NP - What rock star will be remembered? Compared to literary field.

[Mark Kohut]

"Predicting is hard, especially about the future."---Yogi Berra

On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 4:17 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello all,
>
>    I came across this article about what rock musician/performer will be
> remembered in the future:
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/magazine/which-rock-star-will-historians-of-the-future-remember.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-5&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0
>
> The author of the piece, Chuck Klosterman, starts off with John Philip
> Sousa and marches. He speculates that if asked most people could not name
> or could only name Sousa as a composer of marches. He then poses the
> question of who will be remembered from rock. He quotes Ted Gioia: “Over
> time, critics and historians will play a larger role in deciding whose fame
> endures,”
> I think a good point is made when he compares Saturday Night Live and
> Never Mind the Bollocks. " In 1977, the disco soundtrack to “Saturday
> Night Fever” and the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex
> Pistols” were both released. The soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever” has
> sold more than 15 million copies; it took “Never Mind the Bollocks” 15
> years to go platinum. Yet virtually all pop historiographers elevate the
> importance of the Pistols above that of the Bee Gees.
>
> Bourdieu might point out that the Bee Gees were clearly oriented toward
> the pole of heteronomous production that provides greater economic capital
> and that the Sex Pistols were oriented toward the autonomous pole of
> production (though not in a dominant position, rather a subversive avant
> garde one) that garners more symbolic capital than economic. The two
> prodcucts have different life cycles and thus age differently.
>
>     For me it is interesting to read this speculative study of the future
> status of rock stars (agents in the field of musical production) over and
> against the the literary field. What homologies of structure or strategy
> might we find? For Klosterman, Sousa and march are synonomous as (he
> suspects) might happen with Bob Marley and reggae. And in literature?
>
> If you're a Deadhead you think people will recognize the grateness of the
> Grateful Dead; if you're a Pynchon fan you likely think his writing will
> stand out a hundred years hence or more. But is this just our "ilusio" as
> Bourdeiu calls it? Vision fogged up by Fanboy feelings? Is this all hollow
> speculation of no import? Though the above is speculative in nature I do
> not think that the question is doomed to mere speculation.
>
> ciao
> mc otis
>
>
>
>
>
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