I have many outré viewpoints about many societal shibboleths, but nothing I ever say out loud bugs people more. I see it on their face first (unless I’m driving, because I try to keep my eyes on the road), and they immediately start objecting to it. In my experience, knocking religion or sports isn’t nearly as likely to set people off.
And I always regret saying it, because it always sets up a 45 minute clarification exercise, which they constantly interrupt with further objections. This process is tiring, and usually fails, despite my many years of practice.
So this is my attempt to plunk it into the public record, so I don’t have to keep explaining my position. Of course, I realize that this won’t work either. It will be long, for one thing; I can see that already. And people won’t read it. (Here’s a good place to put my annoyance about THAT. “TL/DR,” one of the many irritating anti-intellectual toadstools that have sprung up in the internet era, means “too lazy/didn’t read,” and I’m happy to say that no-one’s ever typed that in a comment on my posts, but I have occasionally seen “I was going to read this but then I saw how LONG it was.” I wonder how many of these people have had the patience to take one of those intel-gathering Facebook quizzes about which Smurf they are, or whatever. Or the patience to wait in line to get into a dance club, or to see a prop comic. If you are waiting in line to see Carrot Top or Gallagher, you need to re-examine your life.)
The first problem with the “I hate pop music” conversational gambit is that people literally don’t even understand what the words mean. What is “pop music”? Sometimes from people who see their own taste (in pop music) as extra smart, I get the odd response that yes, they hate pop music too, and it turns out “pop music” for them just means the crap they don’t like. Justin Bieber, etc. Which reminds me of my frustration that the Bieber reference is becoming, or has become, outdated. I used to have a never-ending parade of young students who had a thing for that platinum-selling generator of school bus crushes, but the first cracks in that dike occurred when his public behavior (terrorizing neighbors with mini bikes and rotten eggs, jerking off on maitre d’s, and so forth) began to trigger a collective gag reflex even among people who could stomach his music. I had one student who used to wear a shirt with “The Future Mrs. Bieber” printed on it, and she turned on that Osmondian motherfucker so fast it was scary. Don’t cross a tween girl, brother. They don’t play.
So when I encounter a person who sees their own taste in pop music as elevated (and lord, despite appearances, I’m not judging. Many people unfortunate enough to have known me in my Pleistocene period will no doubt recall the airs I used to put on because I listened to, say, the Clash, or Madness, rather than Adam Ant), I immediately have to explain that I’m using the words “pop music” to indicate virtually everything that’s not blues, jazz, classical music, or field recordings of guys in turbans playing reedy instruments that bring to mind an episode of Jonny Quest where sinister hooded slant-eyed villains are churlishly killing white people in order to reclaim the Great Ruby of Azmataz, and the murders are disrupting Dr. Benton Quest’s research. Sometimes, this explanation works, but often it doesn’t work at all, because their self image is tied up with the idea that the catchy song they like is smart, while the catchy song another person likes is not. This dubious narrative is one I fight against in my own thinking, and it’s an uphill battle to rival San Juan Hill.
I hope it reassures some of you who are defensive about your pop music tastes when I throw you this bone: over in the supposedly sophisticated worlds of jazz and classical music, this moronic sort of self-congratulation is possibly even more egregious than it is in the pop world. I joined several classical music Facebook groups, assuming that there, at least, I’d find a respite from namby-pamby provincialism. Nope! And it’s even more insufferable to me when I encounter it in that world, because these are classically trained people, whom you’d think would know more about the mechanics of music, the nuts and bolts of it that make clear to a serious observer that virtually all music functions the same way, regardless of which social norm or geography-based cliquishness a particular example upholds or violates— but they don’t, apparently. So when I see a Chopin fan sniffing that Schoenberg (or some other Snidely Whiplash-esque classical music villain) has long been recognized as passé among people who know their shit, it’s even more dispiriting to me than hearing some record store hipster arguing that Sonic Youth is better than the Beatles. Or vice versa. Of course, that Sonic Youth reference is about as relevant as the Bieber one at this point. But why should I bust my ass spending two minutes on the internet to find out what the contemporary version of that argument would be? What fucking difference could it possibly make now? Or any other time?
