Hey Fellas, You Curled His Horns

I’m an avowed fan of “shop-talk” in all its iterations: I love listening to football strategists dissect opposing defenses with no shortage of jargon, and I’m the guy standing next to the car mechanic while getting his fan belt changed, asking questions like “what exactly does a fuel pump do, you know, in the grand scheme of things?” Admittedly, my good friends over at Destination: Out provide me another chance to eavesdrop on a conversation I have only a scant hope of understanding, but it doesn’t mean I don’t run over there every time my rss shows they’ve updated. More than “learning” in the sense we typically use it, I think my appeal for shop-talk has to do with watching virtuosic displays of very specific knowledge, no matter what form it takes–mostly because i’m a reknowned dabbler. Bonus points for those experts who try to make their wisdom applicable to the unwashed masses, and that’s what I smell cooking over at Slate, where Alex Ross (another member of the shop-talk canon, re: classical music) is gabbing with Ben Ratliff (NYT Jazz guy) about the confines of genre, and how those enamored with a particular style of music cross party lines, what they find on the other side, and why. There’s only one entry so far, but Ross has already compared Eric B. & Rakim to Stravinsky, so it’s a good start.

I’ve been wondering about genre in pop music for a while now, and hopefully these two can spur me toward writing something here. I’m glad that, for the most part, American critics try their best to push away from the Joe Carducci formal aesthetic analysis/instrumental gatekeeping approach (leading to: rock = “art”; pop = meaningless), although many British critics still find themselves lapsing into the old “you can define ‘pop’ by the melodic structure of the song” saw. I’m much more for analyses that foreground music’s role in practice, but yeah, I understand the critical urge to fall back on genre as a shortcut when faced with word-count-limits. I will not ever, under any circumstances, however, understand those who use undefined, hazy cliches as snarky shortcuts (”dad rock,” I’m looking in your direction; “yacht rock,” you’re funnier, but still). We’ll see how this turns out.

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Programming note: I’ve been really chatty and grumpy over the past few weeks, evidenced by some of the longer posts still present on the front page. Hopefully, that phase has passed.

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Also: NEW JAY-Z AND IT’S PRETTY F’ING GOOD! I haven’t written on this blog long enough to write about a Jay-Z record I liked (Black Album, obv.), and I really like this new one. Will hopefully write something in the upcoming days (it’s out tomorrow!). Maybe it’s just because I’m so hungry for a good rap record this year (Kanye, not so much; Lil’ Wayne, bordering on omnipresence; Prodigy, pretty durn good), but I can’t deny the instant pleasure I felt listening to “Pray,” “Ignorant Shit” and especially “Roc Boys,” which Jay performed last Friday night on Letterman. After a brief interview, that is, in which he appeared to be very charming: