so, a few days ago i got into what became a very strange conversation/fight with someone about how ridiculous it was that i would posit that he looked like nick cave. the logic was not that he looked or didn't look like cave, but rather that the statement was bankrupt of meaning, because 1) he didn't know what nick cave looked like and 2) because of that, there was no acknowledged stylistic kinship, and thus I shouldn't be able to infer anything about his state-of-being from his weird, sartorial and bone-structure coincidence.
well, what struck me about this was that five years ago, when i was 20, this would have been a totally acceptable thing to say to someone. people were 'still figuring out' their style, their worldview and what place artists and musicians, writers and whomever else, had in shaping how we spoke, carried ourselves, and yes, dressed. i suppose this is insulting to someone as they mature, because we're supposed to be over it and not taking cues from lame rock stars, even ones as beautiful and well-heeled as nick cave. so, ya, dude, i take it back, you don't look like nick cave. you fully look just was robotically h&m as everyone else our age. does that make you happy?
but really, this is one of those annie hall moments. know the scene where woody allen is in bed with the blonde rolling stone critic, and she's boring the crap out of him with her jabbering wit re: some concert...har har, there's me! only i'd like to think that my mind operates way outside the bounds of 'rock writing,' whatever those bounds are, to include some of the 'normal' things that people talk about (tho god help me, i'll never be so tacky as to talk about wealth management in public). still, as i get older, it does seem like explicitely caring about popular music, as a profession, becomes less and less cool and more ridiculous, especially as a woman. Ann Powers says it best here. All this comes from a Girl Group conversation about music, writing and aging re: the Nick Hornby op-ed in the NY TIMES. My response to said is below. Also here's sasha frere-jones' response...thanx to amy for posting it for the group.
Re: Hornby, link here: XXXX
Whoa - this reads to me like an incredibly conservative 'gee, wasn't
rock better when it was white men singing about love' revisionist
nostalgia piece, sadly sent to the top by the nytimes in their new
quest for celebrity music writers. tirade follows.
most problematic ideas:
-invoking of the sad, middle age man's 'justify my existence' through
rewriting what rock 'should be' to fit his listening, which is silly bc
he's only working in a narrow, media created frame of what rock has
been anyway, like 'vh1 told me i can't like rock!' oh NO, welcome to
not-being-the-target-market! now you have to be creative in your lyric
listening/identification through music like all the non-white,
non-male, non-hetero, non-young, (and maybe in ameri-pop's case,
non-Xtian?) people!
- music is 'too full of itself' because obviously, Jerry Lee Lewis
wasn't full of himself, but instead just trying to have 'fun' without
that damned self-consciousness that plagues modern man. Quote:
"And if bands see the need to use electric drills instead of guitars in
order to give vent to their rage, well, bring it on. But is there any
chance we could have the Righteous Brothers' "Little Latin Lupe Lu" —
or, better still, a modern-day equivalent — for an encore?"
umm. well, you could, but hey buddy, it's different times. one of the
most bizarre things to think about is how people since the 80s have
been fetishizing 60s culture, and think about it -in the 60s, 20 years
ago was the 40s, so fetishizing the 60s now would have been like people
in the 60s fetishizing the 20s - a.k.a. "Honey Pie" by the Beatles, a
piece of nostalgia shlock, charming but throwaway period piece, not an
'authentic' return.
- rock can't be both high and low, commerce has **suddenly** ruined
this duality, known to me as the "mansion on the hill' syndrome
lamented finely in the book of the same name.
-no mention of women, as already mentioned, but of special interest -
my joke for the week has been inserting the term 'heteronormative' into
everything possible...
- slighting Throbbing Gristle, as if a)anyone reading the Times knows
what the hell you're talking about and b) it was a personal crusade
against provocative, sexually ambiguous music that doesn't make you
feel like chasing tail, but instead examines what is chasing, what is
tail.
"I just want it to have ambition and exuberance, a lack of
self-consciousness, a recognition of the redemptive power of noise, an
acknowledgment that emotional intelligence is sometimes best
articulated through a great chord change, rather than a furrowed brow."
"However, there is still a part of me that persists in thinking that
rock music, and indeed all art, has an occasional role to play in the
increasingly tricky art of making us glad we're alive. I'm not sure
that Throbbing Gristle and its descendants will ever pull that off..."
the immediate above, true, but not the only, and hasn't been that way
for a while. arrgh. sorry for the long ass email - this kind of
top-of-the-mountain regurgitation of VH1 rock narrative with fake fru
fru language makes me a little yarfy.
finally, Slate ran this about the Hornby backlash phenomenon...
