i opened the window and INFLUENZA

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(ok this is a follow to THIS POST, and a response to frank's comments in particular -- and i'm going to write it up rough and quick to get it done, so as usual not everything is tied up proper or said right probably)

SOME REASONS WHY INFLUENCE DOESN'T EXIST
i. the word influence arrives in the critical lexicon via the SCIENCE OF ASTROLOGY, viz the effects of the movement of the stars and planets above on us here below
ii. the word INFLUENZA (ie flu) was regarded as an ASTRAL AFFLICATION, a seasonal contagion caused by the heavens
iii. i would in fact be CONTENT if artists stopped saying "my influences are nick and charlie drake" and said, instead, 'HERE BE MY AFFLICATIONS: ace of bass, astrud gilberto and andrew lloyd webern" (after all, they're all stars!) -- instead of "nazareth were never very influential" say "sabbath were HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS" -- already the quality of the writing is improving, no?

frank is perhaps right that i'm doing not much of a job seeing off the existence of influence as an idea (or cluster of ideas) -- but my argument is that, at least within rock-crit culture, to say "x influenced y" IS ALWAYS ALSO to believe that nothing else needs saying; it's always an end point, never a beginning. I'm claiming that if, every time you wanted to use the word influence, you stopped and tried to say what you're saying in another way, without using, you will ALWAYS produce a better momentum towards better ideas about an artist's relationship with his or her or their precursors. It's a dead metaphor; a cliche as well as an evasion. It's an intellectual black hole.

"IS ALWAYS ALSO to believe that nothing else needs saying" -- can I prove this?

Well, Frank picks an actual-real-people mid-70s trend that he noticed, and saw work, and decided would be worth emulating in the mid-80s. I was referring -- slightly jokily in my ref to the velvets -- to a mid-80s UK trend which more or less coincided with the emergence of WMS, and seemingly took a similar shape, except to produce exactly the thing Frank was decrying. With locus = rise and canonisation of JAMC , VU were crowned as the godfather of indie -- the style and attitude you should aspire to, jangle and shades and haircut and etc and etc.

Frank describes his relationship to Marsh, Bangs et al -- as "took it as a model"; in other words, he qualifies the relationship usefully; what he was interested in, why he wanted to use it. The critical language in the UK, yoking JAMC to Velvets, was "influenced by" -- not only was there never much hint you should worry yr head with what was interesting here, let alone "how do we do what they were able to do, what's stopping us?" -- it was IMITATE THE MASTERS FOPR GREATNESS TO RETURN, and if as to WHY, if you have to ask you'll never know....

Frank correctly points out that the "looking back at the past" was a 70s (pre-punk)* phenom: and that 'influence" would be a perfectly good word to use during discussion of how bangs. marsh etc were looking back with a view to rebooting, and that looking back to with a view to rebooting isn't itself a a bad idea, in fact -- taken as a model, as he did -- it's a GREAT idea. OK, I don't have a problem with that -- what I'm arguing is that the routinisation of looking back, as an uncritical veneration of elements of the past, which congealed in UK crit in the 80s, congealed round the word "influence". Yes it's possible for Frank to use it to describe what happened to him -- but notice that he always uses stronger, better ways to examine his relationship as well. "The word "influence" NEEDS QUALIFICATION to get beyond its damaging gravitational pull.

Which is what?

Influence in the sense of "has power over" seems to me an acceptable phrase in the context of politics: "Israel has more influence in Washington than Laos" -- even if the how of this influence is not detailed (as it probably ought to be), we have a reasonably sense of the claim. Politics is about power; the word "influence" acknowledges the fact of such power, even if it somewhat hurries past how this power manifests: the actual mix of political authority, moral authority, cultural authority and other modes of the institutional ability to achieve your intended ends (technology, quality of staffing, infrastructure generally, economics generally) may be be complex and not easily unravelled, but the idea of "political influence" isn't self-occluding.

But I wonder if the OK-ness of this useage doesn't import some of its bad effect into rock writing? Invoked as the spine of a causative chain of quality, it turns our attention to the wrong things -- away in fact from content, the content of ideas (critical, musical, whatever), and towards inherited authority. It turns us away from "Is this a good idea? let me think up some ways to test it, let me USE it and see if it breaks" towards "This is a good idea because IMPORTANT PEOPLE I WANT TO LIKE ME said it". It's kind of craven.

