Elitism, Cont.

Well I did eventually hear back from Mark about his Prince comments. He assured me that “spiv” wasn’t intended to have any class meaning. He said that his main problem with Prince was that he felt that his body of work represented a “a rockist reterritorialization of electro, r and b”. Fair enough, I’d say Prince definitely had issues with crossover appeal.

I absolutely refuse to get involved with the rockist vs. popist debate, I feel like I’m watching my elders squabble over half defined terms with a very tenuous connection to reality. These are old battles between rock critics, largely started before I was born. In my opinion the real struggle lies not between two schools of criticism but between the differences in function.

Let me clarify, if I understand the stereotypical rockist stance it is one of favoring authenticity over pleasure. Or perhaps if I’m slightly more charitable: seeking more complicated pleasures than what K-punk refers to as “hedonic stim”. In my opinion the division is between an essentially hedonist stance and one that is more self consciously epicurian. If this is the case then the true division is not between rock and pop as musical forms, but between music that is essentially hedonistic and music which has added “worth” associated with it.

For me that divide lays between dance music proper and everything else. Characterizing the popist as an amoral hedonist is essentially the construction of a strawman, and from what I’ve seen of this debate (from both sides) is there are no true popist or rockists.

Just armies of strawmen.

But if you are looking for uncomplicated hedonic stim, dance music is your purest fix. Personally speaking I have a very complicated relationship with pleasure, it just comes with my background.

To put it succinctly, I’m bisexual and my father is a Christian minister.

So for me this is both a moral issue in the abstract, and also more concretely in my daily life.

I really love dance music, but I also have incredibly mixed feelings about it. Some of my issues with class probably extend from this complicated relationship with pleasure as well.  I don’t tend to enjoy music which reminds me of my own class prejudices and faults in an uncomplicated manner.

I guess I’ve internalized some rockist ideas myself.

Lets take Prince as a further object of thought, if Prince was a rockist appropriation of the tropes of r’n'b and electro then the rockist line of thinking would be to follow his influence on other music. He did have a large effect on the popular music of the late 80s, but it seems that most of that effect was outside of rock. The Minneapolis sound had much to do with the popularity of electro in pop/dance/r’n'b circles of the time, but it wasn’t the only source of “rockist” influence. Afrika Bambataa’s electro hiphop was singularly responsible for the creation of Latin Freestyle, and the popularity of electro-funk groups such as Cameo certainly had very little to do with either Prince or Bambataa.

But Prince was heavily sampled by hiphop artists.

Check this page.

I’m sure that Simon Reynolds would argue that hiphop is as essentially rockist a genre as rock itself is, that is that it privileges authenticity over pleasure. But when he would argue this I’m sure he would be thinking largely of the early 90s classic New York sound. The sample based, true school stuff: Mobb Deep, early Nas, anything Premier related. He probably wouldn’t be thinking of the goofy danceable likes of Digital Underground.

Who apparently sampled Prince a number of times.

But if Prince is thought of fondly, outside of his effect of hip-hop, its in dance music. That is to say he is well loved by the dance community, and was back in the 80s. House DJs back in the Golden Age were just as likely to play When Doves Cry as anyone back then. I’ve got a recording somewhere of Ron Hardy playing it at the Music Box.

And lets not forget Prince’s affinity with house, Housequake anyone?

He was a major figure back then and his influence is still pretty potent.

Although I do sincerely wish Andre 3000 had never bought a copy of Sign of the Times. I’ll leave you with Ginuwine’s cover of When Dove’s Cry, production by Timbaland.  

I think it speaks for itself really.

Elitism

As I was working this week something that K-Punk wrote a little while back kept going through my mind. It was in his essay about the Justin Timberlake album that blew up last year. He at one point mentions the album’s similarity to Prince. He writes “The obvious precursor for Future Sex/ Love Sounds would be Prince – who can miss the echoes of Lovesexy in the title? - but, for my money, Future Sex outdoes anything that revolting priapic spiv ever achieved.”

Not knowing the etymology of the word “spiv” I did a quick search and found this short synopsis. It really is mindboggling how differently class works in the UK vs. the way things are here. I can’t really think of an American parallel to this concept. Its as alien as the other UK class insults I see more often: “chav” and then the ones with racial or racist overtones to them like “pikey”.

So labeling Prince, (I live in Minnesota, keep this in mind) a spiv, seems to be drastically misunderstanding the situation. Its a nasty off-hand comment, Mark’s entitled to his opinion of course, and I’m certainly unwilling to defend the latter day Prince. His jazz noodling and Jehovah’s Witness conversion doesn’t really endear him to me.

But its the principal of the thing.

Growing up in Wisconsin in the 90’s Prince was a virtual unknown to me. However he is still very much a point of cultural pride here in Minnesota. Big strapping heterosexual men will gladly admit to being Prince fans here. Which is one of the many things that I find endearing about the (80s) Prince. His image, carefully assembled from sources as varied as Little Richard’s queer rock and roll look, psychedelia, funk and r’n'b artists really is a kind of inspiration to me.

