Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 36 posts ] 

Board index : Music Talk : Rock/Pop

Go to page 1, 2  Next
Author Message
 Post subject: Article: 'Rock Snobs'
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:27 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=ul%2FTm ... PE3n%3D%3D

OR:


WASHINGTON DIARIST
Remastered
by Michael Crowley
Print this article.
Printer friendly
Post date 08.24.05 | Issue date 09.05.05 Email this article. E-mail this article

Since the dawn of rock, there have been individuals, usually young men, of argumentative tendencies who have lorded their encyclopedic musical knowledge over others." So states the introduction of the recent Rock Snob's Dictionary, compiled by David Kamp and Steven Daly. I like to believe I'm not the insufferable dweeb suggested by this definition. Certainly, much of the dictionary's obscure trivia (former Television bassist Richard Hell is now a novelist; Norwegian death metal stars actually murder one another) is news to me. But I do place an unusual, perhaps irrational, value on rock music. I take considerable pride in my huge collection and carefully refined taste. And I consider bad rock taste--or, worse, no rock taste at all--clear evidence of a fallow soul. I am, in other words, a certified Rock Snob. But I fear that Rock Snobs are in grave danger. We are being ruined by the iPod.

While the term "Rock Snob" has a pejorative ring, the label also implies real social advantages. The Rock Snob presides as a musical wise man to whom friends and relatives turn for opinions and recommendations; he can judiciously distribute access to various rare and exotic prizes in his collection. "Oh my God, where did you find this?" are a Rock Snob's favorite words to hear. His highest calling is the creation of lovingly compiled mix CDs designed to dazzle their recipients with a blend of erudition, obscurity, and pure melodic dolomite. Recently, I unearthed a little-known cover of the gentle Gram Parsons country classic "Hickory Wind," bellowed out by Bob Mould and Vic Chestnutt, which moved two different friends to tears. It was Rock Snob bliss.

In some ways, then, the iPod revolution is a Rock Snob's dream. Now, nearly all rock music is easily and almost instantly attainable, either via our friends' computers or through online file-sharing networks. "Music swapping" on a mass scale allows my music collection to grow larger and faster than I'd ever imagined. And I can now summon any rare track from the online ether.

But there's a dark side to the iPod era. Snobbery subsists on exclusivity. And the ownership of a huge and eclectic music collection has become ordinary. Thanks to the iPod, and digital music generally, anyone can milk various friends, acquaintances, and the Internet to quickly build a glorious 10,000-song collection. Adding insult to injury, this process often comes directly at the Rock Snob's expense. We are suddenly plagued by musical parasites. For instance, a friend of middling taste recently leeched 700 songs from my computer. He offered his own library in return, but it wasn't much. Never mind my vague sense that he should pay me some money. In Rock Snob terms, I was a Boston Brahmin and he was a Beverly Hillbilly--one who certainly hadn't earned that highly obscure album of AC/DC songs performed as tender acoustic ballads but was sure to go bragging to all his friends about it. Even worse was the girlfriend to whom I gave an iPod. She promptly plugged it into my computer and was soon holding in her hand a duplicate version of my 5,000-song library--a library that had taken some 20 years, thousands of dollars, and about as many hours to accumulate. She'd downloaded it all within five minutes. And, a few months later, she was gone, taking my intimate musical DNA with her.

I'm not alone in these frustrations. "Even for a recovering Rock Snob, such as myself," Steven Daly told me, "it's a little disturbing to hear a civilian music fan boast that he has the complete set of Trojan reggae box-sets on his iPod sitting alongside 9,000 other tracks that he probably neither needs nor deserves." It's true: Even if music leeches don't fully appreciate, or even listen to, some of the gems they so effortlessly acquire, we resent them anyway. One friend even confessed to me in an e-mail that "I have been known to strip the iTunes song information off mix CDs just to keep the Knowledge secret."

