murkage

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I was gonna post this on my own LJ but it's a welcome counterpoint to that k-spunk article from yesterday, I think. The other week, I went to a symposium on the hardcore cuntinuum at the University of East London, which is WAY WAY WAY OUT EAST, Cyprus is so far out but I love the DLR so it was all good. I missed k-spunk's talk because I was interviewing Tori Amos (and tbh her academic babble is so much more preferable) but that didn't matter - I was there to support Dan Hancox and Joe Muggs and they were both excellent, v funny and incisive in debunking the cuntinuum. I don't think either has put their speech online but I was particularly pleased that Dan brought up the issue of dancing, which ~for some reason~ is rarely discussed despite the cuntinuum consisting of dance genres. ANYWAY, my friend Melissa Bradshaw (who is the kind of smart, knowledgeable writer who should be linked up all over the place, rather than fauxthorities like k-spunk and SR) was in the audience with me, murked k-spunk at one point and has now written about it, as well as comparing the symposium to the soca aerobics class she left early to go to, and a vg read it is too.

Comments

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

I don't get the negative reactions to the continuum concept itself. I'd speculate that it's the dressed-up terminology/over-intellectualisation* from critics of certain positions that makes people react to it like this. what else could be wrong with it?

*intellectualisation from WITHIN the continuum or at least the DJs, producers, promoters and devoted punters who don't write it but live it has, as far as i can tell, rarely occurred (and why would it?).

so to berate commentators for not being participants is problematic. most of the time you can only be one or the other. and it's often only from an outside position that you can make an effective criticism at all - it just depends on how well you do it (this is where i agree people tend to come unstuck esp. when arguing 'innovation' as both crucial and lacking).

[cis.livejournal.com]

Sort of related to M Bradshaw's thing-- I was thinking, recently, about what the core of my problem with S Reynolds is, and might have worked it out: it's that he so strongly believes in the idea of the music critic as intermediary&intercessory between musician and fan, and I so strongly believe in the relationship between music and fan. So, basically, catholic v protestant! Something like the SY/portals thing a while back, where his image of 'the portal' was 'the non-musical influence that you are guided to by reading Portrait of the Artist of the Consumer in the NME' (ie artist mediated through music critic), and mine was 'the thing you happen upon through over-attention to sleeve notes and b-sides' (ie artist's interests as hidden treasure in music-as-object). Obviously as a music critic it's all to the good that he considers himself to have an essential position in the act of music appreciation! I mean, otherwise-- what would be the point? How can you write music criticism unless you think you're fulfilling a necessary role? It's just, unfortunately, easy to slip into hubris.

We can overstress the dancing thing: yeah i think it's dumb to talk about a specific form of dance music w/out experience of the situation in which it is primarily experienced, but it'd be equally dumb to locate it only in that world and only in that instant, and to never try and see it in any wider context. S Reynolds has got carried away with one of his own ideas, and unfortunately he's establishment enough that he's carried away some others with him, and unfortunately that idea doesn't really hold any sort of water. But the act of making up a prism through which to view the world and marvelling at the funny shapes it makes is still essential.

i dunno why but while i find "hardcore cuntinuum" funny I'm uncomfortable w/ yr using "k-spunk": it seems, well, bullyish frankly although i'm sure it's not intended that way. If he's wrong, his wrongness can speak for itself.

[koganbot]

Just read Melissa's thing and this thread and haven't gone back to untangle who is saying what and so forth, and I'm so far out of this discussion, but...

(1) If anything, Simon's and K-Punk's problem isn't ego but underconfidence, which means that they're relying more on their theoretical tools than on themselves as the wielders of the tools. And as I said back at the time of poor K-Punk's "Choose Your Weapons" thing, I think the guy is in a lot of pain and that this distorts his vision. (But I've not read much K-Punk, really, and though I've read a lot of Simon, it's been a while so it's not fresh.)

(2) Simon once very kindly helped me with advice on a piece about Hardknox that I had no business writing since I didn't know what I was talking about, he probably assuming - correctly, I think! - that I'd have something interesting to contribute to the discussion despite my incompetence.

(3) There is no such thing as "the role of the critic," any more than there's "the role of the musician" and "the role of the DJ" and "the role of the dancer" and "the role of the fan." There are lots of potential roles for all of these - "the role of the person" - and the role is what various critics/musicians/DJs/dancers/fans create for themselves.

(4) Subtracting their underconfidence, I don't see how what I do is different in kind from what Reynolds and K-Punk do (incl. saying when I think a whole genre of music has gone sour).

(5) As for the question of how dare the critic think he's more important than the subject matter, horrors horrors, here's what I wrote in a letter to Geeta earlier this decade (you can look it up):

My principle is this: We can't convey the romance and the adventure of music unless we're willing to convey our own romance and adventure. And if we want to continue on with the so-long-ago ideals of the music ("Don’t follow leaders" someone once said) — if we want readers to be inspired by the music, not subordinate to it — then we must set the example and not be subordinate to it ourselves.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

I have no idea at all what this post is all about, but I do know that I used to write with both Dan Hancox and Melissa Bradshaw for my student newspaper. Glad to see they're both still writing (even if I don't understand half of what they're on about)!!