Indie fans, so the theory goes, are an intellectual kinda group. They all went to college, and not your common state school either, but liberal arts colleges. Their preferred music reflects this: it’s a little detached, a little effete, a little bookish, disconnected from the more bodily pleasures of something like metal or dance.
Why, then, is there such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism among the indie rock fans on music blogs?
Allow me to employ an example from my own life. Last week, Stereogum thought to link me in a post about an imagined beef between Radiohead and Prince, in which Prince seemed to be asserting ownership over the cover of “Creep” he performed at Coachella earlier this year. The author of the post, Brandon Stosuy, linked to a piece I had written about the cover, claiming that I said “the Purple One actually did write (or re-write) ‘Creep.’” After quoting four paragraphs of my post, he concluded: “Or maybe he forgot the words. Grad School [sic] is fun. Give it up for Borges.”
The thing is, I wrote the piece a month before any of this surfaced, so it had nothing to do with copyright wrangling. I was really just saying that the cover was awesome, specifically because Prince made “Creep” his own. Though Stosuy seemed to have some problem with this, the idea of making someone else’s song your own is not an unfamiliar one to most music fans. This is because of a little show called American Idol. See, for instance, Randy Jackson at the end here:
(Or, you know, you could just read an earlier post on Stereogum.)
I’ve spent some time thinking about the art of the cover, and I’ve come up with a certain set of guidelines. First, if you’re going to cover a song, it has to sound different from the original. If I wanted to hear the original, there are many outlets for me to do so. Second, any good cover reinterprets the song using the coverer’s particular sound, and should meld the song into the quirks of phrasing and effects that permeate that artist’s originals. And finally, covering a known song is almost always better than covering an unknown song. The thrill of hearing a cover comes from referentiality, not discovery.
All this stems from a particular philosophical viewpoint: there are too many songs out there, and not enough interpretations of songs. The history of recorded music is deep enough at this point that pop should be adapting some of the techniques of older musical forms, and one of the most important ones is reinterpretation. A great cover shows us something about the original that we never saw before, some stylistic similarity or hidden element that the coverer brings out and highlights. This is what “making it your own” means. A good cover doesn’t just transmute an existing song into a new style to make hay from the absurd juxtaposition; it makes an old song sound like a natural part of the coverer’s repertoire, thus revealing things about both the original artist and the one doing the reinterpretation.
All this was very clear in my piece, were you to actually read it rather than placing it out of context into a new setting that had nothing to do with it. The spin put on the piece by Stereogum was not just wrong, it was some Bill O’Reilly shit, intentionally misinterpreting what I said so as to cause outrage. Though I don’t normally respond to crazy criticisms of things I write, I figured a clarification was in order, and I threw together the least snotty comment I possibly could–which, in fairness, was still kinda snotty–to make sure everyone was clear on what I meant. I then went on with my day.
Still, something about it bugged me. Maybe it was the comments. Here’s a sampling, all [sic], naturally.
That second to last paragraph almost made me throw up.
What kind of insane garbage was that second statement. If I go into a karioke bar, fuck up a song…can I claim that I was just using my creative genius too?
That ClapClap paragraph is a load of bullshit: If All Along The Watchtower’s still a Bob Dylan’s song, then Creep is still Thom Yorke’s…A cover’s a cover, no matter how much “astounding pop magic” is used, period. Maybe if I could see the fucking thing I could change my mind for the better, but since that’s pretty much nil, Prince remains a corporate whore to me. Plus, the fact that Radiohead embraces this new age of open media has to say something for them compared to other popular rock bands.
I LOVE the description of how Prince made it his own - it’s like that great clip where Vanilla Ice defends the bassline in ‘Ice Ice Baby’ as being completely different from the bassline in ‘Under Pressure.’
“i’ve written this new song its called “2009″ i copied Prince’s “1999″ almost verbatim but instead we’re going to party like its about to roll over to 2010. you get it? I’m brilliant.
Now, this is being somewhat unfair. Comments posted after mine corrected many of the errors in the original post: Thom was just pointing out the irony of being unable to hear a cover of a song he had written, Prince did have a right to request the videos’ removal as the performer, and my post had nothing to do with any of this.