But resistance is futile. Even the Rock Snob's habitat, the record shop, is under siege. Say farewell to places like Championship Vinyl, the archetypal record store featured in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. "The shop smells of stale smoke, damp, and plastic dust-covers, and it's narrow and dingy and overcrowded, partly because that's what I wanted--this is what record shops should look like," explains Hornby's proprietor, Rob. Like great used bookstores, the Championship Vinyls of the world are destinations where the browsing and people-watching is half the fun. (A certain kind of young man will forever cling to the fantasy of meeting his soul mate as they simultaneously reach for the same early-era Superchunk disc.) Equally gratifying is the hunt for elusive albums in a store's musty bins, a quest that demands time, persistence, and cunning, and whose serendipitous payoffs are nearly as rewarding as the music itself. Speaking of book-collecting, the philosopher Walter Benjamin spoke of "the thrill of acquisition." But, when everything's instantly available online, the thrill is gone.

Benjamin also savored the physical element of building a collection--gazing at his trophies, reminiscing about where he acquired them, unfurling memories from his ownership. "The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed," he said. But there's nothing magic about a formless digital file. I even find myself nostalgic for the tape-trading culture of Grateful Dead fans--generally scorned in the Rock Snob world--who used to drive for hours in their VW vans to swap bootleg concert tapes. My older brother still has a set of bootleg tapes he copied from a friend some 20 years ago during a California bike trip. Having survived global travels from Thailand to Mexico, the tapes have acquired an almost totemic quality in his mind. I feel the same way about certain old CDs, whose cases have become pleasantly scuffed and weathered during travels through multiple dorm rooms and city apartments but still smile out at me from their shelves like old friends. Soon our collections will be all ones and zeroes stored deep in hard drives, instantly transferable and completely unsatisfying as possessions. And we Rock Snobs will have become as obsolete as CDs themselves.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:31 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
I dont agree with the general tone of the article..but this must kills

"Even worse was the girlfriend to whom I gave an iPod. She promptly plugged it into my computer and was soon holding in her hand a duplicate version of my 5,000-song library--a library that had taken some 20 years, thousands of dollars, and about as many hours to accumulate. She'd downloaded it all within five minutes. And, a few months later, she was gone, taking my intimate musical DNA with her."

I would have made sure I erased it


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:32 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
yeah but you know that she deleted most of that crap too because it was shit like pere ubu bootlegs and Quicksilver b-sides.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:33 pm 
Offline
Go Platinum

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 10:26 pm
Posts: 6459
iPod be damned. I have an original "Burn My Eye" and I'm a better human being for it.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:37 pm 
Offline
Smoke
User avatar

Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 11:40 am
Posts: 10590
Location: Drifting into the arena of the unwell
Nice article. This article is essentially the reason I keep coming back to this board. We are all musically obsessive on some level and it's good to know there are others that feel the same way about music.

That being said, I have experience with the "parasites".

With the exception of the time I lived with Loogar for a few months, every roommate I have ever had has brought virtually nothing to the table as far as their music collection goes. I have had rommates with great taste in music but not the desire and need to hear more and more. AKA they didn't want to spend their money on it.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:37 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
i know that this article has a playful tone, but does anyone else feel like we've been beseiged with mentions of how the paradigm of music or reading appreciation has changed and we're worse off for it? i had a massive argument with a friend of mine who's a newspaper editor where he was complaining about how the very nature of reading has changed and people don't learn from long, in-depth articles in papers or worse, from books (edit- and he considered this situation to be a shortcoming and a fault in modern life). my perspective was that people read now in short bursts and are more informed now in a more shallow way about many topics, whereas in the past perhaps they would get more information about fewer topics, but that that in itself didn't imply a travesty in reading culture, but in fact was a success and an increase in society's literacy. granted i'd been drinking when i made this argument.


Last edited by Black Magic Putin on Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:40 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
I think I would side with your friend on this. Drink deep or naught at all,

I think that there are serious problems with how people get their information but like you pointed out, I think the average person has more information (facts) now than they did in the past. The argument might be over whether this is a good or bad thing. That isnt the argument I want to get into.

