Critic’s Roundtable, Part 2
(This conversation has four parts.)
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4
Tom is, as usual, generous, judicious and fair in his evaluation, and that’s why he always would have made a better rock critic than some of us of stronger, more strident opinions. But there are two underlying issues those framing these kinds of queries should consider.
(1) The value of Joke Rock period. Humor (Flipper, Ramones), of course. Maybe it’s because I gave up, you know, bongs too early for martini shakers. But seriously, how many times can you take the skinheads bowling? I mean, it’s raining, and it’s 4.23 p.m. Sunday, and there you are picking a CD. Do you really say, “Forget Gang of Four or Sterling Morrison. I want to hear ‘Frosting on the Beaters.’ “? In 2011? Who are these people?
(2) The revisionist tic. We all know the value of finding, in Greil Marcus’ phrase, the secret history of the 20th century. That’s how we hacked out the lineage of British postpunk from isolated Montana hamlets where one just didn’t pop into Lloyd Kelly’s record shop and find “Metal Box,” much less Comsat Angels or the Chameleons. But there is a kind of a bored, Pitchfork insider mentality of late that really starts to believe minor enthusiasms trump the top shelf. Tom gets at this but it bears repeating: As much as one can baste in the Dream Syndicate (“Halloween”), they were never the Velvet Underground. John Berryman is not Ezra Pound. Fill in the blank is not Bach. Stop it.
– JK MANLOVE
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I agree with MANLOVE. Joke Rock can certainly be an admirable endeavor, but its room for potential simply has a lower ceiling. I can unashamedly enjoy Cheech & Chong, They Might Be Giants, Tenacious D, et al., but will they and their fellows (no pun intended) ever, in any kind of lasting way, significantly affect my understanding of music, much less the world’s?
– Cory Davis
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> (1) The value of Joke Rock period. Humor (Flipper, Ramones), of course.
> Maybe it’s because I gave up, you know, bongs too early for martini shakers.
> But seriously, how many times can you take the skinheads bowling? I mean,
> it’s raining, and it’s 4.23 p.m. Sunday, and there you are picking a CD. Do
> you really say, “Forget Gang of Four or Sterling Morrison. I want to
> hear ‘Frosting on the Beaters.’ “? In 2011? Who are these people?
The Hon. Mr. Manlove here touches on twin shuttlecocks often batted between Tom and myself: (1) does Joke Rock automatically rank less than non-Joke Rock (John seems to say yes); (2) more messily–and more important if the answer to (1) is “yes”: How/where do we slice Joke Rock (thumbs-down) away from what John above terms Humor (thumbs up)? In a world where such touchstones of mine as They Might Be Giants, Ween, Devo, Fountains Of Wayne, and the Butthole Surfers indeed get dismissed by some as “Joke Rock” (inferiority implied), I’d like to be on the winning side. Even if I feel compelled to argue against sides.
As an aside, I’ve never loved the Posies a few songs aside, but I’ve never seen them lumped in with Joke Rock before. Anyone else’s thoughts?
> (2) The revisionist tic. We all know the value of finding, in Greil Marcus’
> phrase, the secret history of the 20th century. That’s how we hacked out the
> lineage of British postpunk from isolated Montana hamlets where one just
> didn’t pop into Lloyd Kelly’s record shop and find “Metal Box,” much less
> Comsat Angels or the Chameleons. But there is a kind of a bored, Pitchfork
> insider mentality of late that really starts to believe minor enthusiasms
> trump the top shelf. Tom gets at this but it bears repeating: As much as one
> can baste in the Dream Syndicate (“Halloween”), they were never the Velvet
> Underground. John Berryman is not Ezra Pound. Fill in the blank is not Bach.
> Stop it.
Well, we’re up to finding the secret history of the 21st century, aren’t we? The important thing to remember here: What comprises the Unsecret History? In the 20th century, that was everything could probably buy in a mainstream record store (which for me, but not necessarily everyone, meant something in a mall.) In the 21st century…well, it could be Pitchfork, but you’ll have to sell me harder.
Another question posed by Tom and John’s attitudes as understand them: Is the Top Shelf now closed, with no more room for new entities? (And if so, when did it close, and why?) Manlove and Kipp seem to say yes to the first part…
– Andrew Hamlin
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Mr. Hamlin, William S. Burroughs was capable of invoking a wide range of sentiments, not the least of which is top-notch humor, including even the knee-slapping variety, but he didn’t really tell jokes. That’s the difference between those labelled as Joke Rockers and say, the more subtle humorous musings of, say, Mick Jagger or John Lydon.
– Cory Davis
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Gosh, a real debate. This Internet thing may work out after all.