Still, one issue remained: that final sentence of Stosuy’s post, the one where he mysteriously capitalized “School” and sneeringly–and just as mysteriously!–invoked “Borges.” In my attempt not to be snotty, I nevertheless couldn’t resist responding to that one, beginning my comment with: “I appreciate the hat tip–and the anti-intellectualism!” A Stereogum commenter took issue with this:
And I don’t know if you got the memo, but intellectualism is not very cool anymore (or was it ever?).
There’s an irony in this. Stosuy is not exactly one to shun intellectualism himself, having written, among other things, a book about conceptual artist Matthew Barney, as well as the introduction to a book published by Semiotext(e). And good for him! These are all interesting, worthwhile things. And they make it not only more difficult for him to accuse someone of being pretentious, but fairly depressing to see him do so.
Gentle reader, I must be honest with you at this point. I am, indeed, in grad school. But I began writing wordy, pretentious, and overexcited things long before I rejoined the academy. Four years ago, I wrote over 23,000 words on a single Fiery Furnaces album. And this was not entirely unusual for the time. Those of you who remember the early days of music blogs might remember them as being more or less like what I described above: long, thoughtful, serious posts about music. I’m sure you need not be told that this is no longer the case, and the fact that a Stereogum commenter thought to tell me that intellectualism isn’t cool–key choice of words there–should indicate why.
If my writing gets pretentious and overly serious, I’m happy to be called on that. But if you read my piece, I don’t see anything approaching grad schoolishness; it is, after all, mostly about fucking. What I do see in my piece is enthusiasm, something that’s never cool, whereas what you get on Stereogum is the exact opposite: hysterical denunciation. That’s always pretty cool–were you to ask commenters what they were rebelling against, “What do you got?” seems a likely answer.
As the audience for music blogs has expanded, the wordcounts of posts have shrunk, and the commenters have gotten meaner and greedier. Instead of the kind of thoughtful and occasionally heated discussion that was once the norm, we are now treated as heretics if we fail to bestow upon our readers the free music they feel they deserve. Forget good writing–music blogs have chased the lowest common denominator so aggressively that anything longer than a blurb merits a “tl;dr.” Maybe the indie rockers read so much in college that they they’re tired of it.
I try not to let it get to me. I try to get excited about things, and think about things, and write about things at whatever length they deserve. And if I don’t always get it right, I’m OK with that. An error is forgivable. To pander to the worst impulses of your audience by snidely dismissing thoughtfulness is, I think, a bit less forgivable. A writer or a critic with any concern for his craft should not so easily abandon the idea of expanding the imaginative possibilities of art, especially not in pursuit of more click-throughs from a readership that likes nothing better than being told everyone is stupid but them.
[Photo: Vincent Giordano]
What are you trying to say here? I don’t know. The post got a little too long and intellectual for me so I stopped reading about halfway through.
I guess you’re not “cool” enough to know that no one says tl;dr anymore. Now it’s all about the teal deers.
For what it’s worth, I enjoyed your original post, and I got what you were trying to say; people who quote things you’ve written and purposely misinterpret them (or try to interpret your intentions for writing them in the first place) are basically attention-seeking jerks who want to feel better than everyone else by being “cool” with their anti-intellectualism.
That’s what fandom_wank is for. I think we don’t need no hateration here.
tl;dr is coming back, man.
My favorite bit of this whole thing is the extraneous apostrophe in Stosuy’s first paragraph:
“That said, it’s been difficult finding reliable footage of the Purple One’s take on the top of the Modern Rock 500, because Prince’s NPG people are extremely thorough about removing the clips, including the one’s we’ve tried linking.”
Do they allow that in Grad School?
Worth noting, I think, that while Stosuy’s post took Mike’s post out of context and had one or two lines of anti-intellectual snark (yet making a Borges reference so obscure it actually out-intelletualized the intellectual clip it was mocking!), it was the commenters who took it to the extreme of anti-intellectualism.
But really, turning this comments thread into a forum for bashing Stereogum–its writers or its readers/commenters–I think misses the point Mike is trying to make here. Which is, duh, peeps need to smarten up.
Let’s just start a blog about Borges.
I wouldn’t care about or even remember the name Brandon Stosuy were it not for his “Top 50 Singles of 2003″ synopsis of Missy Elliott’s “Gossip Folks,” in which he claims that “the use of invented language and implied meaning as a central hook is pretty radical in all senses,” yet he somehow fails to mention that the radical hook originates from Frankie Smith’s 1981 “Double Dutch Bus.” Stosuy was just so psyched to be living at the bloody cutting edge of the future that he couldn’t believe that the past ever existed.
