Genre Vexation
Genre vexation is the way it feels when you get tired of trying to categorize bands. As Nightlight Booking Dude (artist relations?) it's a tricky thing. I write those little descriptions on the website and find it fruitless to try to pigeonhole many, many of the artists on our website into subgenres or genre amalgamations created through slash/slash/slash styled litanies.
This is a pet peeve or a point of continuous contention on my part, and maybe it doesn't bother you, but I get a little put off when bands describe themselves as indie/experimental/ambient, three terms that have been so overused that they are practically stripped of meaning at this point. It all seems so empty and false, so contrived and annoying.
So, I was super-pleased to find a rather eloquent explanation of a way of thinking that confronts this very problem in an old issue of Wire. I bought an old copy of the one with Mayo Thompson on the front at CD Alley in Wilmington over the Christian Fertility Weekend, and read Byron Coley's article about Victoriaville's Musique Actuelle on a TTA bus. Coley relates an anecdote:
At the end of this concert, a journalist asked Nels Cline what sort of music he played. "Well, back in the 70s they used to call it jazz rock," he said. Backstage, he moaned that he was not going to be able to stay and catch more of the festival. "It's just stupid to even bother with categories any more," he said. "Look at the people that are playing here. It's not about categories at all." To wallow in the entire muddy stew of possibilities is a whole lot more satisfying. And to allow yourself to be open to each and every one of the viruses found there is a Platonic ideal.
I, for one, would like us all to take a second and have some muddy stew.
This is a pet peeve or a point of continuous contention on my part, and maybe it doesn't bother you, but I get a little put off when bands describe themselves as indie/experimental/ambient, three terms that have been so overused that they are practically stripped of meaning at this point. It all seems so empty and false, so contrived and annoying.
So, I was super-pleased to find a rather eloquent explanation of a way of thinking that confronts this very problem in an old issue of Wire. I bought an old copy of the one with Mayo Thompson on the front at CD Alley in Wilmington over the Christian Fertility Weekend, and read Byron Coley's article about Victoriaville's Musique Actuelle on a TTA bus. Coley relates an anecdote:
At the end of this concert, a journalist asked Nels Cline what sort of music he played. "Well, back in the 70s they used to call it jazz rock," he said. Backstage, he moaned that he was not going to be able to stay and catch more of the festival. "It's just stupid to even bother with categories any more," he said. "Look at the people that are playing here. It's not about categories at all." To wallow in the entire muddy stew of possibilities is a whole lot more satisfying. And to allow yourself to be open to each and every one of the viruses found there is a Platonic ideal.
I, for one, would like us all to take a second and have some muddy stew.
2 Comments:
Hi c, I understand what you're saying, but those terms at least describe you as "not rock" or "not 60s cover band" - you know, as NOT what you don't want to be seen as. That said, I hate those terms, all of them. I agree with Coley (who will always be a hero of mine if only for the Orchid Spangiafora project, which I bought unheard when it first came out and which changed my life (some). veal
Yeah, the problem is when a band wants to not be something, and then they try so hard to not be something *specific* that they forget to be themselves, have fun, and express.
That's why I think it shows more effort and inspiration to describe yourself based on what you want to do, or what you want people to feel, or what you believe in. And if you believe in rock'n'roll and sixties cover bands, I fuggin hear you. Do that shit, and do it at the best you can. If you like scumball noise hash and scronk biddly bop, with tam-tam hi-hat drum roll jelly rolls, then do that shit, and do it the best you can.
But please don't just pick some over-used terms out the air and then bandy them about like so many business cards and so many press photos. Unless you really are gunning for some Virgin Music America shit while you muck around the dive bars of the world with yr myspace and yr sonibids epk and yr super fancie website.
Wow, the vitriol just drips like cactus needles. Someone get me a ginger ale.
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