Reynolds hardcore continuum event

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bassnation

the abyss
Slothrop said:
If nothing else, his reputation stays standing because he was one of the first people to stick his neck out and take an interest in the cheesy disposable side of dance music and to actually start thinking seriously about stuff that most critics were writing off as lowest common denominator trash. The fact that we're having this conversation at all speaks volumes for his influence.
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well, unless you count all the kids from the council estates and proto-chavs riding round in their mums cars booming hardcore out of the sound system. those people were the scene, which had already been in existence for some time when simon had his road to damascene conversion described so vididly in energy flash. i love simon's writing, but at the end of the day he is a critic. sometimes its easy to forget that critics come after the fact. i've read energy flash several times and it makes me proud that he's documented with so much love something so close to my heart - but the scene would have existed and have meant the same with or without energy flash.
 
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Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Sorry, yeah, I meant to say "one of the first mainstream(ish) critics..."

Obviously he didn't actually invent jungle or anything.
 
subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
droid said:
How does any theory about any kind of art advance our understanding of the art in question?
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not much imo — theories are mostly imposed on art in retrospect and say little about anything but the theories themselves
 
jambo

jambo

slip inside my schlafsack
One of the reasons rave pulled in so many people, and actually became this POP moment, was basically that is was so much more fun than anything else that was going on.

I wonder if that can happen again? Or are people already having that kind of fun? I have to it doesn't seem like it really.
 
B

bassnation

the abyss
Slothrop said:
Sorry, yeah, I meant to say "one of the first mainstream(ish) critics..."

Obviously he didn't actually invent jungle or anything.
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lol, sorry, being a bit disingenuous there! there's always one smart arse deliberately misinterpreting stuff, isn't there?
 
S

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
padraig (u.s.) said:
I guess I'll always have a soft spot for him cause we don't really have a SR/Eshun/Toop type tradition in the States of intellectual types who can inject a ton of critical theory and still write in a compelling fashion.
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In the States there was Lester Bangs who injected a ton of personal investment, emotional responses, and intensely immersive involvement into the music he was writing about and, for me anyway, this was miles more compelling.
 
P

Piotrek

3,5,0,1,2,5, Warsaw!
Sick Boy said:
In the States there was Lester Bangs who injected a ton of personal investment, emotional responses, and intensely immersive involvement into the music he was writing about and, for me anyway, this was miles more compelling.
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@ Bangs vs. Reynolds
like Simon Reynolds never used emotional tone lol. Anyway, I never really could get into Bangs' writing - don't know maybe his quest for controversy and language he uses is a bit dated for me, and since I'm not native English speaker, I prefer writers who are more precise, less muddy, and still have lots to say. And, I am more interested in present developments of music, not what he had to say about Zappa or THe Beatles.

and people like Lester Bangs or Nick Kent were more like a rockstars those days, Reynolds is more like a cultural anthropologist, no matter how pretentious it may sound now...
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Sick Boy said:
In the States there was Lester Bangs who injected a ton of personal investment, emotional responses, and intensely immersive involvement into the music he was writing about and, for me anyway, this was miles more compelling.
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tbh I can't stand Bangs andh his whole 2nd-rate Dr. Gonzo does record reviews, gatekeeper of cool, Maileresque "last of the white niggers" schtick. criticizing him as a rockist, the epitomy of a rockist even, though true, would be unfair given that he was a product of his times, but still, yuck. one of the main reasons I identify with Reynolds (and similar writers) is that he never, ever tries to be cool or pretends that he is cool.

detached, and sometimes smarmy and/or condescending, but never a false pretense of cool.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
bassnation said:
well, unless you count all the kids from the council estates and proto-chavs riding round in their mums cars booming hardcore out of the sound system. those people were the scene, which had already been in existence for some time when simon had his road to damascene conversion described so vididly in energy flash. i love simon's writing, but at the end of the day he is a critic. sometimes its easy to forget that critics come after the fact. i've read energy flash several times and it makes me proud that he's documented with so much love something so close to my heart - but the scene would have existed and have meant the same with or without energy flash.
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yeah but that's all a given, right? it's more that the critic is trying to impart credibility on the music/scene and risking their reputation (cultural capital, yeah?) to do so. not that that's a heroic feat or anything, but it's laudable, esp. when it's sincere, like a Reynolds or Blackdown.
 
B

bassnation

the abyss
padraig (u.s.) said:
yeah but that's all a given, right? it's more that the critic is trying to impart credibility on the music/scene and risking their reputation (cultural capital, yeah?) to do so. not that that's a heroic feat or anything, but it's laudable, esp. when it's sincere, like a Reynolds or Blackdown.
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yeah, i'm being a bit unfair to be honest. a good critic championing a scene is as creative an act as a dj who pioneers a sound.
 
S

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Piotrek said:
@ Bangs vs. Reynolds
I am more interested in present developments of music, not what he had to say about Zappa or THe Beatles.
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Fair enough.

Personally I lament there aren't many writers taking Bangs' approach to music journalism. I am getting really tired of this detached, egghead, clinical approach to writing about what, to me, is experienced in a totally opposite way.

I also don't think Bangs was too guilty of having a false pretense of being cool. He actually was knee-deep in the shit when it came to the music he was covering, and lacked pretty much all respect for the ultra-deference that a lot of people were showering upon people like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed at the time.

If you want to see a serious example of someone whose sense of being cool results in cringey, obnoxious, self-assuring twaddle please let me direct you all to our current throne-bearer of "geist-y" music journalism, Mr. Chuck Klosterman.
 
Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Never read a great deal by Bangs - should probably make up for that - but surely you could compare what Reynolds did for ardcore and what Bangs did for 60s garage-punk? Reynolds pretty much acknowleges as much in Energy Flash. They both stood up fanatically for music that was critically slated at the time, but in time, no doubt in part due to their endless support, has come to be respected as a rich cultural heritage, almost a musical 'language' that can be drawn on continually. And what Bangs did for the garage bands certainly involved risking a whole lot of cultural capital and coolness status.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Sick Boy said:
Fair enough.

Personally I lament there aren't many writers taking Bangs' approach to music journalism. I am getting really tired of this detached, egghead, clinical approach to writing about what, to me, is experienced in a totally opposite way.

I also don't think Bangs was too guilty of having a false pretense of being cool. He actually was knee-deep in the shit when it came to the music he was covering, and lacked pretty much all respect for the ultra-deference that a lot of people were showering upon people like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed at the time.

If you want to see a serious example of someone whose sense of being cool results in cringey, obnoxious, self-assuring twaddle please let me direct you all to our current throne-bearer of "geist-y" music journalism, Mr. Chuck Klosterman.
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But that's exactly the point innit. "Knee-deep in the shit" was Bangs' angle on coolness. Only doubly so, b/c not only was he cool enough to be into MC5, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and so on but he was so cool that he could shit all over them. In a calculated fashion, of course, so as to maintain his own image as the ultimate rock fan. Which, in a way, he was.

To be fair though I think if Bangs had lived longer he may have eventually produced some work that wasn't so obnoxiously solipistic; the 70s were halcyon days for rampant egomania. He certainly had an immense wealth of talent, no denying that. Also, he clearly cared about his subject matter in a way that even most critics don't (perhaps to the point of being unhealthy). And he defended Metal Machine Music, so there's that.

Please let's not bring Klosterman into this. No one wins there. ;)
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
One other thing, re: the lack of writers following in Bangs' footsteps

B/c it's harder to do than it seems, I suspect. The same is true for Hunter S./Burroughs etc. There are hordes of people trying to ape their style and very few of them doing it well.
 
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