@Kate Richardson: Only if its a blog where someone posts five words or less and we have to guess which Borges piece they are referring to.
Inaugural post: “Mirrors!”
@Kate Richardson: Would that require reading? If so, count me out.
Wait how is Stereogum indie again?
@SomeSound-MostlyFury: None taken, I swear. I realized I came off snotty!
Just noticed that you can rate individual comments at Stereogum. Poor Mike got a -16. But that was only second-lowest. Some dude who said Creep sucks got -60. What a bizarre function to have in the comments…
blog fight between blogs owned by the same company.
clap clap, you ARE kinda a douche. it’s ok
I don’t know what it says about when when I see “tl; dr” and mistake it for misplaced HTML.
i’m surprised Stosuy didn’t address the fact that this post (probably unintentionally) insinuates that he doesn’t like metal.
I was going to say “Be thankful this didn’t happen with you and a sports blog, because you’d've just been called a fag,” but I’ve seen it become popular around Chicago indie-kid groups for everyone to call everyone else a fag. I hope that’s just the trust fund microcosm, as that’s all I saw.
Are you owned by the same company yet? That’s scary. I’ll admit that I’ve had my share of issues with this site, but I think you’ve improved a lot since the Gawker thing was announced (and I always liked this better than stereogum).
“Never take the anti-intellectual side in an argument. You will wind up hating the people you are defending.” - Kenneth Tynan
Blog fight! Blog fight!
While I agree with most of your points, I will say this: Its STEREOGUM. You may be tango-ing with the wrong partner if you want to have a rational discussion about music. I hate to fall into the same cycle of snide put-downs, but Stereogum commenters are the NASCAR fans of indie music.
Wait, what does former Boston Globe sportswriter Ron Borges have to do with all this?
@SomeSound-MostlyFury: Don’t bring NASCAR into this. Sure, the fans are often nutso, but I love NASCAR for some very intellectual reasons, mainly the drivers and pit crews’ understanding of physics and team strategy to win races. It’s pretty fascinating to me. Can you decide to pull a spring rubber because the track is cooling and getting hard or lowering the track/panhard bar to change the real roll center and thus the handling?
@SomeSound-MostlyFury: What he/she said. Theme and variation is not a concept that their readership can grasp apparently. Plus their site crashed my browser twice, so screw em.
@Big Gray.: Personally, I would just press the gas pedal a bit more.
This is in keeping with a long history of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. Richard Hofstader’s classic work stands as relevant today as it did 40 years agao. I actually think it’s great that Stosuy went after your very “uncool” intelligence, it gives you a good idea of who you’re dealing with. The fact that he is in fact himself guilty of intellectualism doesn’t only make him a hypocrite, but it leads me to wonder if his hostility toward intellectual views on the part of others is rooted in a desire to be smarter than everyone else. This mindset is famously rampant in the indie-music world so it wouldn’t surprise me.
Above all I’m glad to see that my firm policy of ignoring anything to do with stereogum is a wise one that shall continue.
You guys should meet up for brunch on Sunday in your best NorthFace jackets to discuss this.
TL;DR
JK.
LOL
@Big Gray.: Sorry - no offense intended. I actually enjoy most forms of car racing as well. I ts Friday and I couldn’t conjure up any more appropriate analogies.
@NickEddy: I just bought his diaries. What I’ve read so far, I like.
Oh, and fuck Stereogum.
As above. I think the internetz died somewhere in the middle of this post.
And with “as above” I intended “TL;DR” (damn, you’re so fast…)
Hey Mike, my Prince/Radiohead post wasn’t intended to be anti-intellectual. I wasn’t critiquing intellectuals. I wasn’t even really critiquing you beyond a bit of gentle ribbing at some of your logic.
Basically, like this massive response to my tiny blog post, I just thought you used a lot of words to discuss something that could’ve been said more plainly. That’s what I meant by setting grad school in capital letters: The institution of graduate school-style writing, i.e. when folks use more words than necessary to present an argument that’s been made a before (maybe not between Prince and Radiohead, but you know what I mean). Full disclosure: I went to grad school.
I realize your initial “Creep” piece was written earlier. As a grad student, though, you know things written at different times can be juxtaposed, pulled together, etc., to make interesting discoveries, theories, arguments, overlaps. Your post fit nicely with the Prince/Radiohead debate. It brought another angle into the discussion. I thought it was kind of fun.
