Klosterman (w/cornrows and a pudge)

OK, OK, so I rip on Pitchfork a lot for having horrible, short-sighted reviews. (Speaking of which, there hasn't been much to say lately, although I did want to say a few words about the Rapture review. Have they really changed their ways? Have I made a difference? Those college brochures were right!) And justifiably so: sometimes their pieces are just bitter hack jobs, a series of insults without any particular justification, meant purely for the entertainment of sour indie snobs, doing little to advance the music they profess to love but doing their own little bit to sink it slower and slower into the morass of insularity. They have published some bad, bad reviews.

But then there's this: the worst review ever. And it's not even in Pitchfork. It's a book review, of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by one Mr. Mark Ames.

And the fact that it's a book review is probably the problem. Yeah, people are starting to doubt that kickoff manifesto in the Believer, but hopefully the ol' snark watch (currently featuring the above review at top) will pick up soon, presumably as soon as they get me to write for the Believer. (Hear that, Andrew?) But it's true that the harshest reviews are book reviews, because...well, because they're written by writers about writing, so there're whole other issues of bitterness and jealousy tied up there. If there was a good way for musicians to do harsh reviews in song, there would probably be some pretty stinging pissing matches there too. (Do we count "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Takedown"? Well...no.) Writers, lacking abilities in certain areas (socially if not physically, almost always--c.f. David Foster Wallace's essay about how being a writer turns you into an observer rather than a participant, and vice versa) learn to defend themselves with words. And that defense then becomes an offense as other more blatant modes of conflict fall out of fashion outside of adolescence. As Dalton Conley puts it, "thinking of a quick retort...was the perfect training...That's what we do. We sit around snapping on each other." And as a friend of mine likes to point out, going to college and majoring in one of the disciplines that requires less of your logic-and-thoroughness skills and more of your arguing skills (English, politics, etc.) gets you to this point where you can pretty much argue any point with anyone successfully. This is undeniably a useful skill, but we have to be careful how we use it, and too often we become enamored of how entertaining and enjoyable it can be to zing really funny, witty, harsh insults at each other. And sure, it's funny, but you kind of have to be aware of how you're doing it. Ripping on someone who won't hear it is one thing, ripping on your friend in a bar another, ripping on a public figure another, and all of these are OK, but you sort of need to be aware of the context. And you very much need to be aware when you're doing it to a peer. So there's the Bowers way--which ends up being kind of nice despite the exceedingly funny snaps he gets in there--and then there's the Mark Ames way. (Which is not so different from the Chris Ott way, but that's another story.)

Let's knock down the obvious ones first. Geez, let's see: there's the focus on the author photograph, which Ames spends four paragraphs talking about, and along with the fact that he mainly talks about the book's cover, the book's title, the book's prologue, and the first few essays, it sure does sound like Ames didn't really prep well for this particular book report. There's the repeated use of a made-up word he never defines, "Beigeist" (it's even capitalized for no reason!), which was so bad even Gawker readers talked about it. There's the idea of accusing Klosterman of "coming off as a sex offender," which is such a low standard that it makes me wonder if he thinks Jarvis Cocker looks like someone who masturbates onto the pope's hat every night. There's the fact that Ames' own personal bitterness, jealousy and resentment are so close to the surface that it's embarrassing even to someone who disagrees with him.

And there's the fact that his main argumentative technique is to quote a bunch of things Klosterman said and then let them lay there, like it's so obvious how wrong they are that he doesn't even have to waste his time explaining it to us. So, for instance, here's one of his rebuttals: "Are you scratchin’ your chins over that one, Gen-X- and Gen-Yers? I dunno–my forefinger and thumb are getting pretty raw; I need a special chin-scratching machine to help me through all the thoughts that one inspires. There’ll be nothing but bone and tendon hanging from my lower jaw by the time I figure it out." Now, it's funny when it's on the Simpsons--that bit about the electric clue-finding machine and whatnot. But in an ostensibly substantial and argumentative book review? Uh, not so much. The problem with reviews like this is that since the author is "smart" and he has become very very convinced of his own smartness, he has a really hard time admitting that other people might have legitimate disagreements with him, especially when it comes to things that are subjective rather than objective, and as such just tends to dismiss things out of hand that actually require a bit more elaboration. Like this:

"Billy Joel is great."

