“At first the number of white people interested in this music was not enough to have much effect on the sales of popular music. This portion of the audience probably consisted at first of college and a few high school students who cultivated an ‘R & B cult’ as most of their equivalents earlier (and even then) cultivated a jazz cult.

By a happy coincidence we happen to have some observations of remarkable insight made by the sociologist David Riesman on the popular music audience of this period, which illustrate the character of the specialist audience. In an article, ‘Listening to Popular Music’, Riesman noted that two groups could be identified: the majority audience, which accepted the range of choices offered by the music industry and made its selections from this range without considering anything outside it; and the minority audience, which he described with details which are relevant here.

‘The minority group is small. It comprises the more active listeners, who are less interested in melody or tone than in arrangement or technical virtuosity. It has developed elaborate, even overelaborate, standards of music listening; hence its music listening is combined with much animated discussion of technical points and perhaps occasional references to trade journals such as ‘Metronome’ and ‘Downbeat’. The group tends to dislike name bands, most vocalists (except Negro blues singers) and radio commercials.

The rebelliousness of this minority group might be indicated in some of the following attitudes toward popular music: an insistence on rigorous standards of judgement and taste in a relativist culture,; a preference for the uncommercialized, unadvertised small bands rather than name bands; the development of a private language and then a flight from it when the private language (the same is true of other aspects of private style) is taken over by the majority group; a profound resentment of the commercialization of radio and musicians. Dissident attitudes toward competition and cooperation in our culture might be represented in feelings about improvisation and small ‘combos’; an appreciation for idiosyncrasy of performance goes together with a dislike of ‘star’ performers and an insistence that the improvisation be a group-generated phenomenon.

There are still other ways in which the minority may use popular music to polarize itself from the majority group, and thereby from American popular culture generally: a sympathetic attitude or even preference for Negro musicians; an equalitarian attitude toward the roles, in both love and work, of the two sexes; a more international outlook, with or without awareness, for example, of French interest in American jazz; an identification with disadvantaged groups, not only Negroes, from which jazz springs, with or without a romantic cult of proletarianism; a dislike of romantic pseudo-sexuality in music, even without any articulate awareness of being exploited; similarly a reaction against the stylized body image and limitations of physical self-expression which ‘sweet’ music and its lyrics are felt as conveying; a feeling that music is too important to serve as a backdrop for dancing, small talk, studying, and the like; a diffuse resentment of the image of the teenager presented by the mass media.’

[…]

Riesman’s observation that no matter what the majority chooses, there will be a minority choosing something different explains how popular music continues to change, no matter how good – or bad – the dominant types of music are at any particular period. And because the minority audience defines itself as being radical within the music audience, its taste is likely to favor, consciously or unconsciously, music with some element of social comment or criticism in it.

During the early fifties, young people like those described by Riesman turned in increasing numbers to rhythm and blues music, and to radio stations that broadcast it. If the first listeners were those with relatively sophisticated standards for judging music, those that came later included many whose taste was more instinctive, who liked the dance beat or the thrilling effect of a hard-blown saxophone, people who may have found the rough voices of the singers a bit quaint and appealing as novelties.

It was this second group of listeners who provided the inspiration and audience for Alan Freed, who , with Bill Haley, played a crucial role in popularizing rhythm and blues under the name ‘rock n’ roll’.”

- Charlie Gillett, ‘The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock ‘n Roll’ (Dell, 1972), pp. 19 – 21


Serving Suggestions:

John Lee Hooker – This Is Hip
Frankie Lee Sims – She Likes To Boogie Real Low
TV Slim – Flat Foot Sam
Guitar Junior – Roll Roll Roll
Icky Renrut – The Rooster
Bunker Hill – The Girl Can't Dance

Labels: auto-critique, books, Charlie Gillett, R & B Cults

“When these critics purport to write about a record, they are really writing, ‘Me, me, me… What about ME?!?’ And because they are actually propagating themselves, they resent performers and groups with any personality or character of their own. This competition with the subject is perfectly logical from their perspective. These critics see themselves as artists in their own right; their writing needs a clean slate on which to project, a tabula rosa. Just as a lead guitar player wants a steady backbeat over which to ‘shred,’ the critic celebrates the performers and groups who will provide a clean, tidy soil bed in which their word-seeds can sprout – groups and singers whose personas won’t overpower the writer’s own voice.

Therefore they reward formalistic, inoffensive, dull, pretentiously unpretentious groups who ‘rock’ with a studied indifference, who try too hard to not try too hard, who compose a kind of indefinable muddle sometimes described as ‘indie-rock.’ The groups the critics celebrate, though middle class and usually college educated, are not intellectual or poetic, nor are they threatening in any way. Their style is varsity casual; they’re smart enough to be bland and unassuming, and they are attractive in the sense that they received the right nutrients when they were young during their unremarkable but privileged upbringing.

Their type of music isn’t necessarily ‘bad’. In fact, it might even be ‘good’ in some sort of way. But it is typically unassuming, introverted, unexciting, dealing in mawkish emotionalism better left on daytime television, inscrutable in a manner which betrays cowardice on the part of the ‘artist,’ and is often state-subsidized by the government of its country of origin, whether it be Canada, France or Sweden.”



