The Northcote Social Club looks like a place that your grandmother frequented in the 70s when men's top lips were bristling with mustaches and beer could be bought for under a dollar. Textured floral wallpaper, shag carpeting and red velvet curtains greet you walking into the band room. I was half expecting to see a seniors bingo game in progress. Despite the antiquated decor, the beer prices had their origins very much in the present. But what of the bands accompanying The Beards on their 100 Beard Tour of Australia? Beards are pretty 70s, right?
The Graduate School of Rock: Scholars sculpting rock into art
On November 9, 1967, Jann Wenner’s first editorial appeared in the inaugural edition of Rolling Stone magazine. It read:
“We have begun a new publication…sort of a magazine and sort of a newspaper…reflecting what we see are the changes in rock and roll and the changes related to rock and roll. Because the trade papers have become so inaccurate and irrelevant and because the fan magazines are an anachronism, fashioned in the mold of myth and nonsense…Rolling Stone is not just about music but also the things and attitudes that the music embraces.”[1]
By imbuing it with an authority of publications of record similar to that of newspapers, Wenner laid down the charge for all “serious” rock music magazines that endeavored to present rock music as serious instead of frivolous, a part of the real experience of a culture instead of mere entertainment – as intelligent art as opposed to vacuous "pop." Throughout history, popular and folk music has been defined in opposition to classical “art” music. Prior to the 1960s, pop music could not be considered high culture like the great classical canon – it was commercial, trashy and intended for the lowest common denominator. But rock, like jazz and folk before it ultimately gained merit for its inherent artistry, bringing it to bear scholastic examination.
Scholars and rock journalists’ unifying contention in the early era of rock was that the music mattered in a way that “surpassed pure entertainment, breeding an equally strong need to understand and explain why this was so…in the critics’ view rock was as much art as jazz, but like film, far more democratic.” Cultural theorist Tim Wall cites the academic scholarship of Black American blues music of the 1940s as hugely influential on mainstream American and European popular music of the 1950s and 1960s which eventually was applied to rock music. Rock sociologist and critic Simon Frith devotes the first chapter of his landmark text on rock music and subculture Sound Effects to “rock roots” from both a sociological and musicological perspective as a launching point for academic analysis. Frith describes rock music as an art form that is “primitive” insofar that rock musicians impart emotion through pre-linguistic devices such as sounds and rhythms. He contends that “rock music is the result of an ever changing combination of independently developed musical elements, each of which carries its own cultural message.” Rock and roll came into its own in the 1960s during a re-appropriation of Black music such as soul and pop through interlocutors like Chuck Berry who then went on to influence the Beatles, “opening up the space for the development of rock music” by further appropriating Black American blues, soul and of course rhythm and blues (R’n’B.) Prior to the 1967 Wenner moment, rock music was largely ignored by the establishment, especially in Britain. The BBC had not ventured to play rock music which was instead broadcast by pirate stations and others such as Radio Luxembourg. John Peel, a DJ for pirate station Radio London was considered by the rock music subculture as one of their consecrators and eventually was “poached” by the BBC to head up its new pop music radio station, BBC Radio 1. This motley collection of “fans” became a “real,” structured hierarchy – there were consistencies in the dress, style, taste, politics and activities of these people that consumed and produced rock music. Outside observers could easily identify rock fans; it was the beginnings of an expressive rock subculture.
Ever since the 1930s, studies on subculture had been the domain of academia. Rock music, rock fashion and rock performance was and still is a mass leisure activity or pursuit, giving rise to a self-conscious group of consumers that identify as part of a rock subculture. The Birmingham School of Contemporary Cultural Studies was one of the first academic units to purposefully examine the rock subculture in Britain which lent further credence to rock music as not only an art form but the linchpin, expression and overall rallying point for a subculture. Frith and Horne in Art into Pop explain rock and pop music’s explosion into academia can be explained by the “extraordinary art school connection” with British musicians and later American musicians adding “image, style and self-consciousness – an attitude to what commercial music should and could be…This attitude has been influential even when a particular genre (like punk) didn’t actually sell records.” Subcultures express a response to a set of conditions that are tied together into structured, relatively coherent wholes and rock music is a binding force for a rock subculture can also be viewed in this fashion. However, the mere appreciable existence of rock music subculture did not make it an artform worthy of academic criticism, debate and study. Rock music criticism – the act of thinking and writing critically about rock as art - did not fully begin until the post-1967 Wenner moment.