I have a book called the Lexicon of Musical Invective, written by a guy named Slonimsky who had encyclopedic knowledge of music as well as a sense of humor. (Just try to find someone like that on your friends list.) Slonimsky’s book immortalized a stuffed duffel bag worth of bad reviews, written by the available crop of stuffed shirts and wind bags when the great white European composers were still alive, and their compositions were new. These reviews are from old newspapers, and they are different from reviews we might see in a paper today, for two important reasons.
1. They’re packed with insulting personal attacks on various composers, and in many cases they throw in a few racial slurs too. (Mostly these involve the use of “Chinese” music as a comparison, the widespread belief among white people of the time being that “Chinese” music was the most unlistenable music on the planet.)
2. Beethoven is savaged repeatedly, particularly for his later work. Nowadays Beethoven is so universally and unequivocally praised in the west that John Cage’s dismissive comments about him were intended to shock, Beethoven being arguably the most respected of all European composers and thus the most sacred of sacred cows. That was not the case when the sainted Ludwig was alive, as Slonimsky’s marvelous book makes abundantly clear.
I’ve found this book as useful as any I’ve ever read, for the simple reason that if Beethoven got shitty reviews during his lifetime, it seems reasonable to assume that none of us are immune.
Beyond that, the point is that there is always someone around to slam something new, and there is also never a shortage of equally dim people claiming that some new thing renders some old thing irrelevant. This kind of phenomenon also applies to different genres, different cultures, different everything, really. There’s no consistent correlation between musical “knowledge” and openness to one thing or another. Classical musicians are often more reactionary or hidebound than pop music fans, and some jazz fans and musicians seem perversely unwilling to say any nice things about certain notable pop musicians. Quincy Jones, the producer of “It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore, recently got a lot of attention by making some unusually harsh statements about the Beatles. This was discussed endlessly and pointlessly online, but I just saw it as the latest example of a person who knows a lot about one thing knowing nothing about another. It’s also in the category of highly educated and experienced musicians being especially susceptible to the notion that their personal taste is something more along the lines of fact.
Thus, I hasten to add this caveat. (Only in a Karl Straub screed does a point made hundreds of words in qualify as “hastening.”)
My statement “I hate pop music” is by no means a value judgement. There’s plenty of evidence of me bloviating on social media about rock and roll albums I love, and of course my recorded output is primarily pop music. No matter how many years of study and practicing (of classical and jazz, plus other non-pop things) I’ve layered on top of my early listening habits, it will always be true that my first album purchase was a Monkees record. I still like that record, by the way, and I’ve continued to hear echoes of it in even my most recent songwriting.
So let me clarify further, for anyone who’s stopped seething long enough to read this far. Seething isn’t good for you, by the way, and doing it on behalf of pop music reflects abysmally poor judgment. Believe me, I know. Pop music is designed to bring you pleasure, not make you angry when someone else doesn’t like it. If you really want to pay appropriate tribute to your pop heroes, I advise you to keep enjoying their work in the face of the cold and calculating comments of wise guys like me. I’m sometimes asked to name my musical “guilty pleasures,” and my stock answer is that I don’t think in those terms. If I enjoy listening to something, I don’t feel the need to hide my love away lest my taste be questioned, and neither should you. I certainly don’t want anyone to feel bad about their pop music preferences because of my taste. Nor should my reasoned evaluations trigger your opprobrium. Critical evaluation and personal taste are not the same thing, nor should they be. Moreover, I’m liable to rethink either at any moment. There was a time, for example, when Cecil Taylor’s music didn’t move me. Now I find myself borrowing from his thinking even when I’m playing honky tonk guitar. And I used to own around thirty Frank Zappa albums, and admire him unconditionally. Now I own an even higher number of them, but admire him far less. Just as my enthusiasm for the Grateful Dead waned a little more with every Merle Haggard album I purchased, my respect for Frank Zappa has been beveled a bit with each 20th century classical composer I’ve listened to. And whereas I used to be incensed by his dunderheaded pronouncements about the Beatles and the Byrds, I can now say that what really caused me to make the final break with my lingering enthusiasm for Zappa’s ideas was his completely arbitrary denunciation of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck. It would take a musical mind more advanced than mine to figure out why, for Zappa, there was enough room on the pedestal for Varése, but not Berg. As he put it when referring to Berg’s great work, “spare me.”