Wrong. And someone should pick up a chair and crack it over Klosterman’s head for writing this.

The extra special problem with this is that the quote isn't a random observation on Klosterman's part; it's actually the point of the whole goddamn essay it comes out of. He acknowledges that other people might disagree and he spends a few pages trying to convince them otherwise. In other words, there are other things Ames could have taken issue with about Billy Joel than just the outright statement. Klosterman, in other other words, has already proved him wrong.

But by far the biggest sin this review commits is...well, let me put it in a dictionary definition so it's clear.

miss·ing the fuck·ing point v. colloq. [superl. really missing the fucking point.]
1. Not quite getting it. "Dude, I think you're missing the fucking point."
2. [motion of palm passing over head accomp. by imitated sound of plane]
3. Mark Ames

[Middle English mysnyg thee fyceng pynt, from Old English cl?less. See mis- in Indo-European Roots.]

The point he's missing is that Klosterman does not always mean exactly what he says. I can see some of you bristling out there, worried that I'm going to use the word "irony" (I could, since he's being actually ironic instead of "I'm-making-a-joke-about-Webster" ironic, but I won't), but let's think this through. Klosterman doesn't mean everything he says. Sometimes he may, in fact, even mean the exactly opposite of what he says. He may not believe in what he's saying at all. But this is OK for two reasons. First, it's a book about fucking Saved By the Bell and Billy Joel, not a book delineating the administration's foreign policy. It's a standard literary device, and it's OK. But the other reason it's OK is because it's actually pretty damn useful and really really effective.

So, for instance, Ames complains about the essay in which Klosterman blames John Cusak for his inability to sustain a relationship because Cusak has projected this particular romantic charm that no normal guy can live up to ("This is Emo"). Ames, predictably, responds to this mainly by saying that Chuck can't get wimmins acause he's ugly, but in the midst of this 12-paragraph, um, critique, he does make two substantive objections, and examining these might be illuminating.

#1: 'Underlying this lame point of media criticism is the false notion that other people, not Chuck of course, are incapable of distinguishing media fictions from reality–a stupid premise that was marginally interesting long ago in the hands of Barthes, Baudrillard and Gitlin, but deserving of a milkshake on the head in the case of Klosterman. Only hack media critics believe that "regular" people are somehow more susceptible to the pop culture bacillus than they are, probably because they don’t spend time among these "regular" people.'

Absolutely wrong. What's underlying this essay, instead, is Chuck's own implication in the whole scheme. I'd be the first to pounce if he was indeed doing what Ames is accusing him of, since it's one of the things that really bugs me about media criticism. But he doesn't. Midway through he even says, "personally, I would never be satisfied unless my marriage was as good as Cliff and Clair Huxtable's (or at least as enigmatic as Jack and Meg White's)" and he finishes the essay by saying "I want fake love. But that's all I want, and that's why I can't have it." For the love of everything fried, the essay's called "This is Emo." Klosterman is clearly putting himself squarely in the center of this problem. It is, in fact, this quality--of simultaneous self-effacement and honest implication--that makes the essays so effective. They're not mocking his lessers: he's writing about horrible pop culture artifacts he himself absolutely loves, and in some cases, is even kind of obsessed with. And anyway, we really all do do this, if not with TV or movies, then with books (the Madam Bovery thing) or biography (politicians getting a bit too into their idols, etc.). We're all part of this. Even Ames, a man who, after all, moved to fucking Russia to escape the tyranny of prime-time television, which is one of the most fucking melodramatic things I've ever heard. If you want to get away from USA consumerism, Mark, there's always Canada.

#2: 'Sick thing is, Klosterman, as a proud North Dakotan hick, spent all too much time with "regular" folks. He knows their presumed susceptibility is a lie, but also knows that this lie is what the coastal Beigeocracy [the what now? -ed] wants to hear. He’s only too willing to sell them all out in order to please his Manhattan masters, who have their own set of clichés that they expect to read. Hence, this gem of a media-crit cliche: "The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want."'