So, to Andy’s No. 1, let me quote a bit from a private response I made to one correspondent:
My solution has been to invoke songwriting, structure, form. I plead guilty to formalism as (an inevitably) provisional standard with which to sort or judge cultural productions. And this is where Joke Rock so obviously fails. It is almost always derivative in its (received) sense of what makes a song, its “contribution” or “originality” lying in its lyrics, always described by acolytes as clever. So my critique comes down to this: What endures, the formal or the clever? Or, how soon do you nod off after the joke is over?
As to his No. 2: There is a misunderstanding of sorts, I think. I am not arguing the “canon” is closed. I am arguing that people with more access than passion have succumbed to the temptation to believe that passing fancies, private obsessions, little crushes, can form the grounds to argue against sound aesthetic judgment by the standards cited above.
So that, say, you become entranced by a contemporary poet. Let’s say Louise Gluck, whom I like well enough. I own most of her books. So then you start to say, Hell, I’m living in a Louise Gluck universe, baby. I want to write THE big Louise Gluck book. OK. Then, then, my dear Andrew, you cross the line, and say silly things. You say that her line breaks are the best of any female poet of the 20th century. Oops, there’s H.D., the Bach of the 20th century about structure. Her lines are carved in stone, marble, granite. She had the ear of a god. Forget “female” poets. Just poets. She and Pound and Eliot just ARE the 20th century in poetry.
I have enthusiasms. I love Echo and the Bunnymen. But Jesus, only Ian Curtis talked to God. I mean, that music came from nowhere, just appeared out of the ether. So when we want to revise the story — sometimes we must; after all, Jon Landau proclaimed Bruce Springsteen the teleological “end” of rock music at just the moment “Anarchy in the UK” hit — we must know whereof we speak. And live it diamond-hard. I.E., not as a postgrad intellectual “game” the equivalent of beer pong.
Right?
JK Manlove
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I think there are a few things you are slanting a bit, or even willfully misprising [perish the thought!], in your summary of the day’s Kipp/Manlove rhetoric:
1) For us Joke Rock has not equaled the Pantheon Achievements of many other genres of music. This may [or may not] be an “inherent” limitation, as Cory previously discussed, but as we can judge only those entities [and their artifacts] which have been brought to market, I would challenge you to suggest Joke Rock “equivalents” to the usual Rock Pantheon Subjects, i.e. The Velvets, Stooges, Stones, Beatles, Dylan, Neil Young, Pistols, Clash, Prince, Husker Du, Nirvana, et many al.
2) To clarify, “The Best of Joke Rock”, of which I believe I am familiar with the great bulk [Devo and The Dictators, if they can be included as “Roots” influences/inspirations, much as Delta and Chicago bluesmen are at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Camper Van B and The Dead Milkmen, whom I believe are definitive/prototypical mid-1980s examples; and perhaps They Might be Giants, Too Much Joy, Thelonious Monster, King Missile and several other mainstream indie stalwarts from JR’s 1987-93 heyday, as I perceive it, of course], is clearly much better on records or the radio than the VAST majority of music the The Biz has thrown at us–skillful, witty, winning, self-deprecating, sometimes hard-edged, pop punk that one can enjoy without embarrassment, though perhaps also sans Musical Transcendence, which I do believe we all recognize when it hits us in the face or the eardrum.
3) I am even more fond of several bands not commonly invoked in these debates–Denim/Go Kart Mozart and The Pooh Sticks from the UK; The Moldy Peaches and The Donnas from the past decade; the celebrated Bay Area conceptualists The Residents, Negativland and Pansy Division; Tim Cook and Gerard Cosloy’s beloved The Frogs; The Gizmos and The Gynecologists from 1970s Indiana; and, perhaps best of all, the dementedly literary emanations of Columbus, Ohio’s Ron House–Great Plains and The Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments.
4) If one can be permitted license to posit “Joke Punk” as a viable-if-ad-hoc category, I can definitely shoehorn in some of that Musical/Conceptual Transcendence: To wit, The Ramones, Flipper, Black Flag, The Angry Samoans, Half Japanese, and yes, your own beloved Butthole Surfers, whose first ep [featuring “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave”] and subsequent masterpiece construct “Moving to Florida” may even be the very Apex of said genre as such, though the bulk of their “career” amounts to World Class Wank of an almost unprecedentedly-frustrating tedium [again, in my view]!
5) Both Mr. Manlove and Miz Cory do a fine job below of distinguishing that which we may find witty or humorous from music whose sole reason to be is “the telling of jokes”, musical or verbal. One reason Joke Rock seldom peaks all that high is that its MUSICAL backdrop is rarely more than generic chord progressions designed not to get in the way of the putative laughs, or obvious “quotation” from famous works of musical art for dubious gain and/or mayhem [“Hello, Dread Zeppelin! Hello, Coolies!”]. Deliberate desecration CAN be funny, but never in my experience for 40 minutes STRAIGHT on any album-length musical release with which I am familiar. Tell me what I’m missing, if such a thing existeth! I can’t wait.
