The Sellout Debate: R.O.C.K.I.S.T. in the U.S.A.
For more on the sellout debate, see Marathonpacks, a.k.a. Eric Harvey, who accurately pegs Hitsville as a rockist:
Wyman’s playing by rockist rules, which set the standards of music evaulation by an arbitrary, imaginary set of authenticity parameters, most succinctly summed up in his quote: “A rock artist is trafficking in the implicit independence of the form” (my emphasis). [ … H]ow can he have written about a subject for so long and still not be able to see past his own biases? Or, at least not call attention to them in his writing (or blogging)? How can he think that rock music, as a form of popular culture is “implicitly independent” of anything—commercial interests, cultural trends, industrial mergers, differently inflected ideas of artistic credibility?
The alternative to “rockism” is called “popism.” For most of its proponents, the latter is based on the straw man that “rockist” critics don’t appreciate pop music. Harvey is not saying that, which I respect. I accept his definition of “rockism”; those imaginary, arbitrary authenticity parameters are mine, and people can take them or leave them. That’s what criticism is all about.
The trouble is that most “popism,” once the big words are stripped away, is conveniently indistinguishable in practice from “entertainment journalism.” As I’ve said before, it gives the people who practice it a clubhouse and a neat handshake, but more importantly it offers a patina of intellectual cover for their appreciative profiles of shitty artists for the glossies. In this particular area, for example, a popist approach to the question of selling out dovetails smoothly with the feelings the artists in question have on the subject, not to mention their publicists and managers. It makes working in the pop journalism arena a more comradely endeavor than you’d expect.
For an apropos example, see my critique of Kelefa Sanneh’s too-enthusiastic-by-half writings on R. Kelly. Talk about your differently inflected idea of artistic credibility!
One more thing. Harvey writes:
What Wyman’s actually arguing for, though he doesn’t seem to realize it, is a return to the economic and popular culture climate of 1991 […]
I disagree with Harvey on that, but I guess that’s his point as well. It reminded me, however, that 1991 came up in Maura Johnston’s comments too. It was a complex year. My own modest contribution to the limning of its difficult admixtures of artistry, stardom, commercialism, and corporatism—all foreshadowing the broken wall, the burning tower, and Agamemnon dead—is here.
4 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Mr. Hitsville,
First of all, I’ve been a reader/fan since back your Chicago Reader/Sound Opinions days. So glad I found this blog.
Anyway, while I would prefer if musicians did not sell their music for advertisements — personally, Steve Earle’s sale of “The Revolution Starts Now!” was more depressing than Cobain’s suicide — consideration of counterfactuals keeps me from following you down that road.
It would be great if musicians didn’t sell out, but just think about the following:
Would I be happier if THE Jesus Lizard had licensed a song — or even a video — to Budweiser, but stayed together?
Yes.
Would I be happier if the Bottle Rockets sold a song to Chevy, but Brian Henneman didn’t have to put up drywall or work in a tee-shirt shop to feed himself?
Yes.
Would I be happier if Public Enemy had written a jingle for Burger King, but Flav was never drawn into the quagmire of reality television?
Yeeeah boy.
Would I be happier if “You’re Gonna Miss Me” played in Hallmark ads, but Roky Erickson no longer had to rely on charity for his care?
Oh. Hell. Yes.
Would I be happier if High on Fire licensed a song to… ok, I can’t think of a corporation that would license a HoF song. But it would be nice if Pike could tour with multiple guitars — then he wouldn’t have to borrow one from the opening band when he breaks a peg like I witnessed at the Double Door.
I guess my point is that when musicians must suffer financially for their art, we all suffer.
– SCAM
so-called “Austin Mayor”
http://austinmayor.blogspot.com
I see marathonpack called you an “old-guard rock critic”. Gosh. What does that make R Christgau or Greil Marcus? Who’s leading the new guard these days?
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have thrown the “rockist” thing out there. That’s been did, but it certainly allowed you a neat retort, which draws that unnecessary genre-definition between “rock” and “pop”. How long has rock been pop music now? How many debates have been squashed in which someone attempts to define “pop” as, gulp, a genre?
But! Are you seriously implying that those who write about pop are nothing but PR shills? If I read your response correctly, that’s what it seems you’re implying. I mean, you use “popists” as a bit of a crutch there, right?
It’s a neat way to basically re-affirm your critical position, but as a set of parameters for interpreting some of the best, most insightful and well-written criticism being published (ever read Simon Frith?), it just seems inadequate at best, and stubbornly ignorant at worst.
You seem like an informed person who can grasp that writing about pop music doesn’t mean you’re in bed with PR, just as much as you know that hacks exist at all levels of criticism. If you’d like, I could send you some examples!
Where I’m coming from, the Popist thing started because of the perception of a lot of people — I am one — that the music we always loved was dismissed by rock-and-roll snobs — particularly in the criticism of the 1970s — as inherently not worth doing, mostly for no more reason than the way it sounded. Not the content, not the craft, not the passion (though critics often maintained it was about passion), but a simple, nasty, condescending rationalization for a personal preference. And it still looks that way. Contempt for (say) the Fifth Dimension had a lot more to do with Coolness than merit, while eminently criticizable musicians like the Jefferson Airplane were not called to account for their many inadequacies and stupidities; or rather, the Jefferson Airplane would be forgiven their flaws because they were doing the right sort of thing, while the Fifth Dimension’s flaws were proof of the inherent inadequacy of their entire approach, period.
Popism was about recognizing there were a lot of us who felt this way, and that we didn’t have to accept from the cool crowd that our taste was worse — in most cases not because we didn’t like rock, but because we could like pop as well — and talk seriously about the value of what we loved. And the response of a lot of the old-guard rockist crowd has been to impute our motives and reassert the same old standard line of what’s worth doing and what isn’t. I enjoy your analsyis and your writing and your cultural observations very much. But it does annoy me that when you talk about the Popist revisionism and the Rockist reactions to it, you repeatedly frame it in terms that implicitly motive-bash. Popism questions the set of assumptions that the rockist critical consensus was built on. The Rockist reaction to this, by and large, is to say that Popism is about apologizing for crass commercialism and shit. It’d be nice, at this late date, to have the big discussions of taste and style without the (even at this articulate level) dismissals and reassertions of inherent authenticity and inherent garbage.