I apologize to any KISS fans out there, but I’ve never had much respect for Gene Simmons. From his constant philandering to his obnoxious Islamophobia, Simmons has always had an aura of sleaze in my book.
So his recent takedown of Rihanna and others as “fake” music is simply par for the course. It was rather bold talk from someone famous for running around stage in Kabuki makeup amid thousands of dollars of pyrotechnics.
Simmons’ comments came about a month after Dave Grohl made a less inflammatory (but just as passionate) plea for “real” music. As Racialicious pointed out, there was a racial component, even if unconscious, to Grohl’s comments. There is also a gender component to this. Invariably, “real” music is the kind of rock favored by white males. KISS and Nirvana “belong” in the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame; Madonna does not.
The late 70s is usually shown as a battle between punk and disco. However, both were actually responses to the elephantine excess of studio-produced rock. In each case, they were the pop music of the excluded. Disco became huge because it appealed to women and gay males, who were ignored by most rock music.
In the early 80s there was a movement associated with Post-Punk that rejected what they called “Rockism,” roughly defined as an adherence to the standard band makeup of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums. This setup was considered reactionary. Long guitar solos were rejected in favor of minimalist riffs and short songs.
Of course, by the time grunge came around, things had changed. Kurt Cobain rejected the macho posturing of the metal bands, but his music was within the same narrow range. Nirvana could use cellos or acoustic guitars in songs, but never anything resembling a synthesizer. I don’t think Cobain was consciously racist or femme-phobic, but a lot of his fans were.
In college, I hung out with people who fell on the progressive end of politics. It never ceased to amaze me that people who fought for inclusion and diversity were so narrow in their musical tastes. Gay dance artists were ignored in favour of earnest folk music and queer positive rockers like Cobain. If black music was represented, it was as reggae; dance music was too fake, rap too macho. For the young feminists, Madonna and other pop women were instruments of their own oppression by putting out slutty images.
So why defend so-called “fake” music? Isn’t it just bourgeois pablum designed to sell us stuff?
In a word, no. Sure, pop is overrun by the scourge of Autotune, and a lot of the lyrics are inane. But their have always been provocateurs in the field. Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” was an unprecedented sympathetic look at prostitutes, while Grace Jones challenged the conventions of female beauty. These days, Lady Gaga and the even more outrageous Peaches are challenging gender norms in an exciting way.
Plus, disco and other dance music us fun and often celebratory, and we need all the celebration we can get. Emma Goldmann wanted a revolution you could dance to. As Cheryl Lynn sang (in a song adopted by drag artists) sometimes you’ve Got To Be Real.
So has everyone forgotten that rock was invented by black people, and that Elvis Presley was basically the Eminem of his day by being the first white guy to get rich off of it?
That isn’t quite accurate- rock n roll was a synthesis of white (country) and black (rhythm and blues) music. Elvis borrowed frOm everyone.
I was going to leave a long reply to AB dissecting that nonsense but THIS speaks for itself about the kind of person I’m choosing to not talk to. “That’s not because I have a problem with black people, it’s because white people (or more correctly, white guys) are more likely to make (or get popular with) rap in a style which annoys me less”. Wow… Un-fuckin-believable. “I hate this idea that you aren’t allowed to dislike something until you’ve literally wasted hundreds of hours studying it”. I’m sure I’m allowed to dislike you without wasting hundreds of hours studying… Read more »
@Schala: And some will say that videogame music isn’t real music (I’ll concede that MIDI doesn’t use real instruments, and that was the physical storage limitation of 8 bit, 16 bit and some forms of 32 bit. This is no longer the case in the era of 512 bit (Xbox+PS3), music size is no longer a limitation worth even mentioning). Simple solution to that problem: Sit them down and have them listen to some VGO or maybe Play! (though I’m not as familiar with Play!, admittedly). You might want to look up F-Zero (Big Blue) or One Winged Angel from… Read more »
Re: “white rap” vs. “black rap”: http://www.good.is/post/america-is-dying-slowly-talking-about-hip-hop-after-trayvon-martin/
Hey, it’s like that time Schala assumed I was full of irrational hate and a distrust for science because I said I was religious and completely disregarded why I brought up religion to begin with. Funny how those kinds of arguments wind up working out.
Oh wait, you weren’t being serious here.
@0thello says: I am going to assume that your ‘first experiences with rap’ were most likely your last… Why? Because rap is so awesome that anyone who don’t like it must be ignorant, or because America is the only real country in the world so any experiences outside of it must be nonexistant? Seriously, at no point did I say anything about only having listened to rap once, just that my first experiences with it (making up the foundation of what I associate with the genre) was from white guys. And I didn’t like it much then either. This doesn’t… Read more »
“Ballet, Viennese Waltz, and Salsa are all forms of dance music which are apparently not considered to be Dance Music (TM) ”
Classical or ballroom music.
Though SOME dance music are good for it. Mambo Number 5 is a mambo for example. But you try dancing Cha-cha on The Summer is Magic.
Some of these classifications are pretty strange. Ballet, Viennese Waltz, and Salsa are all forms of dance music which are apparently not considered to be Dance Music (TM) according to music store classification schemes. Then there’s “Urban Music” (so anything not filed under the “Urban” music category was written on farms or in the Suburbs?). And don’t even get me started on “World” music :).
