the impulse to group-historicise vs the causes of bad writing

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

follow-up to:
(a) a post i made on freakytigger's thread
and
(b) the part of my EMP paper which i actually pussied out of and didn't explore (as requested by dickmalone


(a) i was wondering about the social context "ver kidz" are downloading all this material INTO, and suggested that 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)

by this i mean that there comes a point -- an age -- when things in yr life (like interaction w.yr own kids, or death of parents, or mid-life crisis) cause you to take stock of yr life so far and the choice you made; but -- while in its full effect there is an atomised, solitary just-you element to it, there is also (always) a social element, as in did "i dodge my generation's bullet?" vs "haha what were we thinking?"... the social aspect will be responded to, media-wise (at its most basic, this is what nostalgia-media is about, and there is LOTS of it, catering, often very differently, to a succession of different generations)... my speculation about the sheer quantity of information the young'uns are processing leading to a speedier mnedia of recapitulation'n'revision is exactly that, speculation --- but i do think that if the carousel is whirling ever faster and noiser, then more ppl will step off or fall off sooner, and their consolation-needs will kick in more urgently

(b) specifically what i meant by "results in bad writing" (which thus goes on to create bad music) -- tho as i say i pussied out of this part of my paper and ended up not thinking it through -- is rock after punk created a language of critical success that stresses lines of established influence, as well as innovation and breakthrough within those lines (form being thus: "xyz, influenced by green on red and pigbag, is the first band to combine ska and salsa with indie hiphop")... this is bad writing (to me) bcz it immediately goes on to evade the important bit, which is to answer the question "SO WHAT?" in respect of this analysis (viz my war on the word "influence", which to me is the touchstone of this failure: a shared understanding of the significance is taken for granted right at the point it should be being explored)

my conclusion in ref.good writing was that maybe the TEST OF SPACE can be formulated (in the extreme abstract) thusly: "Does it matter to you that it matters to me (and vice versa)?"

Comments

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Thanks. To pick at it a bit, though, how did rock-pre-punk process new information, if not via a chain of influences? Do you think writing's better when it's not contextual, or are you saying that you think this focus on influence narrowed the scope/worldview of both writing about music and music itself?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

first, i think there is a shift, from "chain of influences" as a matter-of-fact minor locationary point to make (among many): and "chain of influences"as establishing-quality

second, i think in the 60s and 70s, there was (if anything) a tendency to assume that boomer music was doing stuff so new and important that the pre-boomer bedrock just wasn't that important (non-derailing exceptions = the blues as a root; prog as a child-of-the-classics) --- xyz was good bcz it ROCKED (and if it "was influenced by sam & dave" this was of minor historical matter; besides, basically EVERYTHING was "influenced by stones/elvis/beatles", so the point wasn't worth making)

so i think the analytical argument kicked in abt the time it became necessary to argue -- within rock -- that we were going back to RESCUE the genre from where vit went wrong, and to cite (as roots of quality) elements OVERLOOKED AT THE TIME; generally meaning the VELVET UNDERGROUND obv

"chains of influence" had a similar, longer-encrusted function in other musics (eg jazz) and art-forms -- so there's an element of rockwrite borrowing from the critical language of "more grown-up discourse" to professionalise itself, an authority-seeking tic which after a while becomes a distorting shortcut, churned out in industiral volumes

also of course with punk and post-punk there was a huge outreach to artforms other than rock to shore up rock against the kinds of political crit that punk brought into the dicussion

i think it's a leap out into a bogus objectivity, pandering to an idea of history and historical importance which very much misses what WAS new to rock as a cultural project

[thomppw.livejournal.com]

so uh wasn't that an account of a chain of influences which then stops at the point of explaining what is in fact important and new about rock as a cultural project?

admittedly this is a bit snide of me, sorry :(

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

uh, yes, that's exactly what i'm saying, thom: the attempt to explain or explore what was special about rock as a (no longer quite) new thing went through a massive crisis of confidence, and ended up routinely defining its "true" self against itself by weirdly uncritical outreach to all kinds of other "non-rock" things -- "influence" being a touchstone word in this evasion; that once you've said it, you apparently don't have to say anything else

[thomppw.livejournal.com]

no, i meant - isn't this an account of 'influence' on rockwrite? - it's humbug of me, though, cuz it isn't, plus now having gone and looked at your abstract i gather that the "what were the chain of things that led to rockwrite going wrong" isn't the center of it in the way i took it to be from this post. (wasn't at EMP.)

