For never are the ways of music moved without the greatest political laws being moved.
Plato, The Republic, 242c
And so they say, this the golden age…
U2, “New Year’s Day”
At this point one might well wonder why I am bothering with rock, having abundant reasons to dislike the music and the half-baked intellectualizing that so often accompanies it. I do think its musical and lyrical accomplishments have been overrated, and that the grandiose expectations put upon it have been harmful. This does not mean I have no sympathy for rock’s higher aspirations, or that I am unimpressed when they are achieved.
Moreover, my sense is that at its best, rock has an almost unmatchable facility for catching, expressing, and questioning the passing collective moods of present-day life, whether these are “in the air” or flowing through subterranean channels. Since it is a more immediate form of expression than the grand canvases of the novel or motion picture, and since, unlike poetry or the visual arts, it attracts a lot of attention, it is not surprising that artists tuned to the fluctuations of the zeitgeist gravitate towards it. The latter part of Morely’s claim for Siouxsie and the Banshees(see songbook #14), that they sought to elicit from present-day facts, fantasies, and sounds a “sense of the things that matter,” seems an honest description of an ambition shared by many of the more poetic rockers; I must add, of course, that the crucial question of whether rock is the right arena for such an ambition is one that aspirants to genuine poetic service and excellence, as opposed to aspirants to poetic glory first-and-foremost, ought to let themselves honestly consider. They need to consider the problems raised by the Poetic Wisdom Paradox, and how Rock amplifies them.
I also agree with the idea that rock has “meta-political” significance, as my quoting of Plato reveals. I just think its significance is far more bohemian-libertarian than it is leftist. To put it too simply, the Sexual Revolution, and the autonomy it stands for, is the primary element of the Rock Revolution, which incidentally, also means that a big problem facing rebellion-seeking rockers from the late 70s on was that it had basically been accomplished.
While rock’s primary ideological element thus is sexual/psychic-al libertarianism, its secondary element, I would argue, is a profound ambivalence about modernity. This often is expressed by opposition to corporate capitalism, but it runs much deeper. Fundamental to the best rock’s “timeliness,” I think, is its disappointment with or even despair over the materially well-provided-for modern life. How to best deal with the supposedly good contemporary life and the conformist temptation to resign ourselves to its satisfactions is one of its basic themes. This is why rock resonates in the enclaves of the prosperous around the globe while it never really catches on with impoverished populations, and a major reason why it came to be identified as a white thing in America. For our (rich and middle-class) generations, the best rock artists serve a similar purpose as the romantic poets did for earlier ones—as the rare souls who glimpse the full implications of modern rationalism for living, and whose art seeks to provide an aesthetic refuge and alternative.
August 30th, 2011 | 7:48 am
Good summation of what you’ve been up to in these 17 posts.
You show admirable skepticism about the capacities of rock as the best arena (let alone as being performed in one!) to provide some sort of poetic wisdom whether through Homeric indirection or through a “Dante and Shakespeare” that incorporates in part the Socratic criticism of poetry. As a “canvass” for reporting, exploring, analyzing, and expressing the moods and ideas of the “times,” rock seems to be sorely lacking in its ability to point toward any philosophical eros–or even leftist revolutionary praxis. Instead it simply rehashes the idea of libertarian and sexual independence over and over. Even when it shows this idea indirectly through its white middle class “angst” (the name of an 80s post-punk band if I recall correctly) in regards to the materialist, suburban, middle class conformity, it seems only capable of returning to some sort of libertarianism.
This post almost sounds like it is conclusion of sorts.
I have a question though–does the inability of rock to express longings other than private sexual libertarian freedom, or even some idea of aetheticized anarchy have anything to do with its inability to express any indication of philosophic eros?
For instance, it seems that rock cannot credibly speak of God, and this is a big problem for the sake of poetic wisdom. I think I remember Peter saying somewhere that Christian rock is bad in two ways–it’s bad rock and it’s bad Christianity.
This seems about right to me, and it shows that rock leads to the cul de sac of “late modernity” as you put it.
August 30th, 2011 | 9:13 am
Now you’re cooking with gas, Carl!
August 30th, 2011 | 3:33 pm
Thanks guys! The Songbook is meant to unfold, with hopefully ever-added-value.
John, although certain barriers imposed by the typical rock-song form and the typical rock-group set of musical resources can put certain subject-matter out of practical limits, and the low lyrical talent of average rockers tends to send them back to typical subjects and sentiments, I don’t see that any subject-matter is off-limits for the most talented.
So for example, U2′s “Gloria,” “40,” and “October” work for me as rock songs about God. Paul could school us about Mr. Morrison’s contributions on that score. The whole “Christian pop and its mediocrity” issue tells us little about what rock can sing about. And there really have been a few hard-core Marxist bands, ready to rake their own fans over the coals for buying (not stealing!) too many rock recordings.
I’m in agreement with the great Will Morrissey, who during a classic No Left Turns rock-focused thread of 2006, http://nlt.ashbrook.org/2006/08/the-classics.php, said the following:
“[Rock] is 20th C folk music – and like folk music, anyone can grasp the rudiments and with some dedication write reasonably good material. (That doesn’t make them Ralph Stanley, mind….)”
Just about anything can be said in such “folk” songs, if we proceed song by song or band by band.
So what I’m talking about above is the overall phenomenon. The Rock Youth Culture. The Rock Identity. I’m saying you might try to be a rock band that fights against autonomy libertarianism, dumb leftism, the sexual revolution, etc., but the big ka-boodle (the “arena,” scene, and industry you are going to have to function within) is still going to wind up being mostly about those things. It’s still going to have its larger patterns and cultural impacts.
And it may even be that many of your fans, even if your lyrics are crystal clear preaching against those things(which they seldom are, or can be, in rock), get drawn into them.
August 30th, 2011 | 9:38 pm
[...] Carl Scott is probably the blogworld’s leading expert on the content of rock music (both words and music). He calls that content, once in a while, its ideological dimension. var myTarget='http://track.webgains.com/click.html?wglinkid=49480&wgcampaignid=98282&js=0'; var uri = 'http://track.webgains.com/link.html?wglinkid=49480&wgcampaignid=98282'; document.write(''); [...]
August 31st, 2011 | 9:12 am
U2 does nothing for me. Dylan and Van Morrison each have plenty of songs that reflect the soul of a religious thinkers. But they’re not the popular ones.
But I am hoping that God is a slob like one of us, because according to that standard I’d be fast-tracked into heaven as having lived a most godlike life.
August 31st, 2011 | 9:39 am
[...] Carl Scott is probably the blogworld’s leading expert on the content of rock music (both words and music). He calls that content, once in a while, its ideological dimension. Carl both is trained in political philosophy—especially Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America—and actually knows and … [...]
August 31st, 2011 | 1:29 pm
[...] Carl Scott is probably the blogworld’s leading expert on the content of rock music (both words and music). He calls that content, once in a while, its ideological dimension. [...]
August 31st, 2011 | 9:07 pm
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
November 19th, 2011 | 1:41 pm
[...] the nature of the Songbook project itself. The Songbook proposed, you may recall, that one of the potentially redeeming features of rock artistry is its attempt to resist or at least bear witness to the destructive pull of modernity. Insofar as [...]
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