Now this isn't even necessarily a problem in all art-forms. Harold Bloom makes an argument in re poetry that you may not agree with: that it has a central canonic core, which operates by a kind of sacerdotal inheritance. In which case, influence as an invocation of authority is not out of place. All artforms that are formed round a guild-guarded armoury of techniques and intentions and uses are setting aside a place for received authority in the zone the artform lays claim to. Prior to the 20th century I would think almost all artforms set aside such a place, and made a proud point of doing so: "authority" as a PROBLEM -- while it doubtless animated individuals back to the dawn of time -- was not a constituent part of art MOVEMENTS prior to the late 19th century, I don't think.

(Whence add in the fact that, by invoking "influence", some critics are hoping to make themselves seem like the established historians of the art of another era -- I called this an "element in rockwrite" in my first post, and to be honest, I don't think it's more than that; a hint of pose, as avatars of a higher learning... in itself, i don't think its disabling, and obv there are plenty of other critical borrowings, and so what?)

Anyway, what happens in music at the start of the 20th century is the emergence of figures whose claim to authority is, not a conformity with pre-approved elements, but themselves and what they do: in pop this starts pretty much with Louis Armstrong (I could sort of make a case for John Philip Sousa but it would be shaky and unhelpful). (In composed music it starts, with a bang, with Wagner -- who created a cultural-critical framework in which HE was the prior master, DESPITE his lack of skills at and disinterest in all manner of composer techniques considered sacrosanct and essential in a composer, such as polyphonic part-writing.) Jazz hit the problem of its own lineage -- establishing a tradition of anti-traditionalism -- as it moved into its third generation: end of the 40s, beginning of the 50s. The anti-tradition showbiz wing "became" R&B (which had other ancestors also): and before you knew it, rock'n'roll too had a figure whose authority was WHAT HE DID, not how he was like his precursors viz Elvis. (Most of whose fans never heard his precursors.)** Rock'n'roll's problem of its own lineage arrived as it moved into its second generation: the Beatles -- and the question of rockwrite -- spoke to millions by virtue of what they did, NOT by virtue how they were replicating and imitating and enriching what came before (what THEY knew); bcz the millions never what became before. Beatles/Dylan/Stones fell out of a clear sky to the bulk of their fans. And what I'm arguing is that this thing -- authority by virtue of charisma and sheer sonic affect ("bcz they ROCKED" -- is in respect of the traditions and the authority of tradition -- a big new thing in music. (Albeit a thing which actually started and came apart several times already in 20th century pop...) ("ended art forever until some forgot" as Meltzer would say...)

Falling out of the sky, they were responded to, largely, in just these terms: early rock crit wasn't just unhistorical, but anti-historical (yes yes Ralph Gleason, but he was the EXCEPTION THAT PROVED THE RULE). Year zero time, in its cheerful way. Until the mid-70s, when the energy was flagging badly and things just weren't fun by virtue of being themselves any more -- faced with what Frank (rightly) calls the DULL UGLY RESPECTABLE ROCK BEHEMOTH (which had authority not for what it was doing, but for what it HAD ONCE DONE, a lifetime -- ie four years -- ago) people looked to see what had gone lost, where value could be discovered to re-inject into the thing. And the answer was -- more or less unanimously -- the past (also there was reggae, but that's a difft tale). Prog (equally loose defined) reached for classical, jazz, the electronic avant garde. Punk (equally loosely defined) reached for garage rock, pre-punk punk, power pop, bubblegum, pre-"rock" rock and roll etc.

Now I don't have a problem with Frank's argument that this hunt was a GOOD IDEA -- but it brought back the issue of old-school inherited authority. Or rather, it did if you approached it in the wrong way. What Frank says "I took as a model", it's clear the agency, the choice, the intelligence is HIS: HE took as model, bcz he invests authority in HIMSELF based on his trust in his ability to think and analyse and judge. If he says "I was influenced by", the implication -- as contained in the backstory of this word -- is that the agency is anywhere but him: it's a refusal of responsibility, a passing of the buck. (Exactly the opposite of the story Frank tells as the standard story of influence...")