In Britain in the 1950s and early 1960s, writing on rock music was limited to trade publications and “fan pages” that were analogous to “film fan” magazines of the 1930s. These papers focused primarily on the “stars” and not a literary or discursive analysis of films unlike the French art cinema journal Cahiers du Cinema or similar publication; some trade publications in the US such as Billboard tracked chart positions and industry news but there was little in the way that could be described as criticism or journalism. The music press at this time could be viewed as merely an instrument of the music industry reflecting the “increasing importance of records and record sales” and provided “no perspective, historical or otherwise on the music they covered; they had no developed critical positions…they presented the industry’s own public view of itself.” In the 1960s onwards, rock journalism emerged into its own field, critically evaluating rock music so as to develop an “account of the music as art” as distinct from other previous forms of music reporting such as the aforementioned trade papers and “teeny bopper” fan-oriented magazines. American rock magazine Crawdaddy! was launched in February 1966. Editor Paul Williams proclaimed it “free from teenage-magazine perspectives” and proudly proclaiming that the magazine’s specialty would be “intelligent writing about pop music” while charging Billboard with “non-critical criticism,” opening up the high-low cultural dichotomy arguably for the first time. These magazines attempted, as Simon Frith wrote in 1981, to “take the new musicians and their audiences as seriously as they took themselves.” Rock fans could now determine what cultural products were noteworthy for their artistry and which ones were lesser or inferior through specialized cultural interpreters – rock critics and rock journalists.
The emergence of rock radio stations, magazines such as the aforementioned, article collections, specialist periodicals and record guides all set up a “critical apparatus” that positioned academically credentialed journalists as both “participants and observers of the rock revolution” thus conferring the authority on their works from mere participants or observers of rock music. Those interested in the subculture could not only use these magazines as reflections of their readership, but also act as an entry point into these readerships. The subculture’s artistic expression was under scrutiny from writers of a scholarly background, using similar appraisal techniques usually reserved for critiques of literature, visual art or classical and jazz music. Through such analysis, we can view rock as a true “art.”
This criticism is produced in a professional manner from a position of influence and cultural authority. Rock critics become “arbiters of taste” from the aforementioned “cultivated disposition” imbued upon them from academia, the emergence of a “genius” styles of writing and a sustained body of works of that quality in the rock music field. Their “self-defined task is not only to suggest what to buy, but how to make sense of [rock journalism as a movement, style, subculture, etc.]” This role as navigator through the world of the rock subculture is not cast arbitrarily. The notion of what constitutes authenticity in the rock subculture and how it is expressed through rock journalism, rock music and rock style is another question in the discourse which will be discussed at length in another essay.
Rock critics and journalists in the 1967 moment onwards and arguably until the 1999 “flattening” of the industry by rapid-fire online content distribution and generation “fought” the battle for rock music; the writing that elucidated and analyzed it was armed with an immersion in academia and a revolt into style. Bringing art into pop (or merely viewing pop as art) laid the foundations for rock criticism and journalism to flourish into the mainstream culture and accepted as a popular “art.” Though much has been made of the “high/low” dichotomy of culture in the past, the new media ecology and conceptualization of consumer/producer/critic as a singular, “remixed” entity existing on the internet or digital media breaks down these distinctions into a multi-valued orientation in which artistic or subcultural merit can be found in almost any production (according to the viewpoint of the subculture or individual.) Though some academics would froth at the mouth if one asserts a loss in the fidelity of “high culture,” the simple fact is that rock as a subculture values this music and style as art and as such, is given praise or criticism by those knowledgeable in the art of rock and of course, the art of analysis and criticism. If one can articulate the points of difference or commendable attributes of rock music then they too can shape the canon as a “cultural interlocutor” through their transmission of authenticity and “professional” or historical awareness as an art.
This essay is an early draft in a series of critical examinations of music criticism and journalism. The project is being co-written by Leticia Supple, blogger and founder of MetalAsFuck.net. Read her essays here.
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[1] Lindberg, U., Gudmundsson, G., Michelsen, M. and Weisethaunet, H. Rock Criticism from the Beginning: Amusers, bruisers and cool-headed cruisers, Peter Lang Publishing: New York, NY, 2005. p. 146.
Push-Button Professionalism: The origin and evolution of the role of professional music critics
If you write on the internet, you’re blogging. There’s an indissoluble link between the two terms – if you have an opinion and have the means to publish on the internet, you are elevated into the “blogosphere” of online opinion. One can blog on virtually any subject they wish, including rock music. These bloggers offer music criticism with lighting fast rapidity and in some cases, keener cultural and intellectual insight compared with academically trained, and establishment-oriented “professionals.” Is there much truth to the charge of popular music academic Don McLeese when he asks:
"[C]ritical writing about pop music has grown steadily more irrelevant. . . . Pinning the entire rap on the Internet allows music critics to dodge some painful but necessary questions. How should journalists illuminate the zeitgeist at a moment when the dominant cultural narrative is that there is no dominant cultural narrative? Do critics have any special license to serve as pop music’s cultural interlocutors when anyone with an Internet connection can attempt to do the same thing? In other words: if anyone can make pop music and anyone can be a pop-music critic, do we really need professional critics to tell us what it all means?"[1]
If we can curate to our own exacting tastes, access music from a variety of sources and similarly the criticism – how can one delineate between “cultural interlocutor,” loud-mouth blogger or publicist shill? How did we end up at this (non-)critical juncture in the first place?