As we know from the Billy Joel thing above, Ames has a problem with taking things out of context, and this is no exception. This quote doesn't refer to Cusak, but instead to Woody Allen. And here's how that section begins:

'Of course, this media transference is not all bad. It has certainly worked to my advantage, just as it has for all modern men who look and talk and act like me. We all owe our lives to Woody Allen. If Woody Allen had never been born, I'm sure I would be doomed to a life of celibacy.'

So he's not, in fact, dumbly railing against the evils of the media's mediation of desire; he's saying it can be kind of cool sometimes. And the Woody Allen point is a fucking fantastic one. Here's what comes right after the quote Ames pulls: "This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he made people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn't. It's just another gimmick, and it's no different then wanting to be with someone because they're thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown." So yeah, there's nothing profound about having a Woody Allen relationship, but there's nothing profound about having any relationship. This is the point. The mass media convinces us that there is some meaning there, but that's OK, because that seems to help us out, relationship-wise (gotta narrow down the field somehow besides our random seuxal tastes), same as with music, or literature, or anything. It's all pretty much subjective. Then again, sometimes that actually fucks things up, confuses them. And it's that ambiguity that's so useful, because really, that original "bullshit media critique" had some real value to it. It's just been oversold and we can't really say it without wincing anymore. Klosterman's doing his best to reclaim and refine it for us.

What Ames doesn't realize is that he and Klosterman are both using that power of lethal argumentation that I talk about above, but Ames is using it for evil, and Klosterman is using it for good. Klosterman doesn't really believe that John Cusak can be blamed for the failure of his relationship; he even says as much: "And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusak." But he does believe in the other points he's making, about the possible dangers of fictional images (a theme explored in Don Quixote for the love of criminey) and the problems of romance and Woody Allen. But if he stated them outright, they wouldn't hit as hard. So he's working his way around to them; he's, you know, writing. If comedy is the "sheen" or "overproduction" of literature, then like with Justin, you need to look beyond that here to the remarkable subtlety underneath. Klosterman isn't just trying to bludgeon us over the head with a supposedly self-evident truth like Ames is; he's trying to give us arguments we can use. And he does so over and over again.

I really love Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. It's a goddamn great book. One essay is about Saved By the Bell and is so amazingly geeky about it that I can't help but identify. One essay is about a Guns 'n' Roses cover band that has some of the best lines I've ever heard in my life, and Chuck clearly really likes these guys. One essay is about the Dixie Chicks and how teenage girls are the new teenage boys. And a whole lot of other stuff which I may or may not comment on in the future, including a real bit of scholarship about Kid Rock that was, hands down, the smartest thing I've read in the last 6 months that wasn't written by Hannah Arendt.

And one essay is about The Real World and how since that's been on, every single American under 30 now acts like one of the 9 personality types adopted by cast members of that show. Again, this is clearly not true, but it is interesting. And that's what I like about Klosterman: he doesn't go half-assed on these things. He gets an idea and he just runs with it, not because he thinks it's right so much as because he's interested in where it will take him. And that's a technique I really like. One of the problems with criticism is that we're so concerned with taste--understandable, since it's the closest thing we have to theorems or formulas, real, quantifiable things you can base scholarship on--that we can't get beyond it. Klosterman's not even really doing the reverse-snob backflip, since it's clear from even a cursory survey of the Real World essay, among others, that he is way too obsessive about these programs to be liking them "ironically." This is a real and genuine love, and he is neither ashamed of it or proud of it; he just has it, and he uses that to go somewhere. I think too often critics find themselves liking something and then resist it, or find some reason to dislike it, but aside from my usual point about how dumb it is to say no to pleasure, I think these Klosterman essays prove beyond a shadow of a doubt how really liking something you're not supposed to can lead you to a conclusion just as valid as if you started from Blood on the Tracks.

My time here is almost done (see, you wait three years for the album and then it's a double-disc), but before I go, let me just address the issue of geographic bias/determinism.