He was the male equivalent to Madonna, the other truly post-modern pop artist of the early 1980s. And by and large he was responsible for electro’s adoption as a production template for 1980’s r’n'b artists. That is to say its very hard to dislike him, especially considering how smothered I feel on a daily basis by the mainstream culture I live in.

Too much pop country is killing my soul.

Its things like this that make me wonder about class, how the cultural differences between the UK, the continent, and here in the US can distort things. I’ve been a big fan of what was ostensibly working class British music. All those guys living in Croydon and East London definitely weren’t poor exactly, no one’s ever accused Wiley of being posh thats for certain.

Loefah’s pretty well educated, Mala (just from the brief conversations I’ve had with him), seems to be at least very kind and open minded.

I didn’t ask about his background .

House music here in the Midwest, where it came from, is either thought of as gay, or not thought of at all. In the UK, you’ve got Hed Kandi and Funky House being incredibly mainstream/hetero music. What’s more its even fairly upscale music, once you start getting towards the more Euro sounding stuff.

I was reading this interview with Omar S, a house producer from Detroit who’s friends with Theo Parrish.

He’s most definitely from Detroit, doesn’t pull his punches.

And absolutely despises white suburban minimal DJs.

Which is dangerously close to what I am at this point.

One of my recent issues when it comes to the music I listen to and DJ, is that I’m growing increasingly aware of my privileges as a member of the white middle class. And increasingly finding white middle class music more and more distasteful. Which is snobbish, and self hating.

But its a very gut level reaction.

Minimal tech-house is very sonically innovative some of the time, so is dubstep. And I’ve got to be very careful of over romanticizing the European dance experience. These days if someone handed me a thousand dollars and told me to fly somewhere it be a toss up between London and Berlin.

Plastic People or the Berghain?

Anyways I’ve been listening to a lot of Jesse Rose lately.

Its got the garage bass, minimal influence, and I can’t figure it out.

Am I allowed to like this music?

Sound Sculptor

I’ve first got to say hello to everyone wishing me well in the comments box. Without your constant thoughtful feedback it would been difficult to continue writing online.

Now for some serious trainspotting.

Last night I went with a friend to see Theo Parrish play a 4 hour set at Foundation. Now I ache, working for 8 hours in a warehouse then dancing for 3 1/2 will take it out of you.

I danced so hard I think I pulled something.

Which is to say I had an excellent time.

When I showed up around 10:30 he was playing some really slow upbeat disco, the floor was pretty much clear and there was only about 25 people in the building. He dropped one of my favorites of the Ugly Edit series, Vol 10, the Brainstorm track: Journey To The Light.

I’ve actually got the original on vinyl through sheer dumb luck.

Its an uplifting old disco-funk number with this really long ecstatic synth breakdown. They made some of the best of the Michigan style early synth flavored funk, along with groups like Slave. Its been a long time since mainstream African American music had this kind of positivity to it. Then came the 80s, disco collapsed and Reagan began his reign.

He started dropping in some 4×4 slower house stuff at the beginning of his second hour. The man really is a supremely talented DJ capable of some really subtle stuff. He also did some mixing I would never try to pull off in a million years. Seriously, keymatching full on disco with acid house, and totally pulling it off. Going from laidback grooves into serious “fuck off” almost Surgeon-esque techno.

He’s really fond of EQing the bass out for a couple of measures, waiting till he’s got everyone’s attention and then dropping it back in. Foundation’s regular system was supplemented with some extra bass amps so this was really quite impressive. I’m sure I lost a little high end hearing, I’ve been to dubstep nights with heavier bass, but this was definitely near that level of power.

About midnight or so the room had filled up and he began playing his more up-tempo, floor filler tracks. I don’t honestly remember too much of that hour, I was having a very good time. Dancing to minimal tech stuff can be a lot of work, but with some of the stuff he was playing it just flowed so naturally that dancing was as easy as breathing.

Towards the end of the third hour the jazz elements of his sound were becoming more obvious. I’m of mixed emotions when it comes to this kind of thing. I think that there is certainly room in techno and house for a jazz influence, but I’m not overly fond of the deep house variety. I like it, just don’t love it.

Rhodes chords can be very stirring, but I guess I prefer for the organ to provide a rhythmic template for the track not so much as to be the lead instrument. It was all of exceptionally high quality, I guess I’ve got no real complaints. After dancing for 2 hours I was pretty dehydrated, but he managed to drag me back on the floor when he dropped a Stevie Wonder track. Like most of the disco he was playing it was an edit, and pitched up to nearly + 8 I’d guess.

No real idea what track it was though.

All night long he played tracks with horns, whether it was disco, or house or even the couple of pure funk tracks he played, there was saxaphone everywhere.

Its amazing how cohesive a style he managed to present considering that he played music from a nearly 40 year period in about 6 different genres. Disco, soul, funk, house, techno, and the varying sub-genres and combinations of all of them.

If you ever get a chance, I don’t care what particular variety of music is your favorite.

See this man.

And buy his records, if you’re a DJ.