[koganbot]

so i think the analytical argument kicked in abt the time it became necessary to argue -- within rock -- that we were going back to RESCUE the genre from where vit went wrong, and to cite (as roots of quality) elements OVERLOOKED AT THE TIME; generally meaning the VELVET UNDERGROUND obv

Wait wait wait, (1) delete "as roots of quality" and this was a very good argument that (2) was made by actual human beings, e.g., Lester Bangs (who'd have used the Troggs more than the Velvets as his touchstone), Dave Marsh (would have picked Question Mark or the Miracles), Peter Laughner (Velvets all the way), etc. etc. etc., and that (3) wasn't about influence actually, but was more along the lines of "How do we do what they were able to do, what's wrong with now that's preventing us - or the MC5, anyway - from being able to do what they did then? Let's try to bring it (garage rock, punk rock, power pop, bubblegum) back into rock, as a return of the repressed, but in our own way, and let's search out within the present the things that seem to have that potential to go somewhere not part of the Dull Ugly Respectable Rock Behemoth, so maybe reach for metal or glam or even Abba or the Carpenters if need be," and that (4) influenced me so that in the mid 1980s I took it as a model for how to attack the postpunk alternative-indie rock world and call for a new regeneration.

[koganbot]

I still don't think you've successfully explained to me what your critique of "influence" is - that is, what type of argument about influence you think is the "bad" argument, or how one deploys the "good" ones, say Harold Bloom or yours. (And I've probably spent as much time as anyone except maybe you trying to understand what your critique of influence is.)

What you're criticizing upthread is the sort of writing that goes "Frank Kogan is writing in the spirit of Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer" and then says nothing interesting about what Lester or Richard did and how I used their ideas myself. Publicists and reviewers make such statements all the time (though it's usually "Band X channels the spirit of [Gang Of 4, Slits, Stooges]). But criticizing this writing isn't criticizing any concept of influence but rather the simple failure to say what the influence was, since the reviewer/publicist isn't telling a story of influence but is rather just invoking names. All this means is that there are a lot of shitty thinkers out there, or OK thinkers who don't have the space to say what they mean, or the impetus to figure out what they should mean. But you've left the notion of "influence" unscathed (in this thread, that is). "In the mid 1980s Frank Kogan took the Bangs-Meltzer-Marsh assault on progressive FM rock as a model for how his own attack on the postpunk alternative-indie rock world and his own call for a new regeneration." That sentence shortchanges my originality somewhat* and overlooks a bunch of my other sources, but I don't see where there's anything fundamentally wrong with it. This is the standard story of influence: Person B uses Person A as a model but applies it to new situation C, modifying model A as necessary, and in rare circumstances overthrowing model A and coming up with something substantially new.

(*I didn't actually read Lester's "James Taylor Marked For Death" until after my first Why Music Sucks broadsides, and I remember when Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung came out Luc and I remarded to each other how similar were the things Lester was wrestling with to the things I was wrestling with.)

[koganbot]

Close quote after "[Gang of 4, Slits, Stooges])." Delete "how" from "as a model for how his own attack."

[koganbot]

remarded - remarked

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes these argts were posted very off-the-cuff and unrigorous to get me back into thinking about them, so w/o doubt full of holes as is -- i have printed out yr replies and am taking them off to shropshire to discuss with my dad instead of getting him a birthday cake ponder while i read my advance copy of luc's book

off-net from 5-ish today till late monday