Mark Ames lived in America, but he got disgusted with "all the other Gen-Xers who never even had the brains or guts to wade into the margins in the first place." And so he moved to Russia (aided in no way, I'm sure, by money gained from the same shallow Amerikkkan system that produces such soul-killing hogwash, etc.) and writes about Russian whores. No comment necessary, I guess, although I will say that his critique makes one wonder how he can accuse Klosterman of peddling "shallow media criticism" with a straight face.

Chuck Klosterman grew up in North Dakota, moved to New York City and is now editor of Spin. He has written a book called Fargo Rock City about loving heavy metal and growing up in the midwest. These facts irk some people; Ames for one, of course (sample: 'I suppose this must go over well with his Manhattan handlers, who just love "authentic" hicks who can write roughly the same Beigeist-intellectual drivel as they while still keeping to their "roots." Here Klosterman is the hick equivalent of an Oreo...'), but it's apparently a widespread idea. See, for instance, here:

With his autobiographical yarns about communing with heavy metal culture in rural North Dakota in the mid-to-late-'80s, it's rather evident (to those keeping score) how Klosterman hit the right notes to break into the NYC media--a creature from the land of slackjawyed yokels who figured out how to channel his earnest consumption of mass produced glam rock into a memoir that resonated with the medium funny set because it was just folksy enough.

The basic gist of all this Klosto-bashing is that he can't possibly actually be like this, and moreover, no one from those flyover states we've never actually lived in but feel a lot of sympathy for could possibly agree with him. It's only elitist Manhattanites! This reminds me of the argument a while back that Saving Schmidt was insulting to Midwesterners, that it was just reinforcing its big-city audiences' stereotypes. The problem with that, of course, was that the people saying this were elitist Manhattanites themselves, not Midwesterners, and they had only seen the movie at preview screenings in Manhattan; in other words, they were just, you know, assuming that people from the Midwest would be insulted, purely on the evidence that non-Midwesterners thought the movie was funny. I saw it in Indiana, and it was both well-attended and well-enjoyed, and I got similar reports from three or four other Midwestern states. Now, you could make the argument that these people were just too dumb to realize they were being mocked, but is that an argument you really want to make? Is that an argument you want to make about anyone from North Dakota who likes Klosterman? I'd have a lot more faith in these particular critiques if they weren't being made by guys in Moscow and Toronto and were being made by guys in Fargo. (Of course, they're too "out of the loop" to understand the complicated politics of the big-city media game, right?) All the Midwesterns I know who've read Klosterman have absolutely loved it and were not offended at all. When you're wondering why some guy you don't like is successful, you have to consider the horrible possibility that he might just be really good. It's possibly, maybe even likely, that Chuck Klosterman got hired at some publications because the editors were riding a hick-authenticity fantasy. But it's nearly certain that he gets read and liked because he's a great fucking writer.
posted by Mike B. at 5:19 PM 0 comments

Real nice post by David over at Big Sunny D about PJ Harvey's "This is Love." Does a nice job of teasing out the joy in it. I'm impressed that he was able to slow the song down enough in his brain to analyze it--to me it's just one big rush of "ooooohhhhWEEEEEE!" I have, um, different associations with this album than some other people, though.

He also posts a pretty damn sexy picture of the artist herself. And, fuck me, is she playing through a Vox? Argh. One more reason to get one.

...and is that really a ZOOM PEDAL?! There on the far left? Hmm, maybe my eyes are deceiving me. I am kind of curious about her gear setup, though.

posted by Mike B. at 12:55 PM 0 comments

Awright, I'm out of the Dizzee argument, since Simon says it's over (okee), and it's admittedly getting a bit ridiculous anyway, which we clearly all realize. Some of the latest posts are good, but they're also starting to sound like a) "My country is more diverse than yours!" and b) the retardo arguments I'd overhear (but, thankfully, never participate in) about "this is not punk rock!" "No, this is totally punk rock!"