6) TC’s original reference to The Posies had merely to do with their contemporaneity in the pop scene co-ruled by The Fellows here in Seattle, and for their nearer-miss with MTV-era fame. The bands have often been lumped together for those reasons, as “Seattle’s Great Pop Hopes”, once upon a time. Though of course The Presidents o’ the USA beat ’em both to that particular lead poisoned “ring” [“She’s lump, she’s lump….”]. Not that THEY were any great shakes either, natch. They just moved the product for one golden season in the sun. And one thing The Posies never [purposely] were was funny!
7) “The important thing to remember here: What comprises the Unsecret History?” I don’t find that question anywhere near so pressing or compelling as learning that which is not generally known, so your urgency there baffles me, Andy. In our select group of debaters and fellow traveling musical adepts, I should think that The Rock Narrative [or, more generally, the “highlights” of The 20th Century Narrative] is almost painfully well-known, and that Pitchfork is merely referenced by JK to point out a particularly irritating PRESENT-DAY problem with historical revisionism [and/or twee critical solipsism!] that our small band of outsiders will surely have observed to some extent, whether therein, at the Pop Conference, in random conversations, or in any number of magazine/fanzine/newspaper articles or reviews.
8) Re: The Top Shelf still being available as an artistic “travel destination”: Why not! JK and I would love nothing better than to add more brand new musical entities to our diet o’ The Greats. Problem is, ya gotta be GREAT to enter, not just willing or ambitious or egomaniacal or best-selling or critically-acclaimed. And neither Kanye West nor Arcade Fire is my idea of a shoe-in, my friend! Your current nominees? Anyone’s?
I hope this rundown has provided helpful exposition of the arcanenesses or caprices of which we may earlier have been guilty, or were at least accused!
Your pal,
– Tom Kipp
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> 5) Both Mr. Manlove and Miz Cory do a fine job below of distinguishing that
> which we may find witty or humorous from music whose sole reason to be is
> “the telling of jokes”, musical or verbal. One reason Joke Rock seldom peaks
> all that high is that its MUSICAL backdrop is rarely more than generic chord
> progressions designed not to get in the way of the putative laughs, or
> obvious “quotation” from famous works of musical art for dubious gain and/or
> mayhem [“Hello, Dread Zeppelin! Hello, Coolies!”]. Deliberate desecration
> CAN be funny, but never in my experience for 40 minutes STRAIGHT on any
> album-length musical release with which I am familiar. Tell me what I’m
> missing, if such a thing existeth! I can’t wait.
Two quotes come to mind:
“A good comedian does funny things. A great comedian does things funny.”
–Buster Keaton
“He shouldn’t be funny, because he doesn’t tell jokes. But he IS funny.”
–admittedly-biased liner notes from Bill Cosby’s “Why Is There Air?”
> 7) “The important thing to remember here: What comprises the Unsecret
> History?” I don’t find that question anywhere near so pressing or compelling
> as learning that which is not generally known, so your urgency there baffles
> me, Andy. In our select group of debaters and fellow traveling musical
> adepts, I should think that The Rock Narrative [or, more generally, the
> “highlights” of The 20th Century Narrative] is almost painfully well-known,
> and that Pitchfork is merely referenced by JK to point out a particularly
> irritating PRESENT-DAY problem with historical revisionism [and/or twee
> critical solipsism!] that our small band of outsiders will surely have
> observed to some extent, whether therein, at the Pop Conference, in random
> conversations, or in any number of magazine/fanzine/newspaper articles or
> reviews.
I’ll rephrase that if you will, to: What are we rebelling against? “Pitchfork” seems pitched to music insiders. If we rebel against that, we, to borrow a phrase from Robbie Robertson, rebel against the rebellion, do we not? Not that there’s anything wrong with such…
> 8) Re: The Top Shelf still being available as an artistic “travel
> destination”: Why not! JK and I would love nothing better than to add more
> brand new musical entities to our diet o’ The Greats. Problem is, ya gotta
> be GREAT to enter, not just willing or ambitious or egomaniacal or
> best-selling or critically-acclaimed. And neither Kanye West nor Arcade Fire
> is my idea of a shoe-in, my friend! Your current nominees? Anyone’s?
Glad to have this clarified! You’re on record as saying you don’t care for much released after 1995, and you showed almost no interest in the list I sent you of my picks for the Great Records 2000-2010 (we were leaving out 1995-1999 at that point). These two together lead me to believe that you considered the canon closed.
