Dammit, why do all these rock snob thumbsuckers have to hate on the chicks? Maybe if you just assume that all the rock snobs in the world are guys, you won’t find any rock snob chicks? Maybe we’ve got, like, lives and stuff and don’t just sit around at home changing our minds about the relative merits of alphabetization by artist vs. genre vs. date of purchase? Because we already decided? Strict alphabetical order!! (I know, I can hear my friend Daniel complaining about all the stuff that gets lost. Serendipity!) Jesus, now you’re going to tell me you just discovered Can’s Ege Bamyasi. But, you know…maybe most rock snobs are guys. And most bloggers are guys? I hope it doesn’t turn out chicks suck. That wouldn’t be very punk rock at all.
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ghengis von bladet 11.07.05 at 12:12 pm
You mean you want a fair and balanced facetious charicature? Would you like a pony with that?
ghengis von bladet 11.07.05 at 12:12 pm
(Sorry, caricature. Too much C programming and not enough driving, vroom vroom.)
George Williams 11.07.05 at 12:13 pm
Stephen Metcalf needs to get out more.
Dude, the Minutemen broke up over twenty years ago when D Boon died. Let it go.
wcw 11.07.05 at 12:23 pm
The listmakers and collector-scum fetishists are all men, true. The fan bases of certain whole genres are entirely male as well (you’re damned straight I’m looking at you, prog rock).
However, there are plenty of female music snobs. One good friend of mine, a woman who in her early teens went to the last-ever Sex Pistols show, was during the early-’90s “punk broke” flannel revolution often heard to hiss at callow trendfollowers, “stop trying to relive my youth!”
Elitism is a very egalitarian institutions. Anyone can play.
Belle Waring 11.07.05 at 12:25 pm
yeah. a pony. and maybe the original German LP editions of the first 4 Can albums? that would be fucking sweet.
ghengis von bladet 11.07.05 at 12:32 pm
No can do, but I’ve got an old vinyl Amon Duul II Phallus Dei somewhere, which is almost on topic, even.
Joel 11.07.05 at 12:38 pm
and maybe the original German LP editions of the first 4 Can albums?
No Problem. The original german press of Monster Movie will only set you back $1800.00.
dave heasman 11.07.05 at 12:45 pm
In 2003 some lecturer at Edinburgh tried to convince my daughter’s class that Can were teh gear. Played a few tracks – class not taken in.
Academic respectability=kiss of death. And that goes for the Velvet bloody Underground too.
I had fond memories of Amon Duul II. Downloaded “Yeti”. Sadly no.
To make some Christmas money this year I have to search the loft for valuable vinyl. I’m not looking forward to playing/checking the Burnin’ Red Ivanhoe stuff.
I make a horrible music snob.
Adam Kotsko 11.07.05 at 12:54 pm
Oh no — if Velvet Underground is called into question, that upsets my entire epistemology of music snobbery (whereby the Velvet Underground is the last band standing before the music snob decides to hate all Actually Existing Music).
dave heasman 11.07.05 at 1:02 pm
I called Velvet Underground into question in the Autumn term of 1967 when Andy MacKay, all excited, played it to us. “That riff – it’s from the Stones’ “I’m Free” – and they nicked it from Marvin Gaye”.
Jeremy Osner 11.07.05 at 1:33 pm
Every day I thank God I am a simple man.
modus potus 11.07.05 at 1:41 pm
I realize that this is biased by small sample size, but at least back in the day I knew at least as many women into prog rock as men. I can’t say anything about present-day prog rock fans; the very idea is too pathetic to contemplate.
Slocum 11.07.05 at 1:44 pm
The listmakers and collector-scum fetishists are all men, true.
Hmmm. This does seems to be mostly true about music collections, but the fetishists who fill their apartments with ‘theme animals’ (turtles or hippos or llamas) are all female. Lyle Lovett wrote a cool song about one of those girls (‘Penguins’).
Joel 11.07.05 at 1:59 pm
I can’t say anything about present-day prog rock fans; the very idea is too pathetic to contemplate.
Ever heard Mars Volta? Prog for the 21st century. I have to imagine there are some women out there who are into them.
wcw 11.07.05 at 2:04 pm
“Collector scum” is a term of art that refers exclusively to collectors of totemic music fetish objects like the $1800 Can LP. For the record, I am male and I own a couple similar (if cheaper) totems.
bob mcmanus 11.07.05 at 3:34 pm
Umm, most everything above is on my harddrive(s). Along with Carolyn Hester, Mary Timony’s solo and Helium work, and Mirah’s latest. As the IMS achieves satori, elitism becomes egalitarianism, collecting becomes amassing, and quantity replaces quality. Everything is beautiful, and Tony Orlando had some killer hooks. You feel ashamed of listening to Broken English, and toss on Marianne Faithful’s 60s pop. Your playlist constantly delivers wonders of Heavenly bookended by Dashboard Confessional and Within Temptation. You become surgically attached to Pitchfork and All Music Guide and GEPR.
