Post-post
Who came up with the idea of naming things using temporally transient modifiers relative to existing ideas, anyway?. The worst of these is “postmodern”. Seriously, that word has about as much intrinsic meaning as post-structuralism. “Modern” was bad enough—adopting a name for an art/philosophy movement that means “relating to recent times” when the present remains anything but. Why stop there? Let’s name the next one based one the first, but without adding any useful content. So “postmodernism” is what comes after modernism (note that it has nothing to do with “futurism” either); or more specifically, an extension and/or rejection of modernism. Don’t even get me started on “contemporary”. I take that back… at least you can tell post-structuralism is, in someway, related to structure.
Now we’ve got the same problem with music genres. Progressive rock, which started out as an extension—a progression, if you will—of rock (in various directions); taking rock and making it moreso; is now a stagnated, strictly defined niche sub-genre. If you want to be considered “progressive” nowadays, you have to sound exactly like certain bands from 50 years ago. And the list goes on. I’ve seen Velvet Underground labeled both a “proto-punk” band and a “post-rock” band (although they pre-date the term post-rock by about 30 years). Ironic, since punk itself evolved as an extension and/or rejection of rock (but in different directions than progressive rock); a post-rock that is much different than the, er, modern (canonical) post-rock. Then we have post-punk, an extension and/or rejection of punk, also pre-dating post-rock by about 15 years, which I suppose could be considered proto-post-rock. Sooner or later, someone will come up with a web app diagramming the relationships of all the rock sub-genres that begin with a prefix that begins with ‘p’. Now with bands like Isis and Pelican, we have “post-metal”. I downloaded some Cult of Luna tracks recently and found them labeled, hilariously and somewhat fittingly, as “post-crust”. Aaaand I haven’t even gotten to “alternative” rock…
Post-Script: http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000502.html
March 7th, 2008 at 8:34 am
I saw this great mural in NYC that showed a sort of flowing tree structure of how various musicians and bands influenced and led to other musicians and bands. It was mostly mainstream pop/rock, and I took issues with some of it, but generally it was waaay better than a lot of the genre-izing that goes on.
human brains naturally want to categorize, label, and compartmentalize. It’s funny how often artists/musicians protest, “but I’m not a ________ artist/musician!”
May 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am
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