Briefly, though, I would say to Luke (more on some of his older posts later, perhaps) that neither the beat nor the vox for "Get Ur Freak On" sound very hip-hop either. Sure, there's lotsa Jamaican influences in Diz etc., but there's lotsa Indian influences in that Missy track. Does that make it "not hip-hop"? And, to parallel Simon's question about Justin a while back (which, yar, Luke's not interested in): what's at stake in Dizzee not being hip-hop? I hear it and I hear hip-hop. That's all. Oh, and would he be receiving such mainstream acclaim if it wasn't hip-hop? (Or reducible by many people to hip-hop?) I would never claim to approach Dizzee from the perspective of someone who knows, well, anything about the history of jungle in the UK (I grew up in rural NY, kids), but neither would I ever claim to care, and I think my perspective is both valid and the one that most people will be approaching Diz from from now on, so probably worth considering.

And to Mark I would say that sure, Brooklyn ain't Idaho, but you wanna put Boise up against the Lake District and see which one comes out on top, punk? Yep, the US has more of a racial divide, but it also has a higher and more evenly-distributed minority population, so it's really been forced to deal with that issue more than the UK has. Maybe Harm wants to chip in here and challenge us all to quote some goddamn statistics, you blowhards? Yeah, probably should. But I'll say this: the US's racial politics, while hardly ideal, are definitely not what they're portrayed as in foreign correspondence.

Oh, and as for geocentrism, maybe I should make that anxiety-of-influence post, eh? Hmm...

posted by Mike B. at 12:10 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

William Bowers reviews a Jon Mikl Thor album, Triumphant, and oh, it's lovely.

The rating above represents the average score of the 0.0 that Triumphant earns for whatever Pitchfork attempts to assess (originality, artistry, musicianship, credigree?) and the 10.0 that Triumphant earns as a novelty-metal classic putting its genre's satirists to shame. (Why did Spinal Tap and Satanicide bother, when this stuff's already self-consciously a caricature to the point of being spoofproof?)

What a crack-up the packaging is. The band logo is metallic, "held on" by Phillips-head screws. The front and back cover art feature an axe-, sword-, and shield-wielding whitey in a skull-belt and bat-helmet chopping up dark-skinned apelike savages in order to protect his pale women, intimidatingly proportioned cowerers "in" ill-advised (transparent) thongs...

The Medieval Times-caliber accents in the skits are hilarious. The first two songs borrow from rap's brand-building tactic of saying the rapper's name over and over; Thor skillfully celebrates his Thorness ("I Am Thor" is self-explanatory, while "March to Glory" chants "Thor is war, and war is Thor" though "glory" and "whore" might be in there somewhere). Thor's three favorite words are "steel," "thunder," and "tundra," though he's always searching for priapic "sceptres" and "hammers." He says that "anger is my middle name" on "Anger III", which is confusing, since we know his middle name to be Mikl, unless we are to accept him as his one-word stage-name. Meanwhile, "Thunderhawk", seriously about being a thunderhawk, is fall-down funny.

This is to say nothing of the Fat Boys ref he drops in later.

It usually only takes me about three sentences to realize I'm reading a Bowers review; it's something about--and forgive the phrase--a generosity of spirit you can grok. Opening a review with a gender theory theory is a classic PF move, but something about the repeated use of "Pardon my blog" tipped me off to the Bowerism.

posted by Mike B. at 5:23 PM 0 comments

Hi there folks--I need a bit of advice here. Tomorrow I need to turn in a 100-word review of Donna Summer's "This Needs to be Your Style." Not a big deal, but I can't decide which version to turn in. They're pretty much totally different, so I'll post 'em here and see what you think. Vote in comments--#1 or #2.

#1

What the hell happened to Donna Summer? We knew she had an experimental streak (i.e. the Moroder collaboration I Remember Yesterday), but a cut 'n' paste laptronica album that throws in references (?) to Britney and the Go-Gos? Yoinks! Shocking though it may be at first (no vocals!), the music is so-so: neither very smart nor danceable, it sounds like your average college student with a Powerbook and Reason who slaps on the granulizer to remind you that it's art, to paraphrase Tom Ellard. The high concept falls flat, but it's fascinating to see this side of the disco diva. You go, girl!