You regain your innocence, your sense of wonder. You return to those glory days:”What the fuck is that gawdawful cacaphony, you call that music? What a minute…hmmm…not so bad there. Was that Neutral Milk Hotel or the Oxfords or Rhonda Vincent? No matter, it will recycle thru the rotation in about 2 1/2 years.”
I think Herman Hesse wrote a book about it. Or Greil Marcus.
Doctor Slack 11.07.05 at 3:43 pm
I have to imagine there are some women out there who are into [The Mars Volta].
At least as many as were into Rush. (I believe there are at least two unambiguous recorded examples of the female Rush fan, possibly three.)
For some reason, women currently tend to make much more tolerable and interesting rock snobs — they can know and love the culture and quote and itemize the obscure and not-so-obscure with the best of them, but they’re almost never the Obnoxious Stereo Nerd who monopolizes the sound system at a party and lectures you (if he can corner you) about the relative merits of Wolf Parade and DFA ’79.
Sifu Tweety 11.07.05 at 4:08 pm
Excellent, subtle dig at The Editors.
I won’t tell.
But I don’t think he’s a rock snob. I mean, Joni Mitchell?
cleek 11.07.05 at 4:09 pm
god how i hate that Rock Snob dictionary.
for real cutting edge rock criticism (pure criticism, no praise), you can do no better than Your Band Sucks. here’s some of their (his) Mars Volta review:
At five minutes and ten seconds, the guitarist sounds like he’s repeatedly trying to play a guitar lick but screwing it up every time. If The Mars Volta intend to paint vivid pictures with their music, it’s working: if I close my eyes, I can see a teenager on a stool in Guitar Center trying to impress us with his avant-garde (i.e. out of key) riffs. Oh sweet, speaking of that: at five minutes and thirty seconds, we’re treated to some wicked fnckin’ tremolo dive-bombs! Rock that Squire Budget Strat, junior!
or this summary of Enya:
Enya reminds me of the feeling of pissing in your pants. Its all warm and nice, but at the same time it’s fncking disgusting on so many levels.
The Navigator 11.07.05 at 4:28 pm
Belle,
Hate to say I told you so (uh-oh), but you yourself may serve to show it:
Dammit, why do all these rock snob thumbsuckers have to hate on the chicks? …. Maybe we’ve got, like, lives and stuff and don’t just sit around at home changing our minds about the relative merits of alphabetization by artist vs. genre vs. date of purchase?
See, that’s the whole point – by definition, if you don’t sit around at home changing your mind (or, more to the point, refusing to change your mind) about the relative merits of any obscure aspect of pop music, you are not a rock snob. You just can’t be.
I, actually, have, on occasion, sat around thinking about alphabetic vs. genre sorting systems, but I cannot be a rock snob, because I’ve never heard a note of Trout Mask Replica. Although I have heard a couple of tracks off Shaggs’ Own Thing….. yikes.
bryan 11.07.05 at 5:19 pm
I knew some women that were into prog rock as men. That’s right, they had to get sex changes to listen to prog rock. poor misguided things.
Adam Kotsko 11.07.05 at 6:11 pm
My roommate, a woman, is a fan of Mars Volta. So is my father, a man. Ergo, there is an equal number of Mars Volta fans of each gender.
modus potus 11.07.05 at 6:26 pm
Hey, no fair criticizing anything I wrote before drinking my morning coffee. But while you’re at it, at least you could have mentioned my using “at least” twice in the same sentence.
Excuse the stereotyping, but women don’t seem to be quite so obsessional in pursuing their preferences, nor so antagonistic toward those with different tastes. Thus it is harder to place them under the rubric “snob.”
In conclusion (and somewhat irrelevantly) I must note that there are ample reasons to reject Rush aside from the genre of music they play.
Iron Lungfish 11.07.05 at 6:50 pm
I hate you all.
ben wolfson 11.07.05 at 6:51 pm
I realize that this is biased by small sample size, but at least back in the day I knew at least as many women into prog rock as men. I can’t say anything about present-day prog rock fans; the very idea is too pathetic to contemplate.
NTM all the current and former female prog musicians. Patricia Dallio, Emily Hay, Lindsay Cooper, Stella Vander, Amy Denio, the woman from The Red Masque (Lynette someone or other), Deborah Perry, Susanne Lewis, Dagmar Krause, Catherine Jauniaux (sort of), usw.
And there’s plenty of good, actually-progressed prog being produced today, and has been since the late sixties, and it’s probably a lot more varied than you think it is. If you’re more content to swallow critical commonplaces unexamined, though, that’s fine too.
