't he?

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Actually, Scott is pretty good! I mean, that's just a message board post.