However, I do see in my students this rather lazy attitude.. like Googling something amounts to "knowledge"- there is the "tell me what to think" aspect that I do think comes from the way information is gathered today.. "fact".. not thinking


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:51 pm 
Offline
Garage Band

Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2005 12:35 pm
Posts: 540
Location: ATLSHAWTY
It was when I first went to Derris' house and I looked upon his c.d. collection that I first realized I had never seen a collection quite as fine and as similar to my own.

_________________
"For God so loved the Erf that he blessed the thugs wit' rocks"
-Pastor Troy


Back to top
 Profile WWW 
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:54 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
f4df Wrote:
The argument might be over whether this is a good or bad thing. That isnt the argument I want to get into.
Right, this was EXACTLY where the argument lied (laid? lay? I've NEVER gotten this one right).
f4df Wrote:
However, I do see in my students this rather lazy attitude.. like Googling something amounts to "knowledge"- there is the "tell me what to think" aspect that I do think comes from the way information is gathered today.. "fact".. not thinking
do you think that this is truly a moden problem, or just a problem with young people in general that we're noticing more because of the impact of technology on their research habits?


Last edited by Black Magic Putin on Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:55 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 12:31 pm
Posts: 12368
Location: last place I looked
f4df Wrote:
I think I would side with your friend on this. Drink deep or naught at all,

I think that there are serious problems with how people get their information but like you pointed out, I think the average person has more information (facts) now than they did in the past. The argument might be over whether this is a good or bad thing. That isnt the argument I want to get into.

However, I do see in my students this rather lazy attitude.. like Googling something amounts to "knowledge"- there is the "tell me what to think" aspect that I do think comes from the way information is gathered today.. "fact".. not thinking

I pretty agree with fD4f. It strikes me that our society is returning to the oral tradition of passing on knowledge (make your own joke), just that instead of face-to-face gossip it's a matter of internet chatter and TV soundbites. The upside to this may be a slight spike in general (though superficial) information, but the downside is the populace becomes more easily manipulated by rumour, fear, and superstition. It's more or less what Marshall McLuhan warned about when he predicted the rise of the "global village".


Back to top
 Profile WWW 
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 12:58 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
Joey Crack Wrote:
do you think that this is truly a moden problem, or just a problem with young people in general that we're noticing more because of the impact of technology on their research habits?


Well I think that 'years ago' you could only afford to be a given degree of lazy and still complete the project or write the paper. Nowadays, that level has dropped drastically.

I always tell my students, if you are going to plagiarize, dont do it from the first link Google comes back with.. at least jump to the 17th page or something


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:01 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
but isn't some of the fault for that you still giving assignments that are easily completed with google? is there no way that you could structure them so as to make this sort of cheating less worthwhile?


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:05 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
Joey Crack Wrote:
but isn't some of the fault for that you still giving assignments that are easily completed with google? is there no way that you could structure them so as to make this sort of cheating less worthwhile?


Well I suppose in America, we would blame the educators for giving an assignment that COULD be cheated on.. right.

However, the point was really that I give my students a lot of leeway into deciding what to write a paper on - why? I consider myself somewhat intelligent and I hated having a set of proscribed guidelines outlining what exactly I had to do.. so I dont do that to students.. its no big deal, I use Eve and Turnitin.com to screen papers.. so they dont really get away with much- other papers, its really easy to spot plagiarism- no spelling mistakes lol


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:07 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
f4df Wrote:
Well I suppose in America, we would blame the educators for giving an assignment that COULD be cheated on.. right.
Well I suppose that in America the first response would look for the failure to lie in the faults of others and not within ourselves. You've got a job to do, right? if you feel like flunking the lazy kids then do so. it sounds like they're half-assing the papers and you're trying to jewmom them by expressing your disappointment but yet still giving them a b-.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:09 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
Nice try but Im not buying your bullshit lol I did and continue to flunk them... that doesnt change the original intent of my post Einstein


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:15 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
f4df Wrote:
Nice try but Im not buying your bullshit lol I did and continue to flunk them... that doesnt change the original intent of my post Einstein
making with the namecalling this early? you're the one having twins, let's not start impugning each other's booklearnin' quite yet. what was the intent of your post? because from what i read it looked like you were arguing that your failure as a teacher was mostly someone else's fault, and i stand by my characterization of that as a quientessentially american response.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:27 pm 
Offline
Go Platinum

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 10:26 pm
Posts: 6459
Facts are crap.

