Poptimist rountable: Why don't you like what you're supposed to like?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

[koganbot  has been answering this question, originally posed by poptasticuk , in his column here, and talking about it on his journal here. I thought it might be in order to continue the conversation today. Personal anecdotes welcome! I'm off out, but I'll be back to talk after 2.]

When I was 12 I was a member of a Scout troop based on a housing estate a little way from the comfortable middle class suburb where I lived. I was just discovering music, and particularly loved the Beastie Boys. (Obviously my mum never let me steal a VW badge, but I was allowed to write and ask for the little replicas they gave out in an attempt to keep kids away from their cars.) For a while I was allowed to share this enthusiasm with other members of the group, until one day they decided that as a 'square' kid from a posh school, I wasn't supposed to like the Beastie Boys, and clearly was only doing it to 'fit in'.

Around the same time my dad was a director at a merchant bank in the city. One day he overheard a much younger colleague saying 'you know Mr T******? You'd think he was into, you know Vivaldi or something. But he likes Iron Maiden!' (And WASP, Helloween, etc. it transpires. Partly because he was lending money to a company that was involved with those acts, but hey, why spoil a good story!)

A year or so later I was in my first year at boarding school, and I had (via my dad -- not how this is supposed to happen!) got into metal. I remember one of the older boys (who subsequently ended up as a maths teacher at the school, I wonder where he is now?) walking past, noticing that I was listening to 'Kill 'em All' and saying 'Metallica: pretty hev (heavy) for a junior'. This time not liking what I was supposed to like was a good thing, and he let me have free run of his cassettes to learn up on all that other heavy stuff. (Result! Cheers Simon!)

Obviously this still goes on -- I think a large chunk of the 'poptimist' experience is about this: deliberately liking what you're supposed to dislike; finding yourself in transgression of 'supposed-to's of various sorts; and of course encoding new 'supposed-to's. (Aren't all the polling and games intended to recognise and disrupt the natural formation of 'supposed-to's?) Most of my IRL pals in Edinburgh like what they're supposed to like (although I think everyone has a couple of things they like that don't fit -- maybe this is the limit of the 'supposed-to' model), and are happy like that. [But I was playing tunes when we had people round for C's birthday and pretty much every track prompted a 'what! you can't play this' from someone -- but there was always someone else who thought it was ok to play it, so clearly all sorts of 'supposed-to's were clashing in the room.]

Anyway what annoys me most about music radio for example is how obviously it enshrines 'supposed-to's: you know, Radio 1 is for 'new music', as long as that doesn't include too much dance music etc.; 6music for 'music that matters'. But then I guess that 'supposed-to's are how the cultural industry works -- fixing and solidifying the 'supposed-to's that are already there in the social world. So the battle for autonomy is the battle against 'supposed-to's?

Comments

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Were it not for how unique I think my personal anecdotes of this are, I wouldn't share it. But my first musical transgression was probably in 6th grade when Rachel (the hot girl, whom everyone wanted to date) asked me what I was listening to on my cassette player. I think we were on a bus on some field trip at the time. In order to spare myself the humiliation, I told her she wouldn't be interested in it. Which, of course, only made her more interested (I guess she thought I was listening to something completely transgressive for a 6th grader - like Metallica, or something. At the time, everyone cool was listening to Green Day.) Eventually she persisted enough that I admitted I was listening to the Les Miserables Broadway OST. She quickly lost interest.

There was definitely this feeling that your class standing (pun intended) was partially determined by the music you listen to. (The coolest people listened to Green Day. Some of the slackers listened to hip hop. Losers listened to Silverchair and Bush. The alternative kids were listening to Oasis...) But in listening to Broadway, I wasn't just rebelling against some upper-class that listened to pop-punk. I was removing myself from the system completely. Who listens to showtunes in 6th grade? It wasn't a conscious decision, but it alienated me from the system nonetheless. Which might be a part of poptimism - not rebelling against the canon, but rebelling against the idea of a canon. (This obviously isn't Sanneh's definition.)

The second time I remember off-hand was when I was in Yeshiva. This meant that most people were listening to Avraham Fried, MBD and Shwecky. If this names mean nothing to you, but you still want an idea of the genre, try MostlyMusic.com. Anyway, during sefirah (a period of time on the Jewish calender when many Orthodox Jews don't listen to instrumental music), they listened to a band called Lev Tahor, which was an acapella group. I listened to Charming Hostess (which was arguably Jewish - they were on Zorn's Radical Jewish Culture label). But Charming Hostess had numerous problems for a Yeshiva boy - first of all, in my Yeshiva you weren't supposed to listen to women sing. Second of all, they have radical politics. Third of all, they aren't Lev Tahor.

During the school year (when it wasn't sefirah), I listened to Nickelback. It was when they just came out with "How You Remind Me." It seems so ironic in hindsight that I was being transgressive with music by listening to the most popular single in the world at the moment. I remember going into a non-Yeshiva run store and hearing the song on the radio. I raved about it in front of a Yeshiva friend, and got looks from the proprietor of the store (who probably thought I had the uncoolest taste in the world). But my Yeshiva friend just thought I was being willfully anti-canon. If you wanted to be "cool" in my Yeshiva, you listened to Blackhattitude (Jewish parody rap). In order to emancipate yourself from the system completely, you needed to listen to radio music. (Which is really just a spin on the first point I was making.)

Jeez, now I realize I could go on forever with anecdotes, but scrolling up, I see I wrote a ton. So - sorry for the screenroll.

[spittake.livejournal.com]

If this names mean nothing to you

Haha, they actually DO, oh dear.