[whorefrost]

Taken from - - http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cdrev/sonic-88.php - -:

Sonic Youth
Daydream Nation
Blast First/Enigma
Royal Trux
Royal Trux
Royal

An edited transcript of a conversation between Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics; Gerard Cosloy, who runs Homestead Records and publishes Conflict; and SPIN editor Joe Levy.

Joe Levy: If these records share anything, it’s that they’re marginal.

Gerard Cosloy: Explain what you mean by marginal.

Robert Christgau: They’re not pop records, Gerard.

CG: And not being a pop record makes it marginal? I’m just curious.

RC: Yeah, by definition, it makes it marginal--on the margins of popular culture. In what sense aren’t they marginal?

CG: In the impact they can have on the individual. Rarely do I concern myself, when I listen to any of these records, what relation they bear to each other or what ten or 1,000 other people are going to get out of it, because I don’t live with those people.

RC: Well, that seems like an extremely--and I hate to use this Lester Bangs word, but I’m afraid it’s the one that comes to mind--solipsistic view of the world. In fact, there are other people, and you are connected to them, and to me one of the crucial things about popular music--especially as opposed to art music and avant-garde music--is those connections. So, you can talk about the marginality of these records in fairly accurate ways. Sonic Youth are less marginal, at this point, because they have a larger audience and a more accessible format. And I think one of the things it has to do with is a conscious, deliberate relationship to the marketplace. Which, in the case of Sonic Youth, has been extremely good for their music. I can’t think of any band of the past five years that’s "sold out" to better effect than Sonic Youth. They’re more interested in writing tunes, they’re readier to work with relatively tight and traditional constructions, song structures. And it so happens--much to my surprise, because I always thought they were an interesting band with a good sound who were incredibly overrated by their cult--they really turned out to be good at this. So that their groove, which was always a problem for me, is now a virtue. Given the melodies and the song structure, suddenly this kind of mechanical and monolithic groove has a different twist to it. My problem is that I don’t find that there’s much room for formal innovation in this music anymore. The innovations people come up with are extremely small, personal, idiosyncratic, and what that means is that they have to hit you where you live or you can live without them. That wasn’t true of, say, Human Switchboard, to take one example from six years ago. They had a lot of places to go.

GC: I think if you look at the climate back then, yeah, I would agree with that. On the other hand, I still don’t mind. Because this music is hitting me right where I live. I think there are people who really are the real innovators right now, very often without ever trying to be. Some of those people have yet to make records. Costes and Suckdog, for example. She’s from New Hampshire and he’s from France. They sing over tapes that they’ve made together, or stuff that they’ve taped off the radio, generally really horrible AM radio sludge, whatever they could find. And they put together their own 30-minute rock operas, usually separately, sometimes together. Lisa’s like 19 years ago, her face is all chopped up, something really bad happened to her at a young age; she’s very strange--it seems as though she’s eight or nine years old and she’s never trying to come off that way. Costes, on the other hand, he’s in his thirties, and his command of the English language is not that strong. The only words he really seems to have gotten the hang of so far are words for body parts. He likes to use those words very often. He likes to talk about the parts of the body, and what he’s about to do with them. Costes doesn’t see himself as part of any sort of rock underground, he actually believes that he is going to be the next Pet Shop Boys, the next Morrissey, the next Elton John, the next Sting. That’s the stuff that he’d listen to. And none of those things are going to happen, not in his wildest dreams, but the two of them together are really great, they’re sort of made for each other. They make a very nice couple. I’ve never heard anything in rock’n’roll that sounds like them. They might make better theater than good music.

RC: Why should anything you’ve said make me want to see this group?

GC: I’m not necessarily trying to make anybody go see them or buy their tapes, I mean it’s nice if people do, and if they like it, that’s even better, but I’ll still be able to listen to them.

JL: So there is a point to that solipsism line. This stuff may be fine when you’re home listening to it, but if it’s driven to any will communicate, it might be better. That’s what makes the Sonic Youth record so good.

CG: I’m not sure I’d agree with that. I’m also not sure I’d agree it’s the best record Sonic Youth’s ever made. I like the Royal Trux record better than the Sonic Youth record. Sonic Youth--they’re at a point right now where they write really great rock songs that for one reason or another don’t really take me to another place. When I listen to their songs, I could be watching them at the Ritz or Madison Square Garden but they remind me of a rock band. I don’t blame them for that, but at this particular moment the Royal Trux record is much harder for me to figure out. The idea of that band: people who are barely able to conduct daily order of affairs, whether it’s buying a newspaper or picking up the telephone, trying to be a rock band on stage, I find that really exciting. That doesn’t mean that they’re talented or that they’re good or they have something to say for a lot of people. But, you know, that’s not what I’m listening for.

RC: You’re listening to be taken to another place, because they’re really innovative, or because they’re really something that you find exciting. Those are the three possible values I pick up from what you’re saying.

GC: Okay, they’re not that innovative. I mean they’re playing guitars, bass, and drums. They’re trying to write songs, even though they haven’t managed yet. They’re not the most innovative group in the world. But I think if one person likes it, it’s valid enough to exist. I think it’s safe to say that I’m probably not as discriminating as you are in what I listen to, but we haven’t talked about records that you might think are particularly special that I might find to be anywhere from average to downright awful. The only conclusion I can come to is that for one reason or another there’s a specific genre that I have more sympathy for than I have for something else. I actually don’t mind that. I also don’t believe in making excuses for what’s happened. I would rather see someone err on the side of being too discriminating than making apologies for something merely because it exists: "Someone’s created this, they went to a lot of effort, and therefore it’s valid." I don’t believe that for a minute.

RC: But I got to tell you it seems to me that in fact that’s how the independent scene keeps going--it’s based on a lot of local loyalties and appreciation for what should happen to a scene at a certain moment in your life. Assuming you don’t have a depression in this country--which is never something to discount--but assuming that there’s a little extra money floating around--because people are not making money doing this and if there wasn’t some extra money floating around it wouldn’t happen--I agree with you that as a phenomenon this sort of music is going to sustain itself for a long time. But whether it isn’t going to become ever narrower and chomp even further up on its own tail, that’s not something I’m so sure about.

GC: I think that as long as people have imagination, something more far-reaching will come along.

RC: It isn’t just a matter of people’s individual imagination. You couch so much of this in terms of your individual response and the individual creativity of the people making the music--what I say is that all art, even arty-art, high art, which is really the kind of art you’re interested in, whether you like it or not, is dependent on a social context. And if the social context dries up, so does the art.

GC: I just think someone’s going to be calling it something else in five years’ time. I don’t believe that rock’s vocabulary is finite. Maybe the bands that are there right now are not using what’s in that vocabulary to their full potential.

RC: I believe the musical vocabulary is finite and what characterizes certain vocabularies is not so much their amplitude as their staying power. That’s the great things about blues changes--they have extraordinary attractiveness and staying power that’s, as far as we can tell, intrinsic, at least for people living in the Westernized world. People like blues changes, a lot of people really seem to like them for a long time. But even they will eventually wear out. Can’t go on forever. The world is long, art is short.

GC: I hope the world is long.

RC: Right, I hope the world is long. And I know art is short.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

 

are these dudes just going to keep masturbating or actually start talking relevantly about music, wait.. this was 1988.. I think I get it now

[whorefrost]

touche!