Music criticism and journalism lends meaning to the subculture or “communities of consumers” as they may be viewed and as an extension of itself. The bands characterizing themselves as artists address their fans through the “interlocutor” or interpreter of critic and rock journalist. However, the force of community building is at tension with the forces of commodification as rock journalism derives its revenue through label advertising in order to sell their own cultural product. Labels seek to reach their markets through magazines. Then we must determine the initial impulse for music writers to start writing about this subject as well.
Charlie Gillett of the underground magazine Rock File wrote in 1972 that “records are the reason most of the journalists are [writers], which is often as frustrating to them as it is to the readers who have to plough through their copy. Records are bait and currency for the rock 'n' roll journalist; he gets ‘review copies,’ free from the record companies, keeps those he likes, and sells or trades off what he doesn't want.” But in 2011 a “music critic” (as defined as someone who actively writes about music with some degree of critical positioning) can download an album, perhaps before its release date and write a review with as much import as a piece written by a critic that works within the traditional structures of the industry and is recognized by others in the subculture as such.
Of course, back in the 1960s and 70s the media ecology of the music marketplace was firmly in the grasp of the music industry. Record labels and their holding companies controlled the means of reproduction (vinyl records, 8-tracks etc.) and how these products were manufactured and sold. Similarly, music magazines controlled the sphere of criticism and music news reporting. In the time of Gillett, Roxon and Bangs, music critics were handed records by publicists or editors and encouraged, “bribed” or ordered to write about what they heard or were charged with finding new sounds or emerging trends in music-centric subcultures. In some cases, these journalists almost uncritically championed styles they favored.
On the whole, critics were charged to communicate to other readers using their cultivated disposition – perceived or otherwise - if what they heard was culturally significant or aesthetically creative; it was their job to appraise whether the music in question was enjoyable, to determine to what extent and why. A reader would have to buy, physically pick up or subscribe to a magazine or street press, read the review and decide whether to purchase the album or single based on the resulting content. In terms of criticism, there was a literal and cultural distance from the work being appraised and the work itself; the record and the magazine existed in two parallel and distinct mediums as opposed to non-critical music-as-content mediums such as radio or television.
Radio ever since its invention and mass adoption, likewise with television in the 1980s, has exposed cultures and subcultures to budding trends in pop and rock music. The content of radio primarily is music (or arguably the commercials that bookend the songs), not music criticism. Once a song was played, the listener was at the mercy of the DJ to spin it again (until the 1980s, when home taping became prevalent although this phenomenon was not as wide-spread as record labels would have us imagine.) Almost all music in rotation at commercial or even community access radio stations was almost always readily available for purchase in record stores or in other outlets. The institution of the radio station serves to actively publicize music (or rather, the records) as a commercial product for retail sale by presenting it as the content itself. When media critic Robert McChesney posited that “there’s no non-commercial part of MTV” in the mid-90s he could easily have applied the same assertion to commercial radio of the 50s onwards (especially in the face of cash-for-airplay scandals known as “payola.”) In the age of media convergence, new media and portable, digital formats such as endlessly duplicable CD or mp3, the once prevailing view of music as a controlled, commercial product becomes problematic. Thus the role and usefulness of the “privileged interlocutor” is thrown into question.
In the twilight of the last century, the file-sharing service Napster along with scores of others forced a usually reactionary music industry to transition towards the portable and online era. Musicians and labels discovered to their dismay they could not merely legislate or litigate the control of their products back to them and how they were covered or evaluated in publications. The age of monetizing the content by controlling the technology was at a close. The advance promo “bait” as a currency to entice music journalists to write favorable copy – or any copy at all – lost all worth virtually overnight.
Likewise, the “underground” publications such as street-press or fanzines, revered for their authenticity due to their autonomy and limited production in comparison to the “mainstream” could no longer maintain this physical distance from Rolling Stone or NME once these blog-zines were only one click away. In terms of music criticism, the dimension between “insider” or “interpreter” and “consumer” or “fan” collapsed. Industry publicists, fans, musicians, technicians and professional journalists could all don the persona of music critic with a few simple clicks of a mouse. We don’t even have to read reviews; websites such as Last.fm, Spotify and ReverbNation allow us to hear music on demand and allows consumers to individually decide whether to purchase (or illegally download) the content for themselves. So do we need professionals to tell us what it all means?
