One of the unfortunate side effects of the lack of critic culture: people are getting more stratified and separated in their listening habits. If you—if you read Spin or Rolling Stone in ‘96, you’d get an article on Nine Inch Nails, an article on Chemical Brothers, an article on Snoop Dogg—and, you know, the internet doesn’t work that way. If you’re into rap, you go to rap twitters. If you go into metal, you go to metal twitters. You know, bands build audiences for themselves! You just follow the bands you like. You don’t have to—you don’t stumble across this stuff, and that’s a problem! It’s harder to get exposed to things that aren’t in your comfort zone. I have friends that are so deep into indie rock that they don’t know what the fuck Katy Perry is, or Lady Gaga, and these are, like, the most ubiquitous songs in the country! “Number 1 on Billboard for 14 weeks? I don’t know what it is,” you know? […] And that dude John Byrne was up here, saying that Twitter makes it easy to find stuff that pertains to you, and he thinks that’s awesome. That’s the fucking problem! That’s the fucking problem. It’s not—you know, like, I can always learn about stuff that’s important to me. That’s easy. I want to learn about stuff that isn’t important to me. I want to be exposed to things! Crowdsourcing killed punk rock. Hands down. Crowdsourcing kills art. Crowdsourcing killed indie rock. It’s bullshit. You want to know why? Because crowds have terrible taste! […] Once people start talking about indie rock on the internet, it’s all this music that rises to the middle, this boring, bland, white people guitar music. It fucking sucks! I hate it! It’s NPR bullshit! And NPR is forced to write about it over and over again because “it’s the link economy!” and people are gonna click on it if it says Fleet Foxes. Well, Fleet Foxes fucking sucks! And it’s the music—It’s not the music that’s the best, it’s the music that the most people can stand, the music that the most people can listen to. If you let the people decide then nothing truly adventurous ever gets out, and that’s a problem.
I was at Bonnaroo yesterday. […] And there were 80,000 people there, and it was really—you know, it was a really eclectic lineup. There was, like, an African music stage for the first time, which was really cool, and an extreme metal stage, which was really fun, and the usual hippie-dippie jam bullshit, and soul, and indie rock, and it was great, I had a great time. […] And—the magazines weren’t covering what they wanted to cover; they were pretending to care about Phish because Phish was a trending topic. You know, these places you would go to to ignore bands like Phish now have to pretend they love Phish because it’s, you know, it’s a trending topic. And I watched as the twitters rolled in and you have this platform where Merle Haggard fans and Snoop Dogg fans were all posting the hashtag #bonnaroo, and reading each other’s posts. And everyone—it was all very self-centered, you know, “I’m having a great time.” “I’m having so much fun.” “This band is great for me.” “What a fun show I’m having,” and it was all very self-centered, and no one was trying to convince anyone to see anything. No one said why! No one said why these bands were great. No one stopped to say, “Everyone at #bonnaroo you should see my favorite band because…” and that’s what we’re missing in a world without critics: the because. You know, #musicmonday is another example. It’s just artist names and song titles—lots of who, but no WHY. And I’ve done 402 record reviews over twitter right now, and […] I can say with authority, there’s enough room in 140 characters to not only elaborate but have good writing. People—people think you need some long internet rant to express enthusiasm. It’s not true. And I try to make every one of my twitter reviews poetic as well as informative, which is something everyone should think about no matter what you’re twittering about. Be a critic in whatever you do. Let people know the why. Let people know the how. Just don’t expect to get paid for it ever.
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Christopher Weingarten at the 140 Characters Conference (video).
There’s a lot to unpack here, so lemme start with the thesis of the second paragraph. I agree 100% with the problems of a lack of a critical culture. Earlier in his presentation, Weingarten noted that in the current leakblog culture, release-date reviews (even in online magazines) can no longer set the tone of the discussion but only reinforce (or to an extent tweak) the pre-existing popular narrative built from blogs, twitter, etc. And this is extremely problematic! Not that all critics live up to their duties, but the record review is basically the only point of intervention in the trajectory of a record at which to problematize issues of authenticity/post-authenticity, sexism, classism, othering, etc. If you have talked to me about music for any amount of time I have probably linked you to Brian Howe’s August 2007 piece for the blog Moistworks on Devin the Dude’s Waiting to Inhale, in which he explores the complicated navigation and reconciliation required when listening to the record and sharing his love for it. I don’t think the points he made could have been condensed to 140 characters (no matter how snarky) so I take issue with Weingarten’s suggestion that Twitter is enough (although many, many reviews, blog posts, etc. could use some serious editing, and it’s also refreshing to see someone other than Ned Raggett talking about how shorter word counts are not all bad). That said, without this sort of critical examination, music tastes tend to be reduced to a facet of a personal lifestyle brand (♥ u carles). There’s never a “why” because the implicit “why” is that it’s “cooler” and “better” than whatever you’re listening to by its very nature. And as long as music is used in this way, i.e. purely as a Bourdieuian class signifier, then of course the “white people guitar music” is going to be most popular. Just look at the race, class, and (implicit) gender signifiers there.
On the other hand, Weingarten, intentionally or not, dismisses Fleet Foxes (in his example) by rehashing the rockist argument against “easy listening.” Fleet Foxes is “boring” and “bland” for the same “inherent” reasons that, say, Celine Dion is “boring” and “bland.” Basically he’s arguing against all lifestyle music. And lifestyle music is, for one, the way the majority of people experience music. Just because critics are no longer gatekeepers between music fans and their lifestyle music doesn’t mean that lifestyle music is a new phenomenon. Most music fans never interrogate their tastes, and never think about the “why” that Weingarten calls for. Not to mention that in the endless rehash of the reification of music (particularly indie rock) as a youth culture, the very music fans to whom Weingarten appeals have been incredibly dismissive of lifestyle music in ageist and sexist terms. Just as Eric Weisbard or Carl Wilson or anyone else analyzing the semiotics of adult contemporary. Weingarten’s argument against NPR music uses the same types of slander as are used against adult contemporary. (“It’s not the music that’s the best, it’s the music that the most people can stand, the music that the most people can listen to” sounds like the argument of the dude in the cubicle who’s mad that they’re pumping the Hot AC station through the speakers at the workplace!) Should everyone think critically about her/his cultural consumption? Absolutely yes. But by drawing on this idea of an “avant-garde” as the platonic ideal (the “truly adventurous,” in his words), Weingarten simply reuses a bullshit high culture vs. low culture dichotomy—a bizarrely backwards-looking argument in an otherwise very much of-the-moment and on-point presentation.
P.S. He also contradicts himself by talking nostalgically about magazines with a breadth of coverage pre-internet and then complaining about magazines (online and in print) that are not narrowly-focused enough to exclude Phish. But that’s a minor point.