Pop Aphorisms XIII

It has been four years since my last list of pop aphorisms. I thought it was high time for another.

1. The discovery of the teen idol was to pop music what the discovery of the star system was to Hollywood.

2. Brill Building composers are to the Sixties teenager what filmmaker John Hughes is to the Eighties teenager.

3. Improvisation is the name for privileging performance over composition, while pretension may be understood as the name for uninspired improvisation. No drum solo ever heard on a rock album must be considered as improvisation.

4. The rock drum solo is simply a form of Modernist bluster.

5. "Noise" must be understood as simply another category of taste.

6. If fans of rock music hadn't routinely violated the dictum, "don't judge a book by its cover," records in cut-out bins never would have been purchased.

7. Rock culture's most pernicious myth: initial failure is a sign of greatness.

8. One unanticipated consequence of the Beatles' success was the Sixties garage band, while an unanticipated consequence of the garage band was the groupie.

9. Rock critics' greatest theoretical challenge: how to explain why the worst records they've ever heard have perhaps ten or fifteen wonderful minutes, while the best records they've ever heard have perhaps ten or fifteen wonderful minutes.

10. Rock critics' second greatest theoretical challenge: how to distinguish between the music of fans trying to be artists from the music of artists trying to be fans.

Pop Aphorisms: 6

1. “The Top 500 Albums of All Time”—another name for the outcome of a questionnaire, a device derived from a nineteenth-century parlor game.

2. Certain records—such as Led Zeppelin’s first album—are worth purchasing simply because of the album art; listening to the record is the buyer's choice.

3. Bubblegum is to psychedelic music what fat free Half and Half is to whole milk: the musical equivalent of non-alcoholic beer.

4. Writing rock criticism is both unfulfilling and self-defeating: no matter how much one says or does, the criticism can never be as fun or interesting as the record itself.

5. The Sixties phenomenon of the “Supergroup”: an example of a marketing ploy that is able to flourish exclusively in an age of commerce—and the Age of Warhol.

6. Sturgeon’s Law states that 90% of everything is crap, except in the case of rock and pop music—then it’s 95%.

7. CD bonus tracks are the aural equivalent of the cinematic sequel: another way of scraping the last bit of cream from the side of the jar.

Pop Aphorisms: II

1. The collocations “art rock” and “progressive rock” are merely distinctions without a difference: both are attempts to assuage pop guilt.

2. Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, observes critic Harold Bloom, authored only nine poems that really matter, but what great and influential poems they are; in the history of rock, only Elvis alone sung nine that really mattered.

3. Improvisation is simply the name for the activity of privileging performance over composition, and avoiding being pretentious in the process.

4. For decades, the dictum, “don’t judge a book by its cover” was routinely violated by rock music fans; it’s why there are now books of album art.

5. The “reunion tour” is rock culture’s equivalent of purgatory--the waiting room to rock ‘n’ roll heaven.

6. To lift a phrase from Man Ray, the worst records I’ve ever heard have ten or fifteen marvelous minutes; the best records I’ve ever heard have merely ten or fifteen valid minutes.

7. When the music of Neil Young is imitated without inspiration or a sense of humor, it is called grunge.

8. If pop musicians were interested in honest self-appraisal rather than self-deification, the flip side of the Righteous Brothers’ “Rock and Roll Heaven” would be titled, in homage to Sartre, “No Exit.”

9. The albums of the Mothers of Invention represent the music of fans trying to be artists; the albums of Captain Beefheart represent the music of an artist trying to be a fan.