Hokay, I’ll exclude artists who came to prominence pre-1995 from my count, assuming (and correct me if I’m wrong) that you’ve made up your mind about, say, Meat Loaf, Fleetwood Mac, Warren Zevon, Freedy Johnston, and/or Ornette Coleman, to the point of latterday releases unlikely to change aforementioned. I’ll mention Scott Walker, though, because his last two albums deviate so very much from his earlier work, and even a good bit from “Climate Of Hunter,” the 1984 album where he began deviating from previous norms…
This leaves (at least): Richard Youngs, Smoosh, Kinski, Low, Venus Hum, Sick Bees, Six Organs Of Admittance, Fountains Of Wayne, Otis Taylor, Patty Griffin, Sara Gazarek, Melody Gardot, Scarlett Johansson, Kate Rusby, Elizabeth Cook, Tift Merritt, Boo Boo Davis, Dirty Projectors, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Soul Coughing,
and Laura Barrett. And Boris. And Moss.
No particular order.
Anyone’s thoughts on those?
Best,
– Andrew Hamlin
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> My solution has been to invoke songwriting, structure, form. I plead
> guilty to formalism as (an inevitably) provisional standard with which to
> sort or judge cultural productions. And this is where Joke Rock so obviously
> fails. It is almost always derivative in its (received) sense of what makes
> a song, its “contribution” or “originality” lying in its lyrics, always
> described by acolytes as clever. So my critique comes down to this: What
> endures, the formal or the clever? Or, how soon do you nod off after the
> joke is over?
Sounds to me (and I’d welcome a clarification) like the old lyrics vs. music debate. Also your last two questions establish an aesthetic at the expense of any absolutes (and maybe we can’t pay any less a price). TMBG’s “Which Describes How You’re Feeling” lingers a lot longer in my own mind than, say, most of what I’ve heard so far by
Husker Du. But that’s exactly the problem. We might find someone on this very mailing list for whom the opposite prevails.
I’m also going to need clarification on how you’re wielding formalism as fineness. Are we talking the philosophical formalism that denies transcendence, or the the artistic formalism which…hm, looks like that denies transcendence too. Dang.
Let me try it this way: Do we ding Dylan and the Stones, even, for (largely) rehashing old forms musically, reserving their “contribution” or “originality” to lyrics alone? Do we praise Rush or Gentle Giant for introducing new musical forms? You could do both, although you’re swimming upstream Dominant Paradigm-wise on either.
(Lester Bangs: Well, It’s like a friend of mine said when I asked him “Do you think The Rolling Stones should break up now that they’ve put out ‘Some Girls’ and quit while they’re ahead or should they keep going?” And he said “Oh no, absolutely, they should keep going until they’re totally senile, and a little bit more creepy and pathetic and creaky each time playing the same old Chuck Berry riffs until they’re 60 years old”. And I agree that’s exactly what they should do, and I think Rock’n’Roll as it goes along gets more creaky. The whole culture will get more creaky and why not. I mean I’d rather listen to the Stones than Tony Bennett or something like that.)
> So that, say, you become entranced by a contemporary poet. Let’s say Louise
> Gluck, whom I like well enough. I own most of her books. So then you start
> to say, Hell, I’m living in a Louise Gluck universe, baby. I want to write
> THE big Louise Gluck book. OK. Then, then, my dear Andrew, you cross the
> line, and say silly things. You say that her line breaks are the best of
> any female poet of the 20th century. Oops, there’s H.D., the Bach of the
> 20th century about structure. Her lines are carved in stone, marble,
> granite. She had the ear of a god. Forget “female” poets. Just poets. She
> and Pound and Eliot just ARE the 20th century in poetry.
Noted. You don’t appear, on further exposition, to be saying, “There can never and will never be another so great as H.D. That is
impossible.” But you can always correct me if I’m wrong.
In closing, a few words from my friend Tris McCall (another Pazz & Jop voter), who gave me permission to cobble together some of his Joke Rock Thoughts from a chat we had earlier. Hope I did a decent job, Tris! To wit:
“Well, I’m one of those people who can take the skinheads bowling indefinitely. And take retards to the zoo while I’m at it. I find songs with humor much deeper than songs that aren’t funny. I mean, I’m a rap fan. I don’t want to listen to Radiohead. They have no sense of humor whatsoever. Camper, to me, wrote eloquently about all kinds of philosophical problems–often by joking about them. David Lowery is one of my favorite lyricists. [Regarding Ms. Davis’ Joke-Or-No-Joke remarks:] I agree that Mick Jagger and John Lydon had great senses of humor, but that doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate David Lowery. Or, for that matter, John Flansburgh.”
Until tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen…
– Andrew Hamlin
