HARD ROCK FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE HARD ROCK
Misattribution is theinsincerest form of flattery.
Paging through the Internet for Wolfmother press, Dick Destiny blog ran across an item in the Charlotte, NC, Independent Weekly citing one of its coinages: Hard rock for people who don't like hard rock.
In an article on new heavy metal bands, "Hammer of the minor deities" from June 7, it is said:
The ILM chatboard is known for many things -- many good and some bad. But it's not the owner of "Hard Rock for People Who Don't Like Hard Rock." The phrase is an insult. I know because I coined it in the Village Voice when Chuck Eddy, a music journo hero of mine, was editor in March of 2005. It came in a review of the Chris Stamey Experience's "A Question of Temperature":
And that's OK! It's neat to have something you've developed be the basis for someone else's less inspired reasoning.
What the Independent Week article didn't get about the hard rock for people who don't like hard rock catch-all insult is that it applies more to the class differences between the current crop of mainstream music writers and the audience for classic rock in the United States.
The nature of it has been discussed numerous times: In P. T. Barnum Metal in relationship to the risible heavy metal for smart people meme, in a dissection of big newspaper hype on Wolfmother and most particularly in matters of bad taste.
From the latter, "[it] has a bit to do with social class, too. For example, at newspapers -- editors and reporters frequently identify with those who share the cut of their jib, the upper middle class and those aspiring to it. So those knocking [classic hard rock] out in the roadhouses are out of luck. Ditto for those drawing good crowds at the county fair or ag festival.
"The music writers didn't like covering them at the newspaper in the late Eighties and they like it much less now. There's no going back."
What this means is that music journalists, by class and by taste, are largely oblivious to the large number of successful, semi-successful and barely making it hard rock acts which release CDs every year. While universal outlets like CD Baby are stuffed with their often very good homemade records, unless a reporter is forced to cover the stuff because of local interests, they are invisible.
The hard rock for people who don't like hard rock band, on the other hand, is the one that almost always comes attached to a good p.r. campaign, usually successfully driven by lashing it to independent/alternative taste. As another way of description, it is pitched to journalists as something better and smarter than classic rock, although always linked to it in a tenuous way.
As a writer I've always been mystified and bemused by the practice. At the Morning Call newspaper in the Eighties, only two journalists other than myself liked hard rock or heavy metal. They were sports writers and only reviewed records for the features section when they had time.
But, practically speaking, the newspaper did not like the subject and would not have allowed space for it had the editors not been entirely driven in their craze for local arts coverage. Since hard rock and heavy metal bands were the only reliable draws in the Lehigh Valley -- from the dives to the arenas -- the subject had to be addressed in furtherance of its journalistic mission. And even though it was covered, it was always a source of aggravation to them, inspiring numerous snarling asides in editorial meetings on the nature of the bands and the fans.
"I'm sick of seeing pictures of angry faces and tattoos!" was one memorable outburst from an assistant managing editor.
So hard rock for people who don't like hard rock didn't exist at the newspaper. The powers in command didn't like any hard rock. And they had no inkling of what a readership wanted. They just knew they wanted coverage of whatever was local, even if they hated it. There was no picking through the genre for oddball or musically marginal acts with value added, as it could be determined, through a sophisticated promotional campaign or delivery of art as musicalchicken soupvitamins for the upper middle class reader's soul.
Going to Flagstaff Resort in burned out Jim Thorpe to see a large almost exclusively male audience of topers indulging in mass urination over the balcony as Robin Trower played "Bridge of Sighs" was normal reporting. But a stagey phonus-balonus art noise band like Sunn0))), while it would have been covered, would never have been painted as something for the intellectual gourmand reading the New York Times magazine on a Sunday afternoon.
Google Fu: Hard rock for people who don't like hard rock.
Misattribution is the
Paging through the Internet for Wolfmother press, Dick Destiny blog ran across an item in the Charlotte, NC, Independent Weekly citing one of its coinages: Hard rock for people who don't like hard rock.
In an article on new heavy metal bands, "Hammer of the minor deities" from June 7, it is said:
"The rock critics and music fanatics over at online discussion forum and cyber circle jerk I Love Music--frequented by folks like former Village Voice music editor Chuck Eddy and All Music Guide's Ned Raggett-- have a term for groups like Wolfmother, unthreatening metal acts that receive a bunch of bandwagon attention: "Hard Rock For People Who Don't Like Hard Rock."Robbie Mackey, the writer of the piece, is an I Love Music (ILM) user whose Google Fu is in need of exercise.
