Testing Testing

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

At the EMP music seminar last year dubdobdee presented a paper in which he contrasted - or promised to contrast - the "test of time" and the "test of space" when analysing (not just pop) music. I can't remember exactly what the "test of space" is in this schema but ANYWAY I wanted to ask the question (for a P4K column most likely) of why an artform where instancy is apparently such a big element attracts so much 'test of time' rhetoric, and also which OTHER tests one might apply.

Comments

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

litmus test.

ACIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED, ACIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the test of space = (acc.me) how potently does [given item of pop, sukratism, whatevs] operate within broader social jostle of the moment

why so much "test of time" rhetoric =
a: need for appeal to authority beyond reactive self ("yes i love this but so what?"
b: need to justify self's commitment to allegedly non-established area of enquiry ("why on EARTH with my brane have i ended up here?")
c: need to establish allegedly non-established area of enquiry ("pop is actually really to be understood as a funkier kind analytical philosophy")
d: general insecurity abt gifts as critic, stylist, authority: sense that authority needs to be outsourced to those we all agree with (viz OLD FATHER TIME)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

note to self: put up "written version" of this paper!!

Ain't nobody as dope as me

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Breathalyzer?

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

It's also a way of claiming quality for old music while dismissing new music, so used by old people who have lost touch. This is often combined with dismissing the chances of new music they don't like of standing the test of time, which is always a very dumb thing to try to anticipate.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's the anticipation that really infuriates me - oh yes I like this but NOES WILL IT STAND THE TEST OV TIMEXOR, curiously it is often music involving PROGRAMMED BEATS or WOMEN that will not pass this crucial test.

[koganbot]

Let's say that pre-1964 or so most or many people believe* a false dichotomy:

the context of popular music (incl. all of blues etc.) is entertainment
the context of criticism is school
school is antithetical to entertainment

Obvious problem with my assumption is that probably many people did not think of popular music as mere entertainment, just as they did not necessarily think of dating or adopting social signifiers or testifying one's great passion - for a human? for a diety? think of gospel-based music - as mere entertainment. (Does a teenager attend dances merely for "fun"? Is the experience limited to "fun"? Is it necessarily fun at all?) Also, I don't assume that popular musicians and listeners were entirely lacking the social do-good and social self-improvement motives - this nonlack probably more evident in movies of the '50s than in rock 'n' roll, but I'd hypothesize that the do-good/self-improvement role takes subterranean forms '50s rock 'n' roll, "crazy man crazy" maybe coding as stepping out of one's social role, and even if this was not called "moral self-improvement" but something very opposite it might well have sometimes played that role anyway.

*Also, calling something a "belief" is problematic when it's something that most people give barely any conscious thought to, is evidenced in their behavior only inconsistently, and would be contradicted by other parts of their behavior. That is, when people explain or justify their own enthusiasms and distates etc. they reach for socially sanctioned "reasons" that don't jibe with their own actual behavior. So someone could, on the spur of the moment, say to someone else, "This is just entertainment; you shouldn't intellectualize it so much," when in fact in their behavior they're treating it as a lot less trivial than "entertainment." (My own prose is somewhat misleading here, since it assumes that "entertainment" is trivial, whereas of course people can entertain themselves by discussing politics or cosmology etc.) So what I'm calling a "belief" is actually a set of clichés that people can get away with invoking whether or not the ideas that the clichés reference to are confirmed or contradicted by the people's behavior.

But anyway, "believing" the dichotomy, someone may well feel that (i) popular music is lacking something (by not being serious), (ii) has a special spark owing to its not being serious, and (iii) school terms (critical terms) can therefore both validate and destroy popular music.

I'm putting aside the question as to whether the school terms of the 1950s or of now are good for understanding popular culture. I see no reason in principle that the school terms couldn't be good, whereas if I believed in the dichotomy I'd think that the school terms were bad by definition and that critical terms that derived from school were inherently a contaminant. But "school" terms often are bad, because "intellectuals" often have their heads up their butts. Also, the reason I suddenly put "school" in scare quotes is that the term as I've been using it in this post is wrong. What I should be saying is "ideas taught or generated in the classroom." Of course, there's much more to a school than the classroom. But the dichotomy pretends that school or work are antithetical to entertainment and leisure, so the dichotomy reduces "school" to the classroom and pretends that entertainment and leisure are unaffected by school.

an artform where instancy is apparently such a big element

So I'm saying that when one is claiming that instancy is a big element in popular music one is doing so in a context where classroom terms are seen simultaneously as validators and contaminants.