In Australia, there are many fanzines and blogs that have risen from the grassroots to later be co-opted by the music industry to propel mutual success. FasterLouder.com.au, Beat Magazine, KillYourStereo, MetalForge.com, MetalAsFuck.net, Mess+Noise, Collapse Board, the AU Review and various others are examples of fan-established and maintained blogs or street press that have risen to prominence significantly due to gaining artist access via official channels. Sites and street press such as these are privy to the sphere of cultural production (to be discussed in detail in another essay) in terms of providing the basis for content creation for these sites. For record label, it’s arguably the last vestige of content control they retain.
In the origins of pop music criticism, when pop was to be considered “art” by academia and eventually the mainstream (radio, television, newspapers and other widely consumed cultural products intended for a mass audience) it was pushed by students and university graduates occupying positions of influence in the media or academia. Alternatively, publications such as the aforementioned Rolling Stone, Creem or Melody Maker (after it went “progressive”) were created to lead the charge for pop music and its adherents as an artistically authentic subculture and not merely as pleasure-driven kids seeking vacuous entertainment. Pop music critic authenticity was conferred upon writers by writing for publications that others considered to be representative of the subculture it was reflecting or shaping. In the internet age, the “professionals” are not chosen by the public, but the labels.
The labels offer the interviews, the advance copies, the free concert tickets to writers they believe carry this authenticity or popularity and are able to act as “cultural interlocutors.” “Amateur” music critics that garner a significant amount of traffic or attention do not tend to stay “amateur” for long. Labels on the prowl for more avenues to publicize their content will seek to co-opt these writers or journalists into their cultural production “sphere” or circuit. Whether the writer publishes his own blog or is employed by conglomerates such as News Limited or Fairfax Media, the task that falls on the writer to “explore meaning” in pop music is granted by the fact labels allow the writer to test these boundaries through controlling who gains access to these artists and who does not.
There is no question there are shills, “hacks” and other fan-writers who write nothing but borderline hagiography when afforded an opportunity to meet or talk to their favorite artist. Others pride themselves on acting as “haters,” harshly critiquing almost everything that they hear. Despite either method (or even striking a moderate balance of coverage) that guarantees the initial access, once inside the label-content circuit, one’s inclusion is not assured indefinitely. If new, more popular writers emerge and the writer in question does not deliver a return on investment (writing negative copy in a publication with declining readership, for example) they eventually are excluded from the circuit. At this juncture, it becomes apparent who is granted "privileged interlocutorship."
It would be naïve to assume that the most popular music writers are considered the “best” writers; this essentially is a subjective position. In the view of the music industry, these critics and writers are given more access for the greatest return on investment. Even though music is stolen with more haste than it is bought, the intrinsic task of the privileged music critic is the same; to promote records through the discussion of it in mass media publications. But do we need them?
To answer simply, the co-opted critic may not be as insightful, incisive or knowledgeable about their chosen critic as one who is not. The “special licence” is conferred upon writer from without, by the source of the content being written about; not inversely as it did in the post-1968 moment until around 1986 and new media trends and transmission methods were integrated into our media culture. A critic that actively resists co-option may enjoy heightened authenticity through maintaining a critical distance from the industry cultural production circuit, much like those in the underground zine culture of the 70s and 80s. By rejecting the compromising “lures” of privileged interlocutorship may work in their favor in terms of shaping the musical zeitgeist in certain subcultures (such as punk and hardcore music for example.) This sounds like a romanticized authenticity rooted in the do-it-yourself punk philosophy, but ultimately the writer with the “all access pass” carries more authenticity and "legitimacy" as a music critic and journalist than the writer without one.
The simple, undeniable fact remains: the writer with the most reach is given that privilege and writes to sustain it; and that license is very much granted at the discretion of the labels and publicists. We don’t need these “privileged” writers, no; but in terms of getting the story and advancing the narrative of music criticism, we do seem to want them. The critics that elevate their craft as an art equivalent to music they write about are the ones that may be the most deserving of this privilege; but unfortunately may not always get it. As long as the participants of a subculture yearn for an authentic story behind artists and their products conveyed without deleterious industry interference from the mouths of the artists themselves - critically or not - the “privilege” is there for the taking and increasingly, exists for our continued consumption.
This essay is an early draft in a series of critical examinations of music criticism and journalism. The project is being co-written by Leticia Supple, blogger and founder of MetalAsFuck.net. Read her first essay here.
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[1]: McLeese, D. 'Straddling the Cultural Chasm: The Great Divide between Music Criticism and Popular Consumption' in Popular Music and Society (Vol. 33, No. 4. 2010) p. 436.