And a very curious one at that: if someone puts forward at his trial that he attacked and killed so-and-so because THE WHITE ALBUM told him to do so, this is (basically) part of a legal strategy of diminished responsibility by reason of insanity. The idea that someone's work -- their writing, their songs-- has a power over you that you CANNOT DENY and MUST ACT ON is, as soon as you say it out loud, evidence of broken oddity (or dishonesty).

Now the idea that a song has a power -- to move us, to tell us something, to enrich us -- is important; not to be shied from. It's plainly not true that the listener creates all the meaning themselves; for the same reason there's no such thing as a private language (a language of one). But this bogus non-existent*** god's-voice-in-my-head dimension to the concept of "influence" masks and overrides the much more important aspects of what power songs (and words, and pictures, and all kinds of things we make) DO HAVE.

The question of where the power lies is as important in the discussion of art as it is in politics: in bioth cases, we're talking about making things happen. What I object to, in the unqualified use of the word influence, is that its claim about where the power lies is just NONSENSE (strong artists as all-powerful sorcerors; the audience as their willingly brainless minions). It seems to be absolutely telling that every one of Frank's attempts at justification of his use of the term "influence" carefully re-introduces a description which cuts this nonsense off at the knees. What I'm saying is that, if he just used the other way of saying it, and never used the i-word, his artument would be just as clear, uncontentious, and uncontested by me. (In fact there are other modes of relationship with precursors than "take as your model" -- the difference between them being something the i-word occludes and confuses, because at best, and even if you don't accept my claim about its deep sorcery-minion meaning, it's a bad generalisation: a map of the differences between the various precursor relationships would be a minimal map of where art gets it power; what kinds of powers it has)

Frank says that publicists and reviewers make these kinds of statements all the time -- I think there are two questions here. When did they start? (I'm arguing that it became a habit, a plague, in the mid-80s) and why is it so useful to them? It's useful because it says (by a secret shared code that in fact everyone understands, without necessarily quite realising this is what they assenting to): "you should like this band because IMPORTANT PEOPLE THINK THEY'RE GOOD"



*except Frank also argues that punk was a 60s not a 70s phenom -- steonss and dlyan got there first -- but that's a separate argument:

**Yes it's a cluster of figures -- Chuck Berry, Little Richard etc etc. Their initial emergence, as with Elvis's, was an excited acceptance to a community who shared their awareness of, and love for their precursors -- but their fast move beyond this first community locks into their authority-in-themselves

***Yes OK "god spoke in my head and I had to obey" maybe DOES exist for certain kinds of mental damage; but it is just NOT a constituent part of ordinary response to stuff people say and do.

Comments

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

The political definition seems to be missing the time-related aspect of musical influence - there's power because they both exist at the same time, whereas with the generational stuff paying lip service to the VU doesn't mean that you want to hear what Tucker, Morrison et al currently think about your sound (and if anyone asks them, they tend to be quiet ghosts rather than "Quite frankly I think it need more mistuned violin").

In fact the only political influence of that sort that I can think of now is the "nu-80s"ness of the US executive branch, which has led to an instance or two of eg George HW Bush going ("well, I wouldn't stand behind everything that's currently happening"). Though it is a relatively specific bit of space-time where you even have the opportunity IE people who aren't in power any more but also aren't dead.

Do you feel a difference between the cross-generational and the happening-now stuff like EG Seargent Pepper being a response to Pet Sounds being a response to Revolver? Or more scene-based stuff (though that said I have a hard time thinking of any band willing to say "yes, we listened to what our co-scenesters did and it really changed what we were doing")?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

oo that's a really good point, about power across time vs power within the same frame -- i must think some more about that

i think it happens in politics a fair with eg invocations of churchill or reagan

i'd like to see what other people say abotu the prevalence of today's artists saying "i'm really influenced by my contemporaries x, y and z" -- does it happen less now? response to the now is a really important aspect of all music which is -- again -- weirdly downplayed in accounts of it (most histories of bands simply omit all histories of contemporaries -- with a few exceptions, such as biogs of professional and self-confessed chameleons; or when there's some really big taste upheaval, like punk or free jazz or hiphop or whatever, and you get a few pages on how this affected zep or the clash, or whoever it is -- in general, you rarely get a sense that musicians CONTINUE actively to listen to other music once they've started making it themselves)

the "response to what's happening now" element of the 60s is HUGELY IMPORTANT to its flavour -- because it was just not at all backwards-looking, and that's really quite unusual: punk had a year zero rhetoric combined with a getting-back-to-basics retro practice that was only occasionally leavened with any kind of anti-retro futurism