By the way, is the "test of time" invoked all that often? I mean, I know that there are girl group box sets and that there's a rock 'n' roll hall of fame, and that there's a claim to permanence - e.g., "if Louis Armstrong and the Beatles are still in play so much now, we can assume this is owing to their inherent value and that they will be in play 200 years from now." But that doesn't necessarily mean "test of time" and claims of permanence play a big role in people's actual listening to Armstrong or the Beatles.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes this is v true on the consumer's part. I think I might have noticed the recourse to the test of time more on artists' part though! People saying they don't care how much they sell, they just want to write songs that people want to listen to in 20 years' time. On the one hand this is sort of understandable, wanting what you create to endure, on the other it is most often said by people who aren't selling any records now.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

That's the thing - I don't think it IS invoked often as a fait accompli - "this music has stood the test of time ergo it is good" - more as a means of justifying current tastes. I noticed a lot when looking at discussions of end of year lists that people criticising them would often do so in terms of "are people going to be listening to this in five years time". The claim that things will/won't stand a ToT is one made as a bet rather than as a fact.

I think I meant 'instancy' not so much as in 'instant appeal' but in the fact that the experience of most pop music is brief and intense - packing a lot of information into 5-6 minutes, and then it's gone.

[koganbot]

But anyway, claiming "instancy" for popular music is to refuse to examine the motives for and the consequences of one's "instantaneous" musical choices, while invoking the "test of time" is to claim consequence without saying what the consequences are. "Test of time" is like an appeal to authority - such as "science has shown that we like music that we are familiar with from our childhood"; "time has shown that you can't spend a dollar if you don't have it," etc. But as I've been saying, someone's claiming either "instancy" or "test of time" takes place in an overall context that is uncertain of the status of "school" and "criticism."

[koganbot]

I think you're right that ToT appears often appears as a bet, "we will be listening to this in five years." I remember someone saying in the comments in Pazz & Jop 1999 that none of the current pop would be listened to twenty years hence; and I took this to be not "as opposed to the rock of the present, which will last," but "as opposed to the girl group etc. pop of yore," so it wasn't anti-pop from the point of view of rock but anti-Max from the point-of-view of Phil.

But I still don't hear ToT being invoked that much. But that could be because I'm not hanging around the people doing the invoking.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think I was looking in vulnerable places - and also of course discussion of end-of-year lists are inevitably ToT-baiting because in a sense they're a time capsule for the future.

The interpretation of ToT depends on its nuance - I see both "as opposed to other stuff now" and "as opposed to then". I am probably more sensitive to the former because it annoys me more.

[koganbot]

I do think that popular music that presents itself as "pop," as opposed to popular music that presents itself as "rock," often does somewhat self-consciously as being of the moment and side-stepping tests of time and seriousness - probably does so more in 2007 than the equivalent music would have done so in 1957.

(Interestingly, I don't think of "teenpop" as presenting itself as "pop" in this way.)

What about a generation calling itself new? Hmmmm. I think the tendency here would be to self-consciously not invoke the Test of Time but to deny the Test of Time to time-tested music of the past.

[koganbot]

often does somewhat self-consciously as being of the moment

often does SO somewhat self-consciously as being of the moment. (But too many "so"s in my previous post.)

this jumped into mind on the bus

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(and i haven't read upthread yet to see if it's tackled)

test of time = how *i* will think of it in ten years time
vs
test of time = how *"people like me"* will think of it in ten years time
vs
test of time = how *the world* will think of it in ten years time

these are all different judgements -- the first merely somewhat acknowledges that excitement can trump sense; the third is a gamble against history's authority; the second hedges its bets in an interesting way (bcz it leavves room for a fudge on how my judgement of "people like me" is going to shift)

my argument at EMP was essentially that second-guessing the future is a fuck-awful way of thinking critically and responsible for a LOT of the bad writing in rock (interestingly there's been a mounting tide of crit during the US presidential election about the "horserace" or tipster element in coverage, at the expense of discussion of substative issues: the point being that it absolves political journalists of having to examine facts vs lies -- let alone good vs bad in ref ppolitical programmes -- to be able to opine on whater such and such a platform, regardless of merit, is "electable")

i guess the underlying argt in rockcrit is that genuine value will win over chartwise -- that the charts of the timeless are truth-bearing in a way we "all know" the charts of the day never are

(ok now i will read the above)

[oddnumbereven.livejournal.com]

One reason I think the 'test o'time' bit gets so much play is, look at the very odd music that has stood the test of time, and has (in retrospect) been incredibly influential.