poptimists | i opened the window and INFLUENZA (Reply)

(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.