So it’s not a question of me saying pop music isn’t any good. It’s just that pop music doesn’t consistently bring me pleasure any more. It’s mostly a form I approach clinically, at least as a listener, which is due to a few things about me that are unusual. I always try to explain to people that for years I dedicated my energy to absorbing, studying, writing, singing, and recording rock and roll, and its various kin. It was like a religion to me. (I mean “religion” in the classic sense, which is to say, a thing you dedicate yourself to monastically, without being paid. I’m not sure the word has that meaning today.) With the time I put into this project, it shouldn’t shock anyone that burnout was the result. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I spent more effort and time processing rock and roll than even a typical group of ten or twelve rock enthusiasts can collectively claim. It doesn’t seem weird to me that rock and roll classics like Eight Miles High, Ticket To Ride, and Satisfaction no longer call to my deeps the way they used to. The Byrds in particular have lost their capacity to lure me in, in the wake of a long-ago Byrds tribute gig where I prepped by logging an unholy amount of hours studying their recordings, and cataloguing the harmony and guitar parts. At one point I listened endlessly to this one chord on some damn Byrds cut, cranking the phones up to an unhealthy level over and over to make sure I was hearing it right, only to be contradicted at the rehearsal by a relatively famous guy I won’t name here. After that gig, I couldn’t really listen to the Byrds any more. It’s still true today, many years later. But I can still recall how I felt hearing their early work for the first time, and how I felt upon initially hearing their later more “country” incarnation too. They changed my ears both times, and my avoidance of their work even for study purposes now hasn’t affected how much of their sound courses through my blood every time I play a Telecaster or sing harmony.
There’s more to it than burnout, though. As a listener, I have different needs now than I did as a teen, or even in my twenties. Or thirties. I submit that popular music is not designed to surprise you. It’s not supposed to make you think, and it’s not supposed to provide you with a listening experience that shifts under you like hourglass sand. It does these things from time to time, certainly, but that’s the exception and not the rule. When I hear a pop song that I like, my usual practice is to glom onto the melody and the chords, and the danger of me just ripping those things off when I write is always a real one for me. But when I listen to classical music, or jazz, or non-American idioms such as Arabic, Greek, Korean, African, Latin American, Indian, or any number of others, I relate to them in a very different way. I’m interested in rhythms when I listen to those styles, as well as in assessing the use of other organizational tools I won’t bore you by mentioning here. Because most pop music’s vocabulary is limited, especially with regard to rhythm, and its structures so repetitive, I can go much further into those areas by listening to non-pop music. It’s natural for me to try to trace the thinking and methods of improvising musicians and serious composers, rather than just stealing licks from them. It’s not only easier, but also much more rewarding. I’m looking for methods I can use to develop my writing and improvisation, rather than catchy vocal melodies and guitar lines I can shamelessly shoehorn into my “original” music.
I’ll add this related idea, though it’s more of an adjunct to this topic. After my recent piece about white people, black people, and American music, I got some feedback I didn’t love. It was much less than I’d expected, and much milder than it might have been, but it still bothered me. I don’t want to score points off anyone here, especially someone who likes my writing or my music, but I’d like to make something clear. On top of my analysis of African-American contributions ruffling a few white feathers, I’ve been accused of unhelpfully putting music into boxes and categories, as well as arrogantly inflicting my musical tastes on others who don’t want to know about them. The implications, as I parse them, are that categorization of anything musical is foolish and antiquated, and telling people what I like or don’t like is at best meaningless, at worst insulting.
For future reference (and past reference too, bitches), let me make this plain.
Regarding categorization: I have mixed feelings about that myself, as my own music ought to indicate. But I don’t think giving eternal credit to the African-American creators of blues and jazz language is about narrow-mindedness, or about categorization. Unsurprisingly, the only people who see it that way seem to be white.
If I discuss my taste, or my value judgments, in my writing, it’s because I think someone may be entertained, and because my informed and professional judgements may help someone think about music in new ways.
Let me put it this way. I’ve occasionally had refrigerator repairmen talk to me about the things that happen inside a refrigerator after I close the door. These lectures are sporadically interesting, and I always listen respectfully, even though I know damn well that I won’t remember any of it later. But I always listen with respect because they’re trained professionals and I might learn something. However, what I put inside my fridge (or take out of it at midnight) is my business. To my various detractors, I say this— why not approach my writing on music in the same spirit? And if you find that my ideas rankle more than stimulate, why not do as so many have before you (SO many), and simply apply this Internet idiom: TMKS/FT. (Too Much Karl Straub/Fuck That.)
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