Two Questions: 1. How are you using class here? Is this some kind of bourgeois V. proletariat class distinction, with the Monkeys being the bourgeois (safe, conventional, status quo) and the Rolling Stones being the proletariat (I remember V for Vendetta playing Street Fighter during the closing credits). Or do you mean some kind of other musical class? In a sense, the question of 'Who Wrote It' which you want to say is indicative of greater class issues, has - either way - become emancipated from those issues. If you ask someone today if writing your own music is important, their answer may have more to do with some kind of new musical standard (that writing music IS important) than with an underlying class issue. For example, the Strokes are probably more bourgeois, but they write their own music. Contrast to, say, Avril Lavigne who is more proletariat, but does not.
2. You write: "the question here is can one class (or whatever) make better music than another class? And my answer is "sure," but this isn't inherent in the class." Does that make the class incidental? Or is it that the class is only an indicator, not a contributer. Or can class contribute even? Certainly the Rolling Stone's were great because they were grimy and dirty and rolled around in the mud and their music sounded like that. So the class contributed. Etc.
Re: 2 QuestionskoganbotAugust 6 2007, 15:33:03 UTC
Sorry I didn't respond to these questions straight off, and I don't have time to right now, but briefly
(1) I'm deliberately using the word "class" loosely and problematically, which we discuss a bit here. Briefly, in some circumstances (e.g., a high school) you have to treat groups such as preps and burnouts and freaks as social classes, because it's these classes that structure the school social environment. But you also have to see relationships between these classes and stuff like "middle class" and "working class."
(2) Class not incidental or I wouldn't have mentioned it. What's going on in the culture will have a different impact on different classes, and classes will also evolve their shape and character over time, so a class that consistently creates good music at one time may do much more poorly at another. (Think of an analogy to genres.)
1. How are you using class here? Is this some kind of bourgeois V. proletariat class distinction, with the Monkeys being the bourgeois (safe, conventional, status quo) and the Rolling Stones being the proletariat (I remember V for Vendetta playing Street Fighter during the closing credits). Or do you mean some kind of other musical class? In a sense, the question of 'Who Wrote It' which you want to say is indicative of greater class issues, has - either way - become emancipated from those issues. If you ask someone today if writing your own music is important, their answer may have more to do with some kind of new musical standard (that writing music IS important) than with an underlying class issue. For example, the Strokes are probably more bourgeois, but they write their own music. Contrast to, say, Avril Lavigne who is more proletariat, but does not.
2. You write: "the question here is can one class (or whatever) make better music than another class? And my answer is "sure," but this isn't inherent in the class." Does that make the class incidental? Or is it that the class is only an indicator, not a contributer. Or can class contribute even? Certainly the Rolling Stone's were great because they were grimy and dirty and rolled around in the mud and their music sounded like that. So the class contributed. Etc.
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(1) I'm deliberately using the word "class" loosely and problematically, which we discuss a bit here. Briefly, in some circumstances (e.g., a high school) you have to treat groups such as preps and burnouts and freaks as social classes, because it's these classes that structure the school social environment. But you also have to see relationships between these classes and stuff like "middle class" and "working class."
(2) Class not incidental or I wouldn't have mentioned it. What's going on in the culture will have a different impact on different classes, and classes will also evolve their shape and character over time, so a class that consistently creates good music at one time may do much more poorly at another. (Think of an analogy to genres.)
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