entertainment through pain

A glimpse into the state of "rawk" criticism twenty-five years ago, courtesy of the November 1982 issue of Creem (the gift that keeps on giving). It's an excerpt from that issue's "Letter from Britain" column, written by Cynthia Rose (on loan from NME):

Rose's argument is that the New Pop aesthetic, as personified by ABC singer Martin Fry, is representative of British mass culture's emphasis on style over substance, where the then-current media fixation on Prince William's birth obscured Thatcher's circus of petty cruelties. Of course, lamenting the focus on appearance doesn't rule out directing catty barbs at Fry's complexion.

Oh, dear. I'm going to make a point of stating, whenever someone complains about the present state of political/social/cultural affairs, that things were better in the good old days, before the one-two punch of "Stool Pigeon" and "Endicott" shattered our previously idyllic paradise. "We lived happily and simply in those days, unaware that we would soon be overrun by slavering hordes of videogenic back-up singers."

At the risk of sounding reductive for the sake of argument, I'd venture to state that novelty is a core principle of "pop." Pop is ephemeral. Pop exists in the "now." Good pop songs can transcend their moments in time, but that is incidental to their initial purpose. Pop's purpose is not edify, not to uplift, not to bear the weight of the human condition on its shoulders, but simply to entertain. One could argue that a good pop song requires a certain level of substance and I wouldn't disagree; given the choice, I'd rather listen to Carter USM's "The Only Living Boy in New Cross" instead of Gary Lewis and The Playboys' "This Diamond Ring." "Good" is a different concept than "effective," however, and even the most banal pop confections can succeed in their momentary purpose by virtue of a catchy hook, a sublime harmony, or clever turn of phrase.

...and the manias over Elvis and the Beatles and the Stones and the other members of the sacred pantheon didn't involve commercialism or me-too behavior in the least. Nor do the countless photo-features, puff piece interviews, and band merchandise ads featured in every issue of every rock magazine ever published, apparently. The big chested blonde ladies modeling Creem t-shirts in an ad a couple pages after this column? They're making a statement of rebellion, honest.

Rockism is prone to a form of myopia which confuses personal sentiments with universal truths about "the music." It takes the shape of a cranky evangelism (with Calvinist overtones) that stresses the chimera called "authenticity." The problem is that authenticity, when used to separate art from product, is a subjective concept in objective clothing, and is applied unevenly based on pre-existing biases. The closer a performer hews toward those biases, the more authentic he or she is deemed.

In the article, Rose singles out Marianne Faithfull and Tom Verlaine (ex-Television) as examples of authenticity in contrast to the New Pop's superficiality. The choice of Faithfull stuck me as interesting as her persona as fallen angel of the 60's Modtopia has generated as much, if not more, ink than her music (which to be honest, I've never seen the appeal of). Though rooted in Faithfull's real experiences, it has become part of the packaged persona of the entertainer -- except the "sex, drugs. and rock and roll" template fits better with the rockist party line than shiny gold sport coats and back-up singers do.

(The Tom Verlaine bit didn't surprise me, since it's standard practice for rock journalists to fawn over anything that ever played CBGB's in the 70's. Expect a gooey retrospective on the importance of the Tuff Darts to appear in the pages of Spin any day now.)

It's not a matter of dismissing the concept of relative quality. There is a world of difference discernable between Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" and Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy" or Anthrax's "Among the Living" and Manowar's "Guyana," even after accounting for differences in individual tastes. It's the imposition of manufactured, mythical standards in place of an empirical personal relationship with "the music" that irks me. I have far more respect for someone who can plain out admit he or she listens to Hoyt Axton because they like his music than for someone who launches into dissertations about historical relevance and "importance" which fairly reek of received wisdom.

If you find pop music too superficial for your liking, then fair fucks to you. Don't, hovever, curse apples for not being more like oranges. Or hold new wave disco-synth bands up to a mythologized standard that doesn't even apply to the purist acts you cite as examples.

When it comes to enjoying music, the only honesty that really matters is in regards to one's own tastes.

Shallow new wave glossiness, uncompromising anarcho-punk convictions -- I adore them all.

ABC - Poison Arrow (from The Lexicon of Love, 1982)

Crass - Don't Tell Me You Care (from the How Does it Feel? 7", 1982; collected on Best Before...1984, 1986)