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

When I started reading the NME - start of 89 - it was just in time for the indie-dance movement, which threw the question of response-to-now into play fairly starkly. The magazine had to walk a peculiar tightrope where its readers wanted extensive coverage of bands who were reacting to something happening but not very extensive coverage of the thing being reacted to.

To compound matters, this was also the era when "bandwagon jumping" became a great sin, which was unfortunate because clearly bands *were* listening extensively to one another and copying each other's successful moves (which there is nothing wrong with!). So every band had to claim their inspiration directly from the wellspring of the dance music scene and not from each other, leading to "there's always been a dance element to our music" (wild applause).

Anyway, today's artists - I get the feeling that they're likelier to claim social affiliation than i direct musical one. Interesting to wonder what effect social networking online may have on the acceptability of admitting responses to current stuff happening.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> in general, you rarely get a sense that musicians CONTINUE actively to listen to other music once they've started making it themselves

No, unless they start doing a lot of acid! :-) Well summat did happen with the Clash deciding to jump on reggae bandwagon (am loathe to go into more detail as my knollidge is a bit hazy here), but most bands are so hard-worked (at least when they're starting out) that the only other bands they get a chance to hear or see is their fellow scenesters. I became quite unhappy in GK as 99% of our co-performers at gigs were uninspiring (and mostly DREADFUL), and our drummer was very unreceptive to ANY music made after 1960, let alone new stuff!. Once you are successful enough to be out of the scene, you don't want to mess with your 'winning' formula (hi dere U2).

> response

I immediately think of Frankee's response to Eamonn ("F*ck U Right Back", I think) and that this goes on all the time in rap and hip-hop! And with remixes as well - not necc. what the actual remixes sound like, but the fact that they are being remixed at all and by whom. Bandwagon or FITE?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i wrote a medium length 'me too' sort of thing, but deleted it. another time :-/

Thinking out loud

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

A mathematical approach:

Band X is said by thoughtless reviewer to be influenced by Band A and Band B (ok to make this more picturesque let's say Band A = Beatles, Band B = Underworld). I, the reader, have never heard Band X and this description is the only thing I have to go on. So I imagine some dude shouting "lager lager lager" over the top of "Yellow Submarine" (X = A + B, as I have no other ingredients). But of course putting these two influences together means that Band X have also been inspired by Band C (where Band C = shonky bootleg mashup purveyor SteveM heehee!), so the reviewer has clearly missed a trick with his shonky bootleg name-dropping (and actually X = [A + B]*C). And of course not all Beatlesband songs are like Yellow Submarine, and no other Underworld songs have dude shouting "lager lager lager" so unless reviewer states a particular noise from a particular song that I just happen to have heard, the whole comparison is pointless (X = [A.submarine + B.lager]*C?).

But giving clear reference points to your readers is one thing. A band saying *themselves* (on their myspace or wherever) that they are influenced by Beatles or Underworld will immediately point out whether the band are clever (or dumb) enough to grab your attention. Personally I find a long list of big name or even obscure influences offputting and tiring - like you mention above, "these people were cool and so I'm going to say I sound like them to sound cool" = spending so much time worrying about being cool that clearly the music must be suffering! I have lost my point somewhere in all that maths, whoops.

With regard to the use of 'influence' in politics, it can be just as dangerous. If you don't know WHY Israel has influence over Washington and not Laos and you just go blindly stating it then you are going to run into trouble (from M0ss4d, hahahahaha). The context behind any political influence is just as necessary as in art if you actually want to not appear a tw4t (thankfully I know enough to know that I know nothing, etc).