In North America, pop music, the kind that goes in top 40s and all, is for the great majority dance music. Blues and rock and metal don’t have much radio airtime. Punk has none because it’s “too hard”, and ‘harder’ styles of metal also would get censored and not asked for. Korn would never pass on radio for example. Nor would Manowar. Much of what passes on radio, if not the entirety nowadays, is dance music, the spiritual successor to disco, tu tiss tu tiss tu tiss tu tiss… Britney Spears and company singing the same refrain for 5 minutes… Read more »
“Then call it dance music.”
Not the same thing.
“Yeah, I know that “pop” is short for “popular” – but the meaning to “pop music” has shifted during the years. We generally don’t consider, say, Metallica to be “pop music” – but, technically, Metallica is a very popular band. So “pop music” tends to refer more to the style than whether or not it actually is popular.”
Then call it dance music.
Yeah, you don’t have to be popular to play pop music any more than you have to be on an independent label to play indy music.
Everyone I know and every music critic I’ve ever read use the word as bttf44444 does… There are tons of bands referred to as “pop” who plays stuff that’s never gonna go in loops on the radio and never are gonna be rich. There are styles of pop that never were particularly popular.
Black Sabbath, at least during their classic era, always played in what looked like street clothes (the odd leather jacket aside). Part of what I dislike about their current incarnation is all the KISS style pomp that their stage show involves.
Yeah, I know that “pop” is short for “popular” – but the meaning to “pop music” has shifted during the years. We generally don’t consider, say, Metallica to be “pop music” – but, technically, Metallica is a very popular band. So “pop music” tends to refer more to the style than whether or not it actually is popular.
Pop actually does mean popular music. Either it’s a style of music that’s so generic it’s virtually universally liked or it’s popular because that’s what’s in vogue.
“Pop” is generally used to refer to a softer-than-rock-but-still-contains-electric-instruments style of music – regardless of whether it actually is popular or not.
“What do you mean when you use the word “pop”? Does “pop” mean “commercial music” in American English? Don’t you have the term “indie pop” over there? I’m confused…”
Pop is top 40 music that passes almost in loop on radio stations.
What do you mean when you use the word “pop”? Does “pop” mean “commercial music” in American English? Don’t you have the term “indie pop” over there? I’m confused…
@Monkey that’s an interesting choice of comparison as I generally despise both of those artists’s music XD Also I wasn’t really defending Nirvana I was just mostly confused how you managed to get from “uses acoustic guitars and cellos” to “is femmephobic” or “has progressive politics.”
I mean Frank Zappa had some songs that consisted *entirely* of synthesizers and his politics were beyond progressive, entering the range of downright radical.
The thing about Halford, though, is that he was in the closer for most of his time with the band. What’s amazing is how many people were surprised when he did come out, because it was one of the worst-kept secrets in rock!
“And like you said, pop is not always just about money.I don’t think Bieber, for example, started out just to become famous.” The people who sign contracts with him have him become an object of looks and fantasm, His music is not something I could even say I know, but everyone’s seen his pictures. Here we have a show called Star Academy. We take virtual nobodies who’ve barely ever even tried to do anything musical-wise (they probably didn’t have a band and go around bars for a pittance, or practice in a garage for years with no professional contract in… Read more »
Schala says: April 11, 2012 at 10:42 pm “Nobuo Uematsu” I listen to his stuff as well, glad someone else does. Schala says: April 11, 2012 at 10:42 pm “male fans of any boys band would also get gay-shamed”. Not entirely true, it was perfectly ok for dudes to listen to Boyz 2 Men, 112 and many black RNB “boy bands” and not get called gay or what have you. Rap groups are essentially boy bands and yet nobody would call the Roots or Slaughterhouse listeners gay. Shit even D12 made a damn song called “My band” parodying the whole… Read more »
Hugh: that’s pretty much what I was trying to say from the beginning. 🙂 I actually *like* hard rock and metal. However, I think metal is just as commercialized as any other genre. It’s not just KISS: Manowar, Iron Maiden, GWAR, Slipknot – none of these guys just go out there in denim and t-shirts. And like you said, pop is not always just about money.I don’t think Bieber, for example, started out just to become famous. WD Reeves: I have no idea whether “hardness” is always phallocentric; however, it’s not a stretch to say that it applies to the… Read more »
Actually – Iron Maiden really does go out there in jeans and T-Shirts. While Manowar doesn’t do the fuzzy loincloths anymore, they do wear a lot of leather, but no facepaint. However, the popularity of leather among metal bands has less to do with KISS (who will be the first to tell you they’re hard rock, not metal), and more to do with Judas Priest, which adopted the leather look because, well, Rob Halford (the band’s lead singer) is gay, went to a leather bar (or bars), and thought the look would work for the band. (Now, Death Metal, on… Read more »
I’d agree that the example you cite is Phallocentric. Other uses: hard rock, hard core, so much. Some have gone so far as to assert that the driving beat of both rock and much dance music is phallocentric. I understand why this claim might be made but I disagree.
And metalhead, it’s going to seem a bit schizophrenic that I’m now arguing in support of Monkey, but I think you’re massively overestimating the non-commercial nature of metal. Bands like Metallica and KISS and so on are hugely commercially successful. Sure, they probably weren’t formed with the sole intent of making a quick buck, but few pop/disco acts were, either. The idea that metal is all authentic craftsmanship is a huge oversimplification. I don’t think any genre of music, or even any musician, has a lock on commercialism or artistic drive. Few musicians see their work as simply a way… Read more »
Monkey: I think KISS is not as representative of rock or heavy metal as you think it is.
KISS are widely disdained or ignored even among rock and metal fans. While KISS’ music is metal/rock, KISS fandom is sort of its own thing.