“Because of the critic’s starring role in the music scene, he or she is concerned with maintaining decorum. If Little Richard were appearing on the scene nowadays, he would arouse the ire of the critics, who would resent his humour, his costumes, his showmanship, and the Dada content of his songs. The Same goes for Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry and The Beatles. The critic would dismiss these as comic or novelty acts, not to be taken seriously, as opposed to, say, the tedious and highly regarded Sigur Ros and Radiohead.

Of course, Little Richard isn’t appearing on the scene now. He is an institutionalized favorite, beloved by critics. Why is he so beloved by them? Because of his ‘otherness’ and his irrelevance. In music, personality is only forgiven if the performer is firmly ensconced in the ‘other’ category, or if they are retired or dead. If he/she is irrelevant or a completely exotic quantity, he/she is granted a right to showmanship, personality, stage name, and even political expression. But that is simply not acceptable for the contemporary domestic artist.”



“The artist is expected to be a silent partner and unannounced extension of faceless authority; one more brand name alongside Stand & Poors, the NASDAQ, the New York Times, Merchant Ivory, Proctor & Gamble, Monsanto and the MoMA. Sting, Bon Iver, and Vampire Weekend fit right in. This policy is propagated via the critic, who feels him or herself trapped by the void. For the official rock critic, the modern group represents ‘fashion’ or ‘art,’ whereas ‘other’ music is ‘costume’ or ‘craft,’ somehow authentic and outside of critique.”



“Another of the critics’ jobs is to have an opinion about things they actually have no regard for or couldn’t care less about. This leads to annoyance on their part with regard to the records and groups they discuss. Their opinions are therefore contrived, conjured up in order to make a statement that addresses the perception of the thing in question, and not the actual thing. Perhaps they will perversely champion that which is unpopular, or vice versa. Or they may try to ‘break’ an unknown. But typically these writers will fastidiously maintain a status quo, an aesthetic which they feel reinforces an aspect of their equally contrived personal ‘identity’.”



“Rock n roll musicians tend to gravitate en masse towards some particular stylistic template. Critics do the same. Though there are many critics, they only have a few voices. The most common one is the ‘omniscient,’ who holds forth as if he/she were a deity on a mountaintop who’d incidentally seen all of humanity’s foibles transpire, including the entire back catalogue of whichever ‘artist’ they are discussing. As an astral being, they affect a tone of chiding condescension. Another is the ‘memoirist,’ who tells you a few incidental comments about the record while you learn oodles about their experience in traffic of their dinner of tikka masala. This is supposed to be refreshingly unpretentious. As opposed to an actual music enthusiast who is invested in the scene, none of these creatures can tell you what kind of music they like or why this does or doesn’t fit into their ideal. To do so would undermine their right to caprice.

The establishment critic is also aware of the role of money. Even on the ‘independent’ level, critical popularity is bought through a form of payola called ‘publicity’. Publicists are like farm league lobbyists. They are ‘connected’ people, usually ex-Conde Nast employees, who are hired to tell their acquaintances who work for periodicals or music blogs to write positive articles about the group which has paid them a fee. They control the way a group is written about too, as they distribute something called a ‘onesheet,’ written by the group’s record company, summarising the new record’s promo campaign with ‘bullet points’. This is why, whenever a group’s record ‘blows up,’ the articles you see written about it are uniformly similar. The Strokes, for example, were said by all press organs to evoke the Ramones and Television, despite no discernible similarity to either group. The extraordinary obedience of the press in following orders from the publicists shows how little many of the writers care, not only about the subjects they write about, but about music itself.

And this is understandable. Because music is not for everyone. Most people, in fact, shouldn’t listen to it. This isn’t meant as an insult to them, or as a way to question their decency or intellectual capacity. People who shouldn’t listen to music are often very competent at their jobs and may also be responsible pet owners. They should not, however, use the groups as a prop for their future career in journalism or as a way to generate ad revenue for their website. Listening to music won’t make one interesting, hip, in-the-know, or better than other people. All of these elitist conceits are common to the enthusiast and are undeniably a factor in listening to music, but ultimately it is music that must liberate one from such concerns.

Unfortunately, it is precisely those who shouldn’t listen to music who constitute the majority of its most influential critics. These people, the snarling dogs who enforce mediocrity through their vehemence, sneering, and know-it-all pretensions, resist music because to them it is an unfathomable, inscrutable riddle. They want to speak about it, hold forth on it, determine its future like a parched schoolteacher who crushes the spirit of the child because he too was crushed so long ago.

This type of critic resents organized sound just as a mole resents sight or the ostrich resents flight. But instead of just turning away, he has been taught that music is integral to a person’s sexuality, to their attractiveness, so he pushes forth in his nonsense elucidations, tracts designed to be read by other confused individuals who need an expert to explain the music to them. Yet music is like food or touch or modern banking – it defies explanation. Explanation or elucidation is an embarrassing redundancy which has no relation to the sensibility borne of the sound itself.”



"Super-Natural Strategies for Making a Rock n’ Roll Group" by Ian F. Svenonious is available now from Akashic Books, or can be found in the ‘popular music / how-to / occult’ section of all good bookshops.

This blog will return to limp on anew on an as-and-when basis, probably paying little heed to Mr. Svenonious’s sage counsel. Keep watching the skies.

Labels: auto-critique, books, Ian Svenonious