Eric Harvey, of Marathonpacks, has a comment that’s worth reading.

His response to my original post is here. My response to that is here.

Up to speed? Here is the next round:

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!

Thanks for taking the time to write. I think the rockist-v-popist debate isn’t about writing about or liking or defining rock vs. pop per se. I have nothing invested in any of that. It’s just a critical philosophy issue that has been debated for some time. That’s what I thought you were referring to. But I guess it’s true that, to paraphrase Steve Albini, I was happily adopting the term as shorthand for the position you were arguing against.

Thanks for taking the time to write. I think the rockist-vs.-popist debate isn’t about writing about or liking or defining rock vs. pop per se. I have nothing invested in any of that. It’s just a critical philosophy issue that has been debated for some time. That’s what I thought you were referring to. But I guess it’s true that, to paraphrase Steve Albini, I was happily adopting the term as shorthand for the position you were arguing against.

That allusion makes me very happy, as did the opportunity to link to this essay on Kurt Cobain, because I’ve been interested in the pleasures of pop and the complications of any sort of purity in the rock world for a long time. (All of that was very much influenced by the work of not just Simon Frith but his sometime collaborator Andrew Goodwin, an old friend of mine, whose work can be accessed at the Professor of Pop blog.)

So it’s funny to be on the other side of the issue right now. But I still think it’s wrong to work as a shill for corporations, particularly car companies, purveyors of crappy, overpriced shoes and any number of other operations. I’ve laid the reasons out in previous posts.

Your argument is basically that times have changed and that I’m pining for the past. But this has always been a problem, and I’ve always ridiculed it whenever possible. What I think has changed—and this might be something you disagree with—is that those who speak out about such stuff are now way uncool. My evidence is I guess anecdotal: I can think of colleagues being uninterested in or hostile to the issue when it came to coming up with story ideas. I was just on a radio show the other day and the booker said it was really hard to come up with people like me to speak out against it. And like I said, the very idea of the Moby Quotient was attacked when it came out.

This is probably another one of those imaginary authenticity parameters, or just a downer, or whatever, but I think it’s all kinda decadent. The idea that Santi White isn’t, from the very beginnings of her career, going to be seeing things from Target’s point of view (or that now U2 will not see things from Clear Channel’s Live Nation’s) seems to me wishful thinking; and the idea that this is now or soon will be the norm is as barfy as an R. Kelly sex tape. So I think it’s true that we are long overdue for a corrective.

And speaking of which, when I was talking about PR shills, I was talking about the utilitarian origins, you might say, of the popist philosophy. But the R. Kelly scandal is an interesting case study in how this all plays out in the real world. Here’s a guy leaving a palpable path of human destruction in his wake for years and much of the establishment press took it all as a joke.