I am all for people trying to describe ideas in a way that hasn't been tried before but I guess sometimes this is impossible and you fall back to what you know. Which always seems to be Bob bloody Dylan, but that's another gripe altogether... :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

"i'd like to see what other people say abotu the prevalence of today's artists saying "i'm really influenced by my contemporaries x, y and z" -- does it happen less now?"

I hear it all the time -- don't know whether that's less or more than when I started reading writing/interviews (round '97)?

On a classical board I post to the influence word comes often enough. Most of the posters bar one use it w/out going any further. The poster I talk about post extracts from scores and writes a para or two (recently did when showing how Brahms was influenced by Palestrina). Is this word a hang-up from classical music? Bcz w/scores of pop songs I suppose aren't normally pulled out to explain anything (at least on msg boards, this is a tech/rights thing) (and I suppose some music isn't really scored).

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

There's a practical instance in which the "influence" notion comes in – in the back of the NME, or the wall of your local schmindie record shop & these days no doubt (he only can assume, like the old man he is) on the web – "Drummer w/own van wanted for radical pop combo. Influences: Mötörhead, Donna Summer, Link Wray, Kirstie & Phil". Now, whether that's a useful approach to assemble a band is another matter...

[koganbot]

Well, that's how I tried to assemble bands "Spoonie Gee meets Teena Marie On The Corner" was an actual ad (or maybe it was "Johnny Thunders meets Teena Marie On The Corner" or something). Met some interesting people this way but didn't form a band out of it. The way I got into Red Dark Sweet was I had a conversation with an employee in the downstairs section at the Strand Bookstore, and we were talking about music and he had some friends who were trying to put together a band, so I gave him my number and several weeks later got a call, and Charlotte said she liked the Beatles and I said I liked Wilson Pickett and I went to Red Hook to visit and it turned out our common ground was the Velvet Underground and the Fall.

[koganbot]

Still seems to me that you're not at odds with the concept "influence" (e.g., something exerts power, something sets or alters one's course, something used as a model) but rather a particular lazy use of the word. I think if you took away the word, the same people who were using it in this lazy way would continue to be lazy and thoughtless. (Whereas if you took away the words "objective" and "subjective" and "rockism" some smart people would free up their thinking.) "Influence" is a vague, general word so it usually requires elaboration and additional specificity. But one good reason to use such a vague, general word is, for instance, when you notice a change in someone or something but you don't know what caused the change but you assume an outside influence and wonder what it is. Or you see some odd phenomenon or band and you want to know how it got that way.

Speaking of getting that way, how did music criticism get so bad? I think what happened is that a lot of mediocrities poured in wanting to justify their minority taste (or so they saw it) for indie-alternative music that they genuinely loved, but they didn't have the urge to understand the world or to create new worlds. Hence they wanted to invoke "influence" but weren't interested in finding out how something actually affected something else.

[koganbot]

Frank picks an actual-real-people mid-70s trend that he noticed

Nitpicking, but the trend starts in '68 or so, not mid '70s; in any event is already rolling when I read my first issue of Fusion in 1969.

[koganbot]

E.g., Meltzer dates the death of rock as late '67, and Charlotte Pressler and Peter Laughner are talking about the need for a "counter-counterculture" in '68.

[koganbot]

rock crit wasn't just unhistorical, but anti-historical

Oh, I don't think so. Tosches was always bringing up the past (albeit half-fancifully), and Jon Landau was writing in '68 about how Dylan occupied a role that pre-existed him (Meltzer's famous [in my mind, anyway] "I would write like Bo Diddley rather than about him" was a deliberate contrast to Landau, who Meltzer said was the type of guy who always needed to tell you e.g. how Bo Diddley fit in to whatever music he was writing about). And Marcus paid attention to the past for sure. But rockcrit did think - correctly - that the present was decisively and necessarily different, so rock critics weren't using influence from the past as an authority to validate or explain the present.