The Mars Volta suck, though.
I don’t think GEPR has been updated in years.
Doctor Slack 11.07.05 at 7:57 pm
NTM all the current and former female prog musicians. . .
Dagmar Krause is prog rock? You learn something new every day*. Henceforth, I’ll have to start invoking Lisa Sokolov on lists of underappreciated female prog rockers. (Though I’ll have to do some fancy footwork when people ask me why she rates but Diamanda Galas doesn’t!)
What’s that figure of speech that’s sometimes used for comical exaggeration? Hyper… something? It’s on the tip of my tongue…
(* Yes, I suspect you’re moving the goalposts a wee bit, but no worries. It’s a critical commonplace!)
bob mcmanus 11.07.05 at 8:02 pm
“I don’t think GEPR has been updated in years.”
I just checked:10/21/05, but looked less active for at least a year before that. Still a great resource, I hope it doesn’t go down like the Borderline sites.
The genres can get confusing. Are Evanescance and Within Temptation prog? Hell the hardest most difficult stuff I listened to in the last month, and sue me for discovering the last three decades late in my life, was MBV Loveless. They call this “dream pop”?
soubzriquet 11.07.05 at 9:25 pm
Amazing, given this post, and we got this far in the comments without a detailed argument about why the new CAN remasters are blasphemous/brilliant?
ben wolfson 11.07.05 at 9:48 pm
Dagmar Krause is prog rock? You learn something new every day*. Henceforth, I’ll have to start invoking Lisa Sokolov on lists of underappreciated female prog rockers.
Slapp Happy/Henry Cow’s “War” isn’t rock enough for you? Hell, the Art Bears’ “In Two Minds” is practically stadium-ready.
Granted her solo work isn’t rock. But Henry Cow, the Art Bears, and News from Babel are, and she was a full-fledged member of all three.
grackel 11.07.05 at 9:57 pm
I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.
Jedmunds 11.07.05 at 10:35 pm
Were you implying I have a vagina?
Oh right… Amanda.
Doctor Slack 11.07.05 at 10:46 pm
Granted her solo work isn’t rock. But Henry Cow, the Art Bears, and News from Babel are. . .
Okay, fair point re: Henry Cow and the Art Bears. (I wouldn’t think of News from Babel as a rock band by and large, though, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Matt Weiner 11.07.05 at 11:26 pm
To pile on, Slapp Happy on its own is rock but arguably not prog.
Oh, and don’t forget Annette Peacock as a woman who prog-rocks(ed).
Matt Weiner 11.07.05 at 11:27 pm
Though “women produce this” is not incompatible with “the audience is primarily male.” I’m sure we can all think of an example if we put our heads together.
ben wolfson 11.07.05 at 11:46 pm
“Primarily” and “entirely” mean different things, though, and I was relying on the unstated assumption that the women who produce this aren’t completely emotionally alienated from their work.
And, despite backing by Faust on Acnalbasac Noom, I’m prepared to say that Slapp Happy on their own barely even rock. Even Desperate Straights, the SH-dominated of the two Slapp Happy/Henry Cow albums, is pretty poppy. I mean, “Some Questions about Hats”?
I would have thought Amy Denio was the weaker link.
Matt Weiner 11.07.05 at 11:58 pm
So we’re distinguishing rock and pop then? I think Acnalbasac Noom rocks at least as much as much prog, but we can probably agree it’s not prog-rock. Is Bongwater prog-rock, though?
Emily Hay doesn’t seem very rock from this description.
Matt Weiner 11.07.05 at 11:59 pm
And I wasn’t claiming that Dagmar was a weaker link than Denio–H. Cow and Art Bears are definitely prog. (Have heard very little of Denio’s solo work.)
ben wolfson 11.08.05 at 12:22 am
No, I was considering listing Hay instead of Denio as probably the weakest of those listed. But she’s lent her voice and flute to the Motor Totemist Guild and U Totem, which are rock. More or less, anyway. (And are the only contexts in which I’ve actually heard her, whereas I have a George Cartwright album with Denio.)
So we’re distinguishing rock and pop then?
I really shouldn’t even have brought it up. But I think we can all agree that rockingness admits of degrees, and “A Little Something” rocks less than, say, “Red”. Not that that means they aren’t both rock, which is practically as meaningless a term as Georg Lichtenberg could ask for.
Saif 11.08.05 at 3:18 am
Why would a grown-up person want to listen to rock music in the first place?
buermann 11.08.05 at 3:22 am
I once hung out backstage with ozric tentacles, they were no tangerine dream.
Uncle Kvetch 11.08.05 at 9:43 am
Hell the hardest most difficult stuff I listened to in the last month, and sue me for discovering the last three decades late in my life, was MBV Loveless. They call this “dream pop�
I vaguely recall it being called that, Bob, but I believe the proper IMS label for MBV and their early-90s ilk is “shoegazer.” The origin of the term being obvious to anyone who’s ever seen them live.