The ILM chatboard is known for many things -- many good and some bad. But it's not the owner of "Hard Rock for People Who Don't Like Hard Rock." The phrase is an insult. I know because I coined it in the Village Voice when Chuck Eddy, a music journo hero of mine, was editor in March of 2005. It came in a review of the Chris Stamey Experience's "A Question of Temperature":
"Set the Chris Stamey Experience down as sluts taking the spoils of opportunity for "Shapes of Things" and "Politician." On A Question of Temperature, Stamey commits the sin of hard rock for people who don't like hard rock: not heavy when and where it must be, so even power drunks will not mistake it for Nazareth or West, Bruce & Laing, thems that own the books on the copies."In November of that year, I used it again for cash money, in still another review in the Voice, one covering Brooklyn metal acts Heather and Early Man:
"In another philosophically odd place are Brooklyn's Early Man. Being advertised as a classic heavy metal band—on Matador — arouses suspicions of the hard-rock-for-people-who-don't-like-hard-rock trick: metal for snobs, sophisticates, and lovers of new age sound tapestries. Not the same as a humiliating and coarse love of Def Leppard. But, lo, Early Man aren't jokers unless they're great shammers. In sound if not category, they're a second- or third-tier New Wave of British Heavy Metal group, imitating bigger-selling betters. In 1984, the duo would have been Cloven Hoof or Witchfinder General. "Death Is the Answer" mimics Sabbath, with grinding brio and excellence, an eerie reverse effect on the vocal lending more vintageUnder a variety of counterspam aliases, I'd used hard-rock-for-etc and variations on it, off and on in the discussion forums for heavy metal at ILM through 2005 up until recently. And in the review, Early Man was not hard rock for people who don't like hard rock. For the Independent Week, it was the opposite. Early Man was to be avoided, a pretender.
Ozzy-ness."
And that's OK! It's neat to have something you've developed be the basis for someone else's less inspired reasoning.
What the Independent Week article didn't get about the hard rock for people who don't like hard rock catch-all insult is that it applies more to the class differences between the current crop of mainstream music writers and the audience for classic rock in the United States.
The nature of it has been discussed numerous times: In P. T. Barnum Metal in relationship to the risible heavy metal for smart people meme, in a dissection of big newspaper hype on Wolfmother and most particularly in matters of bad taste.
From the latter, "[it] has a bit to do with social class, too. For example, at newspapers -- editors and reporters frequently identify with those who share the cut of their jib, the upper middle class and those aspiring to it. So those knocking [classic hard rock] out in the roadhouses are out of luck. Ditto for those drawing good crowds at the county fair or ag festival.
"The music writers didn't like covering them at the newspaper in the late Eighties and they like it much less now. There's no going back."
What this means is that music journalists, by class and by taste, are largely oblivious to the large number of successful, semi-successful and barely making it hard rock acts which release CDs every year. While universal outlets like CD Baby are stuffed with their often very good homemade records, unless a reporter is forced to cover the stuff because of local interests, they are invisible.
The hard rock for people who don't like hard rock band, on the other hand, is the one that almost always comes attached to a good p.r. campaign, usually successfully driven by lashing it to independent/alternative taste. As another way of description, it is pitched to journalists as something better and smarter than classic rock, although always linked to it in a tenuous way.
As a writer I've always been mystified and bemused by the practice. At the Morning Call newspaper in the Eighties, only two journalists other than myself liked hard rock or heavy metal. They were sports writers and only reviewed records for the features section when they had time.
But, practically speaking, the newspaper did not like the subject and would not have allowed space for it had the editors not been entirely driven in their craze for local arts coverage. Since hard rock and heavy metal bands were the only reliable draws in the Lehigh Valley -- from the dives to the arenas -- the subject had to be addressed in furtherance of its journalistic mission. And even though it was covered, it was always a source of aggravation to them, inspiring numerous snarling asides in editorial meetings on the nature of the bands and the fans.
"I'm sick of seeing pictures of angry faces and tattoos!" was one memorable outburst from an assistant managing editor.
So hard rock for people who don't like hard rock didn't exist at the newspaper. The powers in command didn't like any hard rock. And they had no inkling of what a readership wanted. They just knew they wanted coverage of whatever was local, even if they hated it. There was no picking through the genre for oddball or musically marginal acts with value added, as it could be determined, through a sophisticated promotional campaign or delivery of art as musical
Going to Flagstaff Resort in burned out Jim Thorpe to see a large almost exclusively male audience of topers indulging in mass urination over the balcony as Robin Trower played "Bridge of Sighs" was normal reporting. But a stagey phonus-balonus art noise band like Sunn0))), while it would have been covered, would never have been painted as something for the intellectual gourmand reading the New York Times magazine on a Sunday afternoon.
Google Fu: Hard rock for people who don't like hard rock.
posted by George Smith at 1:36 PM
2 Comments:
Led Zeppelin is still crying about how they didn't like them in the first place. NOT.
Ha-ha, Deb! How little is remembered. I suppose I should admit you're one of the reasons I started writing about rock and roll, as opposed to only politics.
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