no one has convinced me there is a case for keeping the word

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i. frank continues to use other actual phrases instead: iv. "something exerts power", "something sets one course", "something alters one's course", "something used as a model", are all better, clearer phrases, and DIFFERENT TO ONBE ANOTHER -- what is the need for a word which merely confuses them for the sake of a forgotten metaphor?
ii. re the shortcut kat talks about: "sounds like yellow submarine crossed with lager song" would be an improvement on "influenced by beatles and underground"
iii. (braisedbywolves's VERY GOOD point about political-influence-as-synchronic-not-diachronic) + (kat's point that most working bands in fact pay NO ATTENTION TO THE PRESENT) = in the present-day world of bands there is NO SUCH THING AS INFLUENCE QED
iv. band want-ads which said eg "heartsease*: Mötörhead, Donna Summer, Link Wray, Kirstie & Phil..." (*or ANY POETICKAL ALTERNATIVE) would get a better quality of respondent...
v. i sketched a possible get-out clause for pre-rock artforms, because i think INVOKED AUTHORITY is part of their existing quality structure -- so what would be interesting to me in brahms wd be what use of the bits he borrows (takes) from palestrina, given that there is so much that he DOESN'T take (a much better phrase in this instance would certainly be "brahms paid unexpected attention to palestrina")

conclusion: some of my aversion is sub's allergy to cliche; some of it is logician's allergy to crappy argument and buried contradiction; some of it is bcz FRANK KOGAN IS MY DISEASE AND MY HEARTSEASE AND THE COLOUR OF MY SKY -- yes i do think influence is a stuporword, in the context of rock

Re: no one has convinced me there is a case for keeping the word

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

oops i meant to go back and lj-ify all the respondents, not just andrew!

[koganbot]

What about performers who go fishing for influences? E.g., "We sound like the Eagles but we should be doing what the Shirelles were doing?" So that they need to create the power of the past.

And then what about...

Mark, I took a lot of shots at Harold during our Bloomenstein email fest in 2002, but I would be disappointed if you thought that there were no interesting stories about pop and rock musicians and pop and rock critics looting and trying to get out from under the past (whether you want to use the word "influence" or not to tell your story). It seems to me that's exactly where we left the conversation in 2002, with my taking out the hocus pocus and simplemindedness from the Bloom ideas and so clearing the way so that the discussion of Blooms AoI for poetry could give way to the Mark Sinker AoI for music and for criticism. That's why this thread is something of a disappointment, since you seem to be saying "people who are using the word 'influence' are telling a bad story or no story" but you don't seem to be using this as a preliminary to telling a story yourself.

[koganbot]

One of the earliest books of rock criticism begins with the sentence "This is a sequel."

[koganbot]

Don't think there's more for me to say about the word "influence." It doesn't get in my way, I don't think. E.g., if I ask the question (which you might want to try and answer) "How much have I and how much should I shuck off the influence of Meltzer?" the word influence is fine and I wouldn't want to replace it with something else, because anything else would be too specific. This is because "the influence of Meltzer" is a number of different things, some more valuable than others, some more obsolete, some perhaps being worthy of being made obsolete. And the word "influence" bundles them all into one. Obviously for me or anyone else to answer the question, we have to then answer the question "How has Meltzer influenced Kogan?" The word "influence" is not itself an answer here. To me, and to you, but not to a bunch of thoughtless rock critics, the word "influence" rarely explains anything. Rather, it's a call for further thought. E.g., "Q: Why is he driving so poorly? A: The influence of alcohol." That works because we know what the influence of alcohol on driving is. "Q: Why is Frank being so nasty? A: The influence of Meltzer." This doesn't work, since obviously there's more to why Frank chose to be nasty than that he read Meltzer being nasty. Why, for instance, was he enamored of that aspect of Meltzer, rather than some others? And why is he being nasty in this particular situation? But if someone is willing to ask the followup questions - which I just asked - then we're fine. I'm not disputing that lots of rock critics are bores when they use the word "influence." But that's because lots of rock critics are thoughtless bores.

[koganbot]

What Frank says "I took as a model", it's clear the agency, the choice, the intelligence is HIS: HE took as model, bcz he invests authority in HIMSELF based on his trust in his ability to think and analyse and judge. If he says "I was influenced by", the implication -- as contained in the backstory of this word -- is that the agency is anywhere but him: it's a refusal of responsibility, a passing of the buck.

