Ethan Stanislawski On The Internet

tag me with a spoon: "NPR rock"

Best example of this in action I’ve seen: a 2008 show at NYU with a lineup of Apache Beat, Marnie Stern, A Place To Bury Strangers, Ra Ra Riot. As soon as APTBS played one note, all the Ra Ra Riot fans left the room until the band was finished. It was like clockwork.

I’ve seen the same clockwork within a single Yo La Tengo set at more than one show, depending on when Ira Kaplan touched the distortion pedal.

desnoise:

That’s fine, and even smart as a take on music generally. But the problem with “NPR rock” isn’t that it’s less angry or noisy, it’s that — like all NPR cultural entertainment — it breeds complacency (specifically, smug affluent liberal complacency - like Palin jokes you might hear on “Wait Wait,” or Garrison Keiller, Ira Glass, etc.), just like their “news under glass” programs that are all framed with perky B.J. Liederman theme music and half-recognizable instrumental interstitials between the stories.

Music highlighted on NPR may be intelligent and good, but it’s 100% intended as a throwaway cultural accessory for suburbanites in Volvos driving their kids to soccer practice who still want to feel like they know what’s “current” and that they’ve heard something their friends haven’t. Their sweet spot is: a little edgy, a little unusual or indie-fresh, a little obscure or “alternative,” hopefully some smart lyrics, but with harmony and hook, non-distracting, and totally serviceable as background music. As a result, it never has the slightest cultural impact.

Now we’re getting somewhere! That’s why I’m so interested in music that ostensibly addresses concerns of smart, serene people (our inability to effect change in a world where “they own the information/ They can bend it all they want”; how we’re always stumbling over what we want to say; how people ought to be free to get stoned or whatever; how it’s actually the responsibility of men not to be dicks to the women in their lives; how women’s bodies are not mere objects for men’s pleasure or something to be ashamed of but rather something they should feel free to enjoy; the importance of questioning authority; the value of expressing ourselves even when we’re afraid we might get hurt) without serving as a form of lifestyle-accessory one-ups-man-ship or limiting itself to an audience on one side of the political aisle. But people are probably tired of me harping on this around here by now? Not sure why I keep bringing this up in bits and pieces— should just buckle down and give people something meatier to argue with at this point, but argh.

EDIT: I thought it was interesting that a teetotaling carnival ticket-booth worker from Tennessee I met at the Iowa State Fair blamed the firing of a clown who apparently made racial or otherwise offensive jokes on, his word, “snobbish” people. Snobbery, or the perception of snobbery, is the bane of both progressive ideology and the underground. This guy was nice and folks like him might even be convinced to agree with us if we didn’t always need to feel like we were ideologically and culturally better than him. (I guess that’s one of my problems with the new Arcade Fire album [oh hai, Hardcorefornerds]: It disparages some people who sneer, but it’s still sneering at them, without any trace of self-awareness that it is doing so [and I know I’m definitely not immune to this syndrome]. Still: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a sneer-free zone?)