The Borges was a reference to his “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” If you haven’t read it, take a look and my comment will make more sense.
You’re so very fucking special.
what i find hysterical about all of this, is that bloggers do this to bands EVERY DAY. then rude, sometimes personal, hate-filled comments follow. but bands are expected to put up with it. if they clarified themselves, they would be called whiny bitches. the tables would turn on them faster than the time it took you to write this. i’m not saying you’re out of order in standing up for what you wrote. i just wish that bands could call out pitchfork for misquoting lyrics and taking things out of context. i wish that bands could call out stereogum for completely missing the point. i wish bloggers could be held accountable. maybe you don’t deserve this, but this is just a taste of ones own medicine.
@stosuy: The irony here is that you give Mike a “gentle ribbing” about not speaking plainly, but are now having to write follow-up posts on other blogs explaining that what you “intended” to say on your post sounds exactly nothing like what you actually said.
Your ideas about juxtaposing articles to make new discoveries is all very cozy and idea-sharing-friendly, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that you took something that had nothing at all to do with a copyright discussion and put it wildly out of context to make it look like it did. They call that “lazy and irresponsible” in journalism-land and I will do the same here.
Oh and saying “Give it up for Borges” does not count as a reference to his Quixote short story. The man wrote literally hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of literature and criticism and most of his themes didn’t involve the richness of reinterpretation. So please forgive us if we don’t immediately get that your five-word sentence isn’t ghastly generalized sarcasm. Maybe you should attempt to write more plainly next time.
Oh Eddie Rebel, You have contributed such a smart and nuanced argument. I hope your mom is proud that she raised such a bitchy little boy.
Wow what a sanctimonious prick. Way to add nothing to the conversation. And if you really felt the need to stop by just to explain those references, you’re probably the type to sniff their own farts out of a wine glass.
i have to agree with brandon here. he was adapting stereogum’s style-sheet in response to a post that uses the phrase “Prince scheme of rhetoric” in its first paragraph. i don’t think that’s some o’reilly shit. but i guess any excuse to bag on s’gum commenters is okay, though.
remember this? this was a good one:
[www.villagevoice.com]
@Big Gray.: Please PLEASE tell me you do this with a crate of Bud Light and a beer hat.
I haven’t read the Stereogum piece because life’s too short, but I support wholeheartedly your last couple of paragraphs. I never understand why people feel the need to leave comments on mp3 links.
I think that anyone who has followed Stosuy’s writing would realize he is one of the least vitriol filled bloggers and one of the smarter writers out there. It seems so childish the way everyone gets whipped up in an uninformed fury towards someone. I am not saying that Mike has no grounds to respond, I do, but the hate that blog readers have for each other seems way out of line and like a waste of time. Maybe everyone should read through things carefully, maybe even twice, before firing off a knee-jerk response. You know… the way we all learned to in grad school.
@SomeSound-MostlyFury: *fondly remembering the first time my husband and I engaged in “gentle ribbing”*
Think someone already said it, but the Borges reference on the heels of the Grad School comment came across as an “insert-literary-figure-some-people-have-maybe-heard-of” move — and anyway, BARTHES would have been funnier because it’s closer to Mike’s actual name. Roffles @ Barthe(l)s. (In the future, a handy http://www.english.swt.edu=“” cohen_p=”" avant-garde=”" literature=”" borges=”" menard.html=”">[www.english.swt.edu]“>LINK to the short story would probably get yer point across. Just think of how many Stereogum commenters would be converted into Borges fans!)
The Quixote story doesn’t really seem to resonate with Mike’s original post anyway, even if the link to cover versions might seem obvious — Mike is interested in highlighting all of the little but significant changes that totally transform the song, whereas such changes, in the Borges piece, would be a sign of a “failure” of the project, which (IIRC, haven’t read it in a few years) is to totally replicate, note for note, Don Quixote from the sensibility of someone who isn’t Cervantes (writing it to the word “as Menard.” The new meanings can’t come through stylistic changes in the text — the “new meanings” are everywhere BUT the text.
Woops,
English: [web.archive.org]
Spanish: [www.literatura.us]
This article was remotely interesting until it turned into (yet) another long, convoluted piece of crap. If you feel the need to jerk-off, why not write for a porn blog? See Brooklyn Vegan’s blog-roll for a list of eligible publishers…