#2

The diva reconfigured as a pudgy male record geek: this album, made entirely from rock/pop samples, sounds unique if simultaneously default.IDM-circa-2003. Donna Summer a/k/a Jason Forrest wants electronic music to be more rawk (thus "cockrockdisco.com") and this reportedly come through live, but here...well, it's not bad (it's pretty good, actually), but it's not what it's supposed to be, kind of like Cex's "Oops..." Ostensibly Plunderphonics-o-tastic, it's too chopped to sample-spot; theoretically poppy, the grooves are few. No doof-doof should run our lives, but we can do better for a rockist rekindling of disco's glory days. Still, it's fine experimental pop.

(there're your options. I considered doing a longer post on Donna, which I can if requested, but I need some free advice more!)

UPDATE: Comments seem to be periodically leaving and doing bikini car washes to raise money for the PTA or something, but you can always e-mail me.

UPDATE 2: Went with #2. Damn you literalists!

posted by Mike B. at 11:02 AM 0 comments

Jesse (my roommate) today has a great article in Salon about the Decembrists and Neutral Milk Hotel. It's real good, even if they did edit out some of the more personal stuff that I really liked. They also link to his excellent STN article on Elephant 6. Go read one of 'em, at least.

posted by Mike B. at 10:32 AM 0 comments

Monday, September 15, 2003

Mark at k-punk and Jonathan at quarks and charms reply to my post about the problematics of loving Dizzee Rascal (hopefully by including the word "problematics" in that link I'll get quoted in a critical essay sometime soon. Send me an e-mail if you do!). I don't know if I can muster a substantive response, but I guess I should at least clarify a few things.

First, a few little things: I only know about gutter garage from what I read in the blogs, but contrary to what Mark says, it was certainly my impression (from Simon R., at least) that the new form of garage was strongly influenced by Dirty South bump, and you can certainly hear a lot of the mealy-mouthed verbalizations thereof in GG, just as you can hear the remnants of garage in the vocals of "21 Seconds." Mark says, "In many ways, Dizzee couldn't sound LESS like US hip hop: it's not only the idiolect and the accent, but also the ruffness of the sound, which have no parallel in the US." Well, he could sound less like US hip-hop by sounding like Blur, but snarkiness aside, he sounds a lot like the undie folks we're all pretty used to by now; there's certainly more of a dance-music (gabba?) heritage to it, but the noise elements aren't that different from El-P's stuff. The voice we all agree is unique, but that's equally true of Flava Flav, so...Mark also writes, "And it's not as if US hip hop has much to shout about at the moment." Geez, really? I'm pretty happy with it. If you're inclined to dislike mainstream pop (as Dizzee's fans seem to be--no offense meant, but it is a pretty fair characterization, yes?) then the fact that hip-hop is the mainstream over here will result in some pop-in-rap-form that will put you off, but I'm pretty damn happy with everything from Outkast to Jay-Z's recent stuff to Mr. Lif to Missy Elliot (Missy fucking Elliot!) to instrumental stuff like Prefuse 73 and RJD2. It's the usual suspects, sure, but aside from the fact that I'd never pretend to be able to introduce anyone to great new hip-hop, it says something that I can rattle off a list of great stuff that easily, yeah? And this is to say nothing of all the underground stuff I don't have my lilly-white ear to.

And Jonathan says: "I'm not so sure that there is a rise of the US-style MC over here- So Solid, Heartless, Gal Flex etc etc make damn sure we know they are a crew/collective/gang. Dizzee made a point of thanking his crew [Roll Deep] at the Mercury awards." I don't think this is accurate at all, although the rest of the post is excellent: almost all US MCs rise with crews, and only break off with them for marketing purposes. I have an example as close at hand as the Diplomats, Cam'ron's crew, and I could also pull out D-12 (Eminem) and the assorted members of the (shudder) Bad Boy Family. I mean, Diz saying "Roll Deep!" in the beginning of "I Luv U" is, if anything, an ancient rap tradition--think Jay-Z slipping "Roc-A-Fella" into every vacant space of Life and Times, Vol. 2. The crew is a pretty ingrained part of US hip-hop, springing from the founding when taggers traveled as members of a crew and there were breakdancing teams, etc., etc. The crew's a pretty big part of US hip-hop.