Surely this is an exaggeration. Fundamentally I'll take responsibility for my choice of models, but the situation is a lot more complicated than "I took the rock critic's early '70s attack on progressive-FM rock as my model for my attack on the postpunk world." (Actually, I don't remember which thread I said "I took as a model" or what exactly I said.) But also, basically, I was falling into a kind of groove that intellectuals of my type tend to fall into, something that goes back at least to Twain and then through Ring Lardner and Otis Ferguson and Robert Warshow and the Cahiers guys and Manny Farber and Andrew Sarris (and maybe subliminally people like Adorno whom I'd barely read) etc. etc. Yeah, there's choice involved as to whom to copy, but then there's choice involved in choosing to copy the Velvets and the Fall too (and as a guitarist I did just that). So, "Frank = intellectual agency; guys who use the word 'influence' = passing the buck" is way too pat. When a musician parades his influences, I think there's a lot of agency involved. And right on the first page of the first preface of my book I'm demanding that people like me see ourselves as social products, so...

[koganbot]

rock critic's = rock critics'

[koganbot]

Believe it or not, there's stuff in "The Autobiography Of Bob Dylan" and the first several issues of Readers' Poll and Why Music Sucks that are straight out of Truffaut (for instance, any time I complain of someone "letting the symbol stand in for the effect," just plug in "mise en scene" in place of "effect").

Word in action

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/05/a_prince_with_no_heir.html

[koganbot]

What I'm saying is that, if he just used the other way of saying it, and never used the i-word, his argument would be just as clear, uncontentious, and uncontested by me.

Well, I think it is uncontested by you, in that your quarrel isn't with me (or my use of the word, which as you say is never "unqualified," but I don't think any general word I use goes unqualified by me - my writing is always full of "but" and "however"). Your quarrel seems to be with bad critics and how they use the word.

Some important questions:

(1) What's really at stake? E.g., when I rail against the use of the word "rockism" isn't because bad critics use it but because good critics use it, to the detriment of their thinking. What's at stake is that I want these good critics to deal with the ideas of mine that are all over my book conveyed (or "conveyed") by my very own buzz words "contamination," "Superwords," "PBS," "the What Thing," etc., but these critics talk about "rockism" instead. And in particular, they (or some of them) use "rockism" to pretend that it's the other guys who've got the issue with authenticity, while we've moved beyond it. Whereas I think not only haven't we moved beyond the issue, but that we shouldn't. (So people's antirockism symbolizes for me my difficulty in finding colleagues.)

(2) What should we be talking about instead? Or, more to the point, why aren't you talking about it, whatever it is? And why did you basically abandon the whole subject in 2002, when you'd raised and then didn't follow up on the question of the rock/rockwrite Anxiety of Influence?

[koganbot]

Unproblematic use of "influence": "In 19xx, Astronomer Y hypothesized that deviations in the expected orbit of Uranus could be due to the influence of an as yet unseen planet orbiting farther out."

"In 196x, Frank Kogan hears the Rolling Stones and decides to use them as a model for his own thinking and playing. So, the deviation in the expected path of Frank's life could be due to his exposure to the Rolling Stones."

This "influence" shows the Stones affecting me (wielding power, as it were) but doesn't undercut the idea of my taking responsibility ("decides to use them as a model"), but...

I once wrote that "You don't dance to the Rolling Stones' music; the Rolling Stones' music dances you." So the Rolling Stones exercised power over me that I didn't necessarily invite. And my deciding to use them as a model meant that I was (among other things) using them as a model for how to exercise similar power over others. Like the gunmen in old movie westerns who shot near people's feet, I was going to make people dance my dance.

So the advantage of using the word "influence" rather than merely "I used them as a model" is that "influence" reinserts the idea of the Stones' power over me and contains a tension between my activity and my passivity.

But putting aside the question of whether or not we should use the word "influence," what do you think of the story I just sketched out? Weren't such stories the starting point for the conversation you started and then - bafflingly - exited five years ago?

[koganbot]

Ha, but I say "his exposure to the Rolling Stones" when I should have said "the influence of the Rolling Stones." This is my unconscious attempt to understate the sense of power they had over me.

Concrete toes and pigeons' feet

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User koganbot referenced to your post from Concrete toes and pigeons' feet (http://koganbot.livejournal.com/328786.html) saying: [...] off a better-stated Mark Sinker argument: it's referenced in "i opened the window and INFLUENZA [...]