Poptimist #4

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

NOW 100% MORE META: my column for Pitchfork this month, spinning out of a Poptimists post last week.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It's the simple fact that the immediate availability of music cuts off criticism from gatekeeping. Why read a long review when you can make up your own mind quickly?

I think it's more important than ever that a critic knows who their audience is: something we've touched on before, the sheer volume of everything which is readily available, means that to a dilettante audience for whom music is important but not a priority, critics are still as necessary as they were - not to gatekeep but to sift, to reduce the volume to a manageable level for non-music geeks. Of course all your points still apply!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Of course the gatekeep function is as important as ever but that needn't at all be allied to written criticism, which is the link I think's been severed - the critical act can be implied, and all the front-end user sees is a new MP3 or 2 and a very quick description: "French dance band, MSTRKRFT remix, tres cool" etc etc.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah but the generalist audience I'm talking about don't go to mp3 blogs or use slsk, or at least not with the frequency anyone here does!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think it's only a matter of time (not MP3 blogs as we understand them but sites with tracks and streaming media and clips) - they go to Amazon and look at the star ratings and listen to clips, for instance. last.fm is a bit less generalist but still pretty general. The kids on the bus rely on real-life social networks rather than P2Ps but they're not reliant on gatekeeping critics, usw.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah I agree - had typed a sentence about "maybe this will change" but deleted it by mistake. I think most kidz - not just those on the bus but anyone student age and under, now - basically uses myspazz and youtube and so on by default, regardless of how much they care about music, these habits will obviously stick into adulthood.

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

I guess it's only older people like myself who read the Guardian's Friday review section and go, oh I should get that Amerie album then ;) It's really good, thx.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Ah thanks! It is always reassuring to find that people read, let alone act on, one's reviews...

('Crush' is so amazing)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm going to act on it too. Well, on the ILX thread more specifically.

"not to gatekeep but to sift"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

!!!

you are simon reynolds and i claim my £5 million!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Good stuff! It's quite satisfying having already read the bits of interweb you're referring to :-)

the meme that never dies

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

POINT OF ORDER: i DIDN'T put michael jackson on the cover of the wire! that was pioneer avant-poptimist richard cook, my predecessor and mentor!! (who should get more recognition)

Re: the meme that never dies

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I did know this, but wasn't clear enough in my phrasing so I did imply you were editor at the time - sorry Mark (and Richard Cook!).

Re: the meme that never dies

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Also I've still never actually READ the MJ issue - my collection starts with the outraged aftermath.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i shall lend you it if i remember (erm it's NOT THAT GOOD sadly -- the idea was better than the execution, bcz rdc was massively over-extending himself then, to keep the mag alive at all, and was too tired and pressured to write the best piece he could... ) (on his game he is easily one of my favourite writers)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

it rly p!sses me off that p4k doesn't have comments or at least a "linking to this post" thing. obv WE know all this stuff, but i'm fascinated by what Others will make of it...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah I will check Technorati now and then and see if anyone is botherd.

First link

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://7d.blogs.com/solidstate/

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Good post - you (and lex above) touched on both the points I'd scribbled down in the margins. Why anyone would not like writing about music that suggests something new that you [i]can[/i] hear is beyond me. (This is sometimes why I read reviews of new product from the Stones or Dylan, just to see what meaning, if any, can be teased from tired old acts.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I don't think writing that engages the reader always has to be polite! But there's a difference between provoking and sneering, between "take your best shot" and "lol n00b".

The awful conversations thing is a good point! I think people realise when they're in an awful conversation, though, and get out of it.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I wish it was true that people instinctively get out of awful conversations, I really do.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think participants in conversations which are awful to observers are often getting stuff out of them.

(I also think conversations can have a very long braking time.)

[koganbot]

Just as women get a lot out of relationships with violent, abusive men.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I like to get thrown like a boomerang and then come back and beat people up. But only once in a blue moon because sometimes I have stuff to do at work.

A few cents' worth (the remix)

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

A few rhetorical questions I don't have the luxury of thinking all the way through:

Can good pop criticism also prevent certain kinds of conversations? Shouldn't it? Aren't there generally awful, pointless, useful-to-no-one conversations that we (or "we") agree should be avoided?

Can music criticism that tries to shut down conversation actually be better at starting conversations than music criticism that tries to engage the reader on its own polite terms? (I'm thinking specifically of Tom Frank's shitty, opaque, wrong-headed Yum-Yum article in Harper's) Is there never any virtue in sneering at a reader?

Re: A few cents' worth (the remix)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I replied to the unremixed version, luddite that I am!

re Tom Frank - yeah of course bad writing can inadvertently start conversations but I still think good writing does a better job, because with the bad writing there's always a straw man element, a temptation to construct a "they" out of "the people who believe this shit".

Re: A few cents' worth (the remix)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Clearly, I think, there is sometimes value in sneering. The problem is that there is no collective restraint (at least in the new media, free-for-all world). A lot of people out there want to sneer at the rest of us, and a) it gets tiring, and b) sometimes the sneerers don't have much to go on.

Re: A few cents' worth (the remix)

[koganbot]

Good criticism can prevent or supersede bad conversations by offering an alternative.

But people stay in bad conversations for much the same reason they stay in bad relationships: familiarity with the terms, fear of stepping into unknown territory, fear of abandoning one's coping mechanisms.

Re: A few cents' worth (the remix)

[koganbot]

Virtue in sneering at the reader: Richard Meltzer sneering at the rock fans - e.g. me - for building up rock in fawning art appreciation terms and in effect debasing themselves before it; so the sneer was meant to tear down the debasement, not just the debased. But also, he liked being mean.

Re: A few cents' worth (the remix)

[koganbot]

"e.g. me" meaning that at age 15 when I started reading him I identified with a lot of the rock and the terms that were being used to build it up, not that he was sneering at me by name. (That came in 2000.) He wouldn't have know who I was.

[koganbot]

Btw, thanks Tom.

[koganbot]

Actually, in the U.S. the main gatekeeper has been radio, not criticism. It's still radio that more-or-less tells you (or is told) what genre something is in, for instance. And of course, radio is facing competition from the Internet too.

Simon Frith once told me that in Britain, magazines play a greater role in determining genre.

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

I finally got around to reading this and I liked it a lot.