Here Today... Gone To Hell!

A lot of times I hear people on this board who talk about how music that's not rock isn't "real music", or that music was better and less commercialized in the old days.? Well, I just found this entry on Wikipedia that really crystallizes this attitude as being a little prejudiced, by calling it "rockism".? I think it's an interesting entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism

ROCKISM

Rockism is an ideology of popular music criticism, originating in the British music press in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

The fundamental tenet of rockism is that some forms of popular music, and some musical artists, are more authentic than others. More specifically, authentic popular music fits the rock and roll paradigm; it is made using the basic rock instrumentation of guitars, bass guitars and drums, and fits the structures of a rock and roll song. Rockism is suspicious of the use of technology, from synthesizers to ProTools-style computer-based production systems. Rockism places value on the idea of the composer and performer as auteur; authentic music is composed as a sincere form of self-expression, and usually performed by those who composed it. This is as opposed to the notion of manufactured "pop" music, created in assembly line fashion by teams of hired producers and technicians and performed by pop stars who have little input into the creative process, designed to appeal to a mass market and make profits rather than express authentic sentiments.

Rockism is a primitivist ideology; a subtext of rockism is that, at one time in history, they "got music right", and that all subsequent innovations have compromised this purity. (This golden age is often placed sometime during the 1960s or 1970s.) Critics of rockism assert that this vaunted "golden age" of pure, authentic music is a myth, and that popular music never was entirely free of the interference of commercialism, marketing and commodification.

Design critic and indie pop musician Nick Currie compared Rockism to the art movement of Stuckism, which held (among other things) that artists who do not paint are not artists.

Criticisms of rockism

Some critics of rockism have alleged that it is a racist, sexist and/or homophobic ideology, in that the artists it privileges with the label of authenticity are predominantly heterosexual white males; the genres of music attacked by rockist criticism as less authentic than rock have included many black musical genres (hip-hop, R&B), genres associated with the gay community (disco, house) and pop music, where female performers such as Madonna (often charged by rockist critics with inauthenticity and trading on image over substance) have often found success.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/arts/music/31sann.html?ei=5090&en=5d74c31cbf3d2d34&ex=1256965200&partner=WEBLOGS&pagewanted=print
(This is a great NY Times article on rockism)

Rock's goals are very similar to pop's goals, except they are achieved differently. Pop encourages mass thought directly. Rock music tells people to "do their own thing", or "be unique", but when you zoom out, it still looks like a crowd with the characteristic mass mentality. It's a subconscious reflex characteristic of almost all fans of rock music. Rock has always had this basic outlook, and there have always been a select few to transcend it, and probably sell very few records in the process. Others, like Rush, are just damn lucky. ;)

Yeah, I definitely subscribe to 'rockism'. What they say is right. The 'real' rock was the sound of the 60s-90's and the crap that some bands put out now ISN'T rock. They can go make their own genre...