Doctor Slack 11.08.05 at 10:32 am
Are Evanescance and Within Temptation prog?
Nope, they’re strictly goth. Evanescence actually describe themselves as “a kind of widescreen goth,” which perhaps is meant to signify their special suitability for superhero movie soundtracks.
bob mcmanus 11.08.05 at 10:43 am
“their early-90s ilk is “shoegazer”
I was aware of the term and its origin, but didn’t consider it remotely helpful as a description of the music. “Noise-pop” is more useful. I listened to some “Loveless” again last night, trying to find the beautiful ethereal melodies in front of, or behind the wall of sound.
Put Fripp/Eno on one side of the stage, crank them to 11, put Judee Sill on acoustic guitar on the other side. You might guess that a visual aspect helped, in making the contrast more explicit and comprehensible. But “Loveless” was a studio album.
Not that I didn’t like it. Everybody else in the house demanded I turn it off, including the dogs.
Doctor Slack 11.08.05 at 10:46 am
But she’s lent her voice and flute to the Motor Totemist Guild and U Totem, which are rock. More or less, anyway.
Less, surely, unless we’re defining “rock” as “anything that uses a drum kit.” Though the “rock” and “jazz” boundary is inherently fuzzy — which is what makes much of Henry Cow admissible as prog “rock” — MTG at least strike me as being much more in “jazz” territory.
commenter 11.08.05 at 11:21 am
No, it’s completely true: there are a whole lot of male music snobs (and female ones, of course, although the etiology is different) for whom gender is a big part of being a music snob. Duh. What, you thought you could just be a chick and be obsessed with […] and get the same kind of cred for it that your male friends get in the me di a? No, this is a guy thing — I mean, this being a guy, it’s a guy thing. You can’t play. You can have all the records, but you can’t have the identity too — some guys need that as much as they need records, although they won’t admit it.
That’s how I always saw it. But bringing up gender questions in rock music is, like, so 1992, and anyway we gave you ladies a fair chance and all you did was start knitting and talking about how feminist knitting is, so fuck that. We can do this stuff ourselves, and reserve the right to complain from time to time about your asking us to turn off the Ex pleeze because it’s hard to knit with that stuff on and have we read this awesome book, The Time-Traveler’s Wife? Uh, no, but we’ve noticed that you haven’t touched this awesome book Ulysses that we recommended to you when you asked us what we like to read…
Is this completely off-base? I swear I’ve met people like this, but perhaps I misunderstood them in some key way…
Doctor Slack 11.08.05 at 12:34 pm
I swear I’ve met people like this, but perhaps I misunderstood them in some key way…
No, I don’t think you misunderstood them at all. There are music snobs of both genders but there’s a certain special breed of male rock snobbery — characterized by a special edge of desperate aggression — that I’ve rarely encountered on the female side of the aisle.
ben wolfson 11.08.05 at 1:05 pm
MTG at least strike me as being much more in “jazz†territory.
This is true of City of Mirrors, but not so much of All America City or the albums collected on Archive One and Two.
Keith 11.08.05 at 1:53 pm
Evenesence is so not Goth! They’re a christian rock band that stopped by Hot Topic on the way in!
Type-O-Negative is Goth. Bauhaus is Goth. Fucking Marilyn Manson is more Goth than Evenesence.
Doctor Slack 11.08.05 at 2:06 pm
Evenesence is so not Goth!
Hey, they’re every bit as goth as Poison were metal. Take it in what sense thou wilt.
cleek 11.08.05 at 4:00 pm
. I listened to some “Loveless†again last night, trying to find the beautiful ethereal melodies in front of, or behind the wall of sound.
i sure hope you found those melodies. Loveless without melody is just a weak Sonic Youth ripoff.
Uncle Kvetch 11.08.05 at 5:23 pm
Loveless without melody is just a weak Sonic Youth ripoff.
My own version of this holds that Sonic Youth is just MBV without melody, but chacun a son gout, I suppose.
bob mcmanus 11.08.05 at 6:05 pm
“i sure hope you found those melodies.”
A birth defect and old age has weakened my hearing in the upper registers, I am afraid. I did turn the volume up and moved closer to the speakers, but the dogs started yowling (does anyone else have dogs that sing along with ambulance and police sirens?) and I fear the total effect was lost.
Maybe if I go study the lyrics…
cleek 11.09.05 at 10:11 am
Maybe if I go study the lyrics
should be pretty easy. there can’t be more than a dozen words per song.
Skippy V 11.11.05 at 4:18 pm
Has anyone heard the theme song for this thread?
LCD Soundsystem “Losing My Edge”.
A great song, that summarizes all of this nicely.
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