Now, before you go and jump down my throat (Radcliffe's oral tradition aside), let me expound.

The ability to regurgitate facts is worthless. It's the ability to draw conclusion from an assembly of facts that matters. It's the difference between "reading" and "reading comprehension".

Information clusters won't help us think. They won't help us engage in discourse.

Also, no one seems to mention the steady deterioration in our writing skills. How can you expect people to maintain reading skills when the source (i.e. writing) is going down the crapper?


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:30 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
You jump all over the place.. first things first.. should I even respond to your failure as a teacher quip? Ok, there is no way I can ever make a student do an assignment.. either due to their gene pool or otherwise, there will always be mediocre students... and I find the level of that mediocrity has deteriorated over time.. there is shit and then there is shit.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:34 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
f4df Wrote:
Ok, there is no way I can ever make a student do an assignment.. either due to their gene pool or otherwise, there will always be mediocre students... and I find the level of that mediocrity has deteriorated over time.. there is shit and then there is shit.
right! so then their status as poor, unmotivated students is unrelated to, or exacerbated by, the ease of completing superficial research using the internet? my point being that the tools have changed but that the nature of learning or even education has not.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:40 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
Well Im not so sure.. honestly. I would say that any change in the nature of learning/education has not soley been due to changes in technology. But I think there is a change and that change has been influences by the changes in technology.

In America at least, college has been the new high school, in my opinion. It is expected that you have a college degree if you want any relatively decent job (exceptions excepting). So the pool of applicants have changed - more people who are not really interested in learning but instead want their degree for its earning power.

So I think now we have people who wouldnt be in college if they could get the same jobs without it, the motivation solely to learn is not there. Add into this the changes in technology that make it easier to pursue a degree without this motivation,... etc. That is a grossly generalized view of what I see going on


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:44 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
oh yeah, i totally agree. in fact i would take the metaphor further and replace "high school" with "trade school". i got in an argument at work the other day with a guy who wanted to take all the arts/lit classes out of a highschool student's curriculum and replace them with trade stuff but still, somehow, wanted America to retain a place of industrial superiority due to our "inherent creativity" and i just don't see how that can happen.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:47 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
Yeah vocational ed indeed... which is fine and perhaps necessary..but not to the exclusion of what I consider an education (more akin to a 'classic education) just because its educational benefits are (arguably) less tangible'


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:47 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
i wonder if the GI Bill's contribution to the creation of the meritocracy in this country is also to blame for this shift, as it put a lot of people in college who previously would not have gone at all (notwithstanding whether they would have wanted to go or not), making a lot of people in subsequent generations feel like a college degree was expected when previously it was the exception.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:51 pm 
Offline
Fluke Breakthrough Single
User avatar

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:17 am
Posts: 2452
Location: getting right with the lord
Im sure there are a lot of contributing factors.. I also see college (and now graduate school) as a convenient way to keep people from entering the work force- Im not talking about a conspiracy here, simply that if the market could not support the immediate entry of individuals into the workforce.. expecting a degree gives a 4 year delay ...


Back to top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 1:52 pm 
Offline
frostingspoon
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 1:48 pm
Posts: 10749
Location: getting some kicks at the mall
f4df Wrote:
Im sure there are a lot of contributing factors.. I also see college (and now graduate school) as a convenient way to keep people from entering the work force- Im not talking about a conspiracy here, simply that if the market could not support the immediate entry of individuals into the workforce.. expecting a degree gives a 4 year delay ...
that's ABSOLUTELY why i went to grad school; my degree certainly isn't necessary for what I'm doing now but i didn't have a job and i wanted something to distinguish me from the other applicants the next time around. also i wanted to feel like i was better than other people.


Back to top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 36 posts ] 

Board index : Music Talk : Rock/Pop

Go to page 1, 2  Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Style by Midnight Phoenix & N.Design Studio
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.