More broadly, though, I guess the "bristling" is a result of me reopening the old wound of, as Mark puts it, "the US anxiety of influence." And I can understand that; I guess when I made the original post I should have been more careful. But I also think that maybe the fact that I wasn't able to link to Simon's posts, the ostensible subject, made things a bit less clear. Those posts were (unless I'm misremembering) saying how sad it must be to be a USA white teenager and have mainstream culture be dominated by hip-hop--and loving it, but being unable to participate in it. And let's be honest, now, that's a bit of a condescending Brit view itself, which was why I took issue with it. So the whole point of my original post was that this situation that Simon had described and gently mocked for American crackers now seems to be playing itself out in the ranks of white UK critics.

Which is OK! The major misunderstanding seems to be that they think I'm saying this is meant as a knock against the UK whereas it's simply an observation. I'm not saying one is better than the other. But I do think there are certain facts we need to cotton to before we can continue the discussion.

First off, like I say above, Dizzee is doing hip-hop. It may have come from a different place than US hip-hop, and it might not sound like Nelly, but neither does Aesop Rock, and that's still hip-hop. And hip-hop was, no way around it, invented by Americans. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean it's better, and indeed, one of the reasons US indie kids get slightly anglophilic is because they UK seems to have a knack for taking debased US genres and re-presenting them to us as something new and, often, better. Again, this might sound like a knock if originality is your primary critical value, but it's not mine, and I certainly don't mean it as a bad thing. Like I say, it's proven pretty useful over the years (see: the blues, Detroit techno), and hell, I bet more Americans are listening to the Beatles and Stones than Elvis and Little Richard.

Second of all, the UK very simply has a much different racial situation from the US. There's no doubt that Britain's situation is shifting towards America's, but it's far from kind of mix that you'll find in most US communities. (Which--again, disclaimer--does not mean that America's racial politics are better than the UK's, just different, especially in that they have far different factors to consider.) London is better, but even there, even in South London, it feels a hell of a lot different from even my own neighborhood in Brooklyn: there are just simply more white people. Simon even says as much in one of his Merc posts: "it’s easy to forget that most bits of the UK don’t have any black people or Asians…" Yeah, it is, and since we all seem to be in agreement that both US hip-hop and gutter garage are black-dominated forms, this matters.

So when I'm accused of imposing "American cultural politics...on Britain," if that's true then I clearly should not be doing so. But I hope that's not the case, because as I say above, what I'm documenting is not a static state but a shift, and a shift that I see taking UK music fans, especially UK critics, closer to the situation American fans have been dealing with for a while. And the reason I bring this up is because I think we've dealt with it badly. Very badly. We've created this bastard undie/backpacker culture where it's OK for white people to rap, but only if they adhere to a ridiculously purist set of standards about what hip-hop should and shouldn't be, especially considering that they didn't start the damn thing in the first place, and where black artists actually seem more exoticized than they are in the mainstream. And that sucks. We went through a period where a music fan could reasonably say "I like everything but country and rap" and not look like a jackass, which still seems to be the case in the UK judging by the BBC comments (and hey, I thought you guys liked Linkin Park or something? You know they rap, right?). That's clearly no longer the case, but I don't think we've ever fully recovered, since we still feel fine saying "I hate that pop shit" (pop=R&B/hip-hop) and seem more comfortable liking rapping whiteys. I don't know quite where to place the blame for this; the idiot, um, "rockists"--at least the ones who still insist you have to Use Real Instruments etc.--deserve some of the blame, but so do the people who refused to see hip-hop as both a part of pop music/culture and to see pop music as Kinda Sorta OK Sometimes. So the situations are different (the geographic distribution of more open-to-the-music minority cultures is worse in Britain, but they do have an established set of reference points which should probably help) but I think many of the possibilities are still there.

I'm a bit burnt out now so I won't get into the anxiety of influence UK-bred bloggers have over US ones such as myself, but suffice to say that is a motivating factor sometimes.

posted